Gmail: why do I have to scroll all the way down a message before pressing Reply or Forward.  I know the commercial reason why: it’s akin to malls making you go around before taking the next escalator… it forces you to walk by the stores and see the sales… Gmail is similar, by having to scroll down you have to see the text link ads.  However, when you are emailing someone back and forth frequently, the thread can be very long… and this becomes tedious.

Please, just do these two things.

More suggestions to be filed under “Assuming you care”:

- Google Weather should be merged into Google Weather.

We relaunched the site on a new, embeddable player with much more robust RSS feeds on August 19th, 2007.    Yeah, I sort of missed that anniversary.  Thankfully, I remembered to pick up flowers on August 27th… which is a slightly more important date… anyway, point is, I was playing around with TubeMogul’s stats and realized their interface gives us nearly 17M all-time streams, which is obviously not too shabby, but it’s not a total tally of all of our streams.

Mind you, I am sure some content providers do that in one month… but I think quality matters in publishing and video in particular and I am proud to say our team has created one of the highest quality collections of video out there, and to generate that many streams to high quality programming is a pretty good accomplishment.  And, regular readers know that we’ve put our brakes on hyperdistribution as a tradeoff to boost revenues, which we’ve been able to do successfully.

Anyway, this got me to look back at our stats to see what our total streams are, to date (you know, adding the streams on our site as well as sites that TM does not track).

1- WatchMojo.com’s all-time streams on the Web are:

You know what TubeMogul gives us (17M), so that is a floor, adding everything else, how many streams do you think we’ve done since Day 1?

a) 17,000,000 - 20,000,000
b) 20,000,000 - 25,000,000
c) 25,000,000 - 30,000,000
d) 30,000,000 - 40,000,000

Answer to come later. And a bonus question for you:

2) Guess WatchMojo.com’s out-of-home reach via our partners per month (basically, how many people see our videos in malls, coffee shops, gyms, garages etc.?):

a) 0-1,000,000
b) 1,000,000-3,000,000
c) 3,000,000-5,000,000
d) 5,000,000-10,000,000
e) 10,000,000-15,000,000
f) 15M and over

Answers to both coming later.

In a nutshell, VCs will give you just enough money to get the ball barely rolling, but then repeatedly force your hand in later funding rounds (if you even make it that far). They’ll have you by the cojones and you’ll have no choice but to give up more and more of what you’ve built through your blood and sweat. And what’s worse, VCs typically bet on a large group of startups with the expectations that one will hit big (the 1 in 10 guideline).

Quite true.  What’s truer is that when a VC senses that he won’t be able to have the upper hand with you (ie. control you), he will lose interest… because it’s the only card they have to play.

Here’s the essential problem:

- on the one hand, VCs push for high growth rates, which require high spending and waste.

- but by spending so much, even if the strategy is right and execution sound, chances are that you will run out of money sooner.

If you try to avoid running out of funds, they will fire you for not wanting to match their target growth rates…  and if you do run out of money, they’ll invest more, which will come at a cost: your stake.

Dogster/Catster’s Ted Rheingold is more right though: invariably you might want to go the VC route, and that’s fine, but you should not rush to it, especially not prematurely.

Just remember one thing: you have a passion for something other than money, that’s why you started your company; VCs only see green, there is nothing wrong with that per se, but their objective is to maximize their money while minimizing resources, be it time, money or people, and that could include YOU!

- Why do Entrepreneurs Accept Draconian VC Terms?
- Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs - and VCs - Make.

There’s also a saying, to the tune of “everyone is equal but some are more equal than others”. That’s from Animal Farm, a story of the Communism Revolution depicting pigs. It’s funny that the animal of choice is the pig because when it comes to investing, we’re all greedy pigs, I presume.

Hearing the non-brouhaha over the fact that some VCs from Insight invested into Photobucket with their own money due to a lack of match between the company then and the firm’s target profile, I realized that sometimes perception is more important than facts. True, the fact is Insight does late stage deals and at the time the partners invested their own money, Photobucket had 3 employees, so it was obviously out of the VC firm’s investment profile. All right, is this a crime? Nope. The fund had no business to invest in a company like Photobucket. For the record, I once had a VC tell me that WatchMojo.com was out of his firm’s target profile but that he and his peers sometimes invested personally, prompting me to ask if he wanted to invest personally, to which he answered “double no” (I’m not making this up!).  So the point I want to stress is: in a way, good thing the VCs invested because that at least helped the company and entrepreneurs… however, does that make it right?

In other words, it does pose a couple of questions and raise some issues:

- Should VCs be allowed to invest “on the side” if they are asked to investon behalf of school endowments, retirement funds and what not? It’s one thing for a lawyer from a big firm to do something pro bono on the side… but if you are to invest $1M and get back $50M (or anything in this scope), I think you have a choice to make. There are exceptions, and those are for the very best VCs for whom the rules can be bent (yes, I said it: there are exceptions to every rule and everyone).

- Going back to my first point: we all make money or no one makes money, is the adage that VCs use. Maybe I’m wrong… but VCs track record at getting exits - let alone high ROIs - has been bad. So if I am Yale or whomever else invests in Insight’s funds, I would have a major issue with this, even if sure, technically, we’re talking about a mismatched investment. In other words: “hey buddy, maybe you should take a pass on those “on the side” deals and focus on getting my money back, plus a hefty return”.

- Moreover, I love the part where the VCs say they spent a maximum of 15 hours on Photobucket… this proves once and for all that beyond a check, VCs have little to offer. Nice to hear the admission from a VC.

- Last but not least, who cares. VCs are not the epicenter of the moral compass, they will push dying founders off a bridge to maximize their stake and fortune… which sort of explains why this is a non-issue.

I wonder who is the person who forwarded this to Valleywag and Paid Content… now that is a better story.

My conclusion: stay away from VCs, call your banker… frankly, there’s no real difference between the two, the banker probably is less dangerous and one less person you have to keep an eye out on (seriously, I’m not making this up).

Read more on VCs:

- Why do Entrepreneurs Accept Draconian VC Terms?
- Biggest Mistakes VCs Make.

Anyway, where I do fault NBC is not using the Olympics to get any momentum.  During the closing ceremonies, NBC began to heavily promote the political conventions… here’s what I did not understand:

- NBC and in turn MSNBC and MSNBC.com (which are 50-50% and 83-17% between NBC and MSFT respectively) will be duking it out with CNN, FOX News, ABC, CBS for ratings (online and offline) during the elections, which unlike the Olympics it does not have exclusive rights to.

- MSNBC.com bought Newsvine, one of the more political oriented social bookmarking sites last year.

- Social media sites Digg and YouTube partner have a strangle hold on efforts to tie in “the people” with mass media… is it just me or NBC could have and should have leveraged Newsvine to get people to vote and interact with the Olympics (vote for the day’s performance, shocker, etc.) and then transitioned this interaction from the Olympics to the elections.

Now, without having leveraged the Olympics (which it had exclusive rights to) it will have to catch up quite a bit to be relevant with the elections since its resources have been so focused on the Olympics.

All to say, I still don’t fully fault for NBC’s cold shoulder to the Web, as I said, they went out of their way to sit on any spark the Olympics could have generated online… but not leveraging the Olympics for the Elections will come back to haunt the peacock network.

TripHub, a Seattle-based group oriented travel site, has closed its doors. We described it as a good way to help compile and centralize information for a group trip, but questioned if it was viable as a standalone business, especially against other players in the travel space like Yahoo Travel.

Yep.  That’s about 99% of the projects we’ve seen funded over the past 4 years… expect more of these deadpool-style announcements on Tech Crunch in the months to come.  It’s a shame, because most of the entrepreneurs behind these ventures are smart, but they were misled by the fickle moneymen who fell in love with trends (and hype).

Lesson #1 of building a successful company:

Build something You (the entrepreneur) can reasonably connect to a paying client.  Investors are way too fickle and emotional to really rely on… which is ironic because the stereotype of being emotional is usually cast on entrepreneurs, which is total BS.

From Fred Wilson:

The forcing function is usually a bad market when nobody wants to write a check. Then the existing investors are forced to look hard at each other and decide if they want to keep investing. And then, if the company is really not making good progress, the answer is usually no.

Indeed. In fact, I’d add that what defines “good progress” has changed quite a bit. Traffic or user growth is meaningless if you don’t have real revenues and a path to profits. So many companies I interact with are on their 5th or 10th iteration of their business model, one more pathetic and ill-fated than the next.

VCs have already moved from social networking to online video and they’re now largely chasing things like clean tech and whatever else that seems like a big pie in the sky. Facebook’s coming down to reality won’t help social networking projects, and eMarketer’s slashing of online video revenues forecasts and NBC’s paltry windfall in online video won’t help video.

The best part is: companies that have avoided VC altogether or raised a little bit of money and will see merit in continuing to build a sensible business will win, just as they did coming out of the 2001-03 nuclear winter.

Some thoughts:

1. Don’t trust anything eMarketer says, including this. This is the same organization that said - 8 months into the year - that 2008 online video advertising was not $1.35B, but rather, $550M. Clowns I tell you, absolute clowns.

2. Things are complicated - on the one hand:

- In some ways, NBC was right to shun the Web for TV because that’s its bread and butter.  The web - while potentially huge - remains a clown industry for TV companies… even CBS’ much vaunted $23M take from March Madness is nothing to offset TV’s massive cannibalization. Jeff Zucker can’t exactly use online video advertising revenues to strengthen his hand at parent GE, hence why he could give web viewers the one finger salute.  Truth is, even marketers don’t necessarily mind it, because they themselves are struggling to grapple with emerging media and audiences fleeing towards it.  The Olympics, coming along once every four year, provides a much needed mirage that freezes time and sends them back to a more nostalgic, less hostile period where their own futures aren’t at risk.

- This being said, NBC missed a huge opportunity to catapult itself into a real player that gets the Web. Four years is a looooong time between Olympics and media buyers looking to get more placement and exposure online won’t treat NBC as a media company that gets it. Will it lose money and business as a result? Yes. But again, for CEO Zucker, the present is all that he cares about.

3. The bloggers and journalists do sometimes need to wake up to business realities. Yes, I’m one of them. But if you didn’t understand why (hmm: only $5.75M) NBC shunned web for TV, you should not be allowed anywhere near a pen of computer. Just saying: show some balance in your reporting and pontificating, otherwise it’s moot and becomes noise.

So how could NBC had generated more revenues and made the Oympics a winner on the Web?

I would have sold licenses to other media companies at $5M (with embedded ads) and $10M (with no ads). If the with ads/without ads option is too complicated (it’s not), another way to look at the $5M/$10M options is for companies to get a compan-wide license (so Time Warner can use the content on both SI.com and AOL.com).  Mind you, this gets dicey: if News Corp. pays for the Web rights for MySpace, can it also use it on FOXSports.com, which is a joint venture with Microsoft’s MSN.com?  As you can see, it’s not perfect but it’s something a couple of business development and sales dealmakers could hammer out over a few drinks.  People (bloggers, journalists) seem to miss the point: NBC never planned to make the Web viable… because if the Olympics online proved to be successful, the future TV revenues from the quadrennial event would become smaller and less lucrative.

But let’s pontificate: NBC could have made a killing by selling licenses.  With any other content, the idea it to resell ads on top, in overlays and pre-rolls, but with the Olympics, a case could have been made to only get the content and the right to sell ads around (though NBC would block that, even, and say no monetization allowed, proving online success was never in the cards).

But, demand would have been there:

If you are, for example, YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, ESPN.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, etc., and want the programming, I don’t see why you would not pony up $5M and let the ads run with the official sponsors and NBC advertisers.

In this case, NBC would simply have to monitor a handful of licensing clients to make sure they are not running their own advertising over the content (in my bizarro world, the others could run ads in companion areas such as display banners and text links, but absolutely no pre, mid or post roll or overlays).

Either way, at the $5M or $10M spend, NBC and Olympic sponsors get more reach and NBC makes more revenue.  Imagine Yahoo.com, AOL.com and MSN.com all paying at least $5M for the coverage. So would ESPN.com and ABC.com.  We’re not saying for NBC to share rights with ABC and CBS, that’s lunacy, it’s blasphemous… but a more open media company (ie. not NBC) would have considered this online route.  Frankly, it might have not even been repeated in 2010 or 2012…

But the point is: it would have been a good test to make online revenues grow faster… and therein lies the answer why this won’t ever happen: TV companies don’t want the Web to grow any faster than it already is.  Part of the incentive to get the rights is to sit on the Web opportunities.

By 2012, for instance, the author forecasts that 90% of US households will have access to broadband, with 94% of these individuals watching online video-this is up from an estimated 77.8% of broadband users in 2008 watching online video.

HIGHLIGHTS

-Worldwide online video revenue is expected to eclipse US$ 4.5 billion by 2012.
-By 2012, 39% of adults in the US are expected to have purchased or rented online video.
-42.8% of US respondents to this survey still favor physical discs with packaging when purchasing movies.

Interesting that their 2012 figure is for Worldwide online video revenue, and not video advertising revenues.  Read more.

Read more here.