On my flight from Minneapolis to Vegas today I picked up a copy of Fortune Magazine, which had and the founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe of MySpace on the cover. The article, “MySpace Cowboys” was pretty good describing the founding of the company as well as the acquisition by News Corp.
With an acquisition price of $580 million, Tom and Chris are still singing the “we’ll keep working as long as we can keep building the vision” song. Well, not exactly, but pretty close. They do seem pretty committed to continuing the journey of making MySpace all about the users and the community.
Also in this issue of Fortune was a short piece, “Don’t Touch that Dial” on Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube and whether the monster-popular video sharing site will ever make any money. I took the article as being pretty optimistic, even with midget sized airplane seats, a person bigger than me to my left and someone thoroughly enjoying the recline feature of their seat in front of me. Throw in some top notch turbulence reminiscent of my experiences with the downward spiral of a C130 way back in the day and you have one unique reading experience.
So what am I doing in Vegas? Waiting for a connection to San Francisco actually. I am definitley enjoying the free internet here, but not the 101 degree temperature. AllBusiness.com has flown me out to do some video on search engine optimization tips for some promotions they are doing with subject matter experts. The video taped interviews will be edited into 15 or so segments and promoted on the AllBusiness.com web site.
Which brings me back to YouTube. Seems to me, it would be an interesting thing for companies like AllBusiness.com to post the videos they’re making with subject matter experts to YouTube as part of the promotion. Will they do it? I’m not sure, but I will certainly make my best social media optimization pitch tomorrow when we do the interviews.
I was actually in Vegas over the weekend (for bachelor party purposes) and just got back. I’ve never been to an airport that offered free wifi – I loved it.
Too bad they didn’t use Tom’s infamous “thumbs up” photo for the article.
All I saw of Vegas was that pyramid casino from the window at my gate. A bachelor party sounds verrrry interesing Jonathan. Glad to hear you made it back alive. 🙂