Dave Beisel has a thought-provoking post on Social Advertising.  He sees it like this:

"I am not referring to the notion of marketing with a goal towards positive societal change, but rather the concept that relevant
online advertising could be potentially delivered to consumers based on
information about which ads were well received by those in their social
network? For example, if I click on an ad about, say a
specific car, it’s likely that those who I know are also in a
demo/psycho-graphic would also be interested in the same advertising
content."

I agree with him that the offering would be valuable.  However, many social networks (or sites that provide connections through  shared friends or interests) offer this in an implicit manner.  For example, MySpace provides a platform for groups and Green Day has a MySpace group with 121K members.  Group members, many of whom are members of bands themselves post on the group to expose themselves to Green Day fans.  The same phenomenon can be observed on Yonja.com, the 2nd largest Turkish web property, where brands create associations with each others’ "fans" through a groups functionality.  This is a version of what Beisel’s thinking of.

Social listing sites like Tribe.com and Judy’s Book,  offer social advertising through a different class of ads.

And finally, Seth Goldstein’s /Root Markets is trying to create a marketplace of attention, which, at one point, will (should) incorporate a social aspect and connect preferences and associations.

As content gets microchunked, so will ways to track its consumption and monetize it.  Welcome to Media2.0.

I have been meaning to write about Slingbox for a while.  They received nice coverage off CES.  My friend Ersin has bought one and was excited about it.  I just never got around to writing about it.

And today, I hear about the impressive round of financing they have pulled off, raising $46.6m from Liberty Media, Echostar and Goldman, and a lot of excitement in blogsphere.  That’s a fantastic lineup.  Congratulations!

What I find the most interesting about Sling is that it’s really not a threat to traditional media, but a way to bridge it to a better-connected world.  You still have to pay your cable subscription, but you can now watch your favorite show while you’re staying at someone else’s ski cottage.  They call it "placeshifting", similar to how TiVo is a  "timeshifting"  device.

Usually the placeshifting concept has meant a compromise due to changes in format.  I had used the example of the NY Times printout you get at hotels.  In this case, I don’t think there will be much compromise.  Your content will eventually get to the same format screen that you have in your living room.

There is value in placeshifting.

UPDATE: Ryan McIntyre of Mobius Ventures has a good commentary on the deal form a VC’s perspective.

  New Google interface 
  Originally uploaded by mamster.

Interesting…

Well, at least in China.  FT recently reported that "eBay has stopped charging transaction fees to its sellers in China, and is now only charging listing fees".  Both Nick Carr and FT agree that this is because eBay could not stand up to the pressure by AliBaba’s TaoBao.

Here’s the problem I see:  To me, marketplaces should be natural monopolies.  The barriers in front of a massive, single marketplace are anti-trust regulations, search inefficiencies, and brands (which, in fact is a result of search inefficiencies).  And these are each significant barriers so we should not be worried that tomorrow, we will only have eBay through which we can peddle our goods.

However, as long as marketplaces don’t turn into monopolies, there will be room for fierce competition, as we see from the China example, which will force the prices down.  And, as a result, information (and content, since I have been focused on Media lately), once again will push towards being freely available.

Going back to the barriers mentioned above, the only one that’s not artificial is search inefficiencies.  Does this tell us that search holds the key to marketplaces and commerce in the future?  I think Google is telling us it thinks so, with Google Base.

Rumors abound today that Yahoo!’s talking to Digg for an acquisition.  I would be surprised if they do, so soon after del.icio.us, especially for the $30-35m price tag being talked about.  According to PaidContent.org, digg has just 140K users.  The price implies a >$200/member valuation.  Remember Murdoch paid $580m for MySpace’s 22m members.  And, MySpace gets much more attention than Digg.  I will be extremely surprised if the deal turns out to be true.

There’s plenty of criticism on Google’s decision to filter search results according to China’s censors.  Bambi Francisco even points to the event as a sign of Google management beginning to make moves for short term gain, and not long term shareholder value.  She also thinks it’s a diversion from the famous "don’t do evil" principle.

Bambi concludes her article with:

"A successful serial entrepreneur friend once said that when starting a
business, one has to know whether they’re doing it because they want to
change the world in a good way, or because they want to make money.
It’s one or the other, not both. He is right. We often have lofty
goals. We often remind ourselves of them, as Google does of its own.
But more often than not we fail to achieve them. The world changes us
far more than we can change it."

I think there are different ways of measuring how lives are changed.  Could it be a good thing (and thus a positive change in people’s lives) that now the Chinese will be able to use Google?  I bet Google’s returned results on any given search will be better than Baidu.

A couple of weeks a go, Fred Stutzman, a PhD candidate at UNC published a brief analysis of Facebook usage by the incoming freshman class at UNC.  There have been numerous posts in blogsphere on the paper, including one by Stowe Boyd.

While I think the analysis is interesting, especially in the pop culture insight it delivers, the most critical number was right there in the initial paragraph:

"…I found that 88 percent of freshmen on the UNC campus had active Facebook accounts."

I assume this rate is similar at other universities, and I am blown away.

UPDATE: In fact, at UT Austin (my alma mater), the rate is 90%.

I presume most readers of this blog have been keen observers of Google, but nevertheless, I came across this well-written piece on Google from the LRB by John Lanchester, who also happens to be the author of a personal favorite of mine, The Debt to Pleasure.

Umair’s post today made me realize the source of some recent anxieties I have been experiencing.  He points out a post by Scott K., to whom he did not link and I was not able to locate, and comments how VC and media are not compatible.

I have been operating as an early-stage investor (without much investing :)) since the summer.  However, as my interest has been shifting from technology to media, the set of available investment opportunities have been shrinking.  So maybe, Umair is correct, when he says:

"…this is because VCs (with a few notable exceptions) and media are not a
great fit – they don’t get media, they’re a bit scared of investing in
media, and they often treat it like tech."

If he is correct, then there should be room opening for VC involvement in media, as the internet growth slams into media.