Steven Savage

MySpace and Facebook friend each other, and . . . oh you know that's the main story, but there's plenty else to keep up on!

Economics/Geekonomics:
MERS is going to be investigated. A look at the whole mess behind the loan system . . . company . . . thing. This could be a shallow nothing, or it could yield a lot of info on the whole mess, so stay tuned.

Matt Stoller discusses how we've gone from sharecropping to debtcropping, noting how the debt treadmill is messing up our society and economy . . . further. Some thought provoking stuff here.

Comics:
The casting for the Superman film begins. Also a good point is made in this article that post Potter, Warner will probably want more big hits and has a lot of properties at its fingertips . . .

Publishing:
Mega-Big econo-political magazine The Economist comes out for the iPad. That is big news because the Economist is an insanely popular magazine, and how it succeeds or fails at this is going to be watched.

Social Media:
Facebook and MySpace are going to get integrated with SOME data, which is causing people to figure it's over for MySpace. The MySpace CEO says otherwise. One thing I can guarantee – speculation is gonna be rampant.

Also Facebook further makes a move against Google with the option to make Facebook your homepage.

Technology:
Either this is utterly brilliant or going to prove to be stupid – but I like it. Plastic Jungle raises $10 million for its gift card exchange business. Thats a nice amount of money, but what a great business idea – because really, how many times to gift cards sit and not get used?

Marketo gets $25 million. They're a northern-Silicon Valley company that does management of email marketing and lead generation, and seem to be doing pretty good. Might be resume worthy.

Video Games:
There's now a cross-mobile platform MMO.

And there they are! OnLive to launch its Microconsole so they're not bound to the computer. At $99 that's a pretty nice deal, smart bit of marketing. I haven't dug up much on OnLive that says people think it's changing the world, but this may help . . .

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Avoiding the MySpace/Facebook discussion, what do you think the next big "cooperative" effort in Social Media is?

– Steven Savage

Ups and down today. Bad for 4Kids and Lucas Arts, Great for Glam Media and LinkedIn, and geeky career news all over the board. Lets go!

Anime and Manga:
4Kids is not doing much 4 Profit it seems. Numbers don't look good. Pretty much this is a death/buyout watch as far as I'm concerned.

Media:
Glam Media is hiring and growing. Might I suggest they need a resume?

Discussions on the role of the media mogul. One thing I do take from this is really the era of the mogul as we knew it is over – its companies and services that are the stars.

Mobile:
Google Docs can now be Edited from iPhone and Android browsers. Considering how much use Google Docs is getting this is a good idea, and positions them as more of a mobile collab tool. Of course at this rate mobile collab is sort of an expected norm. Still, shows Google is keeping up with everything.

Movies:
I'm still double-taking on this. Amazon Studios has started. It seems to be a kind of weird networking/demo/collab combination that thenmakes awards and gives exposure. It also alows optioning. I somehow feel that we don't have a full picture yet – or I don't. However this does make me think that between ClearSpace, this, and other efforts, clearly Amazon wants much more of a hand in media production.

Publishing:
Disney brings the cool again with designer comics in itally. You get to select from various stories, put in a message, and produce a custom comic. Honestly, this is something every publisher of comics and serial media should be looking at.

Paging Kno and eBook companies: Campus Bookstores are competing with eBooks and online retailers. I'd imagine the Campus Bookstores are a microcosm of the future considering their clientel is often tech-savvy and looking to save money. I also wonder how much e-Learning has cut into their margins, but they're not aware.

Social Media:
Meebo has raised $25 million. I admit I keep forgetting they're around, but they're expanding beyond what they were.

Eternal Crush Object LinkedIn is adding one person a second to its membership rolls.

Technology:
Apparently feeling left out, HP jumps on the video conferencing bandwagon. Which may be the get-Cisco's market share bandwagon.

Flash Memory may not sound exiting, but it is cool, useful, and Anobit, a flash memory maker, just raised $32 million. Considering how its being used more and more? Yeah, they need your resume, though you'd probably have to move to Israel (unless you're there).

Video:
Hulu Plus is out, it's $7.99 a month, and it's on Roku boxes. More a note that something to base predictions on, worth following. I also suggest that, if the Roku box fails and its technology is used in another tool, that tool be called the "Aaang." Anyone?

Video Games:
Game Social Network GameGround raises $5.3 Million. A social media tool for gamers sounds like it has too much competition from . . . well, everyone. However it has a good team and good investors, and a pretty ambitious reach. The fact that SoftBank is involved encourages me, so I'm going to suggest they're resume-worthy.

Looks like Wisconsin's Film-Based tax credit also paid off for Frozen Codebase. Come on everyone, follow Toronto and Ottawa's lead!

Wow. LucasArts has had layoffs. Sounds like it's related to the Old Republic MMO's transition to EA. Still not good for the people employed there – and probably a reminder to hold off on sending that resume.

OnLive (where are they anyway?) competitor Gaikai goes open Beta. Let the games begin . . . literally.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: So just what can come of the Amazon Studio idea?  Or is there enough to even guess?

– Steven Savage