Cisco’s Growing Consumer Empire

Mar 19, 2009 By Mark Evans in M&A 2 Comments

For a company whose roots are routers and switches, Cisco is orchestrating a fascinating strategic transformation into a consumer-focused company. The latest foray is the purchase of Pure Digital Technologies, which makes the popular Flip digital cameras, for $590-million.

The deal enhances a consumer-focused portfolio that also includes Linksys, which Cisco acquired for $500-million in 2003, and Scientific-Atlanta, acquired for $6.9-billion in 2005.

That said, Pure Digital, which raised $80-million of venture capital, is a different consumer beast for Cisco given it’s potentially a mainstream product that anybody and everybody can use. Easy to use and selling for less than $300, the Flip has taken the digital camera market by storm, capturing 20% of the market over the past 18 months.

A New York Times story last Sunday included an interesting section about Flip and how it was eventually financed by Sequoia:

When Jonathan Kaplan pitched his initial business plan for the Flip video camera, Mr. Moritz branded it “terrible.” Mr. Kaplan, who had been hoping for something like “promising,” or “has potential,” came away jolted.

But every now and then, Mr. Moritz meets an entrepreneur who dazzles him. He saw that with the founders of Yahoo and Google, which he financed on behalf of Sequoia. When that happens, the taunts disappear. Mr. Moritz throws his energy into persuading those entrepreneurs to let Sequoia invest and help them build their business.

Ultimately, Mr. Moritz decided that Mr. Kaplan did have the right stuff with his Flip camera. The key was to stop positioning the Flip purely as another electronic device, and to recast it as something simpler and more revolutionary: a source of easy, on-the-go video that would brighten people’s lives. Apple would have been proud.

Here’s a complete list of Cisco’s acquisition activity over the past 16 years.

For more on the acquisition of Pure Digital, check out VentureBeat.

Technorati Tags: cisco, flip, pure digital

Are We Over-Blackberryed?

Mar 18, 2009 By Mark Evans in Wireless 5 Comments

In yesterday’s Toronto Star, there’s a story about the city of Toronto wants to hire an “enterprise technical support specialist” to look after the city’s 1,800 Blackberrys.

This prompted Councillor Doug Holyday, a non-Blackberry users, to ask why the city’s employees are using so many Blackberrys.

“I think we’re over-BlackBerryed here. I don’t see anybody doing a better job because they’ve got a BlackBerry,” he said. “I hear them going off in council meetings all the time. I wonder what the heck’s going on.”

While Blackberrys can be great communication and productivity tools, Holyday makes a good point, especially for a city struggling financially. Do 1,300 employees really need a Blackberry to do their jobs?

Having lived without a Blackberry for the past few days and survived the need to constantly check my e-mail, I think many companies are, in fact, over-Blackberryed. At many companies, Blackberrys have become standard issue based on the notion that if an employee is accessible at all times day and night, they’ll work more and harder.

Of course, there’s a cost that comes with having a Blackberry. They cost about $75 to $150/month per employee (the city of Toronto is, therefore, spending about $1.8-million/year for its Blackberrys). And there’s a soft cost that companies pay for having employees who aren’t able to disconnect because they’re continually tethered to their corporate Blackberry.

In reality, many employees could easily operate just fine without a Blackberry. Rather than having mobile e-mail and the Web, they could use a basic phone to stay connected – just like the old days.

More: For Blackberry fans out there, Crackberry.com has a review the Niagara 9630.

Technorati Tags: blackberry, wireless

Five (More) Questions with….Christopher Golda

Mar 16, 2009 By Mark Evans in Five Questions With... 1 Comment

Since its launch last year, BackType has continued to attract attention as one of the ways to track comments within the blogosphere, follow people making comments.

At PodCamp in Toronto last month, I had a chance to talk to co-founder Chris Golda, who mentioned that the company had introduced some new tools and raised another round of seed capital. So, I fired off a few questions to get an update.

1. Talk about how BackType is evolving and how BackTweets and BackType connect fit into the strategic vision?

Everything we do aligns in some way with the long-term vision Michael Montano and I have for BackType. The tools we build for comment authors and publishers promote more conversation online. We believe that the thoughts and insights people share through comments are incredibly valuable. An individual comment may seem to hold little worth, but when you look at millions in aggregate there’s the potential to unlock a lot of value. That’s what BackType is all about.

Lately we’ve been focused on extending our support beyond blogs to other platforms and services. For example, we recently added FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit and others. BackType Connect has always been an interest of ours, but it became really compelling after adding FriendFeed and Twitter. Connecting conversations is something a lot of publishers are interested in, and we were in a great position to do it. We built BackTweets to solve a specific problem we were having while using Twitter — we wanted an easy way to track who was tweeting comments from BackType. It’s also very complementary to BackType Connect. After seeing the tweets about a particular article or post, it’s natural to want to see conversations happening elsewhere, on blogs and other social media.

2. How much are you gleaning from how people are using BackType? How is that impacting product development?

We read everything people say about BackType — feedback and support e-mails, as well as tweets and, of course, comments. It’s very time consuming, but it’s definitely one of the most important things we do. BackType Subscriptions was something we built purely based on feedback. Understanding how people use BackType has played a big role in what we’ve been releasing and our plans for the future.

3. Can you talk about the funding you’ve received?

We raised a $300,000 seed round of financing from True Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley with $155 under management. They’re known for their investments in Meebo, Sphere, Automattic (creators of WordPress), and many others, but what really drew us to them is that they really understand the needs of early-stage start-ups and fully support our vision and direction for the company.

4. What kind of business model are you working on? Are investors looking for revenue sources before they commit?

BackType is primarily used as a toolset for comment authors, but it’s also used by companies for customer support, public relations, etc. It follows that our business model will revolve around the latter. Online conversations are an extremely valuable subset of information online that we’re organizing better than anyone else. We think there are plenty of ways to make money helping publishers and marketing professionals be more effective at what they do. We also want to help consumers understand what people are saying about the companies, products, services, and other things they’re interested in. That’s helpful in many ways, especially for those making purchase decisions.

While start-ups with early revenues are becoming increasingly attractive these days, I don’t think revenue is crucial this early. I’m sure there are other things professional investors look at more seriously — more important questions that they want answered. At seed stage, the main reason someone invests in you won’t be the fact that you’re making a relatively insignificant amount of revenue early on.

Technorati Tags: chris golda, backtype

Newspapers Covering the Future of Newspapers

Mar 15, 2009 By Mark Evans in Media 2 Comments

I wrote my post yesterday about the future of newspapers before discovering the Globe & Mail had published a lengthy feature looking at the future newspapers.

A few thoughts:

1. The G&M story the kind of journalism that newspapers need to do because it offers insight and perspective (aka tell me what it means) about an issue that’s been attracting a lot of news coverage recently.

2. It’s interesting to see newspapers enthusiastically wave the flag about how the industry’s demise would be a blow to society and how politicians behave. This suggests other information platforms such as blogs won’t have the same influence or impact.

3. It puts the spotlight on the quality of work that professional journalists produce, and how much bloggers rely on this content. To me, this is one of the crucial issues going forward: how can top-quality journalism be maintained at a time when news organizations are under financial pressure, and reporters need to focus on quantity (print, blogs, video, podcasts, etc.) as much as quality.

4. If you read the G&M’s story (the newspaper version), it puts the spotlight on a major problem, which is that many people believe there are few things worth reading within a newspaper.

For an important story focused on the future of newspapers, it’s interesting the G&M article is a uninspiring wave of text. There are black and white photographs and some text boxes but there are no graphics or charts that illustrate the state of the newspaper industry visually. The story could have used, for example, a chart showing the most popular online news sites, or even a chart showing some of the new places that people are getting their news.

We live in a world where video games, Twitter, blog posts and free commuter newspapers such as Metro have shrunk our collective attention spans. To get someone to pay attention, the news needs to be compelling and accessible visually. It you can marry that with top-notch writing, your chances of getting someone to read an article are that much higher.

Here are some personal observations about newspaper readership:

- I’ve been taking public transit a lot recently. Few people are reading newspapers. Of those people, many read free commuter newspapers rather than broadsheets (Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post) – and most of these people are men. Women are more likely to read a book than a newspaper.

- The iPod has become an engrained part of commuter culture. Whether it’s music or video, about half the people commuting are using an iPod or MP3 player. For newspapers, it suggests maybe there’s an opportunity to create three to five minute video episodes that tell people the news of the day, as well as places (print and online) where they can get more information.

Finally, I wonder how much of an impact electronic paper would have on newspapers and newspaper readership. For years, people have talked being able to have e-paper that would display a wide variety of content. You could stuff e-paper in your briefcase, read in on the couch and other places within the home, and take it on public transportation.

Is e-paper the newspaper industry’s salvation or a key part of the survival solution?

More: The Guardian has a thought-provoking story on the significant downsizing happening within the U.K. newspaper market.

Technorati Tags: newspapers

Do Newspapers Have a Future?

Mar 14, 2009 By Mark Evans in Main Page 9 Comments

I spent 15 years working for newspapers so it’s not surprising that despite being a digital creature, I still love reading newspapers – the ones made with paper that leave ink stains on your fingers.

Even though I’m no longer a journalist, it’s troubling to see how newspapers are crumbling before our eyes – victims of a business model that doesn’t work anymore, high debt loads brought on by strategic dreams about convergence, and a struggling economy.

The Rocky Mountain News closes, the Miami Herald sheds 200 jobs, the Globe & Mail offers severance packages, the Washington Post downsizes its business section, and on it goes.

There are many questions about what’s happening and who to blame but perhaps the biggest question is whether the struggles of newspapers really matter. Is the world going to be a worst place if newspapers (products made from dead trees) continue to disappear?

As much as I love newspapers, I don’t think it will matter if they go the way of the dinosaur. To me, newspapers are a “platform” that is being antiquated as new technology becomes a more efficient, faster and less expensive distribution vehicle. Newspapers are expensive to produce and distribute. But the economic model that lets newspapers thrive (e.g. classified advertising) no longer works so newspapers no longer make sense economically.

So, if the current newspaper business model doesn’t work, what replaces it? For all the buzz about citizen journalism, it’s a different kind of journalism that involves “raw footage” as opposed to the research and perspective the journalists/reporters churn out – and that bloggers love to chew on.

If newspapers are going to survive and thrive, their operating models must radically change. This includes:

- Reporters need to be multi-functional. They need to write for the newspaper and the Web, they need to podcast, shoot video, blog, Twitter and use other social media tools. It will be an intense and challenging profession – a far cry from the days when journalists had the luxury of writing one or two stories a day.

- Journalism will no longer be a middle-class profession. In the new economic climate, it doesn’t work if you’ve got a newsroom with reporters making $75,000 to $125,000/year. The new newsroom will see most journalists make $40,000 to $50,000 while a small number of investigative reporters and columnists (aka stars) will make $75,000 to $100,000. It may not be great money but the rewards of being a journalist go far beyond their paychecks.

- Smaller newsrooms. Reporters will have to be more productive, and the stories they write will have to offer perspective (aka tell me what it means) as opposed to recounting what happened given the Web more than takes care of the “what happened” part.

- A focus on local news. With fewer reporters, newspapers will thrive by covering what’s happening in their own backyards, while leaving national and international news to wire services.

Even if newspapers embraced all these changes, the number of newspapers will likely continue to disappear. While it’s troubling to watch, there will be no lack of news given new media organizations can be quickly created. An example is Politico, which was started by a group of ex-Washington Post reporters. The challenge, of course, will be creating business models that let these new players do well.

More: TVO’s The Agenda had a feature last night on The State of Newspapers. Look for the video to appear soon.

More II: Clay Shirky has a lengthy post on the world of newspapers, including this telling paragraph:

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

Technorati Tags: blogs, newspapers

mesh Schedule Goes Live!

Mar 12, 2009 By Mark Evans in Web 2.0 No Comments

Since we started mesh in 2006, content can always been king.

Behind the scenes, we spend hours exploring ideas for keynotes, panels and workshops. We have animated discussions, healthy arguments, good-natured banter and lots of laughs. It’s a process that takes time because we want mesh to feature issues and trends that are current, relevant and interesting while attracting great speakers who can offer insight and perspective.

All this explains why it has taken us so long to unveil the line-up for this year’s mesh. But today is launch day as we’re pulling the covers off the mesh schedule. You can find all the details here.

It goes without saying we’re really excited about our keynotes, panels and workshops.

Tickets have been selling at a brisk pace so register soon so you’re not disappointed.

Technorati Tags: mesh, meshU

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