We have a couple of indicators this morning about how much a commercial social network can earn, and how inexpensive it is to build a profitable one.
At the top of the market is MySpace. New Corp, which announced earnings yesterday, doesn’t break out MySpace’s numbers in it’s SEC filings but during a conference call with […]

Events conspired this week to throw into high relief the core question for those who would commercialize social media: can a balanced be reached between user control and corporate control or will commercial social media always exist on a cliff’s edge over which either party can push it at any time?
In the Digg/HD-DVD fiasco, it […]

There’s not much news to be gleaned from the response to the Viacom lawsuit filed by Google/YouTube in federal district court in New York.
As predicted Google is pinning its defense on the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which was designed to shield ISPs from lawsuits when subscribers used their accounts to […]

CBS’s Online Video Network Targets Advertisers, Not Audience: One of the big differences between new media circa Web 1.0 and new media circa Web 2.0 is that this time the big boys get it, or at least the big boys get that they need to do something different quickly.
Consider the CBS Interactive Audience Network–a cross-platform […]

It hardly signals the end of the line for social networking hubs like Facebook and MySpace, but it may be the beginning of the end. I’m talking about the potential impact of a Mozilla skunk works project to embed social networking functionality directly in the Web browser.
There’s a lot of buzz among the meme-makers. At […]

Yesterday’s reaction to the News Corp/NBC NewTube announcement ran the gamut from typical big media hating (Thomas Hawk’s headline: NBC Universal, News Corp YouTube Killer Will Fail) to typical big media cheerleading (Mark Cuban’s headline: Why the NBC/Newscorp Video Venture is a Great Idea).
Sure, there are plenty of reasons for any 50/50 JV between competitors […]

The London experiment with weekly media-making meetups continued this evening with another member getting his first taste of videoblogging. Guy West has been a regular at our discussion groups and kindly recorded some audio at one of the meetings.
We sat in the brand new foyer of the British Film Institute/National Film Theatre which only […]

Last November VC Fred Wilson asked an interesting question of the blogosphere: Can you fake authenticity?
It’s an enormous question of course–the stuff of a thousand dissertation–particularly for Americans. After all, our culture is based on the artificial invention of identities that project authenticity.
But Fred was asking specifically about social media businesses–can the sense of community […]

Tomorrow at the London Club, Michael Spencer and I will show you that we are all hardwired for music.  It’s in our very heartbeat.  Naturally, we want to walk the talk and include appropriate sound effects in the accompanying podcast.
There are several ways to include message-appropriate, cost-effective, and life-giving music and sound in social media. […]

From the bad timing department:  today MyToons  , a cartoon-specific video sharing site, takes the wraps off its service which has been in private beta. The site is being pitched as a place where animation pros and fans can share “their creations” not the creations of others, and naturally the company has a DMCA-compliant take […]

This isn’t a defense of YouTube. Not a legal defense anyway.
The Viacom/Google suit will revolve around how much control YouTube has over the content posted to it, whether YouTube’s business was deliberately built on copyright infringement, and the nature of the prior negotiations between it & Viacom. If the case reaches the Supreme Court Google […]