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Valley Buzz: Skype on the iPhone and Disney on YouTube; VC Cash in Facebook and GE Cash in Tesla
Posted Mar 30, 2009 11:54am EDT by Sarah Lacy in Investing, Internet, Media, Software and Services, Telecom, Information Technology, Recession
As GigaOm first reported, eBay’s enormously cheap voice over IP service, Skype, is coming to the iPhone. Both the Wall Street Journal and CNET got the inside scoop. Anyone who travels internationally knows how painfully expensive and annoying it is to stay connected to home, so there’s been a lot of enthusiasm about two popular mobile players joining forces. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as great as it sounds. The calls have to be routed over wireless networks, not AT&T’s 3G network. Translation: Dropped calls galore. Since most people consider it rude to chat away in, say, a Starbucks the most reliable place to make a call would likely be a home or office, where you’ve already got a laptop and could make a Skype call the old-fashioned way. You can text Skype chats over the AT&T network, but there are already a host of IM clients running on the iPhone. It's an unfortunate yawn for the average user if you ask me.
Meanwhile, PaidContent reports that Google and Disney are close to a content deal that would allow certain premium clips to run on YouTube and preclude them from running on Hulu. The big question is what this means for Hulu, the site the major networks designed to avoid cutting deals with YouTube. New media blog NewTeeVee says that other networks are also pulling content from Hulu, warning the much-loved site that “big media is (is) getting ready to eat its young.”
Up until recently, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed to be the only one wondering if Facebook was going to raise another round of venture capital this year. Judging by the site’s break-out growth and soaring costs, most industry watchers assumed a 2009 fundraising was a given. TechCrunch has new evidence of it today, along with some sussed out numbers of how well the company is doing. According to TechCrunch, Facebook has about $300 million in the bank, and may make between $300 million or $400 million of revenue this year. Still, it’s not quite enough to support the site's explosive growth. At a minimum, the company will likely seek some debt cushion to get it to rosier economic times. But the big question with Facebook is always valuation, and few people expect the $15 billion valuation from Microsoft’s 2007 investment to hold.
Tesla—another much hyped Valley name with some cash-concerns—says it has raised about $40 million, some of which came from GE. It’s not enough to let chief executive Elon Musk sleep at night, but on the heels of the launch of the long-awaited luxury sedan it’s good news for Tesla zealots.
Last today, Twitter is said to be hiring a VIP Concierge to help the flood of celebrities learn the service—and undoubtedly avoid some trouble along the way. Mark Cubans need not apply.
15 Comments
franck s - Monday March 30, 2009 12:22PM EDT
Didn't I see Alec Baldwin advertising Hulu during the Superbowl? He should have ranted and threatened the public; the ad might have worked.
franck s - Monday March 30, 2009 12:42PM EDT
Yes Alec Baldwin rants very well, excellent ranter.
Chris - Monday March 30, 2009 01:49PM EDT
Sarah, why don't you do more of the reporting on Yahoo! I'd rather see you doing the interviews than the other guys. It's all prewritten questions anyway right?
Yahoo! Finance User - Monday March 30, 2009 02:03PM EDT
Wow, at least this post was proofread (kinda.)
Edmund - Monday March 30, 2009 02:06PM EDT
geithner is a disaster and the world will know it soon!
Yahoo! Finance User - Monday March 30, 2009 03:36PM EDT
Sorry I'm not that bright, but I don't quite get what Sarah is talking about. What are you trying to say, to comment, to question, .... what is it? Totally confusing writing, unfocused, .... it makes my mind drift away. So Sarah, could you go back just interview people please?
Roger B - Monday March 30, 2009 04:30PM EDT
AT&T shouldn't care whether you use Skype or not. If you have an iPhone, you still have to pay $80 a month. AT&T gets paid either way.
Yahoo! Finance User - Monday March 30, 2009 05:42PM EDT
True, Roger, but ATT would miss out on the international call fees though, unless that is included in the kitchen sink iPhone plan. What is better is that reliability of iPod touch calls is bound to improve. iPhone is not just iPhone, it is also the iPod touch. It works to call with the new mic imbedded headset already ($39) but the skype software should work better than the client add-ons such as 'Fring' etc...
Techgoose - Tuesday March 31, 2009 01:42PM EDT
If AT&T didn't seek to gouge people when they cross borders with their phones, perhaps they wouldn't have to worry about people trying to bypass them -- but, then again, there are elephants who would like to fly: they won't, and neither will AT&T until it's way too late. As for Valley Buzz, hey; you made it thru todays' column with almost no typos or grammatical gaffes: things are looking up!
xin - Tuesday March 31, 2009 02:28PM EDT
big deal skype has been on smartphones for a long time. iphone sucks.
eep - Tuesday March 31, 2009 04:54PM EDT
Had Skype on my smartphone 2 years ago. $1.29/minute to call back home from EU gets expensive quickly, but you need a decent wifi connection to use Skype. That was difficult and/or not inexpensive of itself. As to the proofreading, I didn't see any obvious mistakes, and the writing was clear enough. Why gang up on Sarah?
eep - Tuesday March 31, 2009 04:55PM EDT
Had Skype on my smartphone 2 years ago. $1.29/minute to call back home from EU gets expensive quickly, but you need a decent wifi connection to use Skype. That was difficult and/or not inexpensive of itself. As to the proofreading, I didn't see any obvious mistakes, and the writing was clear enough. Why gang up on Sarah?
CNXtreme - Saturday April 04, 2009 10:07PM EDT
Well, here's the scoop: I installed Skype on the iPhone yesterday and AGAIN this is one app that's severely limited by the inability of the iPhone to do multi-tasking.. Shows clearly that multi tasking on the iPhone is not just a geek hobby. On just about any computer or mobile device since the 1990's, you could have several apps running at the same time. Without it, you need to keep Skype on the front screen.. doing anything else will log you out of Skype so people can't reach you by Skype call or Skype chat.
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Yahoo! Finance User - Monday March 30, 2009 12:10PM EDT
An official Skype app is not a yawn, you have missed the entire point. What happens to ATT revenue model when its most popular phone can bypass ATT revenue generating cellular network for a percentage of thier calls, wake up !