Sequoia Rings the Alarm Bell: Silicon Valley Is in Trouble
Sequoia Capital, arguably the smartest venture capital investor in business, is sounding the alarm and asking its portfolio companies to buckle down for what could be the worst economic downturn of their relatively short lives.
The fund organized a meeting yesterday where it invited entreprenuers/CEOs from its portfolio companies. The attendees were greeted by a cute image of a Grave Stone, with a message: R.I.P.: Good Times, my sources tell me.
Sling Brings the Web to TV With New Set-Top Box
By announcing its new SlingCatcher set-top box today, Sling Media Inc. is joining the market for Internet-connected devices that will allow users to watch IP video directly on their televisions.The SlingCatcher enables users to connect to on-demand video content hosted on network TV sites, like ABC.com or video aggregation sites like Hulu , and stream that content direct to their TV set.
Media, entertainment shares dive to new lows
Every major diversified-entertainment stock fell to its lowest point in at least a year Thursday, with some falling to their weakest levels in five years as ongoing credit fears rocked the U.S. stock market. In an economic crisis, many companies curtail advertising spending, a primary source of revenue for media businesses. Consumer spending also declines, hurting media concerns that rely on subcription revenue.
Why Netflix May Be an Online Video Leader
But the company is still an improbable success story, fending off many assaults from Blockbuster. Netflix now has 8.7 million subscribers, and its more cautious forecast is to add 278,000 to 578,000 in the fourth quarter. At worst, that’s a pace of 1 million new subscribers a year — not shabby for any business. What I’m paying attention to is the company’s still-small incursion into delivering video over the Internet. Until now, Netflix had a collection of about 10,000 older movies and TV episodes. Last week it added a catalog of 2,500 movies (mainly one to five years old) from the Starz cable network.
Online Ads to Take Hit Based on Economic Crisis?
The Internet analyst community is starting to see signs that online advertising will soon take a hit as a result of the ongoing economic meltdown.
Though the latest spending data issued by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers earlier this week indicated a solid growth rate of 15.2 percent for online advertising through the first half of 2008, some observers see signs of weakness. eMarketer analyst David Hallerman issued a report on Oct. 9 pointing out that classified ad spending was down by more than 5 percent during that period.
Online Video Mixing and Publishing Network Eyespot Shuts Down
3 years ago, an online video startup, Eyespot, raised $3.7 million in funding for its online video editor and mashup tool. Earlier this week, co-founder David Dudas announced on twitter that eyespot was being shut down.
TWC Brings Web Video to TV in Hawaii
Time Warner Cable and ActiveVideo Networks have announced the deployment of a TV experience designed to bring Web content and interactivity directly to the TV sets of cable subscribers in Hawaii. The service, which is being launched in Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is designed to intelligently stream traditional and Web-based content to any digital set-top box.
The Best Consumer Video Editors
We've already shown you the best free apps for sprucing up basic videos. But if you're looking for something more than basic features or expect to be working with HD content, you'll need software that's a bit more high-end. Luckily, many current consumer video editors enable you to produce high-quality content that looks professional—without being as complex as the tools the pros use or as high priced.
NDS Reports Higher Annual Revenues, Higher Income
Interactive TV and conditional access technology provider, NDS–which is in the process of being taken private via a deal that will see News Corp. retaining a 49% stake in the company and investment firm, Permira, taking a 51% stake–has released financial results for its fiscal year, ended June 30th:
- Revenues totaled $850.1 million, compared to $709.5 million for the previous fiscal year–an increase of 20%. Revenues from the company’s conditional access technologies were up 17% over the previous fiscal year, revenues from license fees and royalties were up 12%, and revenues from new technologies were up 40% (primarily due, the company said, to “higher revenues from our DVR technologies, advanced middleware, IPTV, gaming applications and residential gateway devices”).
RayV Takes Live Broadcasting to a New Level
Stealthy live video startup RayV recently told us a bit about what it’s doing, and it’s pretty cool: turning PCs into media servers to make high-quality live broadcasting possible directly from a computer. I really like the live video space because it has both hard technology and exciting new production and consumption applications,
Video SEO Tip: Optimize your YouTube “click-to-action” link
When I first posted a Video SEO tip on how YouTube’s click-to-action buttons can be duplicated by anyone with their own YouTube account for every single video, responses we got were that it sounded too good to be true, or that it was just meant for YouTube’s partner sites, or that maybe it might be viewed as spam? After further testing, we discovered even better tactics of how to optimize a “Hot URL” link in your Description field to get optimal call-to-action results.
