World’s First Virtual VC: Susan Wu

Meet Susan Wu, she’s what Matt Marshall over at VentureBeat has termed a virtual venture capitalist. Her photo is courtesy of VentureBeat too.

Susan is an associate at Charles River Ventures, blogs and has heard funding pitches in a virtual world (part of the Edelman business planning comp in Second Life). She has a keen interest in the MMOG space and her recent post on Second Life is right on the mark…

She finds that SL doesn’t grab her emotionally, has high technical barriers to participation and is a walled garden using closed standards and stifling mass adoption. In short, while they are currently on the edge, they have not truly adopted Web 2.0 principles.

I totally agree with her that we are at the “tip of the iceberg” and that’s why I’m investing a chunk of time into the space.

This bit from her is worth quoting verbatim:

One day, there will be an open standards based platform that makes virtual asset/world creation as easy as choosing templates and widgets for your MySpace page.  In fact, today’s social networking services like MySpace and Flickr already incorporate some smart game design principles, such as levelling up, collecting virtual objects, and homesteading in the form of customization. I expect that virtual items will one day become a far more legitimate asset class and that there will be much improved liquidity for these assets in the future.  It sounds absurd, but there are some basic economic reasons why this concept of real money trade (RMT) makes sense, despite all of the negativity that RMT receives from the core gaming community:
1) Virtual goods can confer real economic utility,
2) It can be much cheaper to buy virtual goods than procuring them via more traditional methods – such as actually spending the requisite time necessary in-game or in-world,
3) Virtual goods can generate attractive investment returns.

Way to go Susan. That day may be nearer than you think. 

Dappled Cities Fly into Sydney for Secret Show

Dappled Cities Fly is heading over to Sydney midway through their sold-out Australian Granddance tour to perform a private show for 100 fans.

The show is being hosted by Defhead, a new site set up by Viocorp, to showcase up and coming bands and artists.

Be sure to tune into the live webcast at 8pm Sydney time (AEST) Tuesday 5th December…and, of course, Yoick will be on hand to blog the event.

The Future of Content: The Power Lies With Aggregators And Brands

Bear Stearns Media Research discussed their thesis on the future of content via conference call on Monday. You can view the slide pack and presentation here.

The talk was titled The Long Tail: Why Aggregation and Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment.

In their view, digital technologies are “democratizing” content creation, which has historically been held in the hands of Hollywood and TV networks. OK, so nothing new there.

Now, they say, barriers to content creation are falling, giving rise to “user generated content.” Yip, we kinda got UGC courtesy of YouTube.

As this happens, they believe value in the entertainment supply chain will shift from the creators of content to the aggregators/packagers of content.  Ah ha – now that is a useful point. In the presentation Spencer Wang posits the view that the importance of aggregators and brands will increase with the exponential increase in content choices.

He also rightly argues that we are on the cusp of an explosion in content choice. From a user point of view this means that not only is aggregation and brand recognition going to be key to getting their attention, but also context will play a key role.  Long live the Attention Economy.

Slippery slope: Mobile and Internet Video Cuts Away at TV

A report on viewing trends in the UK has shown that as much as 43% of the population who watch video on a device such as a a mobile phone or via the Internet watch less normal TV.

While still in the minority, with only 9% doing so regularly, the trend is a slippery slope in the UK and is set to catch up with the US.  The trend clearly demonstrates that  mobile and Internet video will continue to increase in viewer’s attention globally.

Web 2.0 Fear and Loathing Downunder

The Australian Financial Review has an article in its weekend edition focusing on the struggle the established corporate world is having coming to terms with the new Internet.

Come on guys, it ain’t that hard. Web 2.0 is about CICS, plain and simple – (Connecting, Interacting, Creating and Sharing).

Here are some snippets from the article…at the interface between the established corporate world and the fronteir of the internet, there’s a whiff of desperation…business people fear that a world they didn’t create and don’t understand is about to change the way they do business.

In the article David Bolliger, CEO of Tilefile, a Sydney-based socnet startup, likens the development of Web 2.0 to the creation of a city. The best cities, he says, “don’t come into existence from one person’s pen but from longitudinal social interaction and person-to-person interactions.”

Hey, I like the analogy.

Here’s another great quote from David – smart cookie this guy…“It’s an earthquake that’s moving through the collective. We should think of Web 2.0 not just as an internet phenomenon but as an internet expression of a global cultural phenomenon.”

Indeed, and the vanguard of this ‘revolution’ is the fundamental human desire for more CICS.

Sydney Stirrs: Seeking Demoheads

Stirr is coming to Sydney in December.

Do you have a product you’d like to demo at the event?

Yoick WotF: Boo 2 to launch

Techcrunch reports that the poster child of dot crash, Boo.com is looking at relaunching.

They have far more chance of succeeding now that the Internet plumbing is in place. In fact it’s not a bad business model for the non innovative — choose a recognised dot com brand and business idea and resurrect it using Web 2.0 principles and technology.

I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of this.

How Digital Media is Evolving: It’s a Matter of Science Fiction

PodTech recently interviewed Kevin Townsend, Managing Partner at Science+Fiction, about the evolution of digital media. Here are some snippets…

For most of us this is trite, but worth highlighting – the advertising world changed a few years ago dramatically, in that advertisers realized that the traditional medias; print, radio and broadcast commercials, weren’t nearly as appropriate for reaching their audiences anymore, especially because their audiences weren’t what they thought they were.
 As a result Kevin, who has worked with George Lucas, says that advertisers need to go multi-platform. I totally agree – anyone not multiplatforming is crazy, lazy and/or about to be sideswiped by competitors. 

Multiplatforming means that it is not only about seeing a television show or a movie, it’s about seeing something online, it’s about seeing something in a game, it’s about hearing something in a podcast, it’s about being able to talk to people across multiple platforms, sometimes simultaneously. And each of those platforms has its own pluses and minuses, and the content needs to be able to reflect that, so the consumer gets the best possible experience. The reason why that’s important is because the advertisers are starting to use those individual platforms, to create content as a means of reaching their consumer.

Kevin talks about advertisers being in the best position to create content, because they inherently understand best what their customers are looking for. He calls this a self-publishing model…what’s going on with advertisers is they know their audience well; so they know what their audience likes and dislikes. And one of our clients is Red Bull, the energy drink; and they know that their target audience really enjoys the action sports world. So we created programming that revolved around athletes and events within the action sports world that we knew that the Red Bull consumer would really gravitate towards. And then, in order to make it as strategically appropriate as possible, we also created it so it could be distributed across multiple platforms simultaneously. So not only can you get it in one format or on one platform, but you can get on multiple platforms at the same time. So that gives the choice back to the consumer; do I want to watch television, do I want to be online, do I want to watch a DVD? Whatever choice is, that allows Red Bull to having more quality contact with their consumer, it allows the consumer to have a better experience via the brand. And then going back to Red Bull again, it allows that brand to open up more of a dialog with its customers.

The gist of the discussion is that we have both consumer behavior and advertiser behavior changing to create a perfect storm of user-focused content that drives loyalty. The rainbow will appear when more and more brands recognise that they are not only a distribution channel, but also a mechanism for driving user generated content. 

An Obvious Escape: Entrepreneurs 1 versus VC Overlords 0

The New York Times has run a piece on Ev Williams and his recent buy out of Odeo from VCs Charles River Ventures. I’m not overly enthused with some of Miguel Helft’s wording – “struggling podcast company”, but on the whole it’s a great snapshot of thinking behind the move by some of us to focus on building multi-product, sustainable companies.

 The best thing about the newly renamed Obvious, Mr. Williams said, is that he controls its destiny. He wants it to become a sort of idea factory that can spawn project after project, perhaps not unlike a media company that starts magazine after magazine. Obvious already has two projects, Odeo, which soldiers on, and Twitter, a blogging-like tool for quick updates.

Techwag versus Valleycrunch

It had to happen sooner or later — sights set, guns aimed…let’s mash them up and see if we reach equilibrium.

Huh, you may well ask? Techcrunch, the uber buzz builder for new high tech apps, is facing off against Valleywag, the tech hq goss rag.

Read more here and here.

I’ve got a lot of respect for both Mike and Nick – come on guys, kiss and make up.