This was the article that was published in
todays NY Times Business Section

First, the headline.

“Mark Cuban Is Mad (Again). But Why?”

I didnt know i was mad about anything. I guess if the NY Times says I am, I must be. But rather than me guessing
how they got from interview to headline and article, I will just let the interview speak for itself.

Here you go!

Mark,

I’m writing at the suggestion of Robert Hart. I’m a business reporter and columnist for The New York Times. (Alex
Berenson is one of my best friends.) I’m working on a column for this Sunday about the controversy surrounding the
sale of register.com. Specifically, I’m looking at whether investors like you should be as upset as you seem to be
about the sale.

Robert said that you typically like to do interviews by email rather than phone. So, below are a couple of
questions I’m hoping you may answer.

(Answer as many or as little you like in any order.)

1) Clearly the sale price of register.com was lower than you and many other investors – some who may
have followed your lead into the stock – believed the company would be sold for. Why did you expect it to be
sold for so much more?

2) Are you surprised the Yahoos and Googles of the world never bid?

3) If you think it’s such an undervalued business, why didn’t you make a bid yourself?

4) Do you think the auction was somehow rigged?

5) I’m told Barington’s final bid – which will come out in the proxy shortly – is a couple
of cents lower than Vector’s final bid. Do you think Barington’s motives are the same as yours? Some critics have
contended that Barrington is trying to takeover the company on the cheap through the proxy contest. What do you
make of that?

That’s about it. Of course, if there’s anything else you want to tell me, please do. If it’s at all possible
to get back to me today, I’d be terribly grateful.

Thanks so much.

Best,

Andrew

From: mark cuban [mailto:mark.cuban@dallasmavs.com]

Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 4:07 PM

To: sorkin@nytimes.com

Cc: mark@hd.net

Subject: Re: nytimes interview re: register.com

>

> I’m writing at the suggestion of Robert Hart. I’m a business reporter

> and columnist for The New York Times. (Alex Berenson is one of my best

> friends.)

Im sorry

> I’m working on a column for this Sunday about the controversy

> surrounding the sale of register.com. Specifically, I’m looking at

> whether investors like you should be as upset as you seem to be about the sale.

>

> Robert said that you typically like to do interviews by email rather

> than phone. So, below are a couple of questions I’m hoping you may answer.

> (Answer as many or as little you like in any order.)

>

> 1) Clearly the sale price of register.com was lower than you and many

> other investors – some who may have followed your lead into the

> stock – believed the company would be sold for. Why did you expect it

> to be sold for so much more?

Its worth much more. A simple analysis to compare it to comparable companies show the expenses clearly out of
whack.

>

> 2) Are you surprised the Yahoos and Googles of the world never bid?

Not at all. Its not their business. Register.com has a legacy business to build on and cash flow to return to
investors if it gets its expenses in line. Thats not the type of business they go after.

>

> 3) If you think it’s such an undervalued business, why didn’t you make

> a bid yourself?

Im not in a position to run the company. My goal was to work with the new board that would have been voted in
during the next shareholder meeting in a couple weeks to help the company

>

> 4) Do you think the auction was somehow rigged?

Rigged ? I dont know if it was rigged, but i think the board definitely incented themselves to sell the
company. There is so little board and management ownership( the only board member with substantial ownership
filed a proxy leaning against the deal ) that their greatest reward came from change of control bonuses they gave
themselves. Plus I think much of the board just wants out.

Thats not conducive for doing whats best for the company.

>

> 5) I’m told Barington’s final bid – which will come out in the proxy

> shortly – is a couple of cents lower than Vector’s final bid. Do you

> think Barington’s motives are the same as yours? Some critics have

> contended that Barrington is trying to takeover the company on the

> cheap through the proxy contest. What do you make of that?

If its lower than Vectors, I would vote against his bid as well

>

> That’s about it. Of course, if there’s anything else you want to tell

> me, please do. If it’s at all possible to get back to me today, I’d

> be terribly grateful.

>

> Thanks so much.

>

> Best,

> Andrew

>

>

>

thanks for being so responsive, mark.

three quick follow ups:

1) Assuming you can get the deal voted down, what do you want the company to do going forward?

2) From what I know about you, you’re a big believer that the market I usually right. In this case, you believe
register is undervalued. Why doesn’t the market? Why do you suspect no one else has shown up with a better offer?
Who did you think was going to want to acquire this asset?

3) Compared to your other investment experiences, how does this situation compare?

thanks again for all of your help.

best,

andrew

From: Andrew Ross Sorkin [mailto:sorkin@nytimes.com]

Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 6:06 PM

To: mark cuban

Subject: RE: nytimes interview re: register.com

thanks for being so responsive, mark.

three quick follow ups:

1) Assuming you can get the deal voted down, what do you want the company to do going forward?

Hold a shareholders meeting so we can either vote in the proposed slate, or propose a new slate.

2) From what I know about you, you’re a big believer that the market I usually right. In this case, you believe
register is undervalued. Why doesn’t the market? Why do you suspect no one else has shown up with a better offer?
Who did you think was going to want to acquire this asset?

Actually I rarely think the market is right. I believe non dividend stocks aren’t much more than baseball cards.
They are worth what you can convince someone to pay for it.

Valuing stocks can be a marketing effort as it is with most stocks, or in some cases, the companies are positioned
to generate profits, cash and return that cash to shareholders. Register.com has been profitable and cash
flow positive in spite of the problems I mentioned. That’s what makes it attractive to me.

I don’t think wall street likes stocks that would benefit from shareholder activism. It likes stocks it can market
to the next buyer.

3) Compared to your other investment experiences, how does this situation compare?

Very analogous. I take my biggest positions in stocks that are complementary to other things I am doing. LGF and
HDNet and Landmark. Register.com and is complementary, with netidentity.com, redswoosh.net,TuCows and
Icerocket.com

Rentrak (Rent) and Charter

Companies I have various levels of equity or debt investments in. Being a large shareholder can allow me to develop
relationships with management and help with business relationships and value creation in both directions.

thanks again for all of your help.

best,

andrew

Mark,

Thanks so much again for your responses. The column will appear on Sunday. So you know it’s coming, you should know
the column concludes that you and Barington may not be on the right side of this little skirmish. I’ve done a lot
of reporting around the auction process and the company’s valaution and I’m a bit skeptical that there’s a lot more
value in register.com in the near term.

While I’m sure you won’t love the piece, I hope you’ll think it’s at least a somewhat thoughtful look at the
issue. And as a guy who’s pretty outspoken yourself, I hope you can respect soemone on the other side of the issue.
Notwithsatnding my view on this specific subject, I have an enormous amount of respect for you.

Thanks again.

Best,

Andrew

From:mark cuban [mark.cuban@dallasmavs.com]

Cant disagree on barrington

And rarely is the best way to get value out of a company that has been poorly run through an auction process.
That’s typically the worst possible way to get value.

Like I said, the market is usually the last to recognize value.

m

So, there you have the email chain.

From all the above, it somehow got put together as this
article.

I responded to what I hoped would be an interesting discussion about the merits of a company based on a referral
from someone I respected, from a newspaper I respected.

Instead, the article was more a personal attack than a representation of our email exchange. Furthermore, even after
the above exchange, the author preferred to quote the press release saying why I wouldn’t vote for the deal rather
than our email exchange.

Live and learn.

UPDATE:

Just read the rest of the NYTimes business section and couldn’t but help notice the irony of this
article: Corporate Law Class: First what
not to do

The first day of class in Law School, the prof showed our HDNet
Films documentary, Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Room, which
I co-executive produced. It was used as an example of what not to do.

To quote the professor – “The whole idea was to get them thinking about professional responsibility and professional
ethics immediately.”

ShareThis

There is a lot of talk these days in the blogosphere about the need for lists of blogs. People seem to want a starting point in order to find their ways to what current lists are basically saying are the most popular blogs.

The problem with the lists I have seen is that they are far from being the most popular. This isn’t a personal preference issue, its a criteria issue. Right now all the “most popular lists” appear to do their ranking based off of number of links. If 2,500 blogs that are indexed by the engine are linked to blogmaverick.com, then this blog would rank where ever that falls.

Of course the first nitpick is that most people don’t reference to blogs purely by URL or even name. More often its a link to Cubans Blog, or Steve Rubel or Jeff Jarvis, or Jason’s blog. But the bigger question is this, if a blog that no one sees links to your blog, does that make your blog more popular?

Of course not, it just means that one person (at least we hope its a person and not splog) knows about your blog and has offered a link.

The true test of popularity, if that is what we are trying to capture, is in how many people at least go to the blog, and from there hopefully read it.

Which leads to what we are evaluating doing at IceRocket.com

We have feature called linktracker. What linktracker does is count the number of people, in realtime, who have linked to a given post on your blog. We are working on updating this citation, so that it also can count the number of people who have actually viewed the given blog post.

We aren’t there yetin making this fast enough to give back your relative ranking in terms of actual number of readers, but we are making progress. We are also considering adding code to allow you to pick a category that you want to be ranked in to the code…ie, Personal Diary, Politics, Entertainment, whatever.

So, if you would like to stand up and be counted, take a look at the code required by linktrackerand feel free to add it.

We would also love to get your feedback and ideas on how we should implement this feature and how we should present our IceRocket.com List

ShareThis

In the NBA when a player is signed to a contract, the business side is downplayed. Everyone is happy. Everyone knows there is an incredible amount of risk taken, but its a time to celebrate and ignore what could go wrong. All is right in the world.

When teams have to release a player, the NBA becomes a business and all involved say just that. Its just a business and we all understand that these things happen. But its not true. The NBA is never just a business. It’s always business. It’s always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.

Creating a close connection to those you do business with has its many risks, rewards and consequences.There are few things in business i have encountered that are more difficult than firing someone, particularly if that someone has always been, or has become a friend. On the flipside, I have been rewarded withmany friends

Michael Finley is one of those people I am proud to call my friend. Releasing Fin last night was one of the hardest things I have had to do as owner of the Mavs. (Trading Erik Strickland was probably the hardest. Strick did more to help me my first year than anyone.). Even more difficult than releasing Mike was having the conversations with him about what our options were

The model for success in the NBA has changed over the past 6 years I have been in the league. When I first got to the Mavs, there was no luxury tax, revenues from TV and the league went up every year, as did the salary cap. That changed dramatically with the leaguesnew TV deal and it changed even further with this yearsnew collective bargaining agreement. Rather than an environment where salaries could go up because the cap and revenues were going up, we entered an environment where trades were made almost exclusively for financial reasons and rarely for basketball skill reasons.

The Mavs tried to take advantage of the situation. When the annual league revenue increases stopped and a luxury tax loomed, teams adjusted their financial profiles. To get under the tax threshold, they offered good players packaged with horrible contracts. We took them. We hoped the talentwould get us a championship before the number of bad contracts we took on in trades caught up with us.

It didn’t happen

Over the past year we have done our best to try to “rebuild” and still be in a position to win a championship. We have always been good at developing young players. We work hard to give them personal attention and skills development. We are working to improve it even further and have completely upgraded our development programs this summer.

Weare also significantly changing how we scoutNBA players. It has become moreorganized, structured and planned ratherthan “gut feel”. We have a coach who is far more systematic in his approach to both

More importantly we have gone from just trying to acquire talent to haveassets that in turn might be traded for better talent,to making sure we have players that fill a role for Coach Johnson’s vision of the team. Today, and for the future with young players that we can develop to fill those roles on future Mavs teams.

Which brings us back to Mike.Under the new CBA, the amount of money we would be able to save by waiving Mike, and invoking the amnesty provision,when combined with some financial clauses in the way his contract was structured and the money that could be returned as part of the NBA set off contract provisions, could put our cash savings in the next 3 years at more than 90mm dollars. That’s a lot of money.

Now I would be shocked if we are able to realize all of that and stay under the tax amount, but even saving that much money in essence gives us a “do over” in terms of financial flexibility when it comes to signing new players. It gives me a chance to recover from the mistakes I made.

Are we going to get back in the business of taking on bad contracts to get a single player no. Will we consider trading short term contracts for longer, more expensive players yes. If it makes basketball sense and doesnt inhibit our future.The difference going forward today vs the past is that Avery and Donnie are putting in programs and structure that will allow us to better evaluate players and choose those that put our team in the best position to succeed. We never did that in the past.

We made trades because we thought we knew players. I’m embarrased to admit, but this summer was the first time we actually brought in non rookie Free Agents that we were interested in to work out. Before, we just called the agents of guys we liked and tried to work out deals.

Avery and Donnie and Joe P have watched more tape in a week of players that we have talkedabout in trades orFree Agencythen we have watched in any summer since I bought the team and maybe in all combined.

It’s my fault that we got to this point.

I never should have authorized deals without asking for far more details. I was guilty of being overly optomistic. I wanted to believe that the next deal was the one that was the difference maker. I found ways to rationalize the business side and how i would only be losing a few more dollars and that if it made the difference it was worth it. I enabled a culture where we always thought that if we had assets to trade we could fix a mistake.

I was wrong.

We should have done several years ago what the organization is doing now to improve our player evaluation and development.

The template for success in the NBA changed from the Portland model of 1999-2000 when I got to the league, to the Detroit, San Antonio,Miami model. Thefinances andrules of the league evolved.The winning teams were ahead of the curve or evolved as the business of the NBA changed. Today, successseems to come from beinga smart organization that can identify and develop young talent and have the financial and or cap flexability to be opportunistic and improve your team in season or during the offseason.

Although we have succeeded on the court to the point of 5 straight 50 plus win seasons, we certainly didn’t do it “the best way”. We did it the most expensive way. It cost us flexibility and created lots of bad habits. That was my mistake and it ended up costing us Mike.

Waiving Mike gave us the opportunity to reclaim financial flexibility. It never should have gotten to this point. My mistakes let it. Which makes it all the more painful. It’s business, but itreally is personal.

I’m learning. Our organization is learning. The bright side is that I like the team we have going into the year. Our guys have been working hardto get better this summer. I think having AJ for a full training campalong with 11 returning players will allowus to compensate for losingMike andhopefully be a better team.

ShareThis

In the NBA when a player is signed to a contract, the business side is downplayed. Everyone is happy. Everyone knows there is an incredible amount of risk taken, but its a time to celebrate and ignore what could go wrong. All is right in the world.

When teams have to release a player, the NBA becomes a business and all involved say just that. Its just a business and we all understand that these things happen. But its not true. The NBA is never just a business. It’s always business. It’s always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.

Creating a close connection to those you do business with has its many risks, rewards and consequences.There are few things in business i have encountered that are more difficult than firing someone, particularly if that someone has always been, or has become a friend. On the flipside, I have been rewarded withmany friends

Michael Finley is one of those people I am proud to call my friend. Releasing Fin last night was one of the hardest things I have had to do as owner of the Mavs. (Trading Erik Strickland was probably the hardest. Strick did more to help me my first year than anyone.). Even more difficult than releasing Mike was having the conversations with him about what our options were

The model for success in the NBA has changed over the past 6 years I have been in the league. When I first got to the Mavs, there was no luxury tax, revenues from TV and the league went up every year, as did the salary cap. That changed dramatically with the leaguesnew TV deal and it changed even further with this yearsnew collective bargaining agreement. Rather than an environment where salaries could go up because the cap and revenues were going up, we entered an environment where trades were made almost exclusively for financial reasons and rarely for basketball skill reasons.

The Mavs tried to take advantage of the situation. When the annual league revenue increases stopped and a luxury tax loomed, teams adjusted their financial profiles. To get under the tax threshold, they offered good players packaged with horrible contracts. We took them. We hoped the talentwould get us a championship before the number of bad contracts we took on in trades caught up with us.

It didn’t happen

Over the past year we have done our best to try to “rebuild” and still be in a position to win a championship. We have always been good at developing young players. We work hard to give them personal attention and skills development. We are working to improve it even further and have completely upgraded our development programs this summer.

Weare also significantly changing how we scoutNBA players. It has become moreorganized, structured and planned ratherthan “gut feel”. We have a coach who is far more systematic in his approach to both

More importantly we have gone from just trying to acquire talent to haveassets that in turn might be traded for better talent,to making sure we have players that fill a role for Coach Johnson’s vision of the team. Today, and for the future with young players that we can develop to fill those roles on future Mavs teams.

Which brings us back to Mike.Under the new CBA, the amount of money we would be able to save by waiving Mike, and invoking the amnesty provision,when combined with some financial clauses in the way his contract was structured and the money that could be returned as part of the NBA set off contract provisions, could put our cash savings in the next 3 years at more than 90mm dollars. That’s a lot of money.

Now I would be shocked if we are able to realize all of that and stay under the tax amount, but even saving that much money in essence gives us a “do over” in terms of financial flexibility when it comes to signing new players. It gives me a chance to recover from the mistakes I made.

Are we going to get back in the business of taking on bad contracts to get a single player no. Will we consider trading short term contracts for longer, more expensive players yes. If it makes basketball sense and doesnt inhibit our future.The difference going forward today vs the past is that Avery and Donnie are putting in programs and structure that will allow us to better evaluate players and choose those that put our team in the best position to succeed. We never did that in the past.

We made trades because we thought we knew players. I’m embarrased to admit, but this summer was the first time we actually brought in non rookie Free Agents that we were interested in to work out. Before, we just called the agents of guys we liked and tried to work out deals.

Avery and Donnie and Joe P have watched more tape in a week of players that we have talkedabout in trades orFree Agencythen we have watched in any summer since I bought the team and maybe in all combined.

It’s my fault that we got to this point.

I never should have authorized deals without asking for far more details. I was guilty of being overly optomistic. I wanted to believe that the next deal was the one that was the difference maker. I found ways to rationalize the business side and how i would only be losing a few more dollars and that if it made the difference it was worth it. I enabled a culture where we always thought that if we had assets to trade we could fix a mistake.

I was wrong.

We should have done several years ago what the organization is doing now to improve our player evaluation and development.

The template for success in the NBA changed from the Portland model of 1999-2000 when I got to the league, to the Detroit, San Antonio,Miami model. Thefinances andrules of the league evolved.The winning teams were ahead of the curve or evolved as the business of the NBA changed. Today, successseems to come from beinga smart organization that can identify and develop young talent and have the financial and or cap flexability to be opportunistic and improve your team in season or during the offseason.

Although we have succeeded on the court to the point of 5 straight 50 plus win seasons, we certainly didn’t do it “the best way”. We did it the most expensive way. It cost us flexibility and created lots of bad habits. That was my mistake and it ended up costing us Mike.

Waiving Mike gave us the opportunity to reclaim financial flexibility. It never should have gotten to this point. My mistakes let it. Which makes it all the more painful. It’s business, but itreally is personal.

I’m learning. Our organization is learning. The bright side is that I like the team we have going into the year. Our guys have been working hardto get better this summer. I think having AJ for a full training campalong with 11 returning players will allowus to compensate for losingMike andhopefully be a better team.

ShareThis

In the NBA when a player is signed to a contract, the business side is downplayed. Everyone is happy. Everyone knows there is an incredible amount of risk taken, but its a time to celebrate and ignore what could go wrong. All is right in the world.

When teams have to release a player, the NBA becomes a business and all involved say just that. Its just a business and we all understand that these things happen. But its not true. The NBA is never just a business. It’s always business. It’s always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.

Creating a close connection to those you do business with has its many risks, rewards and consequences.There are few things in business i have encountered that are more difficult than firing someone, particularly if that someone has always been, or has become a friend. On the flipside, I have been rewarded withmany friends

Michael Finley is one of those people I am proud to call my friend. Releasing Fin last night was one of the hardest things I have had to do as owner of the Mavs. (Trading Erik Strickland was probably the hardest. Strick did more to help me my first year than anyone.). Even more difficult than releasing Mike was having the conversations with him about what our options were

The model for success in the NBA has changed over the past 6 years I have been in the league. When I first got to the Mavs, there was no luxury tax, revenues from TV and the league went up every year, as did the salary cap. That changed dramatically with the leaguesnew TV deal and it changed even further with this yearsnew collective bargaining agreement. Rather than an environment where salaries could go up because the cap and revenues were going up, we entered an environment where trades were made almost exclusively for financial reasons and rarely for basketball skill reasons.

The Mavs tried to take advantage of the situation. When the annual league revenue increases stopped and a luxury tax loomed, teams adjusted their financial profiles. To get under the tax threshold, they offered good players packaged with horrible contracts. We took them. We hoped the talentwould get us a championship before the number of bad contracts we took on in trades caught up with us.

It didn’t happen

Over the past year we have done our best to try to “rebuild” and still be in a position to win a championship. We have always been good at developing young players. We work hard to give them personal attention and skills development. We are working to improve it even further and have completely upgraded our development programs this summer.

Weare also significantly changing how we scoutNBA players. It has become moreorganized, structured and planned ratherthan “gut feel”. We have a coach who is far more systematic in his approach to both

More importantly we have gone from just trying to acquire talent to haveassets that in turn might be traded for better talent,to making sure we have players that fill a role for Coach Johnson’s vision of the team. Today, and for the future with young players that we can develop to fill those roles on future Mavs teams.

Which brings us back to Mike.Under the new CBA, the amount of money we would be able to save by waiving Mike, and invoking the amnesty provision,when combined with some financial clauses in the way his contract was structured and the money that could be returned as part of the NBA set off contract provisions, could put our cash savings in the next 3 years at more than 90mm dollars. That’s a lot of money.

Now I would be shocked if we are able to realize all of that and stay under the tax amount, but even saving that much money in essence gives us a “do over” in terms of financial flexibility when it comes to signing new players. It gives me a chance to recover from the mistakes I made.

Are we going to get back in the business of taking on bad contracts to get a single player no. Will we consider trading short term contracts for longer, more expensive players yes. If it makes basketball sense and doesnt inhibit our future.The difference going forward today vs the past is that Avery and Donnie are putting in programs and structure that will allow us to better evaluate players and choose those that put our team in the best position to succeed. We never did that in the past.

We made trades because we thought we knew players. I’m embarrased to admit, but this summer was the first time we actually brought in non rookie Free Agents that we were interested in to work out. Before, we just called the agents of guys we liked and tried to work out deals.

Avery and Donnie and Joe P have watched more tape in a week of players that we have talkedabout in trades orFree Agencythen we have watched in any summer since I bought the team and maybe in all combined.

It’s my fault that we got to this point.

I never should have authorized deals without asking for far more details. I was guilty of being overly optomistic. I wanted to believe that the next deal was the one that was the difference maker. I found ways to rationalize the business side and how i would only be losing a few more dollars and that if it made the difference it was worth it. I enabled a culture where we always thought that if we had assets to trade we could fix a mistake.

I was wrong.

We should have done several years ago what the organization is doing now to improve our player evaluation and development.

The template for success in the NBA changed from the Portland model of 1999-2000 when I got to the league, to the Detroit, San Antonio,Miami model. Thefinances andrules of the league evolved.The winning teams were ahead of the curve or evolved as the business of the NBA changed. Today, successseems to come from beinga smart organization that can identify and develop young talent and have the financial and or cap flexability to be opportunistic and improve your team in season or during the offseason.

Although we have succeeded on the court to the point of 5 straight 50 plus win seasons, we certainly didn’t do it “the best way”. We did it the most expensive way. It cost us flexibility and created lots of bad habits. That was my mistake and it ended up costing us Mike.

Waiving Mike gave us the opportunity to reclaim financial flexibility. It never should have gotten to this point. My mistakes let it. Which makes it all the more painful. It’s business, but itreally is personal.

I’m learning. Our organization is learning. The bright side is that I like the team we have going into the year. Our guys have been working hardto get better this summer. I think having AJ for a full training campalong with 11 returning players will allowus to compensate for losingMike andhopefully be a better team.

ShareThis

The media and some blog search engines have gotten excited about counting the number of blogs in the blogosphere. If the number of blogs is growing, the medium must be real. Right?

Right in concept. Unfortunately it’s impossible to count the number of blogs in the blogosphere due to the number of spamblogs, splogs, zombies, whatever you want to call them.

While the number of blogs has been placed by those who like to speculate about suchthingsin the 15mm range, new blogs per day in the 30k to 80krange, and blog posts per day in the 500k to 900krange, no one seems to want to put an asterick next to any of those numbers and try to remove the number splogs.

Whats a splog? A splog is any blog whose creator doesn’t add any written value. I’m sure some might argue that packaging data, such as news feeds or the blog posts of others is added value. I dont think it is. After all, thats why there aretopics andindexes. If I want information about the Dallas Mavericks, I can search for it, optimize it, and save it. Because indexes are based on freshness, my searches are automatically updated, freshest data first, as new postsare introduced.

How many splogs are there and how many posts do they carry? It’s difficult to quantify, but I wouldn’t be shocked if we have excluded more than 1mm of them at IceRocket.

Want to get a good feel for how much splog is out there?

Go to your favorite blog search engine and type in hair loss. Or you can try Cialis, or Discount Tickets… You get the idea. Anything that has ever been spammed about is spammed in monstrous proportions in the blogosphere because its so easy to do.

Any traditional spam key word will get you thousands if not more than 100k results, and there are a ton of spamwords you can think of.

What makes the problem particularly frustrating is that it doesn’t cost anything to setup a blog on what is probably the most common blog host, blogger.com from Google. It’s fast, its easy, it’s free and it can be automated. So blogs are coming at us left and right. We are killing offthousandsa day, but they keep on coming.Like Zombies. It’s straight fromNight of the Living Dead. Brain dead splogs. Coming at us by the thousands.

Blogger is by far the worst offender. Google seems to be working hard to adjust their relevancy indexes to exclude splog from having influence on search rankings, but they don’t seem to be doing anything more than removing reported splogs. Kind of like going after the zombies one at a time with a shovel. Can we get some help on this Google? (You can check out weblogs.com to get a feel for just how much splog we are talking about.)

Google’s problem with splog isn’t just a blog search engine issue. It’s an end user issue as well. No splog detection algorithms are going to be perfect. Not only do we miss splog, but we take out innocent victims along the way as well.

If you are an individual blogger whose blog is hosted on blogspot.com, every day the chances of you being excluded from icerocket.com’s, and other search engines’ indexes increases. It’s not just blogspot.com, pretty much 90plus percent of blogs hosted on .info sites are splogs as well.

What to do?

We are exploring a variety of options. The blog hosts can obviously help, but I think the best solution will come from the pinging process that is used to let blog search engines know a new post has been added. If blogging is supposed to be a personal medium, I don’t know why we can’t use an email confirmation for blog posts. We do it for comments to keep out comment spam. Why not do it for blog posts?

The intellectual property that is available in the blogosphere is an amazing source of ideas, facts and imagination. Now is the time to do something before the splog overwhelms it and make it difficult to discover new and exciting blogs.

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If you don’t follow the stock market, you are missing some amazingdrama. While the headlines go to jailed CEOs from Enron, Worldcom, RiteAid, Tyco, etc, they are alljust greedyguys gone bad, and gone to jail. But drama outside the courtroom abounds. Some funny, some serious, some unfortunate, but none have taken on the XFiles qualities of this story.

In the free world, the CEO of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne hasemerged as the star of his own XFiles like drama. Insteadof searching for the truth about extraterrestials, Mr Byrne is on a mission to find out the truth about short sellers and naked short selling.

I have written in the past about both topics, so I won’t go into that here. There is no need to write about the performance of the company, Jeff Matthews does that well in his blog. There are blogs that praise Mr Byrne as well.But I will suggest that anyone who wants to listen to a drama, that is stranger than fiction andplays out like aradio show from the 40s (I used to love to buy tapes of the old shows and listen) with plenty of comedic elements, they immediately go to the overstock.com website and sign up to listen to the conference call

Never before in the history of Wall Street has a single conference call mentioned the following topics:

Miscreants, an unnamed Sith Lord he hopes the feds will bury under a prison, gay bath houses, whether he is gay, does cocaine, both or neither, and an obligatory, not that there is anything wrong with that, phone taps, phone lines misdirected to Mexico, arrested reporters, payoffs, conspiracies, crooks, egomaniacs, fools,paranoia, which newspapers are shills and for who, payoffs, money laundering, hisIrish temper,false identities, threats, intimidation, and private investigators. All in 61 minutes.

As I listened, allI could think of was whether or not HDNet Films should consider making a movie out of it andthat Mr Byrne clearly was giving Tom Cruise a run for his money on the “what was he thinking meter”.

I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

In the interest of disclosure, I am short 10k shares of OSTK. I want to be short more, however the stock is impossible to borrow, the puts are expensive and it’s hard to get any volume off and I don’t know how to Naked Short a stock. If you or anyone you know has naked shorted a stock, or knows how or where I can,I would be curious to find out how it’s done, so please feel free to add it as a comment below.

If you are a screenwriter or movie producer and you put together a script about OSTK and Mr Byrne, please send me a copy!

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When was the last time you recieved a live multicast feed across multiple networks over the internet? What’s a multicast stream? It’s a stream of bits that can be just about anything, a software program, a movie, a game, a tv show. It doesn’t matter.

When a file or live event is multicast, rather than having a copy of the program delivered, uniquely from each source to each destination (unicast delivery), the stream of bits is replicated through the routers on the network so that one copy exists on the network at any given time. The router basically grabs the stream and provides it to the users on its network segment that want it.

The value in doing this is that the bandwidth savings are huge. For live events it’s the only way to truly conserve bandwidth. For on demand, it even blows away Bit torrent type peer to peer delivery because the routers are always there toact as the peers on any network segment and you can control and monitor the distribution more cleanly.

But anetwork of multicast enabled networks,linked together to form a more efficient internet doesn’t exist. At least that I know of. But it almost did.

Back in the late 1990s, Darin Divinia and our engineers were working hard with UUNet and other networks to test and optimize multicast tunnels on their networks and to peer them with some level of QOS so that Broadcast.com could deliver live events and files more cost efficiently.

We also worked hard with Microsoft Windows Media and Real Networks to deliver live events via multicast. We even had seperate links for users who were on multicast enabled networks to click on so they could pull a multicast feed of a live eventat a higher quality. I think we may have even gotten as high as 12 pct of users on some events. It was one of the most important projects we had going.

But unless it has been hibernating somewhere without me knowing about it, the project died when I wasn’t at Yahoo to champion it any longer.

This isn’t to say that an internet with multicast tunnels routed throughout the net to any end user cant happen. It’s just to say that it isn’t anywhere I can find it right now.Without it, there is no such thing as bandwidth efficient LIVE internet TV. Without it, there is no equivalent to broadcastTV on the internet. Without it, there is no possible way broadcast TV, defined as what we see on major networks that own broadcast spectrum, ala ABC, CBS, NBC, WB, UPN, etc. is going away anytime soon.

The internet can’t support the equivalent of broadcast TV because the internet can’t broadcast. It can deliever individual (unicast streams) streams, but that’s it. This is why AOLstreaming 350k simultaneous Live8 users was a big deal. Instead ofa single 300k video stream that every one tuned into, every viewer had to have their own 300kstream. That’s a boatload of bandwidth and is expensive.

Whathappens when 80mm people want to watch the SuperBowl?What happens when a measly 4mm want to watch a show? What happens when they want to see the show in 1080i HD?

Aslong asthere are TV shows or events that can capture audiences in the millions, the only place to deliver those shows live will be on good old fashioned cable, satellite or broadcast or some other broadcast spectrum delivered TV. It ain’t gonna be the net anytime soon. That’s why broacastTV ain’t going away.

And while I’m on the technical side of TV, it’s going to be very, very interesting to see how IPTV plays out on networks. Traditional TV delivered on cable like networks is basically multicast. It’s always on and viewers just turn the channel to tap into the channel feed. There is enough bandwidth for each channel, and the network can support an unlimited number of viewers.

In the IPTV world, a TV signal for a channel is only delivered if someone has requested it. So if no one is watching VH1 Classics, the channel is not delivered over the network , saving bandwidth. Bandwidth conservation is particularly important in a world of ever expanding digital services including HDTV, where the capital isn’t available or it doesn’t make sense to add more bandwidth to the network.

But the problem with IPTV is the N+1 Disaster. In an IPTV world, there isn’t enough bandwidth reserved on the network so that ifeverychannelis requested, it can be delivered. Which means that it’s possible that someone could change to a channel, lets say BET Jazz, be the first to want to watch that channel in a while, and they would get a message saying it wasn’t currently available, try back later.

That is the N+1 Disaster.

Networks can statistically optimize so that the chances of this happening are reduced, but they cant ever elminate it. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens, when it happens.

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I just read a note in CableWorld by
Paul Kagan
referring to George Gilders “vision” that in the future TV will die, regardless of delivery medium simply because
people will watch only what they want to watch.

How wrong he is. Why he is wrong is a lesson in basic business.

It was Aaron Spelling I believe who said that “TV is the path of least resistance from complete boredom”. Which
is another way of saying that its easier to watch TV, than to sit there and do nothing.

Which describes exactly how people make most of their choices in life. They take the easy way. They take the path of
least resistance.

There are certain things in life we all have to do. There are certain things in life we choose to do. Then
there is everything else. The things we do to kill time.

In every case, all things being equal, we choose the path of least resistance.

Understanding this concept is key to making good business decisions.

When Broadcast.com was around, we understood that our strength came from being the path of least resistance for out
of market sports that weren’t available on national TV. If we had the option of offering a football game that was
going to be on nationalTV in the evening, it wouldnt matter how good the game was, no one was going to
choose to listen online because it was easier to watch on TV.

If that same game was on during a weekday afternoon when most people were at work, we knew that we would get a great
audience because it was easier for people stuck in their offices to listen on their PCs than it was to try to sneak
out of the office and get to a TV. Offering content for which the path of least resistance was watching or listening
online was a key to our building an audience.

The Path of Least Resistance is a key to why HDNet Films is offering our slate of films in a variety of day and date
options.

For the couple who wants to go on a date, going to a theater is often the path of least resistance to making an easy,
relatively inexpensive choice to spend the evening together.

For the family who wants to see the movie, but can’t make it out of the house for whatever reason, offering it on
HDNet Movies or through day and date delivery of a DVD is the path of least
resistance for them to see the movie. We feel that people will pay a premium to be able to stay at home and
watch those movies, either by subscribing to HDNet, or by paying more than the traditional retail price of a DVD.
It’s easier to pay a premium for access to the movie than to deal with the kids screaming about not being able to
go. It’s this reason that we gear the movies we make to an adult audience. Enough can get out of the house to
see the movie, preferably in a Landmark Theater. Enough have kids,can’t get out and have disposal income, so
they are more likely to order the DVD or subscribe to HDNet Movies in order to see the movies they want to see. We
want to offer our movies in the path of least resistance for our target demo.

The path of least resistance is why I think Amazon.com, IPod and Google have been so successful.

I buy everything from books to electronics to toiletries on Amazon because it’s easier than schlepping to the
store. They show up in the mail as quickly as I am willing to pay to have them show up.

I got my Ipod, gave Itunes my credit card, and it takes me seconds to sample and download music. To the extreme
that I even downloaded songs from the Wiggles so that my daughter could listen to them while I was working. It
was the path of least resistance to keeping her occupied so I could get my work done.

Google one upped Yahoo a few years ago by making it simple and easy to plug in a search and get results. Yahoo
made us scan through their home page to make a search and often took us to directories and other intermediaries.
Google was the path of least resistance for simple searches.

TiVo has been successful because it has made it so
easy to record the shows we want to see. The show comes on, you hit a button. You decide if it’s just this
show, or you want to subscribe for the season. The path of least resistance for timeshifting.

In business, one of the challenges is making sure that your product is the easiest to experience and complete a
sale.

I will give you another example. I buy a lot of consumer electronics. When I have a good idea whatI want, or
if it’s big and I don’t want to have to drag it from the store,I buy through Amazon.

Other times I like to shop and kill time and see what’s happening in the consumer electronics world. Two of the
places I shop will let me take the product right to the checkout counter. That’s easy. Another, thatI used to
shop at, made me tell a clerk what I wanted, who in turn went to the inventory room. I then had to go to the sales
line where they would meet me with the merchandise. Two lines. One or both was usually more than a few people deep. I
don’t go back there any more. It might have been easier for them, but it was slow and painful for me.

Moral of the story, make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying
from them, not you.

Which brings me back to George Gilder
and a topic I think will be fascinating to watch play out.

George and others seem to think that unlimited choice is the holy grail of TV. It’s not.

The reason it’s not, is that it’s too much work to page through an unlimited number of options. It’s too
much work to have to think of what it is we might like to watch. We are afraid we might miss something that we really
did want to watch. Put another way, its way too hard to shop for shows in a store where the aisles are endless.
Its stressful and a lot of work. Which is exactly why when we channel surf, or when we surf the net, we all end
up surfing the same 10, 15,20 channels/sites over and over again. It’s the path of least resistance.

It’s also why websites do anything they can to game the system on search engines to get top ranking. They know that
no one is going to page through the thousands of results the search returned. Users will pick from the first
page or they will pick one of the sponsored ads long before they choose to browse through even a couple
pages.

So when Gilder thinks we will only watch exactly what we want to watch, he is dead wrong because we don’t know what
we want to watch as often, if not more often than we do know.

When we get to a point that there are thousands of on demandTV choices, we won’t approachTV programming
guides like we do a search engine, looking for a specific target. That’s too much work. The smart on
demand providers will present their programming guides more like Amazon.com. or Netflix.com. Both of which do a great
job of “suggestive programming.”

We will get a personalized page with options that it thinks we might like based on our previous viewing decisions.
Then different categories of shows, within each we will see best rated, most viewed and newest added, along with
“play lists” suggested by branded guides who make recommendations. All of these simple options will make it easy for
us to make a choice with some level of confidence. We won’t feel like we are missing something and we
will know that if we don’t like the show, we can quickly go back to a point that makes it easy to find another
selection.

Aaron Spelling was exactly right when he said that TV is the best alternative to boredom, future providers of on
demand content will hopefully remember this when devising their user interfaces, and every business should remember
it as well.

Everyone follows the path of least resistance.

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