Andy Boyer

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Category: Big Businesses (Page 5 of 10)

All Hail the Blogger In Chief

January 23, 2009 /

Inauguration day – Tears of joy, hope renewed and a feeling that we will all succeed.

Well, maybe that sentiment was felt by the general public as well, but anyone running a Social Media Marketing agency was even more pleased when the President of the United States proclaimed transparency was king and announced the White House would have a blog, communicating directly with its consumers/constituents in a conversational manner.

The news made waves around the Seattle Social Media community as well.  “Will he Twitter?”  “Will there be a White House YouTube Channel?”  “What new platforms will the White House use for Social Media?”

Any marketing effort that is being undertaken by the leader of the free world basically trumps every argument from any CEO rejecting Social Media as a valuable part of the marketing mix.  So thank you Mr. President.  You have already provided stimulus to one industry.

 

AOL Splits

January 13, 2009 /

We know that a number of companies are going to have to radically change their practices to survive this year.  In what could be the first “re-invention” of 2009, AOL appears to have split itself in two, blowing up the AOL brand in the process.

The new divisions are called MediaGlow and PeopleNetworks.  According to AdWeek, “MediaGlow encompasses a collection of 70 niche content sites launched in recent years, ranging from AOL Health to nonbranded properties like TMZ.com.”  it appears to be similar to Federated Media, a collection of web sites all served by a single ad network.

Meanwhile, “People Networks focuses on social media properties like Bebo and AOL Instant Messenger.”

The AOL portal is effectively gone, an acknowldgement that people are using search to land in their destination of choice, rather than having a single home page they visit every day.  

There are a number of other features that you can read about in the article.  Basically though, the old AOL is finally done.  It will be interesting to see if the new AOL properties become leaders in their new markets.

Will they or Won’t They? And Waht is the Effect of Widespread MSFT “Cutbacks”

January 5, 2009 /

So the blog world is all a-buzz with speculation about the rumored Microsoft cutbacks, layoffs, reductions, pruning, shearing or whatever other verb you want to use.  A lot of commenting is going on over at a blog called Mini-Microsoft, written by an insider.  

There are a ton of ways this could play out.  But at the end of the day, if Redmond makes either substantial cuts in one category, or small cuts across all full time heads, contractors, vendors and agencies, Seattle is going to feel a pretty big effect.

To the average Joe, it really doesn’t matter if Microsft makes formal layoffs, or just slows down the amount of contractors it brings on oard, or culls back some of its agencies.  In some shape or form, Steve Ballmer is writing checks to a bunch of people in this town.  Furthermore, if they do slash what they call the “10% ers,” those folks are going to come out with a tainted brand name on their resume.  If you are an employer, how do you justify hiring someone that was let go for being repeatedly on the “underperform” list?

Anyway, the point of this post is that it doesn’t matter what you call it.  Microsoft employing less people globally, means they will be hiring less people in Seattle.  And that causes not just full-time cutbacks, but also across agencies and temp firms.  And that’s bad for the city overall.  Let’s hope these rumors are disproven.  

Idea for Auto Bailout

November 20, 2008 /

This morning I listened to Dave Ross interview Ravi Batra, a professor of Economics and author of The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos.  Mr. Batra had what I think is a fabulous idea for the automaker bailout.

To summarize, the automakers want $50 Billion to save them.  Batra explains that for about $1 Billion, you could buy 60% of General Motors.  Then you could give all those shares to the UAW to distribute amongst their workers, making every union employee of GM a significant shareholder in the company.  Then, they could decide what woul dbe the best courses of action for the company to take.   

It’s brilliant.  It’s not socialism, because the people would get paid if they created value, and lose their jobs if they wouldn’t.  Plus, it would force the UAW to come to grips and decide whether their policies are good for the companies that employee their members.   I think it’s a great idea.  Too bad it will never be considered…

Mark Cuban vs the SEC

November 18, 2008 /

(Parts of post redacted due to learning new information)

A friend asked me my take on the Mark Cuban Insider Trading allegations yesterday.  I realized I didn’t have an opinion yet, and agreed it would make for interesting blog discussion.

If you don’t know the story, go read the report at the Silicon Valley Insider and come on back.

So assuming you have a little background on the situation, I’ll dive right into the initial thoughts that came to mind.

1) $750,000 sure seems like a small amount of money for Cuban to care about.

2) It sounds like the CEO of Momma.com convinced Cuban to buy 6% of the company in March 2004, and then about a month later the same CEO was bringing in a private equity firm which would dilute the shareholders, including Cuban.  If that timeline is accurate, it’s a pretty shady move to pull on your investors, including one who is a billionaire.

3) It also sounds like the CEO kept Cuban in the dark about the dilution until June 28.  So he had about 3 months of telling Cuban, “Oh yeah, everything is fine,” while working with the private equity firm on how to dilute everyone.  Then he calls Cuban on June 28 and said, “By the way, I’m diluting you in a week tomorrow.”

4) Cuban sounds like he was pretty annoyed by this.  And you would be too.  After all, had the CEO not brought Cuban on board as a 6% investor, the equity group may not have been interested in financing the company.  So Cuban may have gotten used by the CEO, and then since the CEO told him about the PIPE, now Cuban was stuck holding shares that he couldn’t get out of.  In his mind, they screwed him going in and now were screwing him from getting out.

5) So, Cuban’s decision at this point seems irrational and not well thought out.  He calls his financial guy and tells him to sell.  At this point, a good financial guy should look at his clock, see it’s late at night and ask why his boss suddenly wants him to stop doing what he was doing and try to unload 600,000 shares of stock in a company no one knows.  Some alarm bell should go off here.  There needed to be a, “Boss.  If the dilution isn’t for a week, lets take 12 hours and look at our options.” (Edit: The PIPE was announced the next day, June 29.)  But the financial guy should still advise him of the issues.

So my analysis:

  • I think anyone who tries to compare this to Wall St fat cats screwing the American consumer in sub-prime lending, is pretty off base.  Just from reading a few articles, I think Cuban was actually the guy screwed by the Wall St guys (the private equity group) and tried to get out of it.  
  • Unfortunately the rules are a little different for people who have conversations with CEO’s than folks like you and me, and he should have just waited for the announcement and sold everything then, taking the $750k hit.  Then he could have used his conections and power to make sure that CEO never got another dime of funding the rest of his life, and the private equity firm was on a giant blackball list.  I mean, he’s probably made 50x that amount on tips and insights from cocktail party conversations with people you and I don’t get to meet. 
  • It does seem like a pretty trivial matter for the SEC to make a big deal of 4 years after the fact.  Anytime a federal or regional judicial branch of government in a hardcore Republican state, sits on something for this long, and then launches it on a guy who helped fund an anti-George Bush movie, I agree that it kind of feels vindictive.
  • In the end, I think Cuban should pay a fine, we should all avoid ever investing in or using Momma.com and someone should ask why it takes the government 4 years to prosecute something like this.

However, this is only my first take, and if new evidence comes out, I’m willing to adjust.   Looking forward to some thoughts from you guys.

But What is his High Score on iPhone Bowling?

October 3, 2008 /

Adotas brings us word that Barack Obama is bringing his presidential campaign to the coolest phone (and presumably most influential trendsetters) on the planet,  releasing an iPhone app that will enable supporters to easily reach out to friends and remind them to vote for their favorite candidate.

According ot the story, the app,  “Call Friends,” organizes the user’s phonebook by state and gives each contact a status (called or not called).  You can also use the app to find out where he stands on issues – and of course – enables people to donate to the campaign. 

I will tell you one thing.  I wouldn’t  trust a lot of politicians to run a company’s mail room, but if Obama doesn’t become President, he would certainly be a heck of a CMO.   

2 Big Numbers, and How They are Related

September 22, 2008 /

$20 Billion.  $16 Billion.  Two relatively large numbers that may be too hard to comprehend.  So here’s a funny comparison. 

According to Valleywag, the entire newspaper industry is now worth $20 Billion.  I suppose that seems right for a 100-150 year old industry with papers everywhere from New York to Wasilia.

But that number seems kind of small when you figure that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s cofounders, are worth nearly $16 billion each according to Forbes.  So 2 men who have made it easier to search for online versions of newspaper articles, could essentially buy the entire industry they are destroying.   Does that mean personal fortunes are a tad over inflated?

LeBron James Wants to Play in Europe? Why the NBA Should Make it Happen

August 7, 2008 /

The caveat:  I think the NBA is kind of boring these days.  I don’t hate basketball, but the NBA just under-achieves in my book.  Now, if you only speak English and have never traveled outside the US, I can understand why the NBA might seem cool. Similarly, if you’ve never been to a city with more than 200,000 people,  I can see why Appleby’s seems like a real culinary treat.  But I’m not here to bash.  I’m here to push forward a ridiculous notion.

Some background: In European soccer, something called UEFA governs European football. Independent leagues in England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, etc… participate in two European tourneys – the UEFA Cup and Champions League. – which make dump trucks full of money. So in the middle of their regular seasons, Italy’s best teams also play England’s best teams, etc….  It’s pretty cool – and more importantly it makes huge amounts of cash for the teams and leagues.  Now this works for European soccer because there are 3 dominant leagues, 2 or 3 second-tier leagues and about 20 third tier leagues that sneak someone into the later rounds from time to time. 

The ridiculous notion: You could not replicate this in basketball today, because the NBA teams would win almost every game.  But this kind of International tourney could happen in just a few years if some recognizable US players headed to Europe.  Imagine this scenario:

Your favorite team is the New Orleans Hornets.  Towards the end of last season,  with a playoff birth locked up, you had to keep battling to finish in 4th place, and a birth in next season’s Champions League.  You qualified, so several times next season, instead of hosting the Jazz or Bobcats, you are hosting teams from Greece, Spain, Russia or Italy.   Twice per year, the Hornets head out to Europe for a 3-4 game swing.  As a fan, you may even travel with them to Madrid or Rome.

Now to make this happen, a few stars need to be playing for Olympiakos or Moscow or whoever.  If you are a true basketball junkie, what would be better than players and games that you care about playing across the globe starting at 9am your time?  There could literally be basketball on TV morning, noon and night.

The rivalries could be intense.  And because of the extra games, you’d see more players on your own team playing important minutes.  Teams would really have to ration how many minutes they give their old guys versus how many to give their developing players, the same way Ronaldo and Rooney occasionally have to skip Manchester United games.

So if LeBron wants to go to Europe, as this article implies, I think the NBA needs to gather the international basketball powers that be and figure out how to exploit it.  Prop up the Euro leagues and build an international championship that everyone owns a piece of.   Imagine  Lakers vs Moscow – Kobe vs LeBron – in Paris for the World Championship, with a TV audience of 100 million.   That’s real money. 

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