Summit Notebook

So how plugged in is the SEC chair? (technologically speaking)

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro says her agency has its work cut out to compete with the massive amounts of money that private firms, policed by the SEC, pour into the latest technology.

“Can we keep up with Wall Street? I think we have a fighting chance. We’ll never have, under any circumstances, the kind of budgets that would allow us to spend a billion dollars a year on technology as some firms do, I mean that’s just not going to happen, and I totally understand that,” she said at the Reuters Future Face of Finance Summit.

“If we can build a forensics lab for our enforcement people to be able to download data off of iPhones and iPads and other instruments, then we will be a lot better able to pursue insider trading potentially and other securities law violations,” she said.

So how technologically plugged in is the SEC chair personally?

“I have an iPad,” Schapiro said.

“No I don’t do Twitter, I don’t have a Facebook page. You know, in my position it would be complicated,” she said with a laugh. “So maybe I’m kind of middling in terms of technology.”

Her agency has a Twitter feed and a Facebook page in development.

from MediaFile:

Twitter’s Costolo: not quite footloose and fancy free

You'd think fast-racing Twitter would keep one eye firmly fixed on the rearview and side mirrors.

With the Internet landscape littered with also-rans -- from pets.com to AskJeeves.com to a Facebook-steamrolled MySpace -- you'd imagine the one thing overnight Internet microblogging phenomenon Twitter would fear the most would be to get displaced by an up-and-comer with the same alarming speed.

Not so. Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo insists no one at the company he has worked at for less than a year worries about two theoretical guys in a garage dreaming up the next social networking sensation.

"That's a fun question. The way I think about that is the only thing to prevent us from being successful is us," said the co-founder and CEO of FeedBurner, a digital content syndication platform that was acquired by Google in the summer of 2007. "This stuff that's out of my control -- I've got no hair and I'm too stressed out as is," said the bespectacled, balding executive who joined Twitter in September.

"We all kind of make it our job to understand what the landscape looks like but we make it a point to reinforce to each other that we're the people that are going to make Twitter successful, not the success or failure of the competition."

That's not to say Costolo and his company are luxuriating in a carefree existence. With more than $100 million raised from the likes of T. Rowe Price, Benchmark Capital and other investment names -- granting the four-year old firm an eye-popping $1 billion valuation -- tons of hype and the attendant hopes, Costolo is well aware of the need to meet some of those lofty expectations.

"We've got things to prove before we get there," admitted Costolo, an amateur stage performer. "I constantly, constantly, constantly worry about what we need to do to be a self-sustaining business."

Even the best VCs strikeout — a lot

Got access to a couple million bucks and want to be a venture capitalist? A miner of start-up business gold? Then get used to being wrong.

That’s one lesson we learned during a discussion with Venture Capitalists at the Reuters Technology Summit: even the most successful investors — those who finance the bandwagon others jump on when it comes to the likes of Facebook, Myspace and Twitter — meet with entrepreneurs, like what they hear, write a check, and watch the investment go up in smoke.

Rich Wong, partner of Accel Partners, an investor in social networking site Facebook and mobile advertising network AdMob, the rate of picking winners is much like baseball batting averages, where top players like Joe Mauer, Albert Pujols or Ichiro Suzuki do not get a hit 7 of every 10 times they come to the plate.

You can bat .300 or .400 and you are doing really well (even though) you are wrong a reasonable percentage of the time.

So how do I know where to invest my million? For sure, it takes heady research and years of experience, but sometimes its about a vibe. Wong says:

For me, a phrase that i have in my head is “the authenticity of the entrepreneur.” Do I like the entrepreneur? Do they actually understand the problem statement in an authentic way that they say they are trying to solve? (They could be failures because the market will evolve and competition pop up) but if they really understand the customer base or the core technology or the problem they are trying to solve, then they are going to have a better ability to navigate their way through it.

But then we still bat .300 or .400.

Zynga CEO: Half of social web users will be social gamers

Don’t ask Zynga’s Mark Pincus how much money his company is making.

The founder of the hot social gaming company, which is operating at a more than $200 million yearly run rate according to sources familiar with the matter, said sharing such information would contribute to the kind of hype that would be bad for the nascent industry.

“I just hope that we can all partner to try to get the story out in a balanced way, so that the media doesn’t necessarily have to go back and forth, ‘This is the next great coming,’ and hyping it, and then two or three months later, ‘Oh they didn’t deliver on these very high expectations that we’ve all put out there,’” Pincus said in a conversation with reporters at the Reuters Media Summit.

He noted that Zynga, whose games include FarmVille and Mafia Wars, has been profitable for eight quarters and sees no reason to raise capital in a public stock offering anytime soon.

Pincus did sketch a rosy picture for the broader social games and virtual goods business.

“I believe the addressable market for social gaming will be the whole web and the mobile web.”

“I think that eventually more than half of the population of people who are socially connected with participate in social games.”

THQ CEO: No need to buy social gaming share

Internet social networks like Facebook are the new frontier for video game makers.

But not all companies see a need to buy their way in, as Electronic Arts did with its $275 million purchase of Playfish last month (the deal could be worth as much as $400 million if the company meets certain future financial milestones).

Brian Farrell, the CEO of game maker THQ, believes the barriers to entry to social gaming are low enough that his company doesn’t need to buy a company to get a foothold in the market.

“In our view what they [EA] got was they got a user base, and then we can debate for the next several hours about is that worth $275, $400 million,” he said at the Reuters Media Summit.

“Obviously we think there’s a path to build that in a much more effective return on investment,” he added, when asked whether the EA purchase was worth the money.

THQ currently has three games for Facebook in development, said Farrell, who noted that many of the “mechanics” of social games draw on similar expertise that THQ has developed in the traditional, console-based gaming business.

Farrell would not provide details on the kinds of Facebook games that THQ has in the works, but hinted that some of its existing franchises could make their way to the social sphere.

200MB? It’s only human nature to want more

Broadband subscribers want as much speed as they can get their hands on, even if it’s way beyond what’s needed by the most avid downloader of music, keen watcher of video or biggest Facebook addict, reckons cable operator Liberty Global’s CEO.

Maybe he would say that, but Mike Fries says today’s subscribers are signing up for speeds of 100-200 MB to be safe in the knowledge they won’t be left behind whatever the next stage of the Internet — a bit like owning a car with a top speed way beyond the limit.

“Intuitively, you would say: ‘What the heck does somebody need this for?’,” Fries told the Reuters Global Media Summit.

“But in the end we find that increasingly when you say to somebody for the price of a Volkwagen you can have a Porsche, generally they take the Porsche. It’s just human nature.

“Is it fully utilised today? No. Will it be? Absolutely.”

(Posted by Paul Sandle)

from DealZone:

Wealthy clients ask about Facebook relationships for kids

Northern Trust has thought very carefully about how to communicate with its wealthy clients. In the U.S., it says it has people within a 45 minute drive of 50 percent of all of the millionaire households.

It advertises on NPR, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, and local newspapers.

Now it might start “friending” people on Facebook.

“We had a client earlier this year who asked if we could be a friend to their child on (her) Facebook page because the child is a beneficiary of a trust that we manage and they said what better way to get to know my child when they’re awfully remote than to do this through the Facebook page?” said Lee Woolley, President of Northern Trust Bank’s Personal Financial Services division in Boston.

The family said Facebook would be a great way to communicate with the next generation of heirs before they inherit the family fortune.

Of course the 20 year-old daughter would have to accept the invitation for it all to work out.

Woolley told the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit his firm had said “no” in the near term, but was interested.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg talks MySpace, Twitter

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Tuesday and while he wouldn’t touch TechCrunch’s report about financing and valuation, he did opine about a few of Facebook’s Web peers:

On the difference between Facebook and MySpace:

I think MySpace defines themselves as more of a media company and a media portal. A way to see the different content that is going on, or a way for a News Corp parent company to spread content through the network. Facebook has always been more focused on helping people build out their identity, helping people maintain their relationships and communicate really efficiently. We have talked about ourselves as a technology company a lot as opposed to a media company.

On the difference between Facebook and Twitter:

We respect Twitter and we think they are a great company. I think Twitter’s focus different is markedly different from Facebook’s. They are not really at all about a user’s identity. They are more about real time communication. People are sharing more and more information…and on a more frequent basis. If you extend that out then there is a good amount of information that is being shared in real time. That’s where a service like Twitter comes in, and that’s why that’s also one piece of what we want to do. If your friend does something important…there is no reason why you don’t want that update immediately. Real time is clearly one of the growing trends but i don’t think it’s the whole picture.

Photo: Reuters

Virgin Mobile USA’s trillions and trillions

Will mobile advertising make you rich?

Virgin Mobile USA CEO Dan Schulman told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit today about a new advertising partnership with AOL’s Third Screen Media.

We asked him how big a deal it was. Schulman was enthusiastic, to say the least.

“We think it will drive a trillion dollars to us in the next four to six months.”

On the more serious side, Schulman explained that mobile advertising was still in its infancy as carriers have yet to really figure out the right way of offering people ads on their phones without becoming a nuisance.

“It’s small (in terms of revenue) and I wouldn’t even put it in the meaningful category yet. We’re experimenting with it. Mobile advertising is something you need to be quite careful with. A cell phone is a relatively intimate device.”

Virgin Mobile USA has had some success with its advertising forays. Schulman said more than 700,000 of its 5 million customers had signed up for its “Sugar Mama” promotion that let them earn free phone minutes in return for watching ads online.