Another Dot Com

Wow! 100 million Ipod sold by Apple. Big number, right? Let’s see….if 1 song is sold per year….$100 million in music revenue. I think it’s safe to say that Microsoft Zune won’t be catching Apple anytime soon.

Slacker is a music player/services that utilizes satellite to deliver music (I think they should just call it satellite radio). I’ve read that Slacker may be the iPod killer. I doubt it. If anything, Slacker will compete with XM/Sirius and possibly other mp3 devices. For many iPod users, iPod is more than a music player. Yes, it’s a photobook, video player, music, backup drive, and so on…Importantly, iPod, in a way, identifies them as cool, young, and stylish - iPod culture?!?

Divvio is another web startup that lets users create channels, grouping interesting videos. More and more sites are popping up leveraging the existing video stream sites and content. So far, most of these sites allow users to create a channel with videos from various sites on the web. I’ll throw my hat into the mix….I’m working on something as well around video.

Video sites that host/encode/stream has been big since early 2000. Broadband penetration in S. Korea is highest in the world…which translates to heavy use of multimedia content on the web.

Here are some cool video sites in S. Korea.

- TV pot (by Daum.net)
- Pandora
- MNcast
- Damoim
- Aura (Operated by Damoim)
- Mgoon
- Freechal
- Noriter (Operated by Ipop)
- Diodeo

There are many more…too many to list. Some of the sites above offer live broadcasting feature. How cool…I’m sure that feature will be coming soon to the states.

Comeeko.com is a cool little site that let’s you upload your photos, create photo strips (you can add speech bubbles and layout). I actually saw something like this at Daum.net. Though…Daum.net’s photo sharing service (They call it Daum Pie) doesn’t let you add speech bubbles and make the collection of photos tell a funny/interesting story. Anyhow, I think Comeeko has taken photo sharing to another level by adding fun factor.

I just found a new web 2.0 site called Izumi.com. Izumi take a different approach to sharing photos, vids, and other media files. Izumi lets you publish media content, but the content is not actually uploaded to izumi server or any other server to be accessed by visitors. Only meta data and media locator file is uploaded…you host the media files on your computer and serve them. Cool idea…mixing in the P2P concept. But, what happens if you are not online to serve the files? Currently, Izumi software doesn’t support mac ;-( I’ll get on my PC later this week and try it out.

I’ll report back soon.

I read that XM and Sirius has agree to merge to form one company….will this get approved by FCC? Well, I’m not sure. But, will this merge help realize positive revenue in the future? I read somewhere that these companies had accumulated $6 billion in losses. $6 billion!!!! I think it’s time for them to really look at their business model. $6 billion in losses can’t be fixed by merging 2 companies.

Most folks working on Internet start-ups have big dreams. Dreams for innovation, making a difference, and cashing out BIG! Well, YouTube co-founders achieved all of the above.

According to Google SEC filings, YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are each worth about $326 million, and the third co-founder Jawed Karim, who returned to Stanford before YouTube was bought last year is worth about $65 million.

Good going guys. Now, if I can only get my turn at the big bucks!!