Fred Destin

David Lynch on DailyMotion

I am an unconditional fan of David Lynch.   From Eraserhead to the incredible first season of Twin Peaks to that dark gem, Mullholand Drive, I have much to thank him for.

Armed with a big can opener I would, if I could, open l the weird landscapes in his head (presumably to a soundtrack of persistent wind and Angelo Badalamenti).  As a proxy I stumbled across this simple and direct video on DailyMotion.  He was in Paris presenting his new opus, Inland Empire, and gave one of our users, Thomas Clement, a very candid and open interview.  Apparently he loves Chuck Norris. Enjoy.

Asked what kind og movie Inland Empire is: "I agree it is more abstract but there 's the possibility for sure of seeing what it is"

 

David Lynch
Uploaded by clemtom

technorati tags:dailymotion, davidlynch, thomasclement

In Gotham City

I am back in New York this week for the Always-On Media Conference which I hope to be covering over the next few days.  I had a couple of days to enjoy this greatest of cities and brought you back a few snaps from the front, having braved the brutal -8C for these snapshots.  If you don't believe me, check out the Gothamist himself and his smoking manhole cover.

Reflections off the TimeWarner tower on Columbus Square.  When the sun shines on New York it really is the most glorious city.

I never really worried about getting mugged in NY, but I do worry about the odd hit and run.  Here's why !

If you love your brother, tell him with a bench.

A room with a view at the fantastic Mandarin.

Times Square makes even the police looks glamorous

MS Vista: Stemming the XUL Runner tide with huge adverts.  Ain't going to work.

M&Ms.  Soon, they'll be in charge.

Because he's worth it.

Time to go.  The Renzo Piano redesigned JP Morgan Library beckons...

technorati tags:newyork, alwayson

Martin's Valley Brain

Skype is fun, especially when you are having discussions with the likes of Martin Schaedel.  I was telling him I was racking my brain over some company, he said it was very important to keep thinking so as to avoid "Valley Brain".  That I guess is the techie variation of hare brain and a reflection of how many bizarre deals seem to be getting funded inthe US these days in search of the last glimmers of social networking greatness.  Plus Martin's smart enough (I think) he can say that kind of stuff.  Hi5 everyone !

Conferences in Jan-Feb: AO, Lift, FOWA

A quick overview of where to find me in the coming weeks should you want to meet.  Reach at fdestin [at] atlas venture [dot] com.

First off is Always-On Media in New York (Jan 29-31) at the Mandarin.  How very start up.  I will be moderating on session on the Power of Mashups, with the CEO's of Meebo, Etelos, Dave.TV, and ClipSync.  It has nothing to do with improving stamina and fitness, but I hope it will provide some good mental stimulation.  At other times I can be found at the Mandarin Spa of course, with my therapist.

After that off to LIFT, away from West Village grime and on to pure Geneva air for some mind-refreshing social futurism.  Even Jacques Attali apparently felt compelled to attend.  Bold predictions, radical thinking and fondue.  What more can you ask for ?

Then, surprise: no 3GSM this year.  I decided to give it a pass.  I am cross with my mobile phone about having less battery life and impossibly badly designed menus (It's a Nokia N70).  Oh, and all of my colleagues are going.

Instead I am going to Carson's Future of Web Apps for some geeky goodness.  Feb 20-22 in London, so I can also put the kids to bed.  Our boys at MOO are flying the flag !

You can't get anywhere on this Moo cards bike but it sure looks pretty.
Courtesy DonSorsa.

technorati tags:fowa, carsonworkshop, lift07, alwayson, aomedia, moo, moocards

That's all for 2006 folks !

Blogging vacation until Second week of Jan.  See you then for a fantastic 2007.

This video, courtesy of Mauro at Mangrove, describes my life pretty well (the bit where the guy drops his head on the desk).  Enjoy.

If you ever doubted YouTube was a social network...

Check this out.  I was spending (wasting ?) some time on Alexa and decided to look at what YouTube used to look like in April 2005 courtesy of WayBackMachine.  The answer is: a video dating site.

Phew !

One of my four cited inspirations for blogging is still writing :-)

Ode to GapingVoid

Thanks for the sanity check.

Codor rumour

Weird rumour that Julien is about to join a disruptive, stealth Open Source startup project known under its code name of XUL-Office.  Surprising given recent posts.

  Courtesy GapingVoid

UTube sues YouTube

Has to be the news of the day, which I got through my great information service MarketClusters (disclosure: Founder Nick Gregg owes me a beer):

Tube and piper maker UTube is suing video-sharing site YouTube for using its name, according to mashable.com. The pipe and machinery business claims its website is constantly being taken offline due to traffic from users looking for YouTube, costing it lost customers due to lack of online presence. UTube claims its number of unique visitors has increased from around 1,500 to over 2m a month, forcing it to move domain hosts five times to cope with the traffic. The company says their bandwidth bills have also increased one hundredfold since the launch of the video sharing site. No financial details of the suit were disclosed.

 

Utube was a mover and shaker on Alexa as noted recently.  Not everyone is happy about the UTube acquisition !  But I will bet you that everyone in the tube business knows this company by now, so great marketing !  What they should really do is a commercial deal with YouTube to host a video on the website and redirect the traffic, and for that produce a nice custom video ad for YouTube (with a pre-roll ad to defray the bandwidth costs), and turn this into a cash neutral marketing machine for them.

technorati tags:utube, youtube

End-to-end e-commerce

My son is turning one, so we decided to buy him a mega version of his favourite toy.  I bought it off Bebeo.com, a great little e-commerce site which Michel de Guilhermier's blog made me aware of.

The package arrived at my Paris office and, surprise, included a returns address at vente-privee.com.  My PA then told me she bought so much stuff off vente-privee, and in particular how we was impressed by the price discounts they did on a flash sale of ... Bebeo.

As anyone in France will tell you, vente-privee is one of these (fairly discrete) French success stories of European e-commerce.  Supposedly they did over €100M in H1 !  What I found interesting is that vente-privee achieves a virtuous circle of e-tailing:

• it sweats its assets better by providing logistics to other e-tailers
• it is able to provide added value to its e-tailer clients by managing their excess inventory through flash sales
• since vente-privee works directly with the brands on excess inventory (rather than wholesalers or importers) I imagine the logistics integration can be pretty deep upstream as well
  

This looks like a classical win-win situation and a good scale play.  And great homepage graphics, straight from Vegas no doubt !

UPDATE: I got an email from Nathalie Genty (BEBEO manager) who indicated that at the moment there are no discount sales and in fact the brands do not wish them to do so.  I think that it is natural for retailers to monetize their excess inventory through controlled channels; however Nathalie's positioning with her brands is that she is great, protective environment and preserves their brand equity. 

technorati tags:bebeo, micheldeguilhermier, vente-privee

Suddenly NewsCorp thinks it "owns" its users ....

We all thought Newscorp would fumble on Myspace at some point; it might be starting.  Look at the recent confluence of social networking news and you will clearly see to what extent the users are now calling the shots:

• Facebook introduces Feed features that some of its users dislike and gets an immediate large scale rebellion on its hands, leading to a classic post from Zuckerberg (Calm Down, Breathe, We Hear You).
  
• Bebo's Michael Birch introduces "user-selected advertising" after listenining to the requirements of its users (NMA 17.08.06) - "Your request is our demand, well, as long as we think it's a good idea."
• YouTube recently got slammed for content ownership issues in its new terms of use and promptly moved to change its policies.  [Compare and contrast the title of the post to Zuckerberg's ;-)]

On the back of all this, the MySpace owners arrogantly announce they will replicate Web2 since, after all, it's "their traffic" (courtesy of Techcrunch)

“If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flicker, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace,” Chernin said at the conference. “There’s no reason why we can’t build a parallel business.”

We all know who Peter Chernin is speaking to here: investors.  But what is he trying to achieve ? A short-term spike in price share in exchange for long-term decline ?

Fred has a nice analogy to AOL which I could paraphrase as follows: AOL made the mistake of going "walled garden" on the mistaken belief that its access to traffic and premium content would allow it to flourish.  The internet wants to be free, open API is our mantra and so on.  [There is an interesting string of contrary comments which make for good reading.]  But for once I think Fred stops short of capturing the real power of social network users.

I think that younger users, members of the digital era, have truly claimed the space; it's theirs, it does not really belong to whatever company operates the site, not anymore.  Your users own you; they are extremely vocal about what they like and do not like.  They collaborate in shaping your product.  Your business is officially run by 15-year old girls from now on [or whatever your user demographic might be].  Ignore them at your peril ...

technorati tags:myspace, bebo, facebook, peterchernin, avc

Who says VC is boring ?

My partner Graham O'Keeffe alerted me to this pretty cool juxtaposition which has one of our portfolio companies, Paris Hilton and orgy in the same headline.