EightBlack.

The first article I read which got me thinking about this post was by John Battelle - here. I loved the words in italics…

If you have a ton of engaged inventory (ie, people using the web in ways that they value), then you can and should figure out a way to provide marketers access to those people for a premium price that will make network TV look like a blip in the history of marketing.

Then there was this article in todays Australian newspaper, with an article on the front page of the business section titled “TV permits no longer a licence to print money”. The article talks about the “the value of commercial TV licences being slashed by $2 billion since 2003-2004.

And then as I was thinking about what to actually write and how to pull it together, I received an email from AdNews - with the lead story “TV revenue on downward slide”.

All the articles point to one thing. The ultimate death of TV.

I know a lot of traditional ad guys who don’t think this will ever happen. I like the fact that they are still clinging to hope. They desperately want to believe that the medium which has helped pay the lease on their BMW, paid for their skiing holiday in Aspen and filled their wife’s lips full of botox will continue to deliver fat profits for eternity.

Except for one thing. The internet has already signed TV’s death warrant. And the sooner the networks figure this out, the better we all will be.

I know one thing. I want to consume and watch the content I want. And so do you. I don’t want to watch the content some 28 year old media programmer and media buyer wants me to watch.

Why has iTunes been so popular? Content on demand thats why. Started with Music. But I bet video content will outstrip it (eventually). I’m happy to pay 99 cents for a song I know I already have on a CD - which is somewhere in the house. Or if my kids have had anything to do with it - probably buried 3 feet in sand somewhere in the back garden.

I’m also happy to pay $40 bucks for a series of NCIS or Boston Legal - which iTunes downloads for me automatically and for which I receive an email notification. Its so simple. And convenient.

I think our lives have shifted to a point where we’ve had a taste of what’s possible via the web - this “on demand” and “eat what you want when you want” thinking. TV doesnt give you that. Never has. Sure, it helped entertain us for years. And because we haven’t worked out a better way - we’ll still be forced to watch major sporting events via TV because of the money involved and the myopic thinking of both advertisers and TV executives alike.

The only TV network who has the web figured out in this country at least is the one you least expect. And the one that amazingly sits in the public domain.

You guessed right. Aunty.

Domaining is one of those things I never really paid much attention to.

Now I sort of wished I had. A bit like your parents telling you the story of their wise old uncle who bought beachfront property all those years ago - when everyone was wondering why.

Now the same old uncle is laughing in his grave. And his children are eternally grateful - thats one thing for sure.

It makes sense though.

Virtual property (ie domain names) is similar to the physical stuff. There’s only a finite amount of it available.

Apparently - the .mobi and .tv extensions will soon become as valuable as the plain old dot com extensions.

Later this year (supposedly around June/July) the Australian regulator of domain names will be in essence, de-regulating the market and when they do, you can bet there will be a frenzy of activity in the space.

Now’s the time to act if you haven’t already registered every domain name with every extension possible of your own business.

For example, with our new entity - TaguchiMail - we own every variation of the domain (well, the ones we want at least). If you’re starting up a new business or have an established one, it’s hardly good business sense, especially for the sake of less than $20 bucks a year, to forfeit any domain even remotely attached to your business.

There are a lot smarter domain guys in Australia than me. Ed Keay-Smith is one of them. He’s also a trusted colleague who I’ve known since 2004. More on him here.

The biggest guys in the US play in a league of their own. Guys like Bob Parsons and Monte Cahn make the whole industry of domaining look easy. Which it isn’t.

Bottom line - especially for the Aussie’s who read this. It’s time to put some resource in protecting your Australian domain name. No point crying about it later.

I don’t know why but I was reading B&T today at work. Must have been bored.

Actually, it’s a good read and a quick way to see what their editors and journo’s think is important for us mere mortals to read.

Anyway, there was a small article about the recent resignation of yet another BlueFreeway Director - Warwick Smith. Apparently you’re supposed to address Mr. Smith as “Honorary” when writing his name and also use the initials “AM” as a way of recognising the fact that he is a “Member of the Order Of Australia”.

Apparently Gough Whitlam and the Queen are to blame for such nonsense. Bob Hawke thought he was abolishing the whole damn system when he was in charge - but instead he only eliminated the “knighthood and dame” fiasco, partly because he knew that no future PM would ever anoint the King Of Cactus Island (ie him) as a “knight” unless there was a gun held to their head.

Anyway.

So back to Malcolm Smith.

According to the BlueFreeway press release issued to the ASX at the end of Feb, the statement reads as follows:

“Unfortunately, according to professional and personal commitments, including the Federal Governments upcoming 2020 Summit, I am unable to maintain my seat on the board.

I am proud of my time at BlueFreeway and am confident that I am leaving the company in a stable position”.

Seriously.

Malcolm quit because he needs 12 years to prepare for a federal conference? Are you kidding?

That’s like me saying to my wife, “sorry honey, we can’t stay married and I have to leave now because in 12 years time Jessica Alba might change her mind and show up at the doorstep with nothing on and holding a large jar of honey”.

Or something like that.

The smart ones are jumping off the SS BlueFreeway like rats off the proverbial ship. First there was David Smithers, then Richard Webb and Ken McDonald and now poor old Malcolm Smith.

The first and last guys possibly have smart lawyers and PR folks - and wanted to put distance between themselves and a stock price that cant seem to pick itself up from the floor (currently at 29 cents). The 2 guys in the middle, Webb and McDonald, - we’ll there are always 2 sides to the story but it is obvious that they were pushed or had to go given was one the co-founder and the other the CFO.

The other thing I am curious about is why none of these press releases are on the actual BlueFreeway website. When you look for announcements under the “investors” tab, the most recent entry is October 07. And if you try and quiz the website by hitting the “analyst coverage” tab - all you get is a “page under construction” image.

Strange don’t you think?

I still think there will be a very large, uphill battle for BlueFreeway. The mistakes of the past may prove just too hard and just too fatal to shake off.

Man, this can’t be a pleasant place to be right now.

News just out is that Richard Webb, the co-founder and CEO of the embattled digital group has just pulled the pin. So has the CFO, Ken McDonnell (more on this later).

The stock price today has taken a “wayne carey” of a belting. This morning, it fell to an all time low of just 26 cents, but has recovered somewhat later today. I think it’s around 45 cents now. More than 3.7 million shares have traded hands when a typical day for their stock is around the 40-50K mark in terms of volume. Sometimes higher.

The market is clearly not happy with their performance.

What I don’t get is the execution of their strategy. They’ve spent a boatload on their platform BLU, then built a sales team, then tried to sell it.

When I worked for BT (as in British Telecom), this is what they would do. The engineers would get drunk at the labs in Martlesham, think of something to build, spend copious amounts of real british money developing it and when it could withstand a nuclear blast, would reluctantly turn it over to the sales people to sell.

Or something like that.

Then when I worked across the pond at MCI (now Verizon Business) which was the telecom company previously known as “WorldCom”. Don’t get me started on the whole WorldCom saga. That crazed, bible-bashing psycho Bernie Ebbers has a lot to answer for….

Anyway.

The Yanks used to go out and sell something, come back to the office waving their arms, hugging each other and crying. Then the truth would come out and they’d sort of tell the engineers and marketers that they may have inadvertently sold a product that wasn’t yet built but could they have it by next Tuesday. Or something like this.

True cynics will say that BlueFreeway was nothing more than a stock market play. If it was (and is), then it’s going to be a long, long time before any significant shareholder heads off to a European car dealership with their chequebook in hand. I actually feel sorry for all those business owners who sold to BlueFreeway and took a lot of the proceeds in equity.

Greg Daniel, who is sort of the last man standing holding the wheel, said today in a statement released to the market.

“In preparing the December FY08 half year accounts and our FY08 second half forecasts, it became apparent to the board that the costs associated with building and servicing the blu portal, centralised sales force and 24/7 support, had grown substantially faster than we felt was sustainable in the short term, given the level of centralised sales,” said Daniel.

“We are still committed to further developing and selling the blu portal to global and domestic clients, however we will now do this from a sustainable cost base and in an evolutionary fashion.”

If the strategy is correct and the blu portal is they way to go, surely smart people like the management of BlueFreeway will have taken onboard the advice of every Venture Capitalist around which is “it always takes twice as long and costs twice us much”.

I don’t care what anyone says. Digital or physical space - same rule. Nothing happens without sales and this must come first. BlueFreeway should have worked this out and built the platform behind it. Not the other way round.

Daniel continued with comments relating to the costs with the development of the blu platform under Webb and said that the board had moved decisively “to reduce corporate overheads and refocus the business on the 25 portfolio companies, which are growing strongly”.

I’m not sure that eliminating a co-founder is the right signal to the market. There’s more to the story than that. And I’m sure Richard Webb has his own version of the facts. Same with the poor CFO. He’s watched the stock price plummet from $2.40 down today to 26 cents. He probably got sick and tired of everyone crawling up his bum with a toilet brush, including all his relatives who probably dumped a good chunk of their super into the stock (ok don’t sue me, I’m just making that up).

Bottom line is this. Something smells at the Digital Conglomerate. In the past 30 days, the stock price has imploded, David Smithers resigned (former Chairman PWC), one of the founders couldn’t take it anymore and quits, and the CFO departs citing “personal reasons”. No shit sherlock. How would you like to be that guy? I’d rather have a prostrate exam with a whipper snipper.

More importantly, the remaining management have to address not only a falling staff morale, but an angry group of investors, a concerned group of business owners who sold either half or all of their businesses to the “digital dream”‘ and above all, the entire BlueFreeway customer base who are reading all the coverage and wondering if their choice was the right one.

Me? My prediction is still the same. The joint wont be alive come this December. Not in its present format anyway.

In the last week, the stock for the digital “allspark” has fallen from 99 cents to 76 cents. That’s close enough to 23%. In a week! Apparently, insiders were touting that if the share price fell below the psychological buck mark, there would be “blood on the streets”.

It must be flowing now.

The most recent article in the SMH just over 7 days ago said,

Bluefreeway hits the skids, now below $1

The news came after Julian Mulcahy, an analyst at Citigroup, slashed his target price for the stock to $1.36 from $2.10 and cut his 2008 profit forecast for the company by a third.

“BlueFreeway will struggle to post an interim profit,” he wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

Its shares fell 16c, to 99c, yesterday, closing below $1 for the first time, having hit 95c. The stock had already slid 25 per cent last month.

I called the analyst at Citibank, Julian Mulcahy, to see if he would talk to me about Bluefreeways’ further rapid descent (which he politely declined), but it’s sort of understandable as the poor guy has just got to work this morning with the news overnight that his own sky has started to fall in. Citibank has its own set of woes and is reeling from a quarterly loss of $10 billion and write downs of $20 billion.

That’s real money. Even for Citibank.

But back to Bluefreeway. This gig is going to get harder to sell. And harder to raise further capital to acquire more assets. No street smart owner of a digital group is going to want “equity” in a new world order company whose share price has plummeted like a falling anvil.

The smartest guys in all this are guys like Dominic Carosa, from Destra. He sold his hosting company to Bluefreeway for $20 million - $18 in cash and $2 in stock.

Now thats smart.

Image courtesy Asterix & Obelix, Underzo

Something’s up at the digital congolmerate that’s been spreading like the ebola virus. Or more to the point, buying up companies globally like Imelda Marcos at a shoe sale.

Today, the ASX was advised that one of their Director’s was resigning. That’s no big deal. The deck chairs are always being moved around at public companies. Except this change could signal the start of something.

You see, the Director in question who threw in the towel was David Smithers, an ex partner and previous Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a not too shabby accounting and professional services firm. He also used to be the President of the Australian Institute of Accountants. Oh, and also on the board of Rabobank.

Now I know that there are always 2 sides to the story, but I’d love to hear Mr. Smithers side first. Someone with his experience, wisdom and threshold for corporate pain doesn’t just call it quits after 90 days.

Something stinks.

The stock price for the once revered digital darling is now below the initial offer price - and is sitting at 0.95 cents. At it’s high last year, Bluefreeway peaked at just over $2.40.

I’m sure there’s been some interesting dinner conversation tonite between a lot of people, whose companies were acquired by Bluefreeway recently, with many deals done via equity in the new venture and on the basis of a ever promising stock price.

Emotion always trumps over the facts and reality.

This is one story that’s going to be watched by many. Personally, and it is only my humble opinion (and predicition for 2008) - that Bluefreeway will not be alive by the end of the year.

Hopefully, I’m wrong.

Sorry about that. Short blogging break. To be honest, I’ve lost a bit of my blogging “mojo” as we round the bend into Xmas. My RSS reader has just about exploded, my inbox is full and no I don’t know where to start reading.

Well, not quite.

Anyway, thought that this was an interesting site survey, which is being conducted on the AdNews site currently.

Is this what you would have said? What are your key concerns for 2008?

If someone had have told me 2 years ago that I would be flying to Sin City (aka Las Vegas) to attend a blogging conference, I would have thought that they had inhaled an entire bag of weed, let alone a single joint.

Vegas, incidentally, is a city I dislike immensely. And I’m Asian (well, half of me is. Actually the top half - the bottom is African American and that’s the story I’m sticking to).

We Asians apparently love gambling and prostitution. And I can’t walk past a roulette wheel without having a bet. So I should be right at home in Vegas. But it sort of reminds me of a prostrate exam - necessary yet painful. Everything is such a “hustle” in Vegas. And it’s all right there on “the strip”. You know you’re in trouble when you actually land at the airport and right there at the gate, are slot machines with old people propped to one side, obviously using up every last coin in their pockets - hoping for one last chance.

Anyway.

Dave Taylor, who I caught up with earlier this year is one smart blogger. I actually met Dave at an internet gig run by Ken McCarthy. I was so impressed with Dave that I flew back to see him in his home town - and the time he spent with me was invaluable. He told me about Blogworld. I then told him about Avinash. The 2 caught up and voila, Avinash is on the speaking platform at Blogworld.

(By the way, for those page rank desparates, I’m going to find out just what the hell is happening (or happened) with the recent page rank fiasco and I’ll be posting once I’ve interviewed Dave and Avinash and some other smart bastards…more later)

I can’t wait. I haven’t heard from Dave yet as to how many folks are attending, but its a given it will be in the thousands. And there are some serious bloggers in attendance. The irascible Mark Cuban is making an appearance, Mike Arrington from Techcrunch, my good friend Marc Harty, Rich Jalichandra, the CEO of Technorati, GigaOm’s Om Malik, Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress and Australia’s own Des Walsh.

I actually owe an apology to another good internet mate - and that’s Paul Colligan. He blogged from the X10 Seminar way back in September 2004 and I had literally no idea what he was doing, never mind that it, as a medium, would take off like wild fire.

Stay tuned. I’ll be posting live from the event. I just hope the wireless holds up better than it did at Web 2.0.

The ACCC in it’s wisdom have decided to drop their recent landmine case against Google Australia and Google Ireland and decided to pick on an easier target.

Google Inc, USA.

Which of course makes perfect sense. About the same goddam sense as it makes to pick on the 1st Airborne Division of the US Army, knowing full well that just over the horizon is the entire US Defence Force. You might be able to beat up the sibling but there’s no way you’ll end up kicking the shit out of their parents. You get what I’m trying to say, right?
Actually, I can’t help feeling sorry for Google. They must be thinking,”what the hell is going on downunder?”.

The ACCC need to realise that the US are clearly the worlds best litigators and defendants. Their legal system eats this shit for breakfast. Whatever the planned budget the ACCC had allocated to this streetfight, it had better go back with cap in hand to Canberra and ask for a boatload more.

Google Inc, USA have survived this battle before, both in Europe and in the USA. It should hardly be concerned about a pot smoking regulator in Australia.

More here, here and here.

This is getting more insane by the minute.

This case just seems so pointless. I posted about it here in case you missed it.

In today’s Australian Financial Review,

“The competition regulators case  against Google for misleading conduct over sponsored internet search results made a shaky start yesterday when the Federal Court ordered it to confine its allegations to two pages - double spaced”.

Clearly, Judge Allsop was cranky. I even think that he thinks the whole thing is a waste of time.

I said it back in the original post and I’ll repeat it here. This is going to get tossed. In one sense, the ACCC have already failed with this flagrant waste of tax dollars in that they were hoping to rope in Google Inc, and Google UK/Ireland into the pissing match.

My bet is that the Google US and Google Europe lawyers wouldn’t even get out of bed for something like this. Judge Allsop also stated that there was insufficient evidence before the court to show that the Google Mother Ship was involved.

Judge Allsop also referred to the ACCC’s presentation of the case as “prolix and irritating”. 

Which it is. And if I knew what “prolix” meant, I’d respond with something equally as pithy. Ok, ok, I just looked it up. It means “tediously prolonged or tending to speak or write at great length”.

Graeme Samuel, the beleagured Chairman of the ACCC needs to pick another fight. And one that he can win. Because this one is already over.  Google’s Adwords model has already stood up to multiple tests in courts the world over and they clearly stipulate what is and what isn’t a “sponsored” link. If someone can’t easily tell - then they need glasses or should rent a teenager for the weekend. Arguing over the shaded box that surrounds text ads is simply nonsense.

Google has also tightened the belt here in Australia on using trademarked names within Adwords campaigns.

I just don’t get it. On the surface, Samuel is a smart guy. He’s even got 2 law degrees - and apparently he even studied for them.

It’s time for the ACCC to let this one go. What do you think?