The problem with companies who have built their business around free is that it is far from free to remain successful. The more success you have in delivering free, the more expensive it is to stay at the top. The more success you have, the more important it is to management to remain successful.  The more important remaining successful is to management, the more money they will spend, the more chances they will take, the more infrastructure they will build, the more people they will hire.  All of the things that will prevent them from staying lean , mean and flexible. All of the things that distract them from innovating within their core competency.

Last year I wrote a blog post entitled “If the news is important it will find me”. The point was that we all live in so many social networks, that someone will send us an update if something in the world happens that we would be interested in.  Back then I was guessing.  A year later I have data. For the 1st time ever, more people are finding my blog from Twitter and Facebook referrals than via Google.  The total number of people coming to my blog is increasing. The percentage of people who find it via Google is declining. Significantly.

I love this on going discussion. Of course all of you who think that the OPEN internet will be the primary platform for the delivery of traditional tv content are wrong . But hey, thats what makes a market. Before I get into dismissing some of the traditional arguments why Online TV will take over, let me start you with one that hasn’t been used. Rural Broadband.

This past Nov 22nd Youtube had its first major live event. A concert featuring HDNet fave Joe Satriani , Katy Perry Will.I.Am and others.   Of course everyone involved in the space is chattering about whether or not the show was a success. According to Mogulus, the live internet broadcast peaked at about 700k simultaneous users. That’s huge for an internet audience.   I think by any traditional Youtube measure , you have to call it a success, with some major gotchas.

UPDATED. I wish I could say more, but I will have to leave it to this, and let the judicial process do its job.
November 17, 2008
RE: SEC Civil Action in the United States District for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.
Mark Cuban today responded to a civil complaint filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States District for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. In its complaint, the Commission charges that Mr. Cuban engaged in violations of the federal securities laws in connection with transactions in the securities of Mamma.com Inc.

If you havent read, ESPN has come out and said that they will be aggressively bidding for the retransmission rights for the next available Olympics, which will be in 2016. Notice I didnt say TV rights. The battle for the Olympics rights will be in spreadsheet projections done by ESPN, NBC and probably DirecTV (my guess, not based on any info), that will have to take in to account what revenues can be generated on TV advertising (traditional and interactive), through cable/satellite subscription revenues, an ever increasing market size for mobile video and advertising, and of course audio/video and text advertising of all types.

The Motion Picture Association of America is doing their best to follow in the footsteps of their brethren at the RIAA and make business harder for its members. They, Im guessing at the direction of some lawyers of their member companies, want to try to make cable and satellite companies shut off the "analog hole" when showing movies that are being released to TV prior to their DVD release. In the MPAA's own words "Distribution over insecure outputs would facilitate the illegal copying and redistribution of this high value content, causing untold damage to the DVD and other 'downstream' markets."

The future of any technology can be defined by the economic opportunities it creates. One just look around Pittsburgh to see the explosion in the number of businesses built around advances in medical technology to see the importance of entrepreneurs focusing on new technology. The impact has been enormous. Which brings us to today. What are the opportunities in front of us to get excited about in the digital media field?

There is a lot of money being spent trying to turn internet video into something its not. Its not TV. It's certainly not going to be HDTV. What is shocking about the entire attempt to turn the internet into a tv/HDTV distribution medium is how much people lie to themselves about what is actually happening.

It is coming up on 2 years post my declaration that only a moron would buy Youtube and that Google was crazy for actually going through with it. In that period of time, while Youtube traffic has skyrocketed, they have been steadfast in their admission that they haven't been able to monetize Youtube's traffic in a profitable manner. Youtube has become the poster child for the old saying "we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume".

When it comes to broadband internet access, you can have speed or large volumes of data transfer. You can't have both. One certainty in the broadband world is that for those of us with cable or DSL modems connecting us to the internet, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth available. When a user consumes a disproportionate and significant amount of bandwidth, it can and will slow down everyone. I hate that.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the Ala Carting of Video on the Net. The premise was very simple. To paraphrase an old saying, "If you give away the milk for free, there is no need to buy the cow". If you give away your best stuff on an ala carte basis, then the value of everything that depended on that "stuff" declines. Some folks agreed, others searched for ways to disagree. Many in their responses seemed to think that because I own HDNet that I am biased and my judgement is clouded. In fact, its the exact opposite.

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google? Better search? Too subjective. Better monetization? After the fact. Better User Interface? Will we know it when we see it? A new and different search? Semantic? Human powered? We won't know till we know.

There is a dirty little secret in the cable industry. Its being kept secret not by the cable distributors, but by the big cable networks. End this practice and the United States goes from being 3rd world by international broadband standards, to top of the charts and exemplary. Make this change and Net Neutrality becomes a non issue. There is plenty of bandwidth for everyone. What is the dirty little secret? That your cable company still delivers basic cable networks in analog.

First, let me offer a great big thank you to Youtube from me and everyone on the internet, including many small businesses. Im just guessing here, but based on reports coming from Compete and others, I don't think its a stretch to say that Youtube subsidizes the cost of more than half the user generated internet bandwidth consumed in the United States.

I ordered a MacBook Air site unseen. That's a first for me. As I write this I'm about to go workout and it dawns on me that I'm on my 3rd generation of Apple IPod. I started with the original, switched to a bigger version (to back up all my pics and show off my kids to my friends) and then for the holidays, got myself and wife an iTouch.