Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] David Hornik
Foreign.

[00:00:14] Craig Syverson
Welcome to episode 21 of Venturecast. I’m Craig Syversonof Grunt Media and.

[00:00:19] David Hornik
I am still David Hornik from August Capital.

[00:00:21] Craig Syverson
This is the short show and not.

[00:00:24] David Hornik
Just because I can’t help but be anything else.

[00:00:29] Craig Syverson
Because I was here late and David has to go and just stuff’s going on. But we want to do a show because we missed a week. We’re a week late.

[00:00:36] David Hornik
Yeah, that’s a shame. And you know, actually maybe if people hear this and they think, gosh, you know what half hour is. Right, then we could adjust accordingly.

[00:00:45] Craig Syverson
Yeah, I guess, I guess.

[00:00:47] David Hornik
But there’s so much going on. It’s sort of a shame to have only a half hour.

[00:00:50] Craig Syverson
Indeed. So what is going on?

[00:00:51] David Hornik
Well, it’s acquisition crazy time.

[00:00:54] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:00:54] David Hornik
I mean, since we, since last we spoke.

[00:00:56] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:00:58] David Hornik
DoubleClick. I mean, I guess that’s sort of.

[00:01:01] Craig Syverson
That’S a big one.

[00:01:02] David Hornik
It’s big.

[00:01:02] Craig Syverson
I mean, billions of dollars.

[00:01:04] David Hornik
Billions of dollars. Plus, you know, it is, you know, you can’t view it as anything other than this battle of the giants.

[00:01:11] Craig Syverson
Yeah, right.

[00:01:12] David Hornik
Just the stunning thing where the word gets out. Microsoft is putting in an offer to buy DoubleClick and next thing you know, Google essentially says, no, you know what, that’s an asset we need to own and we will.

[00:01:24] Craig Syverson
Yes. Ergo, here’s some cash.

[00:01:27] David Hornik
But it’s interesting, I mean, you know, how do you have a battle of the cash between Microsoft and Google? Great for the investors. I mean, I don’t know if you know, but DoubleClick was a public company. It was sitting out there and one of these private equity shops took it private for about a billion dollars.

[00:01:41] Craig Syverson
When was that?

[00:01:42] David Hornik
A relatively short time ago. I don’t know if it was two years ago, three years ago. But I mean, as returns on investment go, when it got up to 3.1 or 3.2 or whatever, the final price was an incredible return for the folks who had taken it private.

[00:01:56] Craig Syverson
It was, it was private at the time that it was bought by.

[00:01:58] David Hornik
Absolutely.

[00:01:59] Craig Syverson
Okay, so still in the private realm.

[00:02:01] David Hornik
Yeah. So it’s crazy. But the, you know, the interesting implication. Oh, so then of course the immediate reaction once Google wins the bidding is that Microsoft and others, including AT&T, which is interesting, go to the antitrust division and say, no, no, no, no, no, this is an anti competitive action and you can’t have so much of the advertising value chain in a single company. And you know, look, you have to view it as, this is just a business offensive. You know, you win the bid on the other hand, I think you’re going to get too big if you own so much of this value chain and therefore we’re going to fight it. Do I think that there’s a real antitrust claim to be made here? You know, not really when you consider that this is a technical solution. There are other technical solutions out there and I anticipate that Microsoft will find one or build one. I think that others will have to. In light of this, you know, it just was fascinating to watch. It was played out in a very short period of time and well reported in the press. And it just gives you an indication of how important this, the entire system of advertising, from advertising bidders to distribution to these ad server technologies have become. It’s just a many billion dollar business and growing.

[00:03:12] Craig Syverson
But isn’t it more than just technology? I mean, DoubleClick has a huge Rolodex, right. And huge list of clients that are already in place. So Google could probably build it. But it’s the relationships I think that they bought. Right?

[00:03:23] David Hornik
It definitely accelerates things. They had basically puts tentacles out into massive content sites with massive distribution and just further extends the reach of Google in a way that is very good news for Google. And it drove the price up. It’s another instance where they paid a big price and then drove the price up to heights that made it free.

[00:03:45] Craig Syverson
Their stock price went up even though they lost a lot of cash in the deal.

[00:03:48] David Hornik
Stunning. The value of the company went up more than the cost of the acquisition.

[00:03:52] Craig Syverson
That’s great. That’s sort of like printing money.

[00:03:54] David Hornik
It is like printing money. It’s like the good old days. I mean, you know, the good old days when you’d acquire something. Oh man, did you buy that? That’s so good. I’ll buy your stock. So it’s funny, so my, my 9 year old is in this stock club right now. The kids in his class are picking stocks and they have this online trading system. It’s really cool. And so, so, you know, I’ve been saying, oh, you know, no, you got to check this out. This is important. You know, the fact that Google bought double clicked, mark my words, that price is going up. You know, so he buys Google shares. It’s so clear when you look at, because they, they get to write notes on why they’ve purchased their shares and they might as well write notes that say things like, dad gave me insider knowledge because you know, there was one company and I won’t give the company name because it might get someone in trouble. But you know, it Was like they bought this ticker symbol, you know, thousand shares of that stock. And then in the notes it said X Product. I’m told X Product is doing better than expected in the market. And it was clearly information from mom or dad. This was not like something that was existing. I should have, should have gone, you.

[00:04:56] Craig Syverson
Should be trolling those forums.

[00:04:57] David Hornik
I mean, these kids forums in Palo Alto. Really, really valuable.

[00:05:00] Craig Syverson
Hilarious.

[00:05:01] David Hornik
So, you know, it’s just same thing, you know. Boy, there’s great news on, on Apple’s front, where Apple is clearly finally gaining share in the PC business. And I was like, noah, go buy Apple quick.

[00:05:14] Craig Syverson
Yeah, it broke 100 last week.

[00:05:16] David Hornik
It’s amazing. And look, those of us who are using Intel Apple machines and in particular running parallels with Windows, Windows software, rather, it’s a great experience. And it doesn’t surprise me at all that now Windows users who want to be on that platform can have Apple hardware, which has been the state of the art hardware in many respects for as long as you and I have been using them. So it’s just, it’s an interesting time to see that.

[00:05:42] Craig Syverson
It is.

[00:05:43] David Hornik
That’s exciting.

[00:05:44] Craig Syverson
So you went to the Web 2.0 Conference Expo.

[00:05:47] David Hornik
Web 2.0 Expo.

[00:05:48] Craig Syverson
Expo.

[00:05:49] David Hornik
Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten all about that, but man, oh, man.

[00:05:52] Craig Syverson
Yeah, I was in, I was in NAB, so I couldn’t join you.

[00:05:54] David Hornik
So how big was NAB?

[00:05:56] Craig Syverson
Biggest ever? Over. Someone was saying around 150. Anywhere from 1 to 150.

[00:06:01] David Hornik
150,000 thousand individuals. So that bigger than Web2 Expo?

[00:06:07] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:06:11] David Hornik
And NAB is the national association of Broadcasters. So this is. And is it just audio or is it all broadcast?

[00:06:17] Craig Syverson
All broadcast. So it’s audio and video television, radio, traditionally. And then us new media guys are creeping in. So you’re in the corner, we’re in the south hall.

[00:06:26] David Hornik
Yep.

[00:06:27] Craig Syverson
Right. So we’re in the lower south hall.

[00:06:29] David Hornik
So you’re basically like in ces. You’re the pavilion of all the international guys.

[00:06:34] Craig Syverson
I’ve never been to ces.

[00:06:35] David Hornik
Well, in ces, if you go to like the far depths, then you get to these corners where like the Taiwanese gray market guys all have these teeny tiny booths with USB everything. Someone today was telling me that they, they saw online the USB fondue maker. You know, you plug in your fondue, you throw in a couple of slices of Velveeta, you know.

[00:06:58] Craig Syverson
So that’s what these guys boils over.

[00:07:00] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Oh, man, it’s bubbling. Shoot, there goes my keyboard. So you guys are in the, like, international pavilion. In the bottom, bottom right hand corner or something, in a sense.

[00:07:10] Craig Syverson
Or we’re more evenly distributed like a rash throughout the entire thing because we brag about how we’re taking over the world. But you look at the numbers and you’ve got broadcast is huge. Billions and billions and billions of dollars. And we’re maybe making a million total.

[00:07:27] David Hornik
A million dollars.

[00:07:30] Craig Syverson
So, you know, despite our swelled heads, numbers talk. And there’s definitely a huge impulse with a lot of the broader companies to embrace the new media crowd. I mean, Apple’s been doing that forever. And, you know, it shows that the Apple booth was the most packed booth there all week. Even on Thursday afternoon when things were a little slow, they were still completely full and other places were rather lonely. But, yeah, the south hall is sort of the new media ghetto. You go upstairs and we found that people don’t really talk to you unless you’re wearing a suit.

[00:08:01] David Hornik
Wow.

[00:08:02] Craig Syverson
Yeah, that’s really cool because they’re with Sony and Panasonic and, you know, these huge executive type people around. You ask about a, you know, connector or something, you’re just kind of like, whatever.

[00:08:13] David Hornik
So, you know, it’s like the difference between going to a Ferrari dealership in New York versus in Redwood City. Go in New York City, you don’t wear a suit.

[00:08:22] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:08:22] David Hornik
There’s no way anyone’s talking to you about the Ferrari. You go.

[00:08:25] Barak Berkowitz
You go.

[00:08:26] David Hornik
You go in Redwood City and you wear a suit, and there’s no way anyone’s talking to you about the Ferrari suit. Right. So if you’d been wearing a suit at the Web2 Expo.

[00:08:35] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:08:35] David Hornik
And walked up, people like, yeah, whatever.

[00:08:37] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:08:38] David Hornik
What are you? What are you? Homeless guy off the street?

[00:08:41] Craig Syverson
Where’d you get that nice tie.

[00:08:45] David Hornik
So. Well, I know. And, you know, for those of you who are listening, who knows, notice the sonorous tones of Craig’s voice have changed because he had a deep, geeky conversation about the appropriate microphone for this particular venue, this indoor venue. And so what are we on now?

[00:09:02] Craig Syverson
I’m on my electro voice re 50. This is the one we’ve used in the past for our field shows. We go to conferences. This is the handheld mic. It’s a dynamic mic versus a condenser micro. It’s probably what I should have been using all along. We’ll see.

[00:09:17] David Hornik
So any, if any of you notice the difference, it’s like, remember the good old days of CDs when audio geeks like myself would say, oh, I hate CDs because you can hear the clipping, you know, the Highs get cut off and the bass lows are rolled off and which, you know, maybe we did or didn’t hear it actually in the early days of the CDs and some CDs, they were so poorly produced you could actually hear it.

[00:09:37] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:09:37] David Hornik
But the vast majority of people would never hear it under any circumstance. And here’s the same thing. So, you know, those of you who are carefully listening with your perfect headphones and are. And are well produced, then you’ll notice.

[00:09:47] Craig Syverson
That please don’t a. Don’t listen to us with a nice headphone.

[00:09:51] David Hornik
Oh, of course you should.

[00:09:52] Craig Syverson
No, no, no, not that. Well done.

[00:09:54] David Hornik
All right.

[00:09:54] Craig Syverson
All my flaws will come through.

[00:09:56] David Hornik
Oh, well, I’ll stop sniffing and maybe.

[00:10:00] Craig Syverson
That’S hard work and maybe if I, if I do it right, people won’t notice because I can, you know, do some post magic.

[00:10:07] David Hornik
Oh, and you’ll just sort of settle.

[00:10:10] Craig Syverson
Right, sure.

[00:10:11] David Hornik
So what else? Any other nab, you know, revelations?

[00:10:15] Craig Syverson
I think it’s very interesting that Adobe and Microsoft are entering into the player market, the media player bits. They both introduce their own version of a similar thing.

[00:10:25] David Hornik
And what does that look as in an itunes like experience or as in a Flash competitor?

[00:10:30] Craig Syverson
As in a, in a sense like a QuickTime competitor or as an adjunct to Flash. So Adobe’s thing is an adjunct to Flash.

[00:10:37] David Hornik
Right.

[00:10:37] Craig Syverson
And they have a media player that looks really nice, that looks like an excellent way to aggregate a bunch of different types of files like Flash files and such and create your own custom skin on your player.

[00:10:49] David Hornik
And is this Apollo or is this using Apollo?

[00:10:51] Craig Syverson
I believe it’s using Apollo. I’m not sure. But the idea is that in the past you have a straight up Flash file, you double click on it, nothing happens because Flash was all server based. So part of the media player is to be able to play native Flash files.

[00:11:04] David Hornik
Gotcha.

[00:11:05] Craig Syverson
So there’s a client, but it’s basically adding the levels of interaction to media files which are very much needed, as is Silverlight, Microsoft’s thing, which is using a different type of model. They’re using straight up XML to do their programming, which makes it very, very lightweight. So both are interesting. Both are going after what QuickTime is in a sense always been capable of doing. And this is something we rant about a lot as QuickTime fans. QuickTime has the architecture to do all these things. Apple just hasn’t developed the tools to let people get at it. But it’s very sophisticated and it’s all there. So I’m actually pleased because maybe this will Get Apple off their derrieres and start getting QuickTime much more interactive so we can use it more.

[00:11:46] David Hornik
Yeah, that’s great.

[00:11:47] Craig Syverson
But the announcements for Final Cut Studio and the whole editing suite were pretty significant. They had a two hour press event on Sunday just talking about the new things in Final Cut.

[00:11:56] David Hornik
Cool.

[00:11:57] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:11:58] David Hornik
Well, you know, this is the first Craig on our show. Barack Berkowitz, the CEO of Six Apart, has just walked in and you know, we haven’t, we haven’t had any walk in guests. Yeah. But. Hey Barack, come on over. Come have a seat on the couch.

[00:12:11] Craig Syverson
Especially ones who.

[00:12:12] Barak Berkowitz
That looks very attractive.

[00:12:13] David Hornik
You’re not, you’re not going to join us? I mean, I think.

[00:12:15] Barak Berkowitz
Yeah, absolutely.

[00:12:17] Craig Syverson
Hello, Barack, I’m Craig.

[00:12:18] David Hornik
Craig. Barack. Craig.

[00:12:21] Craig Syverson
So we’re going to try to do the past the mic thing here.

[00:12:23] David Hornik
So we were just talking about nab, but we’re also now going to talk about the Web 2.0 Expo and obviously lots of activity with SixApart at the Web2 Expo, which is good. I mean, lots of continued energy around all of the Six Apart platforms. That’s got to feel good.

[00:12:41] Barak Berkowitz
Feels great. People are really excited about our newest platform, Vox. Clearly we’ve got a large number of important bloggers on Typad. Movable Type. We have started to share Movable Type 4.0 with the community and are getting wonderful reactions that. And LiveJournal is doing wonderfully. So we’re really excited about what’s going on and really excited about all the partners we have at the Web 2.0 Expo.

[00:13:06] David Hornik
Yeah, you know, actually I went and wandered around the Nokia booth. They had a big presence there, which was interesting. Interesting in part because that Nokia was making such a big charge at the Web2 Expo, but also obviously a big partner of six of parts. And you know, those of you who are listening who don’t know that I’m on the six of part board, this is the first time you’ve ever heard of me because I obviously spend way too much time talking about how much I love it. But anyway, so it was interesting to see that and see the Nokia phones and the integration with Vox and stuff. What do you think? You think that the Media Phone is going to become the input device to blogging? Input device of choice to blogging in the future or.

[00:13:44] Barak Berkowitz
Well, I think there’s no question that mobile devices, particularly phones, are going to be incredibly important for both posting and keeping track of people and friends that you care about through RSS and other forms that we’re used to coming out of blogs. Camera phones are becoming incredibly rich. The first phone we’re shipping on From Nokia, the N95, it has a 5 megapixel camera, GPS that can put your location in with the picture. All of these things integrated really easily. And with one click you can post it to Vox and have it up on your site. So we’re really excited about that. And we see that happening across the board and we see more and more photos coming off of mobile devices and they look better and better.

[00:14:29] David Hornik
Yeah, well, they have to look better than my God awful trio photos. But I’ve sent lots of them, right, because you have this device, it’s sitting in your pocket, your kid is doing something or your dog or your friend or whatever, and you go, oh, well, let me just get a quick shot of that. And even if it’s a crappy photo, it’s still great to put it out there. But man, the idea of a five megapixel camera sitting on your phone, you know, I paid double the price for a trio with a 5 megapixel camera that I’d pay for the trio that I have in my pocket. Yet they don’t have it. Right? So message, you know, hello, message to Palm, you know, you can charge me twice as much, just give me a five megapixel camera.

[00:15:07] Barak Berkowitz
That must be the big announcement they’re making. No, no.

[00:15:09] David Hornik
Yeah, right, exactly.

[00:15:11] Barak Berkowitz
No, I mean, I think there’s no question, you think about what you pay for a good camera and even, you know, good compact cameras. 300 bucks. A good phone is 300 bucks. And in fact, an N95, which are selling out all over the place, cost $750 in the United States, you know, €595 in Europe, and you can’t get one. So people like this idea. You get a GPS device, you get a camera, you get a phone, you get a web browser. Exactly. It slices, dices, does everything. But it is the best, best device out there as a phone, is the best device for on the fly. Posting to your blog and does a great job in the integration with Vox, is awesome.

[00:15:53] David Hornik
And you’re a total photo. Excuse me, cell phone geek. I mean, you know, as long as I’ve known you, what, how many phones do you think you’ve had over the last two years?

[00:16:02] Barak Berkowitz
See, I shouldn’t say this because then my wife could look it up and actually prove this, but I would say over the last two years I’ve probably, probably have used somewhere between seven and ten different phones.

[00:16:14] David Hornik
That sounds about right.

[00:16:15] Barak Berkowitz
I Mean, I have three with me right now or in my car.

[00:16:18] David Hornik
That’s where you got the bat phone.

[00:16:20] Barak Berkowitz
Exactly. Well, and for the other identities, you gotta have other phones.

[00:16:25] David Hornik
Exactly. Different rings, different blogs. You gotta have it all. Well, you know, I’m waiting for. I think it’s time for photo Twitter, don’t you think? Like, boom. You take the quick photo, boom, it goes to your network and pictures worth a thousand words, which is more than you can send on your sms. Right.

[00:16:43] Barak Berkowitz
I love the idea. And then Joey Ito could post a picture of the peanut he’s eating instead of the post that says Joey eating peanut. It would have more depth and more meaning to it.

[00:16:57] David Hornik
That’s right. Exactly. No, I think that’s right. I mean, I gave a Talk at the Web2 Expo. It was about viral marketing, but I was talking about things that grow quickly. And I said Twitter obviously growing quite quickly. And in fact, hang on a second, let me just quickly send out Twitter here. You know, giving talk at Web2 Expo. Okay, now I can go on with.

[00:17:16] Barak Berkowitz
My Twittering about Twitter.

[00:17:17] David Hornik
Yeah, I got a Twitter about Twitter while giving a speech about Twitter. It’s good. It’s all good.

[00:17:22] Barak Berkowitz
Yeah.

[00:17:22] David Hornik
I’m confused.

[00:17:25] Craig Syverson
I think. I mean, I’m obviously holding out for the Apple phone to see what happens, but I’m holding off on all of my mobile things. My trios cracked and broken.

[00:17:34] David Hornik
I have noticed when he says it’s cracked, he doesn’t mean like, oh, I’m cracking up here. The screen is in three.

[00:17:39] Craig Syverson
Yeah, it’s in three pieces. And it happened the week that Apple announced the phone. So I took it as a sign from God. Yeah, but I have to fix your phone. Not to fix a phone, not to.

[00:17:48] Barak Berkowitz
Fix your phone, not to get something.

[00:17:49] Craig Syverson
Else, not to get something.

[00:17:50] Barak Berkowitz
I have a phone for you if you need one.

[00:17:52] David Hornik
Yeah, right, bro. If you got some laying around, I mean, I might.

[00:17:56] Craig Syverson
It’s getting a little tough. But I’ve also decided. We talked about Twitter before. I’m not going there yet. Although I could have used it in Vegas when I was trying to coordinate with my posse. Thought about it. We tried Jaiku, but I couldn’t get that to work on my Sprint and whatever.

[00:18:11] David Hornik
This dodgeball thing, this is interesting. Twitter’s going crazy. Meanwhile, the dodgeball guys leave unceremoniously leave Google, and they say in a blog post, we’re leaving Google because they refuse to support dodgeball. Don’t you think that’s an interesting. I mean, just. It’s a very interesting thing to see that. How the world turns here in the SMS world and the acquisition world. And so it’s pretty hilarious.

[00:18:36] Barak Berkowitz
That exact subject came up at this conference I was at yesterday, the Social Media Economy conference, which is actually quite excellent. And the exact thing came up and Jason Schellen stood up to say some acquisitions work and some don’t.

[00:18:51] David Hornik
Where did he put Blogger on the don’t? Oh, interesting. Very interesting. You know, so, you know, those who are listening don’t know. Shellen was sort of the. He was the last remaining individual other than EV Williams in Blogger when it was acquired by Google. And so he. And he stayed longer at Google than any of the others. Ultimately, the rest of the folks who had been involved in Blogger had left. So I agree it’s very interesting to watch and particularly now that we have this acquisition economy. And I’ll tell you one thing, right, So I talked about this, I think last podcast that when I was at the venture, the Venture Capital summit, the VC summit that Microsoft has, Ballmer got up there and he said, you know, we care about acquisitions, we’re going to make more acquisitions, et cetera. I tell you, having been the attorney on the other side of acquisitions, Microsoft is an unbelievable acquirer. They are a machine at figuring out who, who’s in the company and what needs to be done to integrate it. So by the time the company acquisition closes, they have taken care of all employee matters. They have moved people over to the right systems. I mean, things that you would think would be insignificant but have a huge impact on how well you play in the new environment. So I think it’s a big advantage and maybe Google will have to work on getting better at it if in fact, there is some controversy about how well these things play inside Google. There you have it. Just my random observation of the moment.

[00:20:13] Craig Syverson
What are the dodgeball guys gonna do?

[00:20:15] David Hornik
That’s a good question. Hey, guys, what you doing? You don’t call, you never write. What are you doing?

[00:20:22] Barak Berkowitz
Dodger.

[00:20:24] David Hornik
Dodger. Yeah, right. Dodger with no E. Right.

[00:20:28] Craig Syverson
The next thing.

[00:20:29] David Hornik
So what else is up, Barack? What do you care to care to share with us in the world? Oh, blogging and six apart. Anything? Well, that’s a broad question.

[00:20:38] Barak Berkowitz
You should be in this interviewing business because we have actually so much happening, it’s kind of hard to get focused down on that.

[00:20:48] David Hornik
That is true. I mean, look, it’s kind of interesting. I mean, sixapart has become sort of the de facto blogging leader across a bunch of different verticals. And it’s interesting to watch how they’ve all evolved. Right. Movable Type. So we could start with Movable Type, which is the enterprise software solution. And the new MT has integration with LDAP and other. I mean, LDAP is basically the directory of permissions within a big organization. And any enterprise application that someone builds, if it doesn’t have LDAP integration, it’s difficult to be adopted company wide. And so it’s significant that Movable Type is the only blogging platform with LDAP integration. And there’s no question that enterprises are. They seem to be responding pretty well to that. So that’s interesting. So I guess I’ll just answer my own question. Brock, it’s good for you to sit here and listen to me talk about. You can fact check me. We have Barack Berkowitz, the CEO of 6th Apart, here to fact check my understanding of his company.

[00:21:45] Craig Syverson
He’s got the fact hammer here too. Let’s pound you on the foot of you.

[00:21:48] Barak Berkowitz
That’s right, David.

[00:21:53] David Hornik
All right, so I’ve moved through mt. Well, look, my favorite topic, of course, is Vox. It is certainly the blogging platform I use the most, as you well know, as you are in my friends and family network.

[00:22:06] Barak Berkowitz
I well know you’re an active individual in my network. And you know, what we’re seeing in Vox is what we hope to see. People are using Vox as a communication tool between friends and family.

[00:22:19] Craig Syverson
That is really working.

[00:22:20] Barak Berkowitz
I mean, your mother is overjoyed to be able to see updates on what are going on with your kids. My mother is overjoyed to have these updates. And in fact, just the intimacy of the relationships from the point of view of. My sister now is insulted if I tell her where I am in the world because it’s like, of course I know that I’m reading your Vox, you know, and again, since I’m posting from the camera phone all the time, she knows exactly where I am. And so there’s a level of awareness and a level of connectedness with people who are far flung and close to you that just you haven’t had before.

[00:22:56] David Hornik
You know, it’s funny, I was on Vox and I was reading something that my cousin had posted about and I saw in her network an address that looked. It was sort of surprising. And the reason it was surprising is that there was every indication that it was my aunt. Well, my aunt is, you know, this is not the aunt who’s going to be on social media property. This is the aunt who’s going to say like, you know, look, you can call me, send me a letter. And so I checked you know, I had to go to the profile and see, and sure enough, it was my aunt. So I added her to my neighborhood as a family and she quickly accepted. And I thought about it and I realized the reason that she’s on there is that my cousin is getting married and she is blogging about her wedding. And so she’s including, you know, here’s where the wedding is and here’s where you can go. And so she doesn’t have a choice. It’s like, you know, now, of course, now that I’ve added her as family in between my cousin’s, you know, one comment on her wedding, there’ll be 16 pictures of my 800 children, but.

[00:23:54] Barak Berkowitz
And all the people who don’t get invited in their conversation.

[00:23:57] David Hornik
Yeah, right, exactly. What about us? What about us? So anyway, I just thought that was. It’s great. I mean, that’s the thing you want to see. And actually, right before I met with you guys, we started having this conversation. An old friend of mine was in here, a guy named Alib. I don’t know if you guys know Al’s name, but Al was the creator of Evite. He and a woman named Selena Tabakawala, while they were still undergrads at Stanford, created Evite.

[00:24:22] Craig Syverson
And.

[00:24:23] David Hornik
And it was just very interesting now, going on a decade after they created this thing that has become a very significant part of all of our communications. I mean, I’d be stunned if people hadn’t heard of Evite. And certainly the three of us. How often do you think you get an Evite in a month?

[00:24:42] Barak Berkowitz
At least two, three times a month. And a reminder, 3x that with reminders.

[00:24:48] David Hornik
Yeah. I mean, just so you think about that multiplied by all of our lives. And so it was just cool to talk with Al about what he thought of how it had evolved and these new next generation Evite like platforms that are trying to take on Evite Socializer or Renku. And he said, I don’t have any problem if someone wants to create a better Evite. I’m not being proprietary because I’m not running Evite. He said. On the other hand, what he felt they had neglected is that the reason Evite is really simple and simplistic is that it’s appealing to my aunt, appealing to the folks who aren’t the social media people. And that’s what drove it to be a mass market experience. And this thing that suddenly you can use it for your Christmas party, your Hanukkah party, your birthday party, even if the endpoints aren’t necessarily Particularly connected individuals. So I think we all have to sit and think about that pretty hard in the context of a Vox or a LiveJournal or a podcast or whatever that this is. If you want these things to be meaningful, it’s not about reaching a million people. That’s about reaching 100 million people. And those hundred million people, they aren’t us.

[00:25:59] Barak Berkowitz
Absolutely.

[00:26:00] Craig Syverson
I mean, that’s again, back to what we were talking about before with broadcast, the comparison. The broadcast is reaching hundreds of millions of people, and those of us in this world aren’t yet. And part of it is the simplicity of the tool and the complication of getting a download. And it’s not so much the complication of the production, it’s more on the consumption end of things. So as that improves, we’ll rise up as well. In numbers.

[00:26:19] David Hornik
Yeah, I was speaking yesterday. There was an event at IBM’s Almaden Research Labs. I think it’s called up. Have you ever been to that place? You go south into San Jose and then you head back into this neighborhood towards the hills, and then you pass a golf course, and then you wind your way around and you’re absolutely certain you’re going the wrong way and you’re lost because you’re in this hill. That’s. And then you see this IBM sign. It is. It’s just amazing. And then you go through, you get the gate and they let you through, and you go up this hill and then all of a sudden appears on this hill, these beautiful buildings and just an amazing facility. But anyway, I was on this panel. It was with Bill Gurley and Randy Comisar and a woman who, I apologize, I’m forgetting her name, from one of the consumer electronics companies talking about consumer electronics devices and the future of ce. And we were talking about mobile phones and mobile phone adoption and the challenges of getting media on and off phones. And I was making the comment that even though we as venture capitalists and we as technologists really want these things, experiences to be off deck, in other words, to not require the carrier to get onto your phone, it’s so much easier when it is on deck. When you go to the Sprint homepage and you say, find ringtone and it’s there, and you find the ringtone and you say accept, it works. It just works on your phone. Whereas if you go searching on the web and you find, you know, the perfect devo ringtone and you want to put it on your phone, but it’s off deck, the chances of it working actually are pretty slim. I mean, it’s sort of stunning to me and you know, to your comment Craig, about the iPhone, that’s why I think iPhone is going to be massive, is that, you know, we all want a great integrated media player experience and it’s why we all have ipods, because it simplifies this and suddenly it’s going to take that and include photos and include the telephone. And so I’ve said this and I think I said it at this thing and I think that iPhone is likely to be the most significant consumer electronics device certainly of the of this year and may and may well be for quite some time to come. You know, time will tell. Obviously if it’s a non functional phone then that will be a problem in practically every other instance I see it being a monstrous hit.

[00:28:27] Craig Syverson
Yeah, I mean it comes down again to old, the old saw about user interface and the experience of use is the differentiating factor. Technology isn’t all that interesting. I mean I look at Vox in the same way, you know that the beautiful simplicity of that, making blogging easy I think is really key. And we did a talk at NAB to the radio group and part of the research I was doing was on portable devices and there was an interesting survey where people asked what devices do they really love to use, what technology they love to use. Ipod was on the top of the list. Other MP3 players was on the bottom of the list below. Even the TiVo which was kind of low on the list too. So it’s not just the technology, it’s not just that it’s Apple, it’s actually that it’s integrated and that people love to use it. They actually get into it.

[00:29:12] Barak Berkowitz
What’s truly amazing is how hard that is to do. I just had the experience of switching from a direct TiVo to a dish DVR. And these guys, after all they’ve had 10 years to look at a TiVo, study everything it does, imitate everything it does and the number of things that are beyond stupid. I mean, for instance, when you search to create what on TiVo would be called a season pass, if you type in something like law and you do a search so you can find Law and Order, every single thing for the next two weeks that has the word law in it will automatically be programmed to record. And in the manual it says you should check to see if there are shows that you don’t want and remove them one by one. And not only that, by the way, you need to check every time the guide is updated because more bad stuff is going to get added in and you’re like, how hard is this? But it’s clearly very hard. Because even if you look at very well thought out ideas like SanDisk’s new players with WI fi built in, they still can’t get the interface right, and therefore they still can’t succeed. And Apple gets it right more often than most. And we try in the blogging world to get it right more often than most.

[00:30:34] David Hornik
Yep. Great. So, hey, I actually have to run. Barack has come here to meet with me and instead he gets to have two seconds of podcast and then. And I have to run away. So the question is what a good.

[00:30:47] Barak Berkowitz
Board member is like.

[00:30:48] David Hornik
Yeah, come on now. Tell the truth.

[00:30:51] Barak Berkowitz
You’re a wonderful board member. You’re there whenever we need you.

[00:30:54] David Hornik
Oh, man.

[00:30:55] Craig Syverson
Man, I can’t believe you made him do that. This is a nice man, you, sir.

[00:31:01] David Hornik
So the question, you know, so the open question.

[00:31:03] Barak Berkowitz
Go with my arm now, David. Ouch. Ouch.

[00:31:06] David Hornik
That’s my kids. Daddy, you’re squeezing my shoulder. Daddy, that’s hurting my shoulder. Well, then, I hope you’ve enjoyed our shortened version of Venture Cast. And if. If you think this is a great short format, let us know and otherwise we’ll be back to the long format in a couple weeks.

[00:31:23] Craig Syverson
Yes, thank you very much.

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