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Of the thousands of hopefuls who line up to audition for American Idol there are invariably a few who can’t sing and don’t know it.  There are also a few contestants with phenomenal talents.  The vast pool of wishful candidates fall somewhere in the middle of these two poles.   For that hopeful majority, producers and talent scouts stand as the gatekeepers to commercial success.  These overworked middlemen are charged with the tough task of plucking the talents from the pile and throwing back those unworthy.  Some amazing talents will be promoted (and some not so amazing ones), and likewise, some amazing talents will be overlooked.  It’s the nature of the business; at least the way it’s been so far.

The same phenomenon exists in publishing too.  Many dream of writing the great American novel, or even some low brow burlesque romance tale, but select few navigate the rough waters from hope to finished draft to literary agent through publication.

Fortunately, in the views of many aspiring talents, the gatekeepers have lost some power.   Changes in communication and media technologies, specifically, blogging, net video and the music industry, have helped bring about Click to Read More

Combine one part traffic pattern analysis (who links in from what and leaves to where), a tablespoon of popularity ranking, two parts subject matter, a dash of keywords and a map showing the picture it all yields and you have a recipe for funding.   Buzz Logic, a San Francisco startup focused on gleaning market data from blogs and social networks  recently closed a Series A financing round with $9.6 m.

Considering Blogs are today’s water cooler conversations, it’s not a bad market to jump into.  Social media (blogs and social networks) are accessible to almost anyone, at any time, and provide a discussion forum for anyone’s rants and raves.   Does Red Sox Nation approve of the Bo Sox’ new pitcher? Ask the blogs.  Nintendo Wii or PS3? Ask the blogs.   Are horror/suspense thrillers still a hot film genre? Ask the blogs.   If you can get them to answer you might just have something.

Buzz Logic, differentiates itself from search engines, which rank popularity of a site or a search term. The Buzz Logic approach is to consider the popularity of subjects and speakers, in a moment and over time,  and then maps the spread of conversations to determine who the most influential members of a discussion are.  Click to Read More

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), reported Q2 numbers exceeding most targets but showing slight drag do to the delays with Vista and Office 2007.   

Revenue for the quarter was up to $12.5b from $11.8b.  Earnings were down to 42.63b from $3.65b last year.

Strong Xbox sales led to a 76% increase in revenue for the entertainment and devices division.  But with each Xbox sold at a loss, the division showed an operating loss of $289m on revenue of $2.96b.  Guidance expects 12m units to be sold by June.

The online services division, which is chasing Google and Yahoo showed an operating loss of $155m on revenue that was up 5%.  In the Search component of the division, for December ComScore Networks ratings showed Microsoft’s share of US searches down to 10.5% from just over 14% last year. 

More detailed press coverage on Microsoft’s finances can be found at:

Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Marketwatch

Netflix  (NASDAQ: NFLX), reported Q4 earnings.

The company announced earnings of $14.9m ($0.21/share) versus  $3.3m (excluding a $34.9m tax gain) in the prior year.  The returns beat consensus which projected $0.15/share. 

During the period, Netflix added 654k new subscribers.  Revenue was up 44% to $277.2m

More detailed press coverage on Netflix’ finances can be found at:

Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Marketwatch

Earlier today, the wire services reported Nintendo had partnered with the Associated Press to provide an online news service through the Wii gaming platform.  Network connected Wii consoles will be able to access a free news channel through an Opera Web Browser.  As part of a 2 year multimedia distribution contract, the free news channel (there are no plans for it to be ad-supported at this time) will provide content from AP in multiple languages including French, English, Spanish and German. Additional Japanese language news will be provided by Goo, a Japanese news company.

The planned interface for the news is a graphic map.  Users will be able to navigate around the map to find regional news, and can zoom in and out to expand focus, all using the Wii’s innovative motion sensing controller.

Click to Read More

Ebay (NASDAY: EBAY), reported Q4 earnings late Wednesday.

4th quarter profit was up 24% with sales volume beating expectations.  Net income was up 5 cents a share over the prior year with net income at $346m.  Sales were up 29% to $1.72b.

The Paypal payments division showed robust growth with payments up 37% to revenues of $417m.  The communications division, home of Skype, showed revenue of $66m which according to comments by CEO Meg Whitman translated to “not yet developing as quickly as we hoped..”

For the coming year, Ebay raised guidance to project earnings for 2007 to be in the range of $1.25 to $1.29 a share; ahead of analyst average estimates of $1.23.  The increase is partly result of expected revenue from the acquisition of Stubhub (est. $120m) and growth at Paypal.

More detailed press coverage on Ebay’s finances can be found at:

Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Marketwatch

Yahoo  (NASDAQ: YHOO), reported Q4 earnings.

The company announced profit was down 61% to $269m from $683m but revenues were up 13% to $1.7b.   Free cash flow was $278m for the quarter.

Average analyst expectations were earnings of earnings of 13 cents per share on earnings. Excluding items including stock based compensation expense, the company had earnings of 21 cents a share.

Also of interest, the Yahoo Answers, Flickr, del.icio.us and Yahoo! Video properties surpassed 100m unique monthly visitors and 50% of those users are under 35 years old; a statistic the company says is better than both MySpace and Facebook.

In the company’s earnings call, there was significant attention on the coming quarters as well as high expectations for the implementation of the Panama modular advertising platform.

More detailed press coverage on Yahoo’s finances can be found at:

Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Marketwatch