Dave Winer wanted us to open a studio he could use in San Francisco. That makes a lot of sense because so many conferences come through there. But we noticed a different trend: most of the world’s entrepreneurs actually come south: to Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.

Why?

Cause that’s where the money is.

So many entrepreneurs come through Palo Alto for that reason and also to visit the mainstream press here (Wall Street Journal has a building right next door to PodTech) that we built a studio here instead.

Today I was showing Doug Kaufmann, CEO of ClearTXT around so you can get a look too.

While we’re talking about ClearTXT, they have a really interesting system to let college staff and students message each other. Very useful during disasters or other things like the Virginia Tech Shootings. That video will be up in a couple of weeks.

Oh, and that’s NOT what we wanted to keep off of TechMeme! :-)

The folks over at NewTeeVee just announced its new conference schedule for a conference about NewTeeVee.

I find it severely lacking.

First, why feature Joost? They haven’t proven that they’ll survive in this new TV marketplace. I’m willing to bet that Justin.tv or Kyte.tv will have 10x the traffic in a year than Joost. Even TechCrunch is growing bearish on Joost’s future. Why is Joost going to have trouble? Because they wanted to replace TV and the TV networks will NEVER give Joost their best stuff.

But let’s face it, it’s still a YouTube world online. What will change that?

So, what else is missing at a discussion of new TV stuff?

1. Best practices of old on new. The best example of oldTV coming to newTV is what ABC.com is doing. Ever watch Lost over there? I have and it’s the best stuff out there. They are using technology from Move Networks. That stuff blows away Joost. To me THAT is “new TV.”
2. The best advertising technology I’ve seen is CastFire. I don’t see them on the program. I do see Brightroll. That’s good, I have a 24-minute interview with the founder on my show. Nexidia showed me a bleeding edge technology that’s already bringing new kinds of contextual ads to several TV stations’ local news shows.
3. The biggest innovator in streaming media is Chris Pirillo. The way he uses chat. His sponsorships. And the way he uses YouTube is very innovative yet he isn’t on the program.
4. Codec comparisons: DivX has some of the best codecs out there. It also has a set top box that I’m playing with and its Stage6 community is pretty neat. DivX’s CEO was on my show at CES earlier this year. Adobe is doing a bunch of work. So are other folks. Can we see a shootout? Or techniques to get the sharpest picture online?
5. Apple? No, they have nothing to do with “new TV” right? Well, I haven’t been able to get them on my show either, but Rocky uses Apple’s FinalCutPro to edit my show.
6. Adobe? I see one guy on there as part of a panel discussion. Are we going to learn anything in a panel?: No, we won’t. But the folks who bring us Flash deserve a lot more than a panel slot. Not to mention they have a video editor, Premiere. Oh, and my video with the engineering team behind Flex/Flash talking about its architecture got hundreds of thousands of views.
7. Microsoft? They want to get market share away from Adobe. I see Dan’l Lewin there, but you do realize he isn’t a technical guy and he hasn’t built any video or done any video on the Net, right? He was a co-founder of NeXT, though. Maybe that’s the closest to Steve Jobs you could get.
8. Rocketboom? They just shipped an iPhone app. They have the best distribution system I’ve seen for an independent video blog. Andrew is still doing innovative stuff. Where’s he?
9. Blognation? (Or ANY blog network other than GigaOm?) They are about to put video bloggers in dozens of countries. But not gonna be at NewTeeVee I guess. And because they are a competitive thing to GigaOm they get locked out the same way that PodTech gets locked out. If I ran a conference I’d invite my competitors to speak. Why? Cause my first responsibility as a conference planner is to the people who come. See Eric Norlin’s video for more on planning a great conference.
10. USVP? They invested in several video ventures (including PodTech, Zannel, and National Banana). Not gonna be there and they should be. Heck, let’s get out of stuff that’d help me out. Last night I had dinner with Stewart Alsop. He’s an investor in Justin.tv. Why isn’t he on the VC panel? Justin is doing the most innovative stuff in the streaming video space.
11. Tracking and uploading? TubeMogul, for instance, showed me how they can let video bloggers upload to multiple sites and track their results. Compete.com’s CTO was on my show too. I wish someone would do a session on new ways to demonstrate audience engagement and size and all that.
12. New ways to tell video stories? YourTrumanShow showed me how, for instance.
13. Mixing 3D world’s with video? I don’t see that either. But Scenecaster has a way to do that. So does Second Life. More on the way. I’d love to hear the latest and see what Eric Rice and friends are up to.
14. Why not a session on video vs. audio? There’s a lot of interest there and it sure would be interesting to see if BlogTalkRadio could make a case for audio. You noticed my son’s first sounds on the Internet were audio only, not a video, even though I had lots of video gear there. Heck, I sure could learn something about getting better audio quality.
15. Facebook? MySpace? LinkedIn? Plaxo? Facebook is one of the hottest video sites on the Internet yet I see nothing about it. That’s really lame and missing where a TON of “new TV” action is happening.
16. Building a social network around your video site? Magnify, Ning, and Broadband Mechanics might have something to say about that. In fact, Magnify shows off a great “new TV” site to me. Ning showed me their stuff too. So does BlogTronix, which has a system that lets companies build sites very similar to the Channel 9 one at Microsoft. Ning will be at the conference but, again, only on a panel. That’s not the help that people need — they need demos of what’s possible, not more talk.
17. Legal issues with new TV. How do you get rights to music, other people’s videos? What’s the rules around fair use?
18. Mobile video? On my show Buzzwire showed off its solution. Also, Radar.net showed me a way to share videos with your friends from your mobile phones. Kyte.tv’s CEO is on a panel discussion but I doubt they’ll do a demonstration of how that works. It really is mind-blowing what you can do on a cell phone now.
19. Streaming video? Ustream came on my show to demonstrate what it’s doing. Veodia is aimed at big companies with a better quality streaming video.
20. Mashups? YouTube is now showing videos on top of Google Earth. Plazes is giving us location-based presence. What could we do with that?
21. Film sites. Jaman is very impressive, for instance.
22. Webcasting? IVT showed me its solution. So did Adobe with its Connect service.
23. New kinds of Web experiences that’ll have an impact on how video is used. Zude got my “demo of the year” mark and demonstrates new ways to use video online. Mixercast is a cool way to mashup video, pictures, and other stuff too.
24. New hardware gadgets for video producers? Drobo showed me a new hard drive system, for instance, that we’re using at PodTech and love. I’ve been testing out tons of the latest gear including a Nokia N95 with Kyte.tv and a new Nikon pocket camera that has wifi built in. Heck, get Ryan Block of Engadget to come out and show off the latest gear. That dude has a ton of gadgets in his house and he always knows what’s good and what’s not.
25. Real Networks? Do they have a shot at sticking around? They came on my show to demonstrate its new player which lets you save from YouTube.
26. Search and Discovery. MeeVee demoed its search engine. Blinkx CEO came on my show to talk about it (then later took his company to an IPO). Dabble’s founder/CEO showed me its cool search portal and community for video. Stumbleupon came on my show to demonstrate its cool video discovery service.
27. Why don’t I see anything on Windows Media Center? TV Tonic showed me a killer system that’s getting lots of traffic for video bloggers.
28. Video greeting cards? Smilebox showed me theirs.
29. Video email? EyeJot showed me how to do it.
30. Bleeding edge ways to use video cameras? Get Andy Wilson from Microsoft Research to come down. He showed me a system that was wild.
31. Ways to make money with your “new TV?” Edgeio showed me a classified ad system that a few video bloggers are using to bring in some extra cash.
32. Splashcast has been seeing massive growth through its Facebook application. They came on my show a few months ago to demonstrate its widget and media distribution network.
33. What’s the future of home entertainment systems? Seagate showed me its version at CES. I just interviewed MediaMaster too (mostly music right now, but video someday soon) and they have a very awesome service. Videos of that coming soon.
34. Screencasting for fun and profit. Don McAllister, who publishes screencastsonline.com, came on my show to talk about how he does it.
35. Google? They do this thing called YouTube. You might have heard of it. Marc Lucovsky showed me how to “bling my blog” with a video bar, too.
36. Video education? Winnov showed me an innovative system for universities to use.
37. Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic (here’s me talking about it). If you really want to be known as “NewTeeVee” you gotta have them on the schedule.
38. Zannel. I interviewed them this week and they are competing with Seesmic and Kyte.tv.
39. UPDATE: I totally forgot Bittorrent. A guy I know downloads all of his TV shows via Bittorrent (and movies and music too). I’m sure he’s not alone so a conference like this should discuss that and what the industry should do for or against it.
40. Serving an international audience. Look at the new Pop!Tech videos. They have subtitles with eight languages in them. That really rocks. But what do you need to do if you want to serve China and keep your videos from getting censored? How about transcriptions so that search engines can work better? Etc.

$500 for this? Damn, maybe I should start charging for my show! I give you a TON more content for free! :-)

Heck, we can even meet over on my newfangled Kyte.tv channel and have a live chat. With audio, video, AND good old text, even!

Oh, and keep in mind I +HATE+ panel discussions. They look great on the Web site, or in a brochure (that’s why I added them to my conferences when I planned them). But you rarely learn anything you can take away and apply to your keyboard. I was just on a panel discussion too at the recent Facebook conference and, while it was entertaining (a good fight on a panel is one way they can be redeeming) I watched the video and didn’t see anything anyone would have learned from it.

UPDATE: Om and I had a nice talk this morning and he’s severely constrained by time (this is a one-day conference). More on that conversation hopefully later in next week.

If you were doing a conference on “new TV” what would you put on it?

I’m talking with Andrew Zolli. He is the currator of the highly-regarded Pop!Tech conference, coming up next week.

Some things they are just announcing:

1. Pop!Casts. Really cool little video snippets. Includes “embedded ability to create open source subtitles in 100 languages.” You can subtitle as much as you like of a particular video. There are already eight videos translated to eight languages. “The data behind it is even more interesting than this.” I’m playing with this right now and it’s f***ing awesome. You can switch back and forth between english and a bunch of other languages. It compiles a new video when you add a new language. Unbelieveable. Done by Dotsub.com, which has other videos. Why YouTube doesn’t do this? Here’s the English versions of the eight videos (play them and in the player you can switch back and forth between the other languages). Zolli says this
2. Pop!Tech carbon offset initiative. Last year they invested an amount to offset the amount of carbon dioxide generated by the attendees in attending PopTech — that turned into a project with (solar electric light fund self.org) where they are replacing diesel generators with solar generators. This year with eBay they are coming up with a new Web site (exclusively announced here) http://www.ebay.com/poptech where they picked three projects that are doing social development work in several communities in the 2/3rds world (Brazil, Nicaragua, and Africa). They used to call that the “developing world” but now we call that the majority world or the 2/3rds world.
3. National Geographic Photo Camp: they are outfitting several kids from poor countries with cameras and they’ll capture the event and share their photos (they also are paying for National Geographic photographers to teach several of these kids how to be professional photographers in their communities).
4. Mobile empowerment is a big theme. Nokia will show off Mosh. Peer-to-peer sharing platform. Subscribe to packages of content that are peer produced on your device. Pop!Tech is doing a bunch of talks and the participants will interview each other using mobile devices, etc.
5. All on stage content will be shared live at poptech.org/live and will start at 9 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. Unlike other events of this caliber (TED and Davos) they broadcast all their content live to the world, which really is great.

Thanks to Seagate for giving all speakers a free hard drive. The speakers at this event aren’t paid, so that really is great. Thanks to Buzz Bruggeman who arranged this interview. I’ll do a separate interview with Andrew after the conference is over.

I wish I were going.

At the Graphing Social Patterns conference there was a guy who said that Facebook was worth $100 billion. He was properly derided, in my view, by most of the people at the conference.

But, one of his arguments was “would you have said that Google wasn’t going to be worth $100 billion back in 1999?” Yeah, I probably would have said you were smoking good crack if you told me that back then.

Problem is that if you said that back then you would actually have been right.

Now, in eight years will Facebook be worth $100 billion?

Well, let’s go back and study the conditions that caused Google to get there.

1. They shipped a real ad platform that opened up a new kind of advertising: contextual advertising.
2. Search turned out to be one of the best ways to concentrate people with intent to do something together. Think about it. If you search for, say, baby strollers, aren’t you being concentrated into a pool of other people who are looking for baby strollers? That’s what made Google’s ad platform so potent. Does Facebook concentrate people who have intent to do something together? Not as clearly.
3. Microsoft and other major players left them alone. Ballmer admitted to the company employees in a meeting I attended that he had made a mistake by ignoring Google. His belief probably was that Google would never be a $100 million company, much less one with a $194 billion market cap.

So, will these three things happen for Facebook?

No. #3 definitely won’t. Already there are tons of companies jumping into Facebook’s waters.
#2? We don’t yet know if that will play out. I think it might. Many other people who are far smarter than me don’t think so.
#1? Yes, that one will definitely happen.

Translation: I agree with Henry Blodgett (damn, never thought I’d say that) that Mark Zuckerberg should take any money being offered to him at a $15 billion valuation. Yeah, the planets might align for Facebook to get to a higher valuation but there are very real risks that it won’t.

On the other hand, Zuckerberg has turned down such advice to “sell out” before and so far he’s been right. Is he still right? I wouldn’t be making that bet.

Kara! Kara! Kara!

Kara Swisher SSSSSOOOOO nails what is wrong with the application developers who are trying to make money over on Facebook.

The other night I was on a panel at the Graphing Social Patterns conference where I helped judge a bunch of Facebook apps.

With each one I asked myself “would I install this?”

The answer with almost all of them is: no. The sad fact, though, is that most people WILL install the stupider apps.

The winners? Three were great, one was really lame.

The Game, by Robert Fan
Judge-O-Rama by Chris Heald
Visual Bookshelf, by Aaron Battalion
Resume, by Joe Suh

Let’s throw out the lame one, the Game, which is a lewd “Hot or Not” app. The others were pretty interesting, though. The Resume app lets you integrate LinkedIn stuff into your Facebook profile. I’m not a fan of LinkedIn, but this app was well done for those of you who are.

If you read books Visual Bookshelf is an awesome way to share your bookshelf with others. Definitely shows a lot of thought and goes way beyond the stupider types of apps.

I have a long list of apps waiting for me. Some are interesting like file sharing, but most are pretty toyish kinds of apps.

I’m really looking forward to the second wave of apps that really do something interesting with the social network of people I’ve added to my Facebook account.

Another problem that Kara doesn’t touch upon is that a lot of these apps simply don’t scale and break for people with thousands of friends.

Looking forward to seeing if Facebook apps improve at the SNAP Summit in San Francisco on October 26.

Oh, and here’s Steve Broback talking about his Facebook Conference, Web Community Forum, up in Seattle on December 5-6, on a walk recently near my house.

Oh #2: Kyte.tv has a new look. I’m going over there today to talk about the changes that are coming to Kyte.tv over the next few weeks. I’m not sure I like this new look. How about you?

UPDATE: I used my Nikon S51C pocket camera to film this video. But Kyte wouldn’t let me upload the high resolution version (said that it was bigger than 50MB, which it couldn’t accept), so you get the small version which makes the player look lame. I’ll push Kyte to increase the limit so we can do more interesting videos.

Damn, what happens when you’re on a panel with Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis? You have to fight just to find a place to get a word in edgewise! I’ve been getting lots of notes from people who says that this was the best panel at the Graphing Social Media conference. I don’t know about THAT but it was pretty entertaining at parts. Especially when Mike told security to remove a guy who thought Facebook was worth $100 billion.

You might not know Eric Norlin but I’ve been following him for a long time. He’s one of the folks who started the Digital ID World conference and is now senior editor there. Now he’s starting a new Internet-focused conference called “Defrag.” I caught him in one of the back rooms at the Digital ID World and we have a fun 42 minute conversation about all sorts of things.

If you are thinking of planning a conference you won’t want to miss this one. We cover the economics of putting on conferences. We also talk about a ton of stuff.

This is a continuation of “smart people week” on ScobleShow. Heh, it’s actually always smart people week, but it’s fun just to do a conversation like this with a smart guy who runs major industry conferences. Hope you enjoy.

I was talking with a Google employee last night at the Graphing Social Media conference.

Aside: why are there more Google employees there than Facebook ones? I think Facebook’s attitude toward the community is saying volumes to all of us.

Anyway, he asked me to guess which Google service had the most page views every day.

Is it search? No.
Blogger? No.
Google Maps? No.
Picasa? No.

So, what is it?

Orkut.

Orkut?

Yeah. Now do you get why they just bought Jaiku?

Now do you get why the world is going to pay attention to what Google releases on November 5?

Yeah!

Facebook has real competition coming. Competition they haven’t yet faced.

It’s going to be an interesting period to watch them go at it.

I have 552 reasons to hate Facebook. I sure wish they would let me add more than 5,000 friends. If Google doesn’t have such a stupid limit that’ll get me to check it out, at minimum (I can’t add any more friends on Facebook).

A few months ago I interviewed the Jaiku founders. I found them to be very smart. This is a good purchase for Google. Add it onto their new social network that’s coming (Orkut 2.0) and Google just made a major move against Facebook.

Steve Clayton writes a post titled “Some Microsoft balance. At last.”

In the meantime Google breaks through 600 and MSFT is still stuck under 30 (I own stock in MSFT and not Google so my “balance” is out of whack. Heh.).

Anyway, Steve, one thing you SHOULD have pointed to was the new Microsoft Health Vault. That’s a legitimate place where Microsoft kicked Google’s behind by being first. That site could really use some SEO, though. Whoever wrote the title tag for that page should be sent to Danny Sullivan’s school for a while to learn what mistakes he/she made and how to correct them (it is hard to find this page on Google, believe it or not).

I see even TechCrunch gave Microsoft props for being first out of the gate. I wonder why Steve didn’t make a bigger deal about this?

Later today I have an interview with a doctor at Stanford’s Children’s Hospital who works in the IT department there and we talk more about these kinds of health services and how they might be used. I love my job, I get to hang out with so many smart people and I get paid for it! I pinch myself again.

Anyway, enough Microsoft balance for today. I’m off to Dave’s Facebook conference now that I’m all balanced up.

UPDATE: my interview with the Stanford doctor is now up.

Ian Hsu told me this when we were photowalking at Stanford: that the Facebook class is standing room only and that tons of people have been asking to get in and can’t. No more seats.

Anyway, Dave McClure, who also runs the Graphing Social Patterns conference that I’m speaking at (starts today) linked to a video essay by one of his students in the class about why Facebook works.

Speaking of Stanford this week I have some really awesome videos coming out of there (one from a doctor working on IT in the Children’s Hospital, one from a photo/graphic researcher, and one from the robot helicopter team). More later in the week.