Examples of the early enthusiasm for the space include $15 million in funding for the Social Gaming Network from Greylock Partners, the Founders Fund, Columbia Partners, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners and $10 milli Continue reading →]]> At InterPlay, there was a healthy crowd of several hundred people, many of whom had paid $199 to be there. That’s a low price for a conference, but it’s unlikely people interested in this industry will be able to attend such confabs for such a small fee much longer.

Examples of the early enthusiasm for the space include $15 million in funding for the Social Gaming Network from Greylock Partners, the Founders Fund, Columbia Partners, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners and $10 million of investment from venture capitalists including Union Square Ventures.

To some at the conference, being there is a function of necessity for those who want to make the social-gaming industry a powerful force.

And while panels at conferences like this are always a big draw, there’s equal interest amongst attendees in getting the chance to network with each other and meet the industry’s leaders.

For example, he pointed out that in the social-gaming space, one of the most important metrics is total monthly minutes spent on a service by users.

The answer, he suggested, is that social networks like Facebook have demonstrated that it is possible to make mundane activities like messaging fun by applying game mechanics.

“It is hard to understand why people are getting so excited about some simple games,” he said, “that don’t take armies of people to create.”

“Hopefully, some of those things will change over the next 6 to 12 months,” McClure said.

“We’re so early in a new industry,” said Kristian Segerstrale, the CEO of Playfish, “to have some of the companies in a room to talk about shared issues.”

Still, McClure, who moderated a panel at InterPlay Thursday called “Funding the social game sphere,” said he isn’t entirely sure if there really is a lot of money to be made yet with such games.

That energy was very much in evidence Thursday at InterPlay, the first-ever conference solely devoted to social gaming.

In fact, the second such gathering, the Social Gaming Summit, will be taking place next month, also in San Francisco. The fee for that event is $399.

Those are big numbers, of course, but there do seem to be a number of social games that have been able to get that kind of user interest and engagement.

McClure said the nascent space caught his attention after a student of his built a social game and quickly got significant financial interest in it from two different companies.

“Everyone here is thinking there’s an opportunity here that the game companies aren’t exploiting,” Takahashi said, “‘Why don’t we, the social media community, exploit it?’”

One interesting question about social gaming is where the big video game publishers are.

Yet, it’s also possible that this is all much ado about nothing, Takahashi seemed to be saying.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I’ll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South’s most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I’m doing on Twitter.

“Two of the most useful metrics are page views and time spent in the game,” said Liew. “I like to see numbers of 100 million minutes spent per month.”

And that’s why, in the end, the space seems primed for a lot more investment and lot more new companies getting involved.

Such uncertainty, he said, is due in part to the fact that there is no universally respected system for collecting payments for the small financial transactions that could be a big part of the process. McClure also noted that it’s going to be hard for anyone to take on the dominant player in the space, Facebook.

“There’s significant recognition that social-gaming applications, at least on Facebook, are displaying high engagement and virality (rates),” said Dave McClure, the author of social media blog 500 Hats and one of the lead organizers of the Web 2.0 conferences.

Further, Segerstrale said, the point of an early conference like InterPlay is to help get the word out about some of the metrics that are important to a new industry, but which the rest of the world has yet to understand.

“You see a lot of traditional game companies sitting on the sidelines,” said Dean Takahashi, who writes for VentureBeat. “It could be costly for them to wait. If Electronic Arts waits too long (to create their own social games), it may be that they’ll have to buy one of these companies for $100 million.”

But back at InterPlay Thursday, attendees chose from a series of panels, including McClure’s and others like “The future of online social gaming,” “Gaming on the social platforms,” “Advertising and marketing on social games” and “Micro-transactions and virtual goods.” There were also some workshops on how to make money with social-gaming applications and a talk about metrics in the space.

“Can you translate user engagement and virality into monetization?” McClure said. “There’s lots of potential, but lots of questions about monetization.”

SAN FRANCISCO–When you’re one of the earliest adopters of a new technology, or one of the first companies into a new space, you tend to be very bullish on its future.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of social gaming–small, casual game applications designed to be played on social networks like Facebook–you soon will be. That’s because there is a lot of interest–and a growing amount of venture capital–being focused on the young space.

That was also one of the two most important metrics mentioned by Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, in the panel on funding social games.

I don't think it's nearly as fun as 2View was, but with more types of speech bubbles to use, it has got great potential Continue reading →]]> 2View, one of my favorite tools for adding notes to digital photos recently ceased to exist, and since then I’ve been wondering if any other services would pop up in its void. Today I’ve been playing around with Picbite, a wonderfully simple (and slightly similar) way to add small speech bubbles or annotations to photos from your hard drive or from a Web link.

I don’t think it’s nearly as fun as 2View was, but with more types of speech bubbles to use, it has got great potential for keeping annotation simple and elegant.

See also: Onesens, Voicethread, and Fleck

[via Delicious]

You can add small, yellow notes of any size to images then share them with others. The service provides a direct link as well as embed codes for use on popular social networking sites, forums, and as direct downloads in JPEG and PNG formats. I’ve placed a small thumbnail sized example of a Picbite I made from our coverage of Under the Radar last year at the end of the post (original shot by Brian Solis).

Unfortunately, I was already running late when he offered those bons mots at the end of my interview and didn't have enough time to get into that. Hopefully, I can reconnect at the company's party this evening.

"They're adding new things as the Web becomes richer. But a lot of the sites you see out there tend to be very Continue reading →]]> ******
I did manage to catch up with Perlman. Here’s what he had to say (over the din of a pounding electric-muzak like attack on our eardrums.)

Unfortunately, I was already running late when he offered those bons mots at the end of my interview and didn’t have enough time to get into that. Hopefully, I can reconnect at the company’s party this evening.

“They’re adding new things as the Web becomes richer. But a lot of the sites you see out there tend to be very static. You go from one static page to another static page. They may call themselves Web 2.0 but it’s Web 1.0 in terms of interactivity….I was walking around the floor (at the conference) and asking myself, `Where is the video?’ It’s not there. And that’s going to have repercussions.”

“What we’ve been seeing is a huge change in the way people manage their data and the way applications handle data. We’ve been working on the assumption that the gold standard for communications was a 1.5 megabit T-1 line. Like, you had it made! Well, today, that just sucks. Most people can get 3 to 6 megabits. So you’re seeing richer flash animations on pages and that’s beginning to change the way people think about stuff.”

Such as?

SAN FRANCISCO–One of the biggest booths at the Web 2.0 Expo here belongs to a very un-Web 2.0-ish kind of guy.

“At least two of the technologies we have are getting ripe on the vine,” he said. The big tease. (By the way, Tom Paquin, who ran engineering at Netscape, does the same at Reardon.)

Remember Steve Perlman? He’s one of those tech wunderkinds who piled up a laundry list of achievements over the last couple of decades–to the point where their predictions about technology carry more weight than most mere mortals. In his case, the highlights include leading the Apple development team whose technology led to QuickTime and later co-founding WebTV (later sold to Microsoft for a half billion or so.)

Perlman has been working at Rearden, an incubation firm he founded in 2000 that has some cool companies in its network, including Mova and Moxi Digital. Perlman was at Web 2.0 to show the corporate flag and sign up new talent. Though neither he nor his team would say what was on deck, they were playing it up as quite a big deal.

(Credit:
CNET News.com)

Interestingly, Perlman isn’t very impressed by most of what falls under the rubric of “Web 2.0.” Coming from someone with his technical pedigree, I was intrigued when he added: “Most of what you see here will be obsolete in three or four years.”

Donkey Kong courtesy of Widgetbox

Grand Theft Auto IV--6,293,000 units sold (despite the fact that the game was only released in late April in Continue reading →]]> The video game business thrives on hits, with a huge catalog of less important titles that help to augment sales and provide alternatives to the big hitters. But in general it’s safe to say the market is expanding, and that interactive games such as those on the Wii, as well as Guitar Hero, are clearly hitting a stride.

Donkey Kong courtesy of Widgetbox

Grand Theft Auto IV–6,293,000 units sold (despite the fact that the game was only released in late April in the U.S. and U.K. and has yet to hit the Japanese market)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl–5,433,000 units sold
Mario Kart
Wii–4,697,000 units sold
Wii Fit–3,604,000 units sold
Guitar Hero III–3,475,000 units sold

That’s 23,502,000 units sold just for the top five games in the U.S., U.K., and Japan only.

Statistically speaking, I would be interested in just how many of these games are purchased by repeat buyers and what the demographics are associated with each leading game.

A new alliance of organizations that monitor video game sales has released the Top Global Markets Report, the first in a new series of monthly tallies detailing video game software sales across the U.S., U.K., and Japan.

I still like to rock old school, so please enjoy a game of Donkey Kong, courtesy of my friends at Widgetbox.

It's clear that Yahoo is struggling against Google, and it's clear that Microsoft wants nothing more than to be important in the online services world. But the combination of these two behemoths, neither of whom have been particularly innovative with technology or customer acquisition of late, is the next AOL/Time Warner debacle.

Does anyone think that the merger of AOL and Time Warner w Continue reading →]]> According to Jason Maynard at Credit Suisse, this is going to be a tough slog.

It’s clear that Yahoo is struggling against Google, and it’s clear that Microsoft wants nothing more than to be important in the online services world. But the combination of these two behemoths, neither of whom have been particularly innovative with technology or customer acquisition of late, is the next AOL/Time Warner debacle.

Does anyone think that the merger of AOL and Time Warner was a success? Does the marriage of two companies that have no clear strategies ever make sense?

Microsoft hasn’t proven that it can take advantage of this scale of web property and has wasted a huge amount of time and dollars with all the Live.com junk. Yes, MS should move into new markets and look to the future but Yahoo is a massive undertaking with a completely different culture.

The other big question is how long search and advertising are the holy grail. Odds are something else will come along and it will be Google or another startup that figures it out before Yahoo and Microsoft.

We expect Yahoo to pursue every avenue to fight the acquisition and believe the ouster of Terry Semel from the board signals that. While management is likely to pursue other combinations like Yahoo/MySpace/NWS, Yahoo/TWX/AOL, and YHOO/AT&T, as well as more exotic options, we believe that Microsoft’s strategic and financial advantages will ultimately overcome management resistance, particularly in light of investor and employee frustration over the lack of strategic direction and failure to execute the company has demonstrated. However, we would not discount the possibility of Microsoft being forced to use a tender offer to move the process forward.

And as always, drop me a line or follow me on Twitter!

Judge Joseph Spero on Monday ordered Oracle to give a specific dollar amount by February 13 to settle the lawsuit it filed in March 2007. Oracle previously indicated in its lawsuit that its damages were in excess of $1 billion.

A federal court judge ordered Oracle to name its settlement price in its ongoing litigation against archrival SAP Continue reading →]]> SAP has until February 18 to issue a counterproposal. A settlement conference is scheduled for February 23.

Judge Joseph Spero on Monday ordered Oracle to give a specific dollar amount by February 13 to settle the lawsuit it filed in March 2007. Oracle previously indicated in its lawsuit that its damages were in excess of $1 billion.

A federal court judge ordered Oracle to name its settlement price in its ongoing litigation against archrival SAP over the handling of proprietary maintenance and support information for former Oracle customers who had switched over to a subsidiary of SAP.

The judge’s order is common practice in lawsuits, in which the parties are ordered to attempt to reach a settlement before the case heads into trial. The trial date is February 8, 2010.

“We will abide by the decision of the court. It is in everyone’s best interest to bring this case to an appropriate resolution without undue delay,” SAP said in a statement.

Oracle declined to comment.

Vieux acquired some of its assets and reopened it as an Internet-only publication that same year. He started printing the magazine again in 2004. Since then, reports of financial distress have plagued Red Herring. Continue reading →]]> Red Herring was one of the tech magazines that rose to prominence during the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, competing with the likes of The Industry Standard, Business 2.0, and Wired. The magazine was a casualty of the Internet meltdown and ceased publication in 2003.

Vieux acquired some of its assets and reopened it as an Internet-only publication that same year. He started printing the magazine again in 2004. Since then, reports of financial distress have plagued Red Herring. The magazine has not been printed for at least the past six weeks.

Red Herring’s 19 employees were evicted Tuesday from the tech publisher’s offices in Belmont, Calif., after it fell behind in rent payments, according to a source close to the situation.

If Vieux couldn’t agree with his landlords on lease terms, he still may have to negotiate with them about taking possession of the company’s e-mail servers, which are still in the building, according to a source.

In a phone interview, Red Herring publisher and CEO Alex Vieux acknowledged that the deputies cleared out his staff, but said it was not unexpected and denied not having the money to make rent payments.

Employees were seen trotting back and forth from the office to their
cars, hauling PCs and other belongings. The blog Valleywag first reported the eviction.

“We have been in negotiation about how to get out of the lease,” Vieux told CNET News.com. “We did not agree and we made an economic decision.”

Deputies from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday arrived at around 3 p.m. and gave the staff 30 minutes to leave the premises, said the source, who is not authorized to speak on the matter. A locksmith and the landlord’s attorney showed up at the same time to change the locks.

Meanwhile, Red Herring’s Web publication is still operating. The publication’s servers were hosted in a different location, according to the source.

Vieux said that he has already found a new office somewhere near his former headquarters, but he wouldn’t disclose the location.

If you're aiming to be green these days, I'm afraid I have to counsel you to turn the power off on your next-generation video game console.

"Our tests found that leaving a PlayStation 3 on while not in use would cost...almost five times more than it would Continue reading →]]> (Credit:
Sony Computer Entertainment of America)

And no, not using them is not enough. As the Australian researchers at Choice found, the machines continue to gobble up power, even when they’re in stand-by mode.

If you’re aiming to be green these days, I’m afraid I have to counsel you to turn the power off on your next-generation video game console.

“Our tests found that leaving a PlayStation 3 on while not in use would cost…almost five times more than it would take to run a refrigerator for the same yearly period,” Choice wrote in its study.

The PlayStation 3 was found by an Australian research group to be one of the most power-hungry consumer electronics devices in the world, even when in stand-by mode.

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I’ll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South’s most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I’m doing on Twitter.

According to Reuters, an Australian research firm has concluded that machines like Sony’s
PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s
Xbox 360 lead the field when it comes to consumer electronics that consume the most power.

The PS3 topped Choice’s list, followed by the Xbox and then plasma flat-screen TVs, Reuters reported.

"So how long will it be before Valleywag drives someone in our community to suicide? My fear is that it isn't a matter of if it will happen, but when. Valleywag and Nick Denton, though, will likely look forward to the event, and the great traffic growth that will surely follow."

Of course, as all of Silicon Valley likely knows by now, Wikipedia's major domo is getting razzed over at Valleywag. The geek Continue reading →]]> Hey, you should have seen my breakup e-mail with Jimmy Wales.

“So how long will it be before Valleywag drives someone in our community to suicide? My fear is that it isn’t a matter of if it will happen, but when. Valleywag and Nick Denton, though, will likely look forward to the event, and the great traffic growth that will surely follow.”

Of course, as all of Silicon Valley likely knows by now, Wikipedia’s major domo is getting razzed over at Valleywag. The geek gossip site got its hands on a breakup note and IM text Wales apparently sent to ex-squeeze, Rachel Marsden.

The news led the page where I came across a pointer to a brief piece by Mike Arrington of TechCrunch titled, “When will we have our first Valleywag suicide?”

Let’s be careful. The Times headline, “After Suicide, Blog Insults Are Debated,” borders on the sensational. That’s not to say it doesn’t get rough out there. Check out the TalkBacks in the piece my colleague Elinor Mills wrote after returning from a interview with Google’s Eric Schmidt. Hiding behind a cloak of anonymity–let alone the distance of a wireless connection–the trolls came out of the woodwork and let the bile flow.

“Gregory K. Brown, a specialist on suicide at the University of Pennsylvania, said that public humiliation could play a role in suicide because “hopelessness is often a major risk factor, and if you’ve been publicly humiliated and your reputation has been tarnished forever, you could see how someone could become hopeless.” Such situations, he added, could contribute to feeling that life is unbearable.

The depth of their animosity floored me. Elinor’s a delightful person, not to mention a hard-working and conscientious reporter. I couldn’t contemplate the demons that drove these folks to jump ugly. But this is cyberspace and people are free to express their opinions. All you need is a keyboard and a connection.

Maybe the real story is that Silicon Valley types seek out the personal and the salacious because, well, they like it. Chalk it up to too much time spent staring at a computer screen each day.

Just kidding.

So it was after reading the Times story early Monday morning that I clicked over to TechMeme.

The Wales’ post was par for the course since Valleywag revels in the online agony of others. (Owen, I’m a kung fu expert, so do yourself a favor and keep me out of your headlines. ) But the correspondence came to light just as The New York Times decided to publish a piece about the suicide last month of Paul Tilley, who had been the creative director of DDB Chicago.

“There’s a market for this kind of content, obviously. And nothing can stop it except significant changes to our libel and defamation laws. That isn’t something I support. But the valley was a much nicer place to live and work before the days of Valleywag.”

The Times piece examined whether nasty comments made by a couple of bloggers played any role in this tragedy. That struck me as odd. Were readers supposed to learn that the blogosphere resembles a rude locker room–or worse? Not much of a revelation. But the piece appeared to suggest that cruel words posted on the Internet may have been enough to drive Tilley over the edge. It reminded readers that a 13-year-old girl killed herself in 2006 after being insulted and dumped by an “online boyfriend” on MySpace.

And unlike some other forms of public humiliation, online insults can live in perpetuity. Whether that increases suicide risk, Mr. Brown said, is an open question, adding, “Although it’s plausible that’s the case, we know very little about the role of the Internet.”

I wonder about that. If someone’s contemplating jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge because of something posted on Valleywag, they’ve got serious issues. Arrington is a frequent target of Valleywag’s barbs and I can understand his frustration. But he’s missing the bigger point. Think back to Cassius’ warning: the fault really is in our selves. If folks failed to click on the stories, I’m sure Nick Denton would have folded Valleywag eons ago.