That’s what invitation from C. R. Sanderson said. Its also the invitation I had been waiting on for a long time.

Why ? Because it came from StoresOnline. StoresOnline is a public company
that i have been short in the past, but currently don’t have a position in. I was short the stock of this company because I always believed that it was a company that specialized in ripping off people who didn’t know any better with claims of grabbing their “Share of the Billions in Revenue on the Internet”

I wasn’t the only one to question their business model. There are a long list of people who are questioning Storesonline and how they treat consumers.

The biggest hurdle that StoresOnline faces, IMHO however, is the battle they have with the state of Utah over whether or not they are a “business opportunity”.

Storesonline claims they only sell software. Now personally, i have never received an email from a legit ecommerce software company making the above claim. I haven’t read anywhere else but in my StoresOnline invitation how I can ” learn how half a million people generate income using the Internet !”. Nowhere else do software vendors claim that “Your opportunities to make money are virtually limitless !”

Does that sound like a business opportunity pitch to you ?

Why is that a big deal ? Because from what I’ve been told, and I dint know all the details, so do your own homework, it looks like Business Opportunities have to register their success and turnover rates with the states. As I understand it, its something to the effect of “what percent of people at least made their money back”

If you have to publish how many customers actually “claimed their share of Internet Billions”, that’s tough on business if it doesn’t work.

Now some may be saying that since I’m in Texas, that its a whole different ballgame. Except that StoresOnline already has had a run in with the State of Texas. They settled with the State, but maybe they couldn’t help themselves and had to go after the consumers in this state again.

I guess the best news is, if i call 1-800-373-3090 and give my Reservation ID of U8H-(X6-P, i can get a seat at this “fun, relaxed and informative 90 minute conference” and get a free Lunch or Dinner, a Free Business Organizer, Free Admission and MUCH MORE !”

What a great business opportunity for me, right ?

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For some reason the fact that intranets can significantly outperform Internets and in particular THE Internet is a shocking concept. It shouldn’t be.

An intranet is a contained network managed to optimize the performance to meet the needs of the participants on the network. Your corporate network in your local office is an intranet. You probably have IT people working hard to make sure its up and as fast as they can make it.

Your home network is an intranet. Wired or wireless, you are probably able to get throughput that far exceeds the speed you get from your Internet connection.

The INTERNET on the other hand is owned by no one, optimized for no one. Whoever you buy your Internet connectivity from, particularly if you are a broadband customer, has a network that is physically, locally accessible through a persistent connection (as opposed to dialing in to a remote network). They do everything they possibly can to make it as fast as possible. Your speed and throughput is dependent on a variety of variables, the most important of which is the type of wire/fiber that connects your house to the network.

Their ability to control the quality of service and throughput you receive to your home disappears the minute your traffic leaves their network and is passed of ff on to the route that will take or request your bits to or from their destination.

Think of it as crossing the border between the USA and Mexico in a car. . Neither side cares about how fast the traffic of the other side gets through. If its busy, its busy. If its slow, its slow. Its not their primary concern.

This is exactly why your video buffers , websites timeout and downloads take forever. No one is responsible for making sure its fast.

The times you get the best performance are when the website or video providers put servers on your providers network. Its for this reason that content providers pay Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) like Akamai a premium to distribute content. Akamai has thousands of servers all across the net.

CDNs however are limited in the applications they can run. They are optimized to deliver websites and graphics and downloads. The same things they have been doing for 10 years . They are not a development platform

Which is exactly why the best years of the Internet are behind it. Before you get all mad at me, ask yourself this. What is the increase in your broadband speed THROUGHPUT over the past 1,2,5 or 10 years ? I went from about 200k in 1997 to about 800k (on a 3mbs advertised number) today. An increase of only 600k. True, its cheaper now than then, but 600k is only 600k. Most people think the throughput TO THE INTERNET of our home broadband connections will increase significantly over the next few years. It wont. Other than dropping fiber in the last mile, not much has changed in the last few years and unless you have fiber to your home, not much will change in the next 5 or more years. Face it folks, the Internet as a platform has stagnated. Its dead as a growth platform. Its like Microsoft windows. From about 1985 to 1995 it was a great platform and there was new software coming out continuously. When was the last time you got excited about a new piece of consumer software written for Windows ? Its a stagnant consumer platform. We switched to browsers for most of our PC activity. We are getting to the point where the browser on the net as a platform is becoming stagnant.

Now ask yourself what the maximum possible throughput of your Internet connection ? You probably are connected to a 100mbs or faster port on the other side of your “last mile”.

The typical provider throttles you down from the maximum not because they cant support more speed on their network, but because they cant deliver more speed on to the INTERNET. If you get your Internet access from the same provider that you get digital TV from , that provider is already providing you more than 1gbs of throughput of service. Yep, there are 10s of millions of people who get more than 1gbs of throughput of traffic to their home. We just call it digital TV. All those channels that you can flip to take up a huge amount of bandwidth in aggregate. The limit on the amount of bandwidth they give you for Internet is not a physical limit , its a limit based on software, technology and business decisions.

So I asked myself, “Self, could that software change so that a new platform for applications that are built on 25mbs, 50mbs, 100mbs or even 1gbs are possible ? ” The answer is yes.

Software is emerging that allows applications to be written that are optimized for very high speed. But those applications can only leverage high speeds on the broadband providers INTRANET. There is no network provider on the planet that can guarantee 100mbs throughput to some random website somewhere in the world. ‘ Put that website on the same physical network that you buy your Internet service from and in the next couple years your provider will be able to guarantee quality of service of 100mbs

Ive sat with several of these network providers and what I’m telling them, and I think they are listening and following through, is to offer a platform or intranet applications. A platform for applications that confirm that the user and application host are on the same network, or possibly even on the same network segment. Make 100mbs or higher throughput a guaranteed service level to that application.

When that happens, people a lot smarter than me will come up with applications that blow away anything we are seeing now. I dint care if you call it Web 10.0 or whatever, but the reality is that the applications we will see then will be amazing.

When it happens, we will look back at Internet applications and laugh. Kids will call you out with things like

“did websites really time out ? we video really buffer and die even though it was limited in size and quality”

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Just thought it would be fun to point a link to what I have had to say on the nba and refs over the past 3 years

http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=web&q=site%3Ablogmaverick.com%20refs

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Every company of any size has had a problem(s) that its CEO and stakeholders have lost sleep over. Its the law of big numbers. If enough things go on, something is going to go wrong.

Products get recalled or are tampered with. There are workplace disasters. There is corruption. No industry is immune. Churches, consumer products, law enforcement, cars, planes, trains and plenty more. No profession is immune. From the CEO who misrepresents corporate numbers or events at the expense of shareholders, to the doorman who tips himself from the cover charge at the expense of the club owner, people of every profession make bad decisions.

Shit happens. Bad Shit happens. When it does, there are two options. Cry over it and do nothing or recognize the problem and do the best you possibly can to not only fix it, but make the entire organization stronger..

As bad as the allegations facing the NBA today are, its also an opportunity to face every allegation that has ever been directed towards the NBA and its officials and pre empt them from ever occuring in the future.

Calamity can be a catalyst for significant change.

There are any number of examples in the business world where calamity led to better management, better communications, greater transparency and even better products. As the proverb goes, Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

The NBA took a hit today. Behind that hit is a catalyst and opportunity for significant change that could make the NBA stronger than it ever has been. Its a chance to proactively put in place people, processes and transparency that will forever silence those who will question the NBA’s integrity.

I have complete confidence that David Stern and Adam Silver will do just that and the NBA and our officiating will be all the stronger for it.

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It was 9 years ago we went public with what was then the biggest first day jump in stock price in IPO history….

If you didnt know broadcast.com, or dont remember it, we were serving audio and video live and on demand to more than 1mm unique users per day in 1999. I dont even remember how many audio and video files we served per day, without 100mb or 10min limits, encoded up to 700k.

We had full length audio books, full length CDs, full length movies, TV shows. You name it. And unlike today, we actually got licenses for them before they were on our site.

We had preroll commercials. We had inserted commercials. We even inserted video commercials into audio files and streams.

And user generated content ? Yep. Mostly corporate, since back then thats who could afford the tools to edit video. Companies or individuals could upload full videos with synchronized slideshows and we even allows hot spots in the videos. And of course we gave you realitime statistics of how many people were watching your video, and if you required registration, which we offered, you knew exactly who was watching. We had companies that had ongoing “shows”, like Breakfast with Dell and we have individuals who did their own thing and we hosted it.

Just think if we had put up a discussion forum and called ourself a Social Network. Its deja vu all over again.

If you want to take a trip down memory lane, here is our video , courtesy of bandwidth subsidy from Google Video (which i have no problem doing given how often our content is pirated on their websites and how much money we have to spend to policing their sites and sending and processsing the legal back and forth of takedown notices)

UPDATE: I decided to go back and dig up our PPT from our IPO roadshow. This was what we presented to potential investors. It is from July of 1998 and gives some more details of who Broadcast.com was and how we saw our business and opportunity. Enjoy !

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The folks at the Mavs put this together so we all could have some fun..at my expense. Its hysterical.

They laughed, alot. i laughed. My wife laughed. My 3 year old laughed. Now its your turn…

And these will be for sale along with one for Dirk at the Mavs website. So hopefully whlie you are laughing with me, or at me, Im laughing all the way to the bank. Go Mavs !

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This went out today:
FIRST HIGH DEFINITION TV RATINGS PUT HDNET OUT IN FRONT OF THE COMPETITION

HDNet Movies and HDNet’s Original Programming Slate Lead the Way

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dallas (July 10, 2007) – According to TNS Media Research of set top box
data in a major market, HDNet’s two all high definition networks, HDNet
and HDNet Movies achieved a record share of the high definition viewing
audience.

According to the real time data captured by TNS Media, the HDNet
networks excelled in all weekday and weekend dayparts. HDNet’s share
of the high definition viewing audience for the week ending July 1, 2007
is as follows:

Weekends – All Day – 8.6 %
Weekends – Primetime – 7.8%
Weekdays – All Day – 6.1 %
Weekdays – Primetime – 6.3 % ***

HDNet outperformed all other HD-exclusive networks in all dayparts, and
beat both cable and broadcast simulcasts on weekends (including DISC HD, KTLAHD, ESPN HD, TNT HD, PBS HD, UniHD, MTVHD and for the whole day on this weekend, FOX HD).

“We are excited by the performance of HDNet and HDNet Movies,” said Mark
Cuban, president and co-founder of HDNet. “It’s obvious that our lineup
of original programming, led by “Dan Rather Reports”, Friday Nights’
“Guys Night In” our “InFocus” series of documentaries coupled with HDNet
Movies’ stellar lineup of Original Movies from HDNet Films and our
unique Sneak Previews of theatrically released motion pictures, before
they reach theaters, is resonating with high definition viewers”

About HDNet

HDNet (www.hd.net) provides viewers with the best in original comedy,
drama, news, sports and music programming.

HDNet is your exclusive, high-definition home for popular, critically
acclaimed original programming, including television’s only HD news
feature programs “HDNet World Report”, “Dan Rather Reports” featuring
legendary journalist Dan Rather and “NASA on HDNet” (presenting live
shuttle launches through 2010). HDNet presents championship sports
coverage featuring the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer,
NASCAR Grand National Division, NASCAR NEXTEL Cup re-broadcasts, boxing
and Mixed Martial Arts; groundbreaking music programming with the HDNet
Concert Series featuring leading artists and bands including U2, Black
Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani and more, plus original music programs “Sound
Off with Matt Pinfield”, and “True Music w/Katie Daryl”; entertaining
interview shows including “Face 2 Face with Roy Firestone” and “Higher
Definition”, in addition to fun and irreverent lifestyle programming
including “Geek to Freak with Dennis Rodman”, “Deadline!”, “Art Mann
Presents”, and “Get Out!” HDNet is also the exclusive high-definition
home to the critically acclaimed and award winning programs such as the
Emmy Award winning “Arrested Development”, “The Black Donnellys”,
“Blade: The Series”, “Star Trek: Enterprise”, “Dead Like Me”,
“Smallville”, “Joan of Arcadia”, “Boomtown” and “Andy Richter Controls
the Universe”.

HDNet Movies also features a wide selection of major studio theatrical
releases – all uncut, unedited, and appearing in their original aspect
ratio so that HDNet Movies viewers get the best possible home theater
experience.

Only HDNet Movies exclusive “Sneak Previews” bring feature films to
viewers before they premiere in theaters! Some of the HDNet Movies
“Sneak Previews” have included the Academy Award nominated “Enron: The
Smartest Guys in the Room”, Toronto Film Festival nominee “The War
Within”, and “Bubble”, the first of six movies by acclaimed director
Steven Soderbergh and produced exclusively for HDNet Films and, most
recently, “Broken English”, from Zoe Cassavetes, starring Gena Rowlands,
Parker Posey, Drea de Matteo and Griffin Dunne. Upcoming Sneak Previews
include “Quid Pro Quo”, starring Nick Stahl and Vera Farmiga, “Hunter”,
the story of the life and death of infamous gonzo journalist Hunter S.
Thompson from director Alex Gibney and producer Graydon Carter,
“Cashback”, written and produced by Sean Ellis, “Flawless”, starring
Michael Caine and Demi Moore, “Closing Escrow”, a real estate
mockumentary featuring April Barnett and Allen Friedman, and “Mr.
Untouchable”, a documentary film about Leroy ‘Nicky’ Barnes who was the
black Godfather of Harlem in the 1970’s. Many more are to come.

Launched in 2001 by Mark Cuban and General Manager Philip Garvin, the
HDNet networks are available on AT&T, Bright House Networks, Charter
Communications, DIRECTV, DISH Network, Insight, Mediacom, Time Warner
Cable, Verizon and more than 40 NCTC cable affiliate companies. For
more information visit www.hd.net.

** TNS Media Research, Anonymous Digital Return Path Set Top Box Data, the
week ending July 1, 2007. HDNet and HDNet Movies share combination.

###

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Don’t remember where I saw Metcalfe’s law mentioned, but it got me thinking.

Metcalfe’s law states that the more nodes connected to a network the more valuable the network is. Its a simple yet brilliant concept.

Since i have some time on my hands recovering from my hip replacement, I decided to ponder what laws applied to the value of video content and its viewers.

IMHO, there appear to be some simple “rules” that apply to the value of video content. Lets call them my hypothesis

1. The more people that see content when it is originally “broadcast”, regardless of the distribution medium, the more valuable the content.

This is the example of “appointment viewing” or “breaking news”. The more people who planned to watch, or did so as soon as they heard about it, the more valuable the content.

Call this the “heat check”.

10mm people watching a tv show at the same time creates more value for the content than 10mm people watching the same show on demand over the course of time.

2. The greater the number of people that watch content simultaneously, the greater the emotional attachment of the viewer.

The greater amount of confirmation that a viewer can get from other viewers that there were others, like them that made an appointment to see a video or immediately changed their plans to watch a video, the greater the “we ” effect and emotional attachment.

3. The longer the period required for content to saturate viewer demand, the cheaper the cost of delivery. Without the constraint of time, the originator to choose the least expensive method of delivery

4. The shorter the period required to saturate demand, the more expensive the cost. This is not intuitive. At first blush it may seem that broadcast technologies can reach an immense audience in realtime with a zero marginal cost of delivery to a new viewer.

However, there is a signicant cost to build a network that can saturate demand immediately. It usually takes constrained resources, whether it is spectrum for broadcast networks, the delivery infrastructure to reach an uncapped audience and the ability to deliver it without time constraints.

5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.

I thought this might create some interesting discussion that I could learn from, so here you go !

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Don’t remember where I saw Metcalfe’s law mentioned, but it got me thinking.

Metcalfe’s law states that the more nodes connected to a network the more valuable the network is. Its a simple yet brilliant concept.

Since i have some time on my hands recovering from my hip replacement, I decided to ponder what laws applied to the value of video content and its viewers.

IMHO, there appear to be some simple “rules” that apply to the value of video content. Lets call them my hypothesis

1. The more people that see content when it is originally “broadcast”, regardless of the distribution medium, the more valuable the content.

This is the example of “appointment viewing” or “breaking news”. The more people who planned to watch, or did so as soon as they heard about it, the more valuable the content.

Call this the “heat check”.

10mm people watching a tv show at the same time creates more value for the content than 10mm people watching the same show on demand over the course of time.

2. The greater the number of people that watch content simultaneously, the greater the emotional attachment of the viewer.

The greater amount of confirmation that a viewer can get from other viewers that there were others, like them that made an appointment to see a video or immediately changed their plans to watch a video, the greater the “we ” effect and emotional attachment.

3. The longer the period required for content to saturate viewer demand, the cheaper the cost of delivery. Without the constraint of time, the originator to choose the least expensive method of delivery

4. The shorter the period required to saturate demand, the more expensive the cost. This is not intuitive. At first blush it may seem that broadcast technologies can reach an immense audience in realtime with a zero marginal cost of delivery to a new viewer.

However, there is a signicant cost to build a network that can saturate demand immediately. It usually takes constrained resources, whether it is spectrum for broadcast networks, the delivery infrastructure to reach an uncapped audience and the ability to deliver it without time constraints.

5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.

I thought this might create some interesting discussion that I could learn from, so here you go !

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Don’t remember where I saw Metcalfe’s law mentioned, but it got me thinking.

Metcalfe’s law states that the more nodes connected to a network the more valuable the network is. Its a simple yet brilliant concept.

Since i have some time on my hands recovering from my hip replacement, I decided to ponder what laws applied to the value of video content and its viewers.

IMHO, there appear to be some simple “rules” that apply to the value of video content. Lets call them my hypothesis

1. The more people that see content when it is originally “broadcast”, regardless of the distribution medium, the more valuable the content.

This is the example of “appointment viewing” or “breaking news”. The more people who planned to watch, or did so as soon as they heard about it, the more valuable the content.

Call this the “heat check”.

10mm people watching a tv show at the same time creates more value for the content than 10mm people watching the same show on demand over the course of time.

2. The greater the number of people that watch content simultaneously, the greater the emotional attachment of the viewer.

The greater amount of confirmation that a viewer can get from other viewers that there were others, like them that made an appointment to see a video or immediately changed their plans to watch a video, the greater the “we ” effect and emotional attachment.

3. The longer the period required for content to saturate viewer demand, the cheaper the cost of delivery. Without the constraint of time, the originator to choose the least expensive method of delivery

4. The shorter the period required to saturate demand, the more expensive the cost. This is not intuitive. At first blush it may seem that broadcast technologies can reach an immense audience in realtime with a zero marginal cost of delivery to a new viewer.

However, there is a signicant cost to build a network that can saturate demand immediately. It usually takes constrained resources, whether it is spectrum for broadcast networks, the delivery infrastructure to reach an uncapped audience and the ability to deliver it without time constraints.

5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.

I thought this might create some interesting discussion that I could learn from, so here you go !

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