I came back to my hotel room late last night from a fantastic dinner with great company (thanks again Will) and crashed before checking my feeds. What a tidal wave! The news about Robert moving to PodTech.net has completely taken over Memeorandum (and temporarily crashed PodTech’s servers because of the traffic)!

What I find almost hilarious is that Robert’s move has leaked as a rumor that the tech bloggers have immediately jumped on (“Rumor”, ”might”, ”may”, ”will”, ”is going to”, ”50%”, ”100%”), before Robert and John had actually crafted their announcement:

I looked at my cell phone and I think there was a call from Om Malik that I ignored (sorry, Om, I didn’t know you were calling about THAT). Then the email started coming in. Oh, crud. It was out.

It also means that the reasons and circumstances of Robert’s leaving were subjects to rumors and supputations, so much so that Robert had … Read more »

I spent a portion of the day at the Consumer Technology Ventures Conference today, catching the interview of Ross Levinsohn, the President of Fox Interactive Media (“FIM”) by Lee Gomes, from the Wall Street Journal.

NewsCorp’s re-entry in the Internet market was kicked off by Rupert Murdoch after Christmas 2004, and a summit of 85 top executives in February 2005. During this meeting, Murdoch’s team brainstormed about the threats and opportunities of taking a prominent position. Last May was when Ross presented a plan of actions – starting with the acquisition of MySpace and also involved investing in their FMI’s properties.

NewsCorp is focusing on companies built as a mix of content and communities. Ross mentions that Murdoch is "fearless" and ready to make bold moves, especially to enter new spaces in which they are not present. He also explains that he did not initially grasp the power of communities like MySpace, but he eventually came around and … Read more »

Very thoughtful post from Christopher Allen re Too High A Standard on how much thinking and research has to go into a blog post. I have really enjoyed Christopher’s (long) contributions in the past, and am looking forward to his more frequent write-ups.