ESPN makes an... interesting play

I'm surprised there's not been more coverage of ESPN's ISP extortion scheme.

ESPN's Play To Make ISPs Pay

(from slashdot)

Its kind of interesting - on the one hand, its their site, their content, they should be able to do what they want... on the other hand, well, it seems like deals like this seem like a bad idea on many levels. I guess the markets will speak on whether this makes sense.

But amusingly, this was also covered on BroadbandReports (see here) - the amusing part is that the article ran with an advertisement (contextually served by our overlords at Google) from, you guessed it, ESPN.

Karma's a fickle beast.

Twitter, really? You're surprised?

I'm always a bit surprised at the media's surprise of media darlings (to wit: "Twitter's Risk of Ubiquity"). First, we're all lemmings - where "all" especially includes anybody who thinks they are a subject matter expert, analyst, or pundit.

Secondly (specific to this instance), Twitter is Second Life for the "cool" geeks (what's the emoticon for sarcasm?). Which is to say, though not as nerdy as 3D, it is an interesting indicator of future interaction patterns ("follow the alpha geek"). But, its never going to be a interesting business, and the early pioneers will likely not stand the test of time.

An ex-VP of Business Development of one of my endeavors once said "Our goal is to have a business model that you can't disprove in a finite amount of time." (I probably should have listened to him - but that's a story for another day)

So here's my new axiom for the new economy (I'll warn you in advance that its not as pithy as my former colleague's):

If you have a Chief Revenue Officer, you might be a jack-ass.

The business of EVERY business is to make money. Seriously. Its right there in the definition and everything.