All Things Digital

Here’s a video I did on the panel I moderated focused on online video at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, called “Webolution!–Hollywood Adapts to the Web.”

Tech is getting a lot of attention in Hollywood, so talking about online video is a key area for the independent filmmakers who are here this year.

Topics on the panel were wide-ranging, including: social networking, politics, the writers’ strike and the need for more broadband.

Better yet, here’s the description of the panel:

“The writing is on the wall–the industry must adapt to new media or face extinction. Today’s studios and independents are finally embracing the challenge of porting content and revenue to new distribution strategies. Join Hollywood power brokers and new media superstars to discuss their strategies for the Web.”

The panelists included Ted Sarandos (Netflix), Dmitry Shapiro (founder and CEO of Veoh.com), Dan Glickman (MPAA), Jason Kilar (CEO of Hulu.com), Mike Volpi (CEO of Joost.com), Erik Flanagan (EVP Digital Media MTV Networks/Comedy Central/South Park Studios) and tech strategy adviser Phil Lelyveld.

In other words, me and seven guys, which is about par for the course in Silicon Valley!

Here’s the video:

And here is my video touring the festival.

I just got to Park City, Utah, for my annual visit (well, this will be my third year here) to the famous film festival that takes place in this lovely mountain resort.

While I like a good movie as much as the next person, I am no film aficionado, nor do I have a screenplay stuffed in a drawer, nor do I hope someday to direct. I do like celebrity sightings, of course.

I am here because the Sundance Film Festival has understood early and often that technology is becoming increasingly important to the future of the film industry.

Because of that, they’ve been expanding additional offerings in the digital arena with panels throughout the festival.

The panel I will moderate is a great one about online video, called “Webolution!–Hollywood Adapts to the Web.” It will take place tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. at the New Frontier on Main here.

Here’s the description:

“The writing is on the wall–the industry must adapt to new media or face extinction. Today’s studios and independents are finally embracing the challenge of porting content and revenue to new distribution strategies. Join Hollywood power brokers and new media superstars to discuss their strategies for the Web.”

The panelists include Ted Sarandos (Netflix), Dmitry Shapiro (founder and CEO of Veoh.com), Dan Glickman (MPAA), Jason Kilar (CEO of Hulu.com), Mike Volpi (CEO of Joost.com), Erik Flanagan (EVP Digital Media MTV Networks/Comedy Central/South Park Studios) and tech strategy adviser Phil Lelyveld.

Videos, of course, to come, along with visits with various tech players here, who are increasing in number annually. And, maybe, a Hollywood celeb or two.

Here’s some more video from the halls of Web 2.0 Summit, which is taking place this week in San Francisco.

Look to John Paczkowski of Digital Daily for liveblogging from the conference yesterday, which included appearances by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and eBay’s Meg Whitman.

Today is the final day, with digital bigshots onstage like: AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, Mike Volpi of Joost and Uber-VC John Doerr.

Of course, most of the action–as always–takes place in the halls of the Palace Hotel, where the schmoozing never stops. We hung out for a bit yesterday and asked everyone their thoughts on the latest hot trend and ridiculous hype. Incredibly, the answer to both was Facebook!

Here’s a video of the scene from Day 2:

Joost, the online video service, is finally out of beta–kind of–with the release of its 1.0 software to anyone who cares to download it and a redesign of both its Web page and search on the service.

The broadband peer-to-peer Internet service, which is trying to popularize a television experience on the Web by providing professionally produced content–complete with network television shows–will remain in beta, although you no longer have to be invited to join.

Presumably, kazillions will now sign up. Or not!

Those who were invited and already using it now get a better interface and a way to find shows that seems more intuitive (the old carousel approach was plainly confusing, so let’s just forget it ever happened).

It will also open its API for third-party apps–in other words, widgetmania continues unabated!

We are no Walt Mossberg, but found the pre-beta version a bit buggy and often annoying, so this is an improvement. Now, bring us more programming we like (and, um, not more of investor CBS’s gross-me-out “CSI”)!

Joost, founded by the founders of the Skype online phone service, is backed by some big players–such as Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures–to the tune of $45 million in funding.

And it also nabbed a popular Silicon Valley player, Mike Volpi, as its CEO.

Here’s a video interview with Volpi, in two parts (Part 1 and Part 2), which I did on a recent trip to Los Angeles, where he was visiting in the vain hope that Hollywood types might suddenly realize the kids love this crazy Internet thing.

Also included is a video I made at Joost’s party in Burbank in June for those same ungrateful entertainment folks.

I like Mike. Volpi, that is, Joost’s new CEO.

Pictured here, the 40-year-old longtime tech exec is a nice choice to run the moderately hyped online video television site.

But I will admit it–I have not been gung-ho on the prospect of Joost–which I have called a potentially “messy control freak of a service.”

I was teasing, of course, but do have doubts about the company–founded by the well-known geek duo Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström–as being too closed and destination oriented, as well as playing in a very crowded field.

In addition, Joost needs massive amounts of cooperation from the very restrictive mandarins of Hollywood. And we all know the amount of leadership they have brought as all content has gone digital–some sum much less than zero.

By the way, Friis and Zennström are the pair who disrupted the phone industry with Skype and also created the controversial peer-to-peer file-sharing service Kazaa, used by many to illegally download–yes–copyrighted entertainment content.

But now in the age of fear and loathing in Hollywood for Google-owned YouTube comes Joost, which aims to deliver a TV experience on the Web with high-quality professional content by using a special player you download. It is free, supported by advertising.

To do this, Joost nabbed $45 million in funding in May from Silicon Valley’s famed Sequoia Capital (backers of Yahoo, YouTube and Google, among others) and early Skype funder Index Ventures, as well as CBS, Viacom and the wealthy Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing.

It has struck deals to offer content, using a peer-to-peer technology distribution system, from CBS, as well as Turner and Warner Bros. and Sony. It has also picked up a slate of big-time advertisers like Coca-Cola. Also, unlike television, it also gives users a bunch of interactive options like instant messaging while viewing and news feeds.

So far, Hollywood likes Joost because, hmm, it’s not copyright-defying YouTube.

But the start-up is not alone. For example, NBC Universal and News Corp. will soon launch a new Web video service called Hulu, in a reported $100 million effort. Also, there’s Veoh, backed by former Hollywood bigwigs Michael Eisner and, recently, Tom Freston.

(At least Joost has this going for it–not such a dopey name as those two! In fact, I like the name a lot.)

And it seems as if a new video site pops up constantly, as every traditional content provider tries to figure out a strategy, even as less cooperative techies like YouTube and Apple’s iTunes grow ever more popular.

So what better place to interview Volpi, a longtime Cisco exec (who was considered the heir apparent to CEO and Chairman John Chambers), than on the trendy Asia de Cuba patio at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Strip.

While Volpi has the tech cred, he is also pretty smooth for Silicon Valley, possessing a bit of Hollywood style and looking hipper than your average nerd (it’s obviously due to his Italian-born roots).

Well-liked and respected in the tech industry, the mechanical engineering grad from Stanford was raised in Japan, where his journalist mother covered a wide range of issues.

Yesterday in Los Angeles to make the rounds at the studios, trying to explain what Joost will do for them, Volpi talked with me about everything from Joost’s prospects to widgetmania to how you create great online content.

He also insulted me, calling me hyped (that’s the digital pot calling the Web kettle black!).

Here’s the first video with the second posted here:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Here’s part 2 of my interview with Joost’s Mike Volpi.

See the first post and video about the online television video service here.

Also below, check out a video (and post here) I did earlier this summer from a party Joost hosted for Hollywood content creators at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Joost threw a party in North Hollywood (which is really closer to Burbank than Hollywood) Tuesday at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’s Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre for a small throng of Hollywood folks, most of whom looked to be about 21 years old collectively.

(You can just imagine a big Hollywood muckety-muck telling his lowly recent college grad of an assistant to go to the party, because “we gotta be up on this digital stuff you young people like.”)

It was an interesting party for me for a lot of reasons, some of which had nothing to do with Joost, but mostly because it represents yet another foray into Hollywood for the Internet Story, The Sequel. (Also see the video after the jump.)

In the last go-round, there were all sorts of empty alliances struck between techies and the entertainment industry that went precisely nowhere–or as they say here, into perpetual turnaround.

But with broadband penetration improving significantly and the explosion of video on the Web, the best example being the spectacular growth of YouTube, a new dance has begun.

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It will be nice to see Danny Rimer back in Silicon Valley this week.

Now London-based, the former SV investment bank analyst and venture capitalist is here for a lunch hosted today by Index Ventures, the juice behind Joost and also a previous little start-up you might recall called Skype.

“From Index Ventures perspective, the world is much smaller and flatter now,” said the invite to the event, which will feature the entire technology investment team of the venture firm, which operates out of both London, Jersey and Geneva.

“Five years ago,” the invite continued, “it felt Herculean to have a small, globally focused business and, today, it is commonplace.”

That, in fact, is the one thing that has struck the 36-year-old Rimer as the difference from when he left California in 2002. He worked here first at Hambrecht & Quist covering then-nascent Web companies (and where I first met him) and then as a fledgling VC at the short-lived Barksdale Group, whose fortunes were buffeted by the first dot-com bust.

“If anything has changed, it is that the Web is really now completely a global phenomenon, which is hard to sometimes see while you are in the middle of Silicon Valley,” said Rimer. “I think I have the best job taking the Silicon Valley model and applying it in totally underpenetrated geographies.”

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To: Mike Volpi, spanking new Joost CEO

From: Kara Swisher, seen-it-all-before journalist

Re: Five quick questions for you on taking the new job at the trendy and well-funded online video service

1. Is it just me or does Joost feel like a service only a Hollywood executive could love, with its big-ticket content and stricter programming than the Web is used to, as I kind of implied here?

2. You’re a tech guy, so can you fix the glitchiness and regular instances of crashing in the beta before it gets out there? Maybe that’s OK for shaggier services like Skype and Kazaa, also founded by Joost’s founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, but watching premium video requires a more reliable service.

3. You bought a lot of companies at Cisco (really, 70?) as its mergers-and-acquisitions guy, so what’s your strategy for handling all your partners now (like Time Warner, Viacom and CBS) and those who are sure to come? Because it feels to me that it might be like wrangling cats.

4. I like you a lot already for saying to the New York Times in this article that “traditional television as we know it is gradually going to go away.” Um, when exactly (and I am sure your investor CBS liked that comment a lot)?

5. OK, so you’re not YouTube with all its messy user-generated content, and you’re not a television network with all its control-freak mannerisms, but I am hoping that does not mean you are a messy control freak of a service. OK, that’s a statement and not a question–so, let me rephrase: Are you a messy control freak of a service?

Just asking.

As has been rumored and even reported on last week, sources say former Cisco exec Mike Volpi will be announced later tonight by Joost as its new CEO.

Volpi knows the founders of the online video service, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, as he has served on the board of their last hit, Skype.

Before he left, Volpi was in line to run Cisco, which is now under the leadership of CEO John Chambers. But as the ebullient Chambers told me in an interview onstage at D last week, he was not planning any move from the tech giant anytime soon (not even for an offer made onstage by Sen. John McCain at the conference to serve in the cabinet if he won his presidential bid).

The company needs a tech-savvy CEO, and one familiar with Silicon Valley, given that it recently got a $45 million boost of cash from a group of big venture firms and media companies, as I wrote here, including Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, as well as CBS.

While a lot of Joost’s success rests on getting a lot of great content for its service to deliver quality video content on the Web, how well it works and how easy it is to use (not so easy in my beta tests, so far) will be key to its success. And also how it works with all its multiple partners.

In that vein, Volpi is a good choice. Though his last Cisco title sounded geekish–SVP of Routing and Service Provider Technology Group–he was deeply involved in all of the company’s wheeling and dealing, including its aggressive acquisition sprees.

He was born in Italy, lived in Japan, attended Stanford University and also worked at Hewlett-Packard, so he is also perhaps a perfect balance of international and local (tech-wise) for the internationally based Joost.

Interestingly, sources told me that Volpi also talked to Yahoo about running its Audience Group.