Kleiner Perkins Invests in China with a $360M Fund

Kleiner Perkins, one of the most respected venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, but also one of its most parochial, has finally decided to invest in china.

It has just announced a $360 million China Fund, to invest in “high-growth industries,” including Internet, media, wireless, health and green technologies. To help it make the investments, Kleiner has hired three partners from the Shanghai venture firm, TDF Capital, and another partner from Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund.

This marks a big turnaround, and is an important and essential move for Kleiner. Until recently, Kleiner had famously resisted opening offices elsewhere, saying it was well-served by staying local. It was hard to argue with: Kleiner has backed a long list of Silicon Valley hits: Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Genentech, Google — the list goes on. For 35 years, the firm remained cocooned in Menlo Park, Calif., where it has worked out of its single leafy office on San Hill Road, but remained among the very best firms.

Robert Scobble: “Ebay is about to announce a gadget that you can put on your blog and consumers can buy products - but not leave your site”

Robert Scobble - “I study how people outside of ‘us’ find people and things”

It’s a Google World:
Podcasters aren’t optimizing their content for Search Engine Optimization - and they are leaving traffic on the table.

Aggregate of the traffic is what gets you found. “Google is worth understanding” - How do people find you? When someone searches for “funny videos” - you’ll want to be found. “If you’re not thinking about how you rank on Google - you’re missing a ton of new business.”

It’s a People World and Word of Mouth World:
Robert thinks that we need to not ignore the word of mouth traffic - remember that, especially with Youtube, AskaNinja, Twitter, etc.
When he reads his feed reader - things that make him slow down are keywords, interesting photos, or “authoritative” people. These are the things that makes his eye stop and actually read the content.

It’s a Distribution World:
If you want to care about the apple tv - you need to care about the format, higher resolutions work better and will drive more traffic. It takes twice the time to code - and the bandwidth can be spendy, but you need to listen to what your readers or listeners care are the formats that they use.
Joost is starting a sister site that uses a “mashed P2P network that is far cheaper than today” - this will allow for the lower level Vbloggers to bring their content to the masses.

Getting bloggers to talk about you is exponential - it will bring in a ton of traffic!
“At Podtech we built a player that allows users to put content on their own site - which allows users to consume content without going outside of your site, and traffic trippled in 1 week.”

Nice little Tidbit of news:
“Ebay is about to announce a gadget that you can put on your blog and consumers can buy products - but not leave your site” — Look out AuctionAds!

Marshall Kirkpatrick - Getting access to information early in the conversation

Marshall Kirkpatrick Speaking at the PodCastHotel in San Francisco - Live Blog Post!

Getting access to information early in the conversation-
Timeliness - reporting on information as early in the news as possible. This is key to building the media properties that has built. SplashCast has been on digg several times, and that’s because of the timeliness of the content and news that is being broken.
Splashcast being dugg on the front page drive between 3,000 to 15,000 uniques to their site. Scribbed.com has had 9 front page diggs in the last month and this is due to timely PDFs that they have provided.

Twitter “is good for community rather than breaking news”. The earthquake story has been one of Marshall’s favorite stories related to Twitter.

Production time for podcasting or video is enormous - and that slows down the amount of speed that you have to break a story. The biggest changes in video blogging will be quickness to bring content online. Using Twitter or other live event notification tools can be used in conjunction with video blogging to let others know that a new story is being broken, needs digging, etc.

YouStream style live video - where it is an end-to-end model is the best that we have, and others will be moving towards this.
Free Speech Radio News uses several different podcasters to provide news - this is a great way to get a lot of content from many sources, quickly.

Reaching out to low-bandwidth and less tech-savy users is really the key for growth in podcasting and video blogging - bringing the un-tapped crowed into the “know” about these type of technologies.

Mini Cologne - has a program in San Francisco that teaches minorities to record and promote pod casts - this one of Marshall’s favorite examples of others reaching into the un-tapped crowed.

PodcastHotel Speakers on Saturday

Today’s events at the podcasthotel are some interesting ones that you won’t want to miss. This is probably the highlight of the day for anyone that wants to tune into the live feed!

1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
The State of Vlogging: What’s new?
How is the community evolving? How can artists get into vlogging as a way to promote themselves and their work? We will address how enabling technologies have changed the way we view and create video content online; are broader audiences ready? Will there be increased demand as with online video sites? How will this impact news distribution in the future?

Moderator:
Eddie Codel, PodTech and Geek Entertainment TV

Speakers:
Adriana Gascoigne, bub.blicio.us
Schlomo Rabinowitz, Vloggercon/CNET
Justin Kan, Justin.tv
Josh Wolf, The Revolution will Be Televised

Google 1Q Profit Rises 69 Percent - Blowing Away Estimates

Google Inc.’s first-quarter profit rose 69 percent, maintaining the online search leader’s penchant for blowing past analyst estimates.

The Mountain View-based company said Thursday that it earned $1 billion, or $3.18 cents per share, during the first three months of the year. That compared with net income of $592.3 million, or $1.95 per share, at the same time last year.

If not for expenses incurred for employee stock compensation, Google said it would have earned $3.68 per share. That figure topped the average estimate of $3.30 per share among analyst surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Quarterly revenue reached a new company high of $3.66 billion, a 63 percent increase from $2.25 billion last year.

After subtracting advertising commissions, Google’s revenue totaled $2.53 billion. That amount was about $40 million above analyst estimates.

Pleasant earnings surprises have become routine as Google has established itself as the most profitable — and perhaps most powerful — business on the Internet. Google has now beat analysts’ estimates in all but one of 11 quarters since its ballyhooed initial public offering in August 2004.

The scintillating performance has helped elevate Google’s market value to nearly $150 billion, despite a 6 percent decline in the stock price since the company’s last earnings report.

As usual, Google’s financial firepower flowed from its ubiquitous search engine, which has become the hub of the Internet’s largest advertising network. Google delivered 225.9 billion advertising links during the first quarter, an 85 percent increase from 122.3 billion at the same time last year, according to data compiled by online research firm Nielsen/NetRatings Inc.

Although Google has been trying to develop other revenue channels beyond the Internet, online advertising continues to produce virtually all of its profits. Google is expected to become an even more dominant force with last year’s $1.76 billion acquisition of online video leader YouTube Inc. and its recently announced $3.1 billion deal to buy Internet ad distributor DoubleClick Inc.

I’m Heading to San Fran For the PodCastHotel Event

I’ll be heading down to San Francisco this weekend to attend the PodCastHotel event, and I’m really excited about this one!

The Podcast Hotel is a conference that is going to allow people to get together to hear people speak but also to create their own works, learn a ton, discuss issues and exchange ideas. The Keynote speaker is Andrew Baron, Founder, Rocketboom, which has become of of the most successful video podcasts in the world. I’m looking foward to hearing him speak!

A few of the speakers are:
Chris Pirillo, Founder, Lockergnome
Mary Hodder, chief executive officer, Dabble
Josh Wolf, The Revolution will Be Televised
Robert Scoble, Vice President, Media Development, Podtech

This should be an awesome event, and I’ll post some notes from the speakers over this weekend!

Facebook: Virginia Tech’s Lifeline

“I’m ok at VT” on the Internet social network Facebook has become an online bulletin board for Virginia Tech university students to post their whereabouts and condition after the campus shooting that killed 32 people.

Some 236 groups related to Virginia Tech have been set up on Facebook, a sign that Internet social networks are beginning to replace e-mail and cell phones as the preferred method for spreading information quickly among younger generations.

The “I’m ok at VT” group included a list of those killed as well as details about the condition of others injured.

One student asked about whereabouts of her friend in a posting on Tuesday morning. “She sits beside me in my Abnormal Psychology class and I really want to know if she is ok,” said Victoria Borkey.

A message posted shortly afterward said the person had been one of the shooting fatalities and called for prayers for her family.

Another Facebook member, Andy Millman, pleaded with members of the group to only post information if they are “absolutely positive” about a person’s condition, noting one of his friends was inaccurately described as OK.

Other students set up a Web site, www.vtincident.com, as one outlet to discuss the shooting. Police identified Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student from
South Korea who was a legal U.S. resident, as the shooter.

On Facebook, some students have posted a black ribbon with the university logo “VT” over it to commemorate the victims, replacing their own profile photo, and spread invitations to attend a candlelight vigil on Tuesday evening.

One student on the Virginia Tech campus formed “Christians Praying for Virginia Tech” and attracted 1,378 members. “Canada Supports Virginia Tech” drew 309 participants. Another Canadian led group drew in 5,200. “A Tribute from Muslim Students,” created by a Loyola Chicago student, attracted 32 members.

Another group included repeated slurs against Asians, but members flooded it with messages calling for its removal.

The shift to the Internet came as cell phone networks were stressed during the crisis. Verizon Wireless, the second-biggest U.S. wireless carrier, said it saw four times normal call volume, peaking around midday, hours after the shooting.

In addition to posting notices and cell phone calls, students turned to instant messaging to spread information.

Virginia Tech student body president Adeel Khan said leaders on campus convened an online chat immediately after the shootings to discuss what to do for the shocked university community.

“Every student leader on campus was chatting about what we need to do to start the healing process,” he told CNN. “We’ve mobilized hundreds of students to plan a candlelight vigil for tonight.”

Trump Loses Domain Name Dispute

A recent WIPO Complaint against “estore” a Brooklyn, New York company was brought up by Real Estate Tycoon, Donald Trump. The domain in question was TrumpFurniture.com and The Donald really wanted to get that name into his own hands. In a rare case of Donald not getting his way, the WIPO panelist, Douglas M. Isenberg ruled:

“The nature of the “other word” is particularly important where the trademark is not exclusive to the complainant. In this case, the Panel observes that the TRUMP trademark is also an English word with multiple meanings (including, for example, to “produce a sound as if from a trumpet”; “playing card in the suit that has been declared trumps”; “outdo”; “proclaim or announce with or as if with a fanfare”) and also a part of trademarks owned by parties other than Complainant. In light of the above, the Panel is not persuaded on the record before it that the Disputed Domain Name is confusingly similar to a trademark in which the Complainant has rights.”

It looks like one of my favorite businessmen doesn’t always get his way!

IDNs vs ASCII Domain Name Brand Protection

One thing that I see all the time lately is a company that has an older web 1.0 domain name like companname-fr.com or companyname.fr and yet, they fail to realize that the IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) version of their brand is still unregistered or even worse, it’s owned by someone else. IDNs are growing even more important for businesses, it’s really Local Search of Steroids, you have a person that speaks a certain language, searching from a certain location, and they already have certain expectations about the content that they find when they access the website. IE. if someone in Russia types in школы.com, they would expect to find information about “schools” in Russian.

I came across a thread at IDNforums that discussed this a little but, (it was actually about using “articles” like “EL or “L” in french names, but you’ll see where I am going here…

There are a few examples given where “articles’ are used in French domain names:
lemonde.fr
l-hotel.com
delamour.com

I want to take a closer look at l-hotel.com. This company does have a real usage for this domain as, l’hotel means “the hotel” in French, however this company, L’Hôtel, a large world-wide brand, fails to protect their brand from an IDN standpoint. Hence, take a look at L’Hôtel.com

– Now, if you’re IDN savvy, you’ll realize that the this domain is actually different, when it’s converted to Puny Code, www.xn--lhtel-7ta3296c.com. But the concept remains, if L’Hôtel really wanted to protect their brand, then they need to pay attention to the IDN version of their domain name.

Hotels.com
I will show you another example, and I’ll keep it very simple, but you’ll see that there are many more possible combinations than I use in the example.

Hotels.com owns hotels.fr - But, Do they own; hôtels.com (hotels in French) or hôtels.fr NOPE!

This will be a challenge for companies in the future, as they not only need to protect their brands from a .com perspective, but, in all CCTLDs and in close to 200 different languages. In many cases there may be several companies that can claim rights to the IDN version of a domain name and to a ccTLD version or a combo of the 2. Especially with generic words like “hotel.”

Venture Capital Activity: Technorati Buys Personal Bee, Akami Buys Red Swoosh, LinkedIN, Y Combinator

Technorati Buys Personal Bee

Technorati said Wednesday that it has acquired Berkeley-based Personal Bee, an online service which allows people to create their own personal sites using RSS feeds. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ted Shelton, founder of Personal Bee, will join Technorati as its VP of Business Development.

Akamai Buys Red Swoosh
Akamai Technologies said today that it is acquiring San Mateo-based Red Swoosh, a developer of client side technology for media distribution, in a deal worth $15M. Akamai said it purchased Red Swoosh in an all-stock merger transaction, and that it will use the acquisition to augment its services. Akamai said that Red Swoosh will be integrated into its existing engineering team in California.

LinkedIn Claims 10M Users
Palo Alto-based LinkedIn, the online social networking web site focused on business professionals, said today that it has reached 10 million users for the site. The company said that it is currently growing at the rate of over 130,000 members a week. LinkedIn provides social networking tools targeted at business users, and has received funding from Sequoia Capital, Grelock, Bessemer Venture Partners, and the European Founders Fund.

Y Combinator is Breaking VC Ground!

The Mercury News has a good description of how Y Combinator works:

Here’s how it works: twice a year, Y Combinator invites “hackers,” or programmers, to fill out an online application, outlining who they are and a business idea. One winning batch of teams is funded in winter and the other in summer. With Y Combinator’s help, each becomes a real company - one that is expected to create its product within three months. The amount of money Y Combinator gives each group - $5,000, plus an additional $5,000 per founder - is a pittance for what it asks in return, which is, on average, a 6 percent stake in their start-up. That money has to really stretch. Beyond their living and working expenses, it must also cover relocation costs, as the winter winners must relocate to the Bay Area and the summer winners to the Boston area.

Why I Blog - Am I Crazy?

Thanks to Eric Hebert for tagging me in the latest Blog Meme game!

I’ll jump right into the 5 reasons of why I blog….

To Share Ideas
I’m a very strong believer in collaboration. Some of the best ideas or concepts can come from sharing similar situations or findings and then creating your own conclusions or solutions based on what other people have experienced. I like to share what I am thinking so that hopefully others will learn a little and share that with others.

To Learn From Others
It’s my blog, but you can comment too!!! - Some of the best ideas that I hear from other people come from blog comments that people leave for me after I make a post. Thanks everyone!

To Create Controversy
Do you every get bored surfing blogs with regurgitated content? - I sure do! I like to stirr things up a little bit when I can. It’s always nice to see SEO controversies in the blogging world!

To Be Credible
Everyone gets their five minutes of fame, but once that’s up, what do you do then? Well….how about blogging to get another 15 minutes of fame! Some 4 letter domain name comes to mind here, it starts with a “DI” and ends with a “GG”. All kidding aside, when you do SEO for several years, I have learned quite a bit and it’s great to share with others and build a small following of readers that look upto you and actually care about what you say. Rock on!

To Have a Little Fun
Blogging sometimes can be too serious, I like to chat about things that you wouldn’t normally see from an SEO/M Blog.

Alright, Time for a little Tagging!

Steve Alledia - Good Domaining Friend and Joomla Master
Tim Germer - PPC Pro and founder of NorthWest Noise
Frank Schilling - Blending Domainer & SEO worlds puts him on my list of marketing pros!
Earl Grey - Long Time BH Friend
Paul Madden - The SEOidiot

Google to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1B

Seeking to expand its already well-honed ability to sell targeted Internet advertisements, online search leader Google Inc. said it has agreed to pay $3.1 billion in cash to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc.

The two companies announced the deal after the markets closed Friday. The boards of both companies have approved the takeover, which is expected to close by the end of the year.

New York-based DoubleClick helps its customers place and track online advertising, including search ads, which Google — more than its nearest search competitors Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Microsoft Corp. — has turned into an extremely lucrative business.

Shares of Mountain View-based Google rose 3 cents to $466.32 in after-hours trading. DoubleClick has been privately held since 2005.

The sellers are San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, along with JMI Equity and DoubleClick management.

Commentary:
From DoubleClick’s announcement of the exchange:

Using the new platform, publishers and other sellers make specific inventory available for purchase. Sellers define a minimum bid value - or “reserve price” - for the inventory and specify rules to restrict certain advertisers, formats and content. In parallel, buyers specify the inventory they wish to purchase, and the associated bid value for that inventory. They can also specify a rule to dynamically control the bid so that the bid price is automatically adjusted in line with inventory performance.

From the New York Times:

DoubleClick, which was founded in 1996, provides display ads on Web sites like MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and America Online as well as software to help those sites maximize ad revenue. The company also helps ad buyers — advertisers and ad agencies — manage and measure the effectiveness of their rich media, search and other online ads.

DoubleClick has also recently introduced a Nasdaq-like exchange for online ads that analysts say could be lucrative for Google.

“Google really wants to get into the display advertising business in a big way, and they don’t have the relationships they need to make it happen,” said Dave Morgan, the chairman of Tacoda, an online advertising network. “But DoubleClick does. It gives them immediate access to those relationships.”

From Bloomberg

`Deep Pockets’

Google declined to give financial details for DoubleClick, whose headquarters are in the same building as its own New York offices. The purchase eclipses the $1.65 billion Google spent to buy video-sharing Web site YouTube in November and was 50 percent more than Hellman & Friedman had wanted. A person with knowledge of the talks said last month the firm may seek about $2 billion.

“The amount is mind-blowing,” said Richard Fetyko, an analyst at Merriman, Curhan and Ford in New York. Fetyko follows DoubleClick rival AQuantive Inc., which he rates buy and doesn’t own. “Apparently there was very competitive bidding. Microsoft has deep pockets, but apparently everything has its limits.”

Friday’s Trip Around the Blogosphere

Kathy Sierra’s - Creating Passionate Users
You really ought to check out Kathy Sierra’s recent post about “outspending vs. outteaching”.

Is Google Acquiring G.CN ?

The China Search Engine View blog writes:

[W]hen you search the whois here, you may find there is one item more, “Registrant Organization: 北京刘元和君咨询有限公司” (Jan Liu & Associates), the attorney for Google’s case of googel.com.cn and googel.cn. Has Google really got g.cn?
This looks pretty realistic to me – and I must say that it’s an interesting branding play for Google China!

Speaking of Google – Aaron Wall has a great discussion about Google being and invisible hand in online marketing .

Aaron takes a look at the perception of trusted advertisers and how that affects your marketing spend and budget.

Their newest ad unit is an unmarked text link ad, which only displays any ad notification AFTER people hover over the link. Publishers who refuse to sell links directly will publish the ads, and if they spread anything like AdSense does, what happens to links to commercial sites? What happens when virtually nobody is willing to link to a commercial site unless it is through Google? What happens when their affiliate payouts are not high enough to solicit a review? And what happens to those businesses when Googlers decide they want that market for themselves, like real estate?

Zanox Puts CPA on the Forefornt: Completes Swedish Acquisition

Zanox which is a really cool Germany-based startup company that plays in the multi-channel marketing business has announced that they acquired a company called Free Network. This Swedish company is only a few years old but they offer CPA advertising - which is an area of huge growth for online adverting in the next few years.

Verisign Price Increase Letter to Registrars

Here’s a Copy of the letter that all the registrars received as notice of the price increase mentioned earlier.

To All Registrars,

VeriSign, Inc. and it’s wholly owned subsidiaries (”VNDS”) is hereby notifying all registrars of a fee change for .com and/or .net domain names effective October 15, 2007. In accordance with our contract, ICANN has already been notified. Details as follows:

1. VNDS’ fee for each annual increment of a new and renewal .com domain name
registration and for each transfer of a .com domain name registration from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another will be US $6.42, exclusive of any ICANN Variable Registry-Level Fee (as defined in the .com Registry Agreement) or any other ICANN fee;

and

2. VNDS’ fee for each annual increment of a new and renewal .net domain name
registration and for each transfer of a .net domain name registration from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another will be US $3.85, exclusive of any ICANN Variable Registry-Level Fee (as defined in the .net Registry Agreement) or any other ICANN fee.

Except for the above-described fee changes, all other terms of the relevant agreements (.com and .net Registry Agreements and Registry-Registrar Agreements) remain unchanged.

Please contact the Customer Affairs Office at xxx@XXXXXXXXXX.com if
you have specific questions regarding this notice.

Best regards,

XX XXXXXXX
Director, Customer Support
VeriSign, Inc.