I didn’t think i would comment any more on this topic. But I couldn’t help myself.

Riddle me this

If Youtube is all about User Generated Content. If Free Hugs, fake Kevin Federlines and Diet Coke and Mentos can be the core of an entertainment business. If Youtube is completely protected under the DMCA Safe Harbor acts. Then why in the world would Youtube spend any money on licensing content ?

If copyrighted materials are just a minimal amount of content and traffic, just deal with it through take down notices. Its your DMCA right. Right ? Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and cash money for licenses that are probably no more than a few years in length and give some level of corporate “veto power” to the rights holders as to how users can use the content ?

Unless of course you think that original User Generated Content is not enough to bring in traffic.

Unless of course you think you will be sued under the DMCA and lose.

Unless of course you realize that such a huge percentage of your audience is foreign and there are laws across countries that aren’t quite in sync with US Copyright laws.

Im sure GooTube is already waist deep in this, but if observors think its hard to do rights deals now, realize that lots of TV shows, movies and other content is parcelled off to rightsholders in foreign countries. So Gootube may have a deal with a huge US Media company that produced a show, but they sold off the right to the show in Japan, or France, or Kazakhstan and you have to do seperate deals with the rights holder in each of those countries or block access to the content to those countries, and deal with the copyright laws of each. You want fun. Now that is fun.

All of which is a lot of time, money and uncertainty for such a simple, riskless deal.

Im not saying Google shouldn’t have bought Youtube. Im just saying that maybe only Google was crazy enough to take on the responsibilities of such a deal.

Blogs, uhh, good God, what are they good for…..(sung to the tune of the song War)…

Has anyone noticed lately that more blogs posts are about other blogs, which are writing about whats being reported in other blogs than about something original from the author ?

Far be it for me to be a cynic, but it sure seems like more blogs are being written with the goal of getting traffic than with the goal of saying something original. Its almost as if bloggers are the new rappers with Blog Pimpin and Blogwars becoming analogous to Rap Wars.

You know, if The Game called out 50 Cent in a song so that 50Cent would retaliate with a song saying something to the effect of “I got shot 9 times, you ain’t got shot non, so shut the hell up son”. And then the Game would rap right back and they both hoped that it would create attention on the radio and on TRL, 106 & Park, in Vibe, The Source, etc and when it was all said and done, music sales would increase. Then they would make up and do a co-production joint and put together the Drop Your Weapons Truce Tour.

In the Blogosphere, self promotion is out of control. Self Diggin , Slashdotting and Deliciousizing are pretty much par for the course, but more prevalent is the new habit of writing about whatever the top story is on the aggregation sites. If its at the top of Techmeme, there are a core of bloggers that you know are just going to write about the top ranking story. Why ? Because then your blog gets listed under the top of mind, top of page topic. Which leads to more traffic. Thats BlogPimpin.

Then of course there are blogwars. There are people who no matter what I write about technology, will write about it. There are others that no matter what I write about stocks or the market, will comment on it. The same with movies, copyright and sports. Why ? Because when people search on my name, or for my blog, on sites like Icerocket.com and technorati, their blogs will show up. Plus, if they get really lucky, I might engage them right back and drive traffic directly to their blog. 50Cent and The Game ain’t got nothing on Mark Cuban and …..

Of course its not just me they write about. Anything that looks good in the tag cloud, videos, movies, whatever, they will post about it in short order. Any blogger with a high profile, they are after him or her.

Its all about Big Pimpin for traffic baby. Welcome to trying to make a living in the Blog Game. It puts the rap game to shame.

No complaining. No backtalk. No taking off your warmups on the court. No arena sound system is too loud. The new ball. All changes for the better. Anyone who has seen me at the games knows its a completely different ballgame, and Im thankful.

I’m excited to get feedback from the fans as well. I would love to read everyone’s comments on how they feel about the changes since I’m sure they wlll be positive. So please, take the time to let me know !

I have a couple customer service sayings I tend to over use. I dont usually speak them outloud. I usually say them to myself as a reminder to always put our customers, in any business first. “Treat your customers like they own you. Because they do.” “You have to re-earn your customers business every day” and one that came from YAHOO, which I thought was brilliant. When asked what Yahoo stood for, some folks there responded “You Always Have Other Options”.

I personally think that the only way you can connect to your customers, is to put yourself in their shoes. For me personally, if I can’t be a customer of my own product, then I probably am not to do a good job running the company. When I go to a Landmark Theater, I don’t call ahead and tell them Im coming and ask for special treatment. I stand in line and pay for my ticket like everyone else. I get my popcorn and Diet Coke like everyone else. I get my seat like everyone else.

With the Mavs, I sit in a seat that is for sale to the general public, Its a great seat next to the bench, but I also make sure that I sit in the very top row behind the baskets, our $2 dollar/10 dollar seats during the season as well. Same routine. Im not surrounded by security. I dont get special anything. If the Nachos are slow and the beer is warm, I know it and the people sitting around me also let me know.

Its interesting to watch different CEOs of different companies and how they deal with the issue of making customers happy. You can tell the ones that don’t trust their products or services. They travel with big groups of people. There are advance teams to make sure everything is perfect. They bring security to places where their customers are families and kids. They protect themselves from any possible interactions, whether direct, phone or email by having secretaries filter everything, and they respond with formletters or assistants, if at all.

I dont know how they do it. I make my email available to everyone and anyone. Not only that, and more importantly, I make sure that all the customer service emails get forwarded to me. If someone is complaining, I want to know what about, and I want to get it fixed quickly. The best focus groups are your customers telling you what they think. No company is perfect, but the CEO who doesnt listen to direct feedback from customers will not take the company as far as it can go.

But it gets worse from there for CEOs that don’t communicate with their customers. There used to be a saying that happy customers might tell one person, but unhappy customers tell 20. In the internet age, one happy customer might make a note in their blog or forward an email. An unhappy customer, starts a blog, writes about how unhappy they are, takes out an ad on search engines to let people who are looking for the product know how made they are, starts an email forwarding chain asking people to boycott the product, does a Youtube video about it and games Youtube to make it one of the top 10 most viewed videos…. You get the picture.

IN this day and age, its a lot easier to proactively communicate than to react.

When I bought the Mavs, I knew there would be tons of things I couldn’t anticipate and wouldn’t be ready for until I faced them head on. One of the most visible, but least enjoyable elements of owning a team is that you are in charge of the Good Guy/Bad Guy Ledger.

In other words, I have to determine whether the guys who have played or worked here in the past are BFF (Best Friends of the Mavs Forever), or AYFR (Are You For Real – as in the Nelly Song)

When I got to the Mavs, I wanted to make sure that former Mavs were around to help create a connection between current and past. Although the standings hadn’t been kind to the Mavs as of Jan 2000, that didn’t matter. Some of the first things I did was offer Rolando Blackman and Derek Harper their choice of jobs. Brad Davis was already here and I opened the door to pretty much any Mav who had played here.

To open the door for former Mavs, we created the position of Player Development Coach. I didn’t care how many we ended up with. it was a way for our players to get personal attention from guys who had been in the league and for the guys to get into the NBA in a coaching capacity and to start to build a coaching career. I caught a lot of heat. We still hear stories about how the Mavs have more coaches than players, , but its worked out great. From Greg Dreiling to Morlon Wiley to Mark Bryant to Popeye Jones, guys have come back and been huge helps to our team. If you played here, you were BFF.

Things started to get sticky with the trade of Nick Van Exel. The media wanted to know how the organization would respond to Nick when he returned as part of the TrailBlazers. Then of course things got far stickier with Steve Nash and Michael Finley.

Both are great guys. Both are great players. Both have been integral parts of the Mavs turnaround over the past 7 years. Both are now former Mavs. Both play for teams that are huge rivals of ours. As do, or have a long list of guys who have been Mavericks that I really like. From Erick Strickland to Robert Pack to Ced Ceballos, Gary Trent, Shawn Bradley and Sean Rooks, to Eddie Najera, Etan Thomas, Raef LaFrentz, Juwan Howard, Darrel Armstrong, Josh Powell, Rawle Marshall and others that escape me as I write this. Guys that were traded or we didnt resign at our choice. Those are guys who once they retire, will always have the opportunity to come back and be part of the Mavs organization.

If a guy has given 110pct in effort for this organization, I can’t do anything but respect them. People in this league like to think that respect is defined by how much you pay someone. Its not. If you can play, someone in this league will pay you. Respect is defined by what you do for someone when no one is watching or writing about it. Few guys are in the league as long as 10 years. All of them are out of the leauge for much, much longer than that. Thats when it counts. When you don’t need anything from the former player and you are still willing to help. If you gave 110pct to the Mavs, I will return the respect and always try to help.

Im the same way in all of my businesses. When we started Broadcast.com , the first people I tried to hire were former MicroSolutions people. When we started HDNet and when I bought the Mavs, I looked to MicroSolutions and Broadcast.comers that worked for me to come help in our new businesses.

The 2nd part of the BFF side of the ledger is retiring numbers. Honestly, this is a tough decision. There have been so many great players in our organization. My first pass on criteria is that I want to wait till we win a championship before I retire any more numbers. Championship banners and retired numbers look great next to each other. They balance each other out. Im not saying I wouldn’t change my mind on this, but as of now, thats where I stand.

As far as the other side of the list. The AYFR side. Well lets just say there are 2 individuals that are on that side of the ledger / People who quit on the Mavs and who were more concerned with getting paid than putting in a honest days work to get an honest days pay. There are 3 people in all of my other businesses combined in the last 25 years that just quit on me and basically stole from me. In any of my businesses, if you quit on me, if you take money without doing the work. Thats unforgivable.

Should any of them ever come back to Dallas, looking for anything, Im just going to play them Ride Wit Me.

Petty, but satisfying.

I already know that not creating my own ownership group to buy the Penguins will go down as a huge mistake. There are only so many hours in the day, and I didnt have the time, or the expertise in hockey to do it right. My mistake.

Im still an NBA junkie first and foremost, but a long time NHL fan as well. When the Mavs were in Pittsburgh to play the Cavs in a preseason game, I snuck in to Mellon Arena and managed to catch the last period of the Pens – Devils game. Hockey games are fun to go to. Watching the NHL on HDNet is great. But what I say in just 1 period in Pittsburgh was the most exciting glimpse of NHL greatness I have ever seen.

In the 3rd period of a 3-2 game, Malkin took a bullet pass straight to the stick from Sid the Kid Crosby, did a cross over move with a puck, that if Allen Iverson would have done it with a basketball, would have broken several ankles, split two defenders, nothing but net.

I’m a Stars and Pens season ticket holder and have been going to hockey games since I was a kid. This was the first time I literally just stood, my jaw dropping in amazement and just shook my head. The most amazing goal I had ever seen. The entire arena stood and every one just looked at each other with that “Are you kidding me” look. I was with Al Whitley, the Mavs equipment manager who is from Vancouver and we just looked at each other and laughed. It seemed like a minute before the crowd actually cheered. Thats how amazing it was.

The Pens took home a 4-2 W, which was cool. I stopped in the fan shop, picked up my Malkin Sweater for a not so cheap $277 dollars and headed back to the hotel.

The next night was our Mavs Cavs game. I obviously was pumped to bring our Mavs back to my hometown. I had tons of friends there. People I hadnt seen since junior high were coming up and telling me stories. Obviously since it was an exhibition game, things were casual. I got to meet Lebron for the first time. It was just a good start to what would be a fun night.

During the 2nd half, I walked over and sat down with some of my high school buddies who had gotten tickets in the front row behind the Cavs bench. While Im yucking it up with them, with Lebron, DJones, Scott Pollard and others giving me a hard time , the security guard points up to some seats at mid court and lets us know that Malkin is here at the game.

So with Lebron and the Cavs right there, the game going on, my attention turns to how i can run back to the locker room, get my Malkin jersey that I had bought the night before, and then get up to Malkin who barely speaks any English and doesnt know me from Adam, to sign my Malkin Jersey.

So the next time out, I run back to the locker room, get the jersey and a sharpie. I didnt want to create a distraction by shuffling in front of 3 rows of people to get to him from where we were, so i had to spend the next 5 minutes convincing Boafie, my high school buddy to take the trip for me.

After a few minutes of coaxing, Boafie set off on the mission to get an autograph from my new all time favorite NHL player. We obviously were following the treck and when he got to Malkin, watching Boafie try to explain that the jersey was for me to a guy who doesnt speak english. was worth the price of admission. Finally , he just put the jersey in his lap, pen in his hand and pointed. He got it signed.

The Mavs won on last second free throws. The highlight of the night. My autographed Malkin Jersey.

You may or may not be an NHL fan, but if you are a fan of greatness in the making, watch the Pens. Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Jordan Staal, Marc-Andre Fleury , the oldest of the 4 is about 20 years old. All have super star qualities. Crosby and Malkin ? They will not only remind Pens and NHL fans of Mario and Jamir Jagr, but could have them wondering whether watching them play together is what watching Mario and Gretzky playing together would have been like.