Social Farming, think Gold Farming with Social Identities
The business of Gold Farming – where paid gamers amass gold to sell to less-experienced users to game the MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games like WOW (“World of Warcraft”) is a well known practice. In a parallel world of connections, perhaps equivalent to “gold” in terms of business leads or viral marketing armies to launch brands, one could imagine a new kind of innovative farming for profit around social media relationships. Think “Twitter sweatshops,” “Facebook factories,” “Diggsourcing” and “LinkedIn (Assembly) Lines.” After the jump, a metaphorical goldmine…
William Morris + Endeavor, Future of the Mega-Agency
The mega-agency merger is made: William Morris Endeavor (WME) Entertainment is the combined talent agency merging film, television, music and book publishing between WMA and Endeavor. Architected on one side by Ari Emanuel, who left ICM (under Wiatt) nearly 15 years ago, and his senior partners – Patrick Whitesell (former CAA), Adam Venit and Rick Rosen (the fourth, or fifth, principal was Tom Strickler, who resigned presumably because he was anti-merger); and, by Jim Wiatt and Dave Wirtschafter from the WMA, now Chairman and Co-CEO, respectively, with Emanuel and Whitesell. A breakdown of the deal math, what it means, and where they go next in relation to CAA.
The Agency/Deal Math:
With Endeavor’s 80-100 agents (about 280 total employees, per LAT) and WMA’s 150 agents (800 employees), Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily’s (DHD) blog, which expertly followed the merger, predicts 100 or so layoffs over the next few weeks.
Add to that the requisite agencies’ assimilation issues – agents/agency poaching and conflicts, agents-turned-managers, change of client marketshare – comes the understanding that while this merger helps both companies survive the current economic storm and a changing entertainment environment (lower DVD revs and TV budgets, less upfront/more backend for theatrical).
With combined revenues of $300-325M – research points to a 2:1 split between WMA:Endeavor – the goal will be to challenge the dominant CAA, while maintaining course with current clients.
And with the new classification as WME “Entertainment” (as opposed to “Agency” or better “Media”), one wonders if they will stretch the model as has been seen with the Endeavor-MRC relationship.
The toss-up will be how the two sides intermingle and work together to produce coherent results for their shared clients. Early on, Emanuel said, “We need a bigger boat,” given the merger exploration process which took an emotional toll on both sides, not to mention their clients.
Endeavor Advantages:
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WMA Advantages:
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Both sides now realize that any newly merged company has to consist of only 150 core movie/tv agents at most. The mantra of these negotiations is “make it smaller”. That means, of WMA’s 150 agents, and Endeavor’s 100 agents, about 100 from the combined total will have to be let go. And since CAA’s Richard Lovett has pursued a policy of 100% marketshare when it comes to clients, the new WMA-Endeavor is making as its goal to rep only the elite Top 2%.
After the jump, more on the new agency makeup, the financial value of the enterprise, and the new-and-improved mega-talent agency skirmishes and wars to follow…
MySpace Facelifts COO+CPO: Michael Jones, Jason Hirschhorn
Fox Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller is a busy recruiter these days. After bringing in Owen Van Natta as new CEO, Michael Jones (formerly of Userplane which sold to Miller’s AOL, and recently Tsavo Agency) and Jason Hirschhorn (formerly President of Sling Media and CDO of MTV Networks) as COO and CPO (Chief Product Officer), respectively. Think “AOL + MTV [x Facebook] = New MySpace.” After the jump, insight into where this troika takes MySpace to innovate the social network/portal. Read more >>
MySpace Facelift, New CEO Owen Van Natta
MySpace’s “loss of face” to Facebook, a rough and tumble economy and a pivotal change of company seats, i.e., Peter Chernin, at News Corp (and MySpace’s own COO and senior technical team’s exodus) has contributed to a major executive facelift of MySpace. While their track record of change with Jeff Berman as President of Sales and Marketing and pitch towards being framed as a “social portal” has helped, the inability to keep up with Facebook’s growth rate and product innovation has forced change at MySpace. With the forthcoming announcement (today) by new CDO Jon Miller of former Facebook COO, Owen Van Natta, to the CEO spot, Fox and Murdoch are betting on social competitiveness to regain position. After the jump, we’ll look at Van Natta, and outside choice, Jason Calacanis’ recommendations. Read more >>
iPod Touch + Skype = Free Mobile Calls
Chalk this up to a little next generation (i.e., teens) or the international community who travel often, but it seems everyone under 20 and those abroad from Australia/UK/New Zealand/etc. are dropping their iPhones in favor of iPod Touches. Now with Skype and a good wi-fi connection, there’s no cost calling plans. How’s that for innovating your office, kids’ utility fees or travel abroad access…? Read more >>
Jerry Maguire’s Manifesto Revisited, The Things We Think And Do Not Say
With one late-night manifesto, fictional sports agent – Jerry Maguire, played spot-on by Tom Cruise – removed himself from corporate contention and revolutionized his life and career. How many of us today can say the same without nervously eyeing our 401K’s or reviewing our latest Chase credit statements? It’s not easy to “Show. Me. The. Money.” as Rod Tidwell (Maguire’s lone client, aka Cuba Gooding Jr.) demanded Jerry repeat, when the money is the check – as paychecks so often arrive “paycheck to paycheck.” This post is the preamble to the “Anti-Studio: Future of the Mega-Agency” article that we’re all writing at New Medici. You have to ask yourself, given the recession: are you doing what you love? And is your business – whether executive or entrepreneurial – a long-time affair? Is this recession a crisis point or a moment to celebrate that we can innovate our way back to greatness? An overly long excerpt from Jerry Maguire’s “The Things We Think And Do Not Say” manifesto after the jump… Read more >>
Reelist: Brüno vs. Borat for Box Office
Sasha Baron Cohen’s Brüno - the Universal and Media Rights Capital (MRC) film – promises to push the boundaries of taste in a very cash-positive way when it opens on July 10th. Below, the “Red Band” restricted trailer – MySpace video is on-and-off, so via TrailerAddict:
After the jump, a comparison of Brüno v. Borat with 14 Brüno aggregated clips to boot… Read more >>
Forbes Dropping Billionaires with Few Overperformers
A year of steady losses. Of the 793 billionaires on Forbes’ 2009 Billionaire List, 656 lost money while 44 surprisingly added multi-millions in the downturn. Bill Gates returned to the top position ($40B net worth, down $18B) with Warren Buffett ($37B, down $25B) and Carlos Slim ($35B, down $25B) changing the first three seats. From a list of 1,125 billionaires recently, and $1.4T (that’s “trillion“) lost, we’ll look at a few of the past year’s success stories – and offer discussion and links to how those few overperformed. Read more >>
MySpace on the Bounty
No mutiny here actually, but we like the pun – today, MySpace’s COO and SVPs of Engineering + Product Strategy jumped off the boat. Noted as a “rising star,” 27-year-old Amit Kapur (MySpace’s COO) is leaving for a start-up after 13 months at the social network portal. In charge of global ops, it’s a fresh turn for Kapur; and a dynamic story of an acquired start-up supporting player turning into a new, untethered, start-up featured role. Think Googler turned Xoogler metaphor. Read more >>
Peter Chernin to Exit Murdoch’s News Corp., Who Wins?
We wouldn’t have predicted such a move with the succession plans of most studio heads being ‘muddled’ at best, but Rupert Murdoch (Innovator/Benefactor) has made a industry-loud judgment call. Based on Murdoch’s legacy plan for his son, James Murdoch, to take over from Chernin, News Corp. President & COO, this leaves Chernin with a 6-year production deal, $40M in severance and a number of other high-flying amenities. So, who wins? Chernin or Murdoch? More after the jump… Read more >>
Reelist.com: Oscar Night
A swell of interest in this year’s Oscars with a lot of predictable winners. A spirited Independent Spirit Awards yesterday with a few surprise winners (Penelope Cruz, Tom McCarthy for The Visitor, and The Wrestler as best feature, among others). And to top it off, a river of new blogs with more penetration into Hollywood studio behavior.
Here’s a few we’ll be watching tonight via RSS and comparing to tomorrow’s trade coverage:
- The Wrap: Sharon Waxman’s new Hollywood, trade-scrimmager.
- The Daily Beast: Tina Brown’s tabloid-take on politics and media. Read more >>
What’s the “Thread Count” of Your Friend Count?
I had coffee with a longtime investor colleague who threw a nice metaphor in my direction: “thread count” as it related to the depth of your friendships. As we all initiate, accept or add new digital relationships into our lives (yes, I did get ‘social’ with LinkedIn back in its early years with 1,500 linkedins; more recently with ~650 Facebook friends), how do we measure the relative quality of the quantity of friends we connect to? Do we connect to add relative quality value to our own persona, or is it done merely to create a personal, i.e., quantitative, fan club of sorts? Read more >>
Social Media vs. Privacy on the Web
I’ll admit it. I’m a social media junkie. And it’s not difficult to satisfy my addiction, considering the large number of social media sites that are quickly popping up as of late. But it has also got me thinking – considering the popularity of social media sites these days, should we be more concerned about our privacy? 5 years ago, it was only the early adopters who were on sites like MySpace and Friendster and most people were weary of sharing too much on the internet. These days Facebook has well over 100 million registered users, and over 222 million visitors per month. After the jump, a list of some of latest and greatest social media sites, along with ways you can ensure that the whole world knows everything about you… Read more >>
Sabbaticalist: Tom Freston
How’s this for a final (yet not final) corporate act: September 5, 2006, 1,500+ Viacom employees crowded the corporate plaza to wish Tom Freston a goodbye when he was released from his contract by Sumner Redstone. Since that fateful send off, Freston has visited over 30 countries on what some would call a “$60M Sabbatical,” i.e., the amount of severance he received after serving 19 years at Viacom. Add to that, Freston became “non-committal” – not in the typical sense (he still helped causes and companies he admired), but more in the sense that he didn’t need a job as many came calling. He became “The Sabbaticalist.” Read more >>
What Would Google Do (to Innovate Next)?
Jeff Jarvis’ book came out this past week – yes, we recommend buying it immediately as we did – and then BusinessWeek does a related cover story. Most be a good week for Jarvis, whose BuzzMachine blog and regular Davos’ accolades help him challenge businesses to iterate more openly and innovate their practices. Per Chris Anderson (of the Long Tail): “Google is not just a company, it is an entirely new way of thinking about understanding who we are and what we want.” But where does Google go next? Read more >>
The 10,000-Hour Rule
Start tracking your hours… Malcolm Gladwell’s third book increases his lead in the ‘innovation as essay’ market. Outliers: The Story of Success walks in with a metaphor: that it takes 10k hours, as a general rule, of experience to become successful. Examples: Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems (early access to university computer labs), Bill Gates (early to high school computers), and The Beatles’ crucible (8-hour gigs in Hamburg 7 days a week, before they ‘invaded’ the US).