Category Archives: Digital Media

Cloud Computing: You May Need It If You Go Viral On Facebook

Posted on May 12, 2008 by

I organized a panel on cloud computing at the Nantucket Conference last weekend. One of the panelists was Stevie Clifton, founder/CTO of Animoto. He shared a story about Animoto’s experience with Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud and going viral on Facebook … Continue reading →

Posted in amazon web services, cloud computing, Digital Media, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Consumer-Selected Sponsorship

Posted on February 15, 2008 by

Sponsorships are growing as an advertising concept and the most interesting sub-segment is the one where consumers select the sponsors they want to be associated with. One of our companies, AWS Convergence Technologies (the folks behind WeatherBug) was a pioneer … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Media, Facebook, MySpace, Social Advertising, Social Commerce, startups | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MySpace + Google >= Facebook?

Posted on February 5, 2008 by

The much expected, joked about and pre-announced MySpace developer platform is finally here. Well, not quite: As Aber mentioned, we’re currently in a sandbox phase. Here are the important points to understand about this phase: Your application profiles are private … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Media, Facebook, Google, MySpace, social media, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Polaris Digital Media Summit

Posted on February 3, 2008 by

I spent the last few days in Deer Valley, UT at the annual Polaris Venture Partners Digital Media Summit or PVPDMS08 as we casually refer to it (right). It’s a great event where the CEOs of our digital media companies mix … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Media, Google, Microsoft, startups, VC, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Going For It

Posted on January 29, 2008 by

In a startup environment favoring fast, relatively cheap exits instead of building sizeable companies, it is always interesting to look at the choices startup founders and CEOs make when they have the option to sell the company or build it … Continue reading →

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OpenSocial: The Lowest Common Denominator?

Posted on December 13, 2007 by

Google’s OpenSocial is becoming the lowest common denominator for application integration in the social media space. That’s actually not that great for Google as it is rarely the case that the most successful applications run on the lowest common denominator … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Media, Facebook, Google, MySpace, social media, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Balancing Choice

Posted on November 27, 2007 by

I’m on a plane to SF (for a third week in a row) re-reading parts of John Maeda‘s The Laws of Simplicity. It’s the kind of book you get more out of the second time around. One of the observations is … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Media | Tagged , | 1 Comment

MySpace vs. Facebook : Apple vs. Orange

Posted on November 10, 2007 by

Although some love to throw MySpace and Facebook in the same bucket, the two companies continue to evolve in different directions to the point where it is probably better to talk about meta-competition than direct rivalry. The latest example is how they … Continue reading →

Posted in Advertising, Digital Media, Facebook, MySpace, Social Commerce, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Amazon Web Services Event in New York

Posted on September 26, 2007 by

I’m polishing my presentation for the AWS event in NYC today. Polaris Venture Partners is the exclusive sponsor because we believe that what Amazon is doing is good for startups. AWS lowers the cost of experimentation online, which helps more ideas come to … Continue reading →

Posted in amazon web services, Digital Media | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Making Money on MySpace

Posted on August 28, 2007 by

It’s always been possible to make money on MySpace if you didn’t pay much attention to the terms of service. The site has never consistently enforced its ban on commerce. That’s partly due to technical reasons–from a content filtering standpoint, … Continue reading →

Posted in Advertising, Digital Media, Facebook, MySpace, Social Commerce, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments