I sincerely apologize if I offended anyone by using the word retarded in the title of this post, but get ready because I’m going to use it again. There’s no other way to express how ridiculous it is that the video site community is so far off in standardizing their metric for view counts. It’s straight up retarded and needs to be fixed.

Disparate video view count metrics is part of an overall problem of non-standard web analytics which ultimately stunts the economics of web content.

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Nothing as far as I can tell.

But if you figure something out please let me know. Just thought I’d send some pics out from day one of the Int’l Auto Show here in Lisbon. It was set-up in the morning and press only in the afternoon. Pretty light crowd, but I had a good view. Take a look. If you make it to the end of the slideshow you’ll see a few shots of the Megaphone screen. (more…)

Heavy dose of travel this week. I’m in Lisbon for the Portuguese International Auto Show. MegaPhone has an installation at the Fiat booth which we’re deploying today. MegaPhone is one of the early-stage technology companies that SDG both has an ownership position in and represents as a client for entertainment & media. They design software that allows for multi-player, casual gaming on big screens through a simple phone call. Check out the MTV demo in Times Square here. It’s a ground breaking product that has caught the eye of several agencies and brands interested in cutting through the clutter to communicate directly with their audience. The European response to MegaPhone has been phenomenal and I expect that this event be be the first of many.

I was recently asked if Funny or Die is irrelevant. It’s an interesting question, especially in light of the site’s one-year birthday last week. The answer I came up with was yes.

Don’t get me wrong, we owe a debt to Funny or Die because of the impact it’s had on online video in the last year. In that sense it will always be relevant. (more…)

I’m in Chicago for the Ad Age event, Marketing at the Movies. I’m particularly interested in how new technologies are being used to enhance the moviegoing experience from a advertising perspective.

How’s that for an oxymoron? (more…)

Anyone else notice that NBC.com’s traffic has taken a dive since Hulu launched?

I’ll bet the folks that run NBC.com did. In fact, they mention it, but Hulu represents a threat to NBC.com and all network vertical sites. But as we know, a threat is opportunity unspun, which might be why I found last week’s Ad Tech Keynote discussion with NBC’s Chief Digital Officer, George K. so interesting.

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If you’ve been to the San Francisco Bay Area recently you may have noticed that they’re doing major construction on the Bay Bridge. It’s a perfect metaphor for the status of collaboration between the Northern California Tech community and the Southern California Entertainment community - Under Construction. (more…)

Many, many years ago, I auditioned to be on a Japanese game show. Not as a contestant. Not as the host. My role was to be a prop for a stunt.

The offer seemed pretty appealing to a kid fresh out of school: a first-class round trip ticket to Tokyo for a one-day shoot plus $1000 cash. All they wanted was a gaijin to be tickled on-stage for 45 seconds. And to top it off, no one outside of Japan would ever see the tape! Sounds likes a great deal, right? (more…)

The gift economy that powers much of web 2.0 is unsustainable. The internet offers an unmatched infrastructure for the distribution of communication, information and entertainment. But professional creators i.e. bloggers, video producers or application developers that build web 2.0 products and help us realize the value of that infrastructure won’t keep making their content and giving it away for free much longer. Why should they? (more…)

99% of this post is 100% true.

I learned a lot about the entertainment business during my tenure at Fox.

At a company off-site, I played golf with Rupert Murdoch. He had just tee’d off and I said that his swing was good, but not great, and that Mark Zuckerberg’s swing was better. Rupert told me that he had some executive advice for me: don’t name drop. (more…)