The Wall St. Journal runs a story on the iPhone and the blogosphere jumps hard on the bandwagon. 
Does Anyone Want BCE?
In the last week, two of the potential suitors for BCE have been dropping like flies. The latest is Telus, which issued a short two-sentence statement yesterday that the “inadequacies of BCE’s bid process did not make it possible for Telus to submit an offer”. Couple of comments: first, I have no idea what that statement actually means; and second, some lawyer somewhere made a lot of money crafting the process to say something and nothing at the same time.
Truth be told, Telus is blowing smoke and everyone knows it – or should know it. It’s a bald-face negotiating tactic to get the federal Competition Bureau to approve a potential Telus-BCE merger/deal before private equity investors swoop in for the kill. You’ve got Telus CEO Darren Entwistle running around Toronto earlier this week talking about how a Telus-BCE deal would be “good for Canada” while lobbying the Competition Bureau to get its collective ass in gear.
Truth be told, Telus wants BCE because the deal makes sense for Telus. In fact, it makes a lot more sense for Telus and Canada than having some U.S. private equity investors take “control” of BCE. But, hey this Canada where regulation and bureaucracy rule the roost.
One final point, if the Competition Bureau was so interested in maintaining competition, why did it approve Rogers’ purchase of Microcell, which reduced the number of wireless players to three from four. It seems like a strange decision given there’s so much talk these days about a fourth national carriers being allowed to enter the wireless market.
Internet Radio Goes Silent
If you want to see – and hear – what the future of Internet radio could soon be like, check out LAUNCHcast, Pandora or hundreds of other online stations today. What you’ll hear is nothing. The fledgling industry, which has provided millions of people with a new and exciting way to listen and discover new music is holding a day of silence to protest what it sees as new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board in the U.S. The online radio industry believes these rates will drive many players out of business simply because they won’t be able to afford the fees, which are being tripled under the new regime.
Obviously, it’s a complex issue but it’s just another example of how there’s a puzzling disconnect between consumers and the music industry. The biggest problem, challenge and opportunity is discovery. You give consumers the tools to discover new music, and there’s a good chance they’ll spend money to access it – be it a CD, digital downloading, streaming radio service, etc.
Right now, the music world is suffering from a terrible case of discovery blues. Conglomerates such as Clear Channel are forcing a cookie-cutter programming down the throats of millions of radio listeners all in the name of we know what’s best for consumers. Well, that might have worked before the Web emerged as a powerful medium but it’s a dumb strategy now given consumers are more aware than ever about what’s available around the world, and they’re hungry to discover, listen and consume it.
It’s been almost a decade since Napster disrupted the music industry’s party, and the business is still no closing to figuring out what’s going to work and how it’s going to survive and thrive.
Note: TechCrunch points out that Last.fm is not part of the day of silence – maybe being part of a media conglomerate, CBS, has already caused Last.fm to forget where it came from.
What’s an Internet Rock Star? Ask Will Pate.
Will Pate, who just agreed to come on board as the editor for b5′s new Internet rockstar channel, provides a lengthy – and colourful – explanation about the channel’s focus. My favourite sentence is this: “An internet rockstar is someone who doesn’t surf the series of tubes, they shred it. They have street cred. Their posse is def and their peeps roll deep.” Of course, someone needs to explain what “def” and “their peeps roll deep” mean but it seems pretty impressive.
Simple Way to Find Web 2.0 Apps
I few years ago, I co-founded a company called Blanketware that aimed to make it easy to do things online as opposed to using the Web as a place to read stuff. Our original service was based on the tagline “I want [fill in the blank]“. Sadly, the business was ahead of its time – actually, it was just waiting for AdSense to arrive to become a viable operation. In any event, I stumbled across a cool search service called Simplespark that lets you find and share useful Web 2.0 applications. It is what Blanketware could have been.
LinkedIn vs. Facebook? Not Really
There’s lots of buzz about LinkedIn opening up its API to outside developers – and the inevitable comparisons with Facebook, which pulled off the same stunt a couple weeks ago. It has caused some people such as my friend, Mathew Ingram, to wonder if LinkedIn and Facebook are competing, and if LinkedIn stands a chance in the face of the Facebook Phenomena (aka FP).
In a sense, LinkedIn and Facebook are competing given they’re both popular and useful social networking tools. That said, they’re different beasts with different wrinkles and characteristics. LinkedIn is a serious corporate networking tool. You recommend me to a colleague, and then when I want to do some business, I’ll contact them – or something like that. Facebook, for now, is about the consumer and fun/entertainment. It’s not about business.
Of course, there will be some overlap. LinkedIn users who into social networking will, no doubt, check out Facebook as another valuable tool to get the word out. I mean, half the reason I’m in Facebook is having my professional profile available to a huge audience. And maybe some Facebook users will check out LinkedIn, although I suspect it will be parents as opposed to their children.
What’s pretty amazing about Facebook is it has 11 million members and, more important, it’s a profitable business. By the way, b5media has a great LinkedIn blog, Linked Intelligence.
