Last Week in BoomTown: Peter Thiel, Writers’ Strike, OpenSocial, Hulu!
by Kara Swisher
Posted on November 5, 2007 at 12:01 AM PT
In case you missed them, check out these stories from last week:
Kara Visits VC Peter Thiel: A video interview with the first investor in Facebook (pictured here), who also sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion.
Thiel’s take: Web 2.0 is underhyped!
Writers’ Strike!: The battle is on in Hollywood, as writers and studios fight over DVD fees split, but there is also wrangling over potential profits from new media efforts.
While that income is still pretty small, it’s a canard that producers are trying to insist that they can’t fork over better percentages because the market needs room to grow. Writers deserve their fair share as the online business gets bigger over the next decade.
Maka-Maka Melee?: Google took a solid shot at Facebook with its new OpenSocial offering, which lets anyone become a Facebook! The signing of MySpace at the end of the week was another slap, of course.
But this week Facebook fires back with its SocialAds offering to compete in the online ad game, where Google rules.
Hulu Doesn’t Stink: I and many others were surprised how good an experience the new online video joint venture from NBC Universal and News Corp. is so far.
While it is certainly not perfect (no downloading, limits on hit shows), it is a clean, easy-to-use service that gives users a lot of ability to control content and a quantum leap in attitude from Hollywood pooh-bahs.
Maybe they could become that enlightened when it comes to ending the writers’ strike.
