Following a fight between Turkish and Greek internet users posting insulting videos and comments, and a wave of reporting on this by the Turkish media, YouTube is now apparently blocked by Turkish ISPs through a court order.  While I find the entire back-and-forth by the nationalists in both countries in poor taste, I am shocked and disturbed by the decision of the courts.

Rumors abound in London that Viacom is looking to purchase LastFM (via Dealbreaker).  From a joy-of-use perspective, LastFM is the best thing to hit my browser since Kozmo.com, so I am happy for them, especially since the price tag is rumored to be $450m.  The latest subscriber numbers I’d read on LastFM were around 15m, and I think $30/user is nicely representative of the value LastFM delivers to its users.

Now what this means given Viacom is old media, I am not sure.  LastFM has generally played by the rules, and they have navigated the treacherous waters of digital music astutely.  So, I don’t expect Viacom to have large strategy changes in mind.

I wonder if this is primarily a grab at large new media properties following the MySpace and Facebook episodes, or Viacom has developed a strategy on how it’ll play at the edge.  As far as old media goes, Viacom’s MTV has always been closer to the edge, but outside of that, there’s really no evidence that Viacom’s moving in a progressive path.

I have been extremely busy with Mondus, so I have not been blogging much, but this post by Jon Udell is too important to pass up.  Udell’s post and the comments he receives provide a good discussion on the meme that is now very established:  the difficulty of attaining critical mass on social networks, especially in the US market. He summarizes the whole discussion with the following:

Increasingly I’ve begun to feel the same way about the various
social networks. How many networks can one person join? How many
different identities can one person sanely manage? How many different
tagging or photo-uploading or friending protocols can one person deal
with?

Recently Gary McGraw
echoed Ben Smith’s 1991 observation. “People keep asking me to join the
LinkedIn network,” he said, “but I’m already part of a network, it’s
called the Internet.”

This discussion is critical both for the internet industry, and, on a much smaller scale, me.  I am keenly following it.

I mean old, old media…

Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper,… [t]he world’s oldest
paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists
only in cyberspace.

The
newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden’s Queen Kristina, became a
Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It’s a fate, many ink-stained writers
and readers fear, that may await many of the world’s most venerable
journals.

"We think it’s a cultural disaster," said Hans Holm, who served as the chief editor of Post-och Inrikes Tidningar for 20 years.

I know it’s fairly meaningless, since the paper’s circulation is around 1,000, but it’s a milestone nevertheless.  (via AP)

On the heels of the new round of funding, LinkedIn’s CEO Reid Hoffman has announced that he’s transitioned the CEO role to Dan Nye, and will operate as Chairman and President of Products.

Reid is one of the most connected people in the Valley and, from what I can follow, has created a very impressive and broad portfolio of angel investments.  I wonder if this move signals a solid step towards a full time investment career.

After my LinkedIn post, I have been called out by Ali Alpay in the comments.  He asks, justly:

"It
is an "impressive" number, but out of curiosity, do you think it is an
over- or under-valued number?"

I won’t say it’s an under-valued deal,
but for the record, my call is that the VCs in this round will generate
positive returns.  In professional networking, the switching costs are  high.  With the lack of progressive moves in the general jobs/careers area, given the enormous size of the market there (look at Monster’s market cap at $6.2b), LinkedIn will attain a nice segment of that market.  I am a buy!