Author: Mike P. Lewis

iLike & Myspace – it doesn’t make sense

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myspaceilikeiLIke was purchased by MySpace this week for $20 million.  Hearing this annoucement, i couldn’t help think that something was off.  Something just doesn’t make sense.

Some facts: iLike has 50 million registered users.  That’s a huge number.  They are definitely one of the most popular applications on Facebook and one of the best applications anywhere for concerts. They have built some things that are quite hard to build such as:

  • A mp3 download store (link)
  • A music activity feed crawling millions of artists and millions of users
  • A ticketing system integrated with Ticketmaster
  • A self-serve advertising system

They have raised $16 million bucks and claim to be profitable.  Both Facebook and Amazon were interested in the deal.   If both of these are true why would they sell for $20 million? Selling for $20 means that the investors get their money back and then then $4 million gets spread around to shareholders.  Basically nobody makes any money that they are happy about.

To compare, Facebook just bought FriendFeed for $20 million and they have 1 million monthly uniques.  iLike has at least 3x that on the web and 50x total and they are growing.

Also, I can’t imagine why a dynamic, fast moving company would want to go work at MySpace instead of Facebook or Amazon.

  • MySpace vs. Facebook. One is doing a fantastic job of innovating and developing new innovative software (FB).  The other is bleeding users, bleeding cash (MySpace Music) and restructuring.  iLike has also actively been courting Facebook for the past 3 years. They’ve thrown Facebook / iLike parties and done everything possible to try to get a FB acquisition.  Going with MySpace is strange
  • MySpace vs. Amazon. One (Amazon) is in iLike’s backyard in Seattle and the other is down in LA.  One is making good inroads into providing a viable music store to iTunes.  The other (MySpace) started as a primary space for music but is now controlled by the labels and is getting worse and worse as they try to cut costs.

Both of those don’t make sense so then you have to conclude that they are just doing this for the money.  But if (a) they are profitable and (b) it’s only $20 million on $16m raised then that doesn’t make sense either.

My conclusion from all this non-sense:

  • iLike was not profitable and were running out of money.  They needed to either raise more money or sell.
  • Fatigue.  Working in the digital music industry and having success at it is exhausting.   Your main content source (music) brings with it tons of headaches.  The labels are working against you every step of the way
  • Facebook had no interest in getting into the music business.  I think they see content area as something for partners and although iLike probably asked them repeatedly, they backed away from the deal.  There is no better content company that is more integrated into Facebook than iLike.  If FB didn’t want them, they’re not going to get anyone.
  • MySpace paid more than $20 million.  They won’t disclose the terms but my guess is that there is some kicker in there that made the deal very attractive to the shareholders.  Too bad we don’t know what it is.

At least one or more of these have to be true.  What are your thoughts?

500 Days of Summer

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500-days
Last month i saw the film 500 Days of Summer. I have a few thoughts about it:

  1. In the film, the main character is a guy who writes greeting cards. While this is his job, he’s actually an architect. When i heard this, the movie immediately became less original and uniquesomethingaboutmary_10

    to me. Being an architect is such a cliche now. Ever since Something About Mary it’s been used in every romantic-comedy around. I understand why. If you’re a woman, an architect embodies all the qualities you’d want in your man’s job: it’s creative, it’s independent, it’s the perfect mix between corporate and entrepreneur.

  2. You must quit your job to be happy. Such a load of crap. In modern movies there are really only four types of themes: (1) “Believe in yourself and you can do anything.” (2) “We are all alike underneath.” (3) “Love conquers all” (4) “Good people win.”  Almost all movies are one or more of these themes.  I was sort of bummed that this movie became a #1 (Believe in yourself) movie when he quit his job.  It just made the whole thing more cliche to me.  Hollywood loves this message and it’s all over the place – almost every tv show and movie is saying this.  I was hoping for more realism
  3. In real life, everyone knows the situation where there’s a couple where both people really like each other. They get along great and things seem fine. However, one person likes the other person way more. The other person is into the relationship, but not enough. They break up and people wonder why. This happens all the time. However, it never happens in movies. The only other movie i know of where this happens is Woody Allen‘s Annie Hall. I also think that just because this movie tackles this situation is why so many people see it as novel or unique.
  4. It’s amazing how good the guy from 3rd Rock From The Sun looks (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  He was so nerdy in that show and he’s really pretty cool in this movie. I liked him a lot as an actor – even though i thought his character was a sap.  I also didn’t even recognize him as the doctor in GI Joe.

All in all, i really liked the movie and thought it was fresh and fun.  I also like the music in it.  It’s worth checking out

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Serial Content

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A few weeks ago i went down to Comicon down in San Diego.  While a fantastic place to people-watch (pics here) i did manage to catch an actual comic book panel.

In the panel you had 7 actual authors of popular comic books and in the seats were about 1000 fans of the books. Questions stemmed from upcoming plot lines to questions about why certain characters behaved the way they did

On thing that occured to me during the Q & A session is that i’ve never experienced the written word in this way.  When i read something, either a book or an article, it’s always complete.  Never is it time-based.  Here’s a form where a user reads something and then has to wait a week or a month to continue reading.

Now I’m used to the anticipation and serial nature with TV shows but i realized that i have never experienced it with anything else.  That’s why i was so surprised to hear Radiohead’s announcement yesterday that they will no longer release albums but rather EP’s and singles.  This is cool. The album does seem like an antiquated concept now.

Imagine how cool it would be if a band released an album serially.  A new song each week for 10 weeks.  If this happened, I would look forward to hearing the 2009 Radiohead collection every week.  The anticipation would be half of the enjoyment.  This just shows that there is lots of innovation left in the industry.  Just because there are Walmart stores set up to sell albums doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to happen.

Imagine a world where Thom York says, “The single next week will blow your mind, while the single the week after that is one of the best love songs i’ve ever written.”  I’d mark those dates and download.  It’d be an event and it’d be a lot better than having to find out from friends when new albums drop

John Hughes Was A Stud

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John Hughes died this week. He can be credited for inventing the modern teenager film. He wrote some of my favorite movies such as: “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Uncle Buck,” “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Mr. Mom,” “Home Alone,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Weird Science,” “She’s Having a Baby,” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” This is a ridiculous set of movies for one filmmaker

bildeWathching TV shows like Chuck and films like Twilight which have almost no emotional maturity, i really respect how he took teenagers seriously. Rarely today do films show teenagers as individuals having real hopes, ambitions, problems and behavior. He did – in fact, in invented the movie that did.

“Kids are smart enough to know that most teenage movies are just exploiting them,” he said on the set of “The Breakfast Club.” “They’ll respond to a film about teenagers as people. [My] movies are about the beauty of just growing up. I think teenage girls are especially ready for this kind of movie, after being grossed out by all the sex and violence in most teenage movies. People forget that when you’re 16, you’re probably more serious than you’ll ever be again. You think seriously about the big questions.”

Kevin Smith once saying, “Basically everything I do is just a raunchy John Hughes movie.”

He was a stud and the world will miss him

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Where is the news going to come from?

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Quoted in Buffalo News about the local citizen...
Image by inju via Flickr

As the media industry consolidates and more and more people are simply linking to news – you might start to wonder where all the news is going to come from. There’s a great quote that was passed along to me by Jordan that goes:

what no one seems to understand is that “news” doesn’t just magically appear on twitter/the web/etc. Most of it is scraped off these “old dead media” sources. I’m constantly amazed by the childlike mindset of the digerati to this process. It’s like kids thinking that food comes from the grocery store. Kill off the farmers and the journalists and see how much magic food and news just “finds you” for your consumption

Lots of stuff is derivative on the web and it makes you wonder if the world is going to just become one big echo chamber. Or will journalists do more stuff on their own?

Personally, i don’t think the analogy holds. Food must be grown but news doesn’t have to be paid for by journalists at major media companies.

  • Not every newspaper needs to write a report on the ballgame. ESPN will cover that for us.
  • We don’t need to pay reporters to go to town hall meetings and report back, people are doing that for free.
  • We don’t need local papers writing opinions on what’s happening across the globe. A handful of paid opinion pieces plus organic perspectives (blogs / twitter / etc.) are enough for me.

What the world needs is not to cut off the supply of news but to radically change the way it’s published and the economics behind it. Most news is still being produced and most of it is being delivered at very low cost or free. If it’s more expensive than that, it has to go.

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Wolf Shirt Amazon Review

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51jZitVcKmL._AA280_This is a review i came across on Amazon and i think it needs to be shared.  Had me laughing this morning.  Take a look at the t-shirt on the right.  Here’s the Amazon page that sells it for $13.78.  The first review on the page reads like this:

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

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Where’s the Android?

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Image representing Android as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Why no Android phones?  I love Android as a concept but every time i hear about a new manufacturer releasing new handsets they are always on Windows Mobile.  I went to Mobile World Congress this year and saw a ton of new phones from Samsung, Acer, Sony/Ericsson, LG and others.  Every single one of them was using Windows Mobile.  For an OS that seems inferior to Android and dramatically inferior to the iPhone, why is it getting so much traction?  Why do device manufacturers keep choosing it.  Please tell me?

If they keep choosing it, it means there will be more and more phones that are essentially useless to me in my handset selection and this is a bad bad thing.

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Jonny Flynn and the Timberwolves

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jonny flynnThere’s been lots of talk about Ricky Rubio and all the he could potentially bring to the twolves.  And while i think he’s pretty special, I’m also very excited about Johnny Flynn.  What happened on draft day is that the the Timberwolves had ranked Flynn as #1 on their board of people they thought they could get (above Curry).  Somehow Rubio dropped to the number 5 spot so they felt they had to choose him.  Then with the number 6 they were faced with the option of choosing someone they believed was worse to fill the shooting guard spot or choose the best guy remaining which was Jonny Flynn.  At least that is the explanation that the GM provided.

I was skeptical but i just watched this video (below) of Flynn’s summer league play and he looks fan-fricking-tastic.  I’m very excited to see what he can do with KLove, Big Al and rest of the squad.

Also, i want to touch on the fact that Mad Dog Madsen was traded to the Clippers.  While not the best player in the league i think he’s done a great job of communicating with the public.  His blog is good read and he’s clearly a very smart dude (from Stanford). He’s missing Minnesota and I’ll miss him too.

Check this out:

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