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August 26, 2006
Assembling a small group of angels!
I am putting together a small group of angles for a company I advise - if you want to get involved, let me know!
Posted by Michael Jones at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2006
Youtube is already wildly profitable. (from Paradigm Shift)
Youtube is already wildly profitable.:
Youtube has been running adsense on nearly every single page of its site for a while now. I was able to do a test campaign that ran on Youtube and was displayed at the rate of 500,000 pageviews an hour for the average price of 30 cents a cpm.
This article says youtubes pageviews are around 250 million a day. If that is even remotely accurate youtube is making a LOT of money. Lets say only 200 million pageviews a day can have ads. That gives you $300/million * 200 = $60,000/day or $1.8 million a month in revenues from adsense.
I guess everyone at youtube wants the world to think they aren’t making any money so that all the people whose content they are stealing won’t come asking for money.
Posted by Michael Jones at 07:02 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2006
YouTube on Network News this AM
I saw YouTube on network news this morning, showing top downloaded movies, etc. Nice cross over!
Posted by Michael Jones at 04:58 AM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2006
LA Web Companies Unite!
I am compiling a list of highly-active Web 2.0'ish companies here in LA - email me if you want to be listed:
Content:
Weblogs
PaidContent
Revver
Technology Providers:
Userplane
MediaTemple
CrazyEgg
Communities:
Spark Networks
eHarmony
Buzznet
MySpace
Tagworld
Snap
itsDex
Reunion.com
Unknown
mEgo
Fliktor
Posted by Michael Jones at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)
Making millions from ads new article (Posted by Markus)
Making millions from ads new article:
The latest business 2.0 article contains a lot of info on new media sites.
Techcrunch, $60,000 in monthly ad revenue, $50,000 profit from party last weekend.
Boingboing $1 million/year
paidcontent $1 million/year 5 million page views/month
fark $600-800k/month 40 million pageviews/month
...
There is a lot of talk about john battelle’s FM publishing. I expect they will do well in the short run, but it would be foolish to think that Google and yahoo are not working on something to extend brand advertising to large companies/sites in their ad network. Offering fortune 1000 advertisers traffic breakdown of the top sites in the publisher network along with demographic data taken from toolbars they could really change the game. I believe in 2 or 3 years we will have some kind of seamless ad market out there, and hopefully the provider will get less then 10% of the ad revenue.
Posted by Michael Jones at 03:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2006
Hiring Opp: VP of Product Management in Washington DC, for a medium-size SNS/Dating site
We have a client looking to hire a VP of Project Management in Washington DC - let me know if you want me to pass your info onto them!
Posted by Michael Jones at 03:46 AM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2006
Partnerships
Sent to me from an old friend!
Researchers from the Center for Study of Entrepreneurship at Marquette University investigated a sample of nearly two thousand companies and categorized the top performers as 'hypergrowth' companies and those at the bottom as low growth companies. Solo entreprenuers founded only 6% of the 'hypergrowth' companies. Partners founded a whopping 94%, and many of those had three or more founders."
"In a poll taken a few years ago, Inc. asked businesspeople if they thought partnerships were a bad idea. Two-thirds of the respondents said they were. When asked why, the majority said they disliked co-ownership because of the partners' 'inevitable conflicts' and 'unmet expectations'."
Posted by Michael Jones at 03:33 AM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2006
Thanks TechCrunch!
I was fortunate enough to be invited to the TechCrunch party - and attended with my good friends from MediaTemple (who seem to be powering most of the valley's hot startups including TechCrunch!) The party was packed - speeches were inaudible - and everyone had a fabulous time. There were a few demo booths which had some interesting new technology that I quite liked : ) !
It was a fantastic event - and per usual my good friend (and LA to SV transplant) Peter from Photobucket was in full swing - I believe he is the most recruited new bus person in the valley - no only if I could convince him to move back to LA!
I was able to spend time and hear about the growth of some amazing companies including:
Dogster - Ted is definitely growing at a breakneck pace - nice work.
Buzznet - events, parties and a growing music scene - hmm - I think there is a business here..
Bebo - I finally met their founder Michael - I had no idea they were only 1.5 years old - wow..
Piczo - Again - I had no idea how big these guys were - seem to be flying way under the radar
Box.net - i have always been a fan of these guys - true startup style!
Tagged - I can only assume they are the next big acquisition. They seem to have a market cornered - and their CEO and CTO are some of the brightest founders I have met.
Digg - Kevin from Digg seemed to harbor no resentment with AOL / Netscape - he seemed very zen over the whole thing!
Flock - I am a believer. I just need to figure out how to integrate!
If I forgot to mention anyone - just let me know. I had a great time - my thanks to all!
(And if you see Jim in his new RS4 on his way to vegas - tell him the Userplane staff is jealous!)
Posted by Michael Jones at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2006
Anyone looking for a good product manager in Portland?
If so - let me know..
Posted by Michael Jones at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2006
Code.TV Launches LA Station
Super-smart new web-TV network Code.tv (powered by Brightcove!) has launched its new Los Angeles station - they have done great things in NYC so our hopes are high for LA.
Nice work Joseph!
Posted by Michael Jones at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2006
News travels fast! Userplane in top 1000!
Posted by Michael Jones at 04:36 AM | Comments (0)
Thanks to all who have emailed and called!
Once I get out from under the load of emails and calls - i promise I will get back to anyone!
If you need to get on my schedule faster - just ping janet at userplane.com - she is setting up meeting and such and handling any immediate requests!
Posted by Michael Jones at 04:36 AM | Comments (0)
Hello AOL!
Friends, Family and Business Associates,
I am happy to announce Userplane has been acquired by AOL. The deal has been in progression for the past few months as some of you know, and after what ended up being a very smooth process, I am happy to announce we have closed our deal. Userplane will stay "Userplane" - operating in separate offices (soon to be in Santa Monica) and our entire team along with the founders are committed to growing our business in the current direction for many years to come!
Personally for me it represents a great opportunity to see the world from the other end of the entrepreneurial coin. Being I have been running startups since my college years this will be a change and one I am eager to embrace. I am excited to be a part of it and look forward to this next phase of life.
To all those I have not been able to share this - I apologize. Lots of public-company secrecy and stuff. I maybe swamped this week with this release - but email/im/call me!
Jenn, Oceane and I might have a few life changes as well : )
All our love to all...
M
News References:
http://press.aol.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1031§ion_id=14
http://news.google.com/news?client=safari&rls=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wn&q=aol+userplane&btnG=Search+News
http://blog.softtechvc.com/2006/08/aol_userplane_a.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/14/userplane-purchased-by-aol/
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/08/14/userplane/index.php
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060814AOLSnakesInAUserplane.html
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/14/userplane-ceo-michael-jones-download-squad-interview/
http://www.socaltech.com/fullstory/0004933.html
http://vcratings.thedealblogs.com/2006/08/aol_beats_vcs_to_the_punch_wit.php
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/14/why_does_aol_need_another_im_provider/
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6105180.html
Posted by Michael Jones at 04:36 AM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
History of Userplane on Dandelife
Just looking back to 2001 - I marked some significant happenings within Userplane as well as including some turning points in the company! Enjoy!
http://www.dandelife.com/stories/list/userplane
Posted by Michael Jones at 03:17 AM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2006
HiveLive is pretty cool..
I received a beta invite to HiveLive¸ - basically a nice place to contain and share personal preferences, addresses, URL's. This site starts to build around the concept of a consolidated personal preferences and data storage with sharing options. Somewhat like a MySpace but with more personal storage and personal preferences. Someone will become this centralized destination for personal information storage - which I feel is very personally very useful - maybe more useful than the sharing components.. Of course web-geeks like me just build it themselves. But either way - this seems interesting..
Go HiveLive.
Posted by Michael Jones at 03:14 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2006
Userplane-Presence mystified..
From Bam!'s MySpace blog: clarity of the waterbats we call the Presence-Userplane, because not only am I a living taint
Posted by Michael Jones at 05:40 AM | Comments (0)
Sounds like Mike Arrington has the grass is greener disease
Being on the backend for so long - I always admire and love the thought of running a direct to consumer business. Maybe Mike is thinking the same with his new - non web 2.0 product blog: http://www.crunchgear.com/
Posted by Michael Jones at 05:35 AM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2006
Apple is to iPod Accessories as Widgets are to MySpace!
Did you know the iPod accessory market is a $1B market? And Apple now is asking for license fees from all accessories manufacturers? What is the size of the MySpace widget market - and when are those licensing fees coming?
Posted by Michael Jones at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2006
YouTube, AOL Video and so many more..
Seems ironic that now as corporations are working to ban IM at the work place as a primary distraction we now have so many options on how to watch TV at work? I would love to know YouTube's stats for region/hour playback and see what type of work hours they are infringing on..
Posted by Michael Jones at 01:05 AM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2006
Old-School Web Tactics
Sternberg and Wherry say there will be plenty of ways to make money from meebo, but in classic old-school Web fashion that hasn't been their focus just yet.
Posted by Michael Jones at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)
Quote of the week!
The Woz tried using a regular pen, but you couldn’t see the signature on Mike’s black laptop case. No problem: Woz pulled from his pocket some sort of laser and attempted to etch his name into the laptop.
Posted by Michael Jones at 04:37 AM | Comments (0)