Glamming It Up (Apparently, Pirate-Style)

Sarah Browne has a post on Facebook about Girly Glam being back, and yours truly is cited for my fashion sense, in particular one pair of boots I own. Although, here at TechTicker, said fashion sense only gets mocked. Mocked in the form of graphics no less!

Here's Howard and Brad's commentary on my lovely DVF outfit today:

Is it me or do I look like some host of a children's show from the 1970s?

Ahem. Back to Sarah Browne's post. Beyond the shout out, it is an interesting one, and hopefully the link above works within FB's digital walls. If not, here's an excerpt:

"So does all this girly glam mean that voila! women have finally achieved so much equality that we can now afford to literally let it all hang out? That women no longer need to dress or behave like men? That we have choices — every permutation of chic from chictini to Hillary’s custom pantsuits to Sarah Palin’s much ballyhooed booty from Saks?"

It's a thorny issue, as I've written about before. But I'm a big believer that it should be a non-issue. The key isn't "Oh, now we're all wearing dresses." It's that women are free to wear whatever they want: jeans, dresses or VC-esque khakis and blue shirts. Sometimes--gasp!-- professional women rock different looks depending on the day. At Yahoo I wear a dress almost every day; when I was writing my book I wore jeans and a t-shirt almost every day. Paul Carr-- never missing an opportunity to mock me-- calls it the difference between SarahLacy.com and Sarah Lacy. But I think they're both me.

Sure, I dress a little girlier than your average CNBC host when I'm on camera, but that's because I think suits are unflattering. I mean, really, if someone wants to count me out because I wear a dress and not a boxy 1980s suit: Go right ahead. As far as I'm concerned, that only gives me more of an advantage. 

Why Evan Made a Smart Move

Om and I seem to be of the same mind. Biggest gamble on this deal: What the currency of Facebook stock is worth. That, and I take Evan at his word that he wants to keep building Twitter. After all, it's not all about money, particularly for people who've already made money. Twitter is a one of the biggest ideas in Web 2.0 and the team knows that doesn't just come around because you decide, "Ok we sold that one, what next?"

I think they made the right call. More in my Dirt segment on TechTicker today below:

What Other Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Dogster

Pets.com may have been one of the most wasteful and frivolous of dot com companies, but Dogster is one of the most disciplined of the Web 2.0 generation. It's interesting since Pets.com had a clearer business model, and satisfied a more obvious need. Just goes to show execution wins, in a downturn or no. While a lot of Dogster's smart moves were made in the company's early days, there are plenty of tips in my TechTicker interview with Dogster CEO Ted Rheingold for cash-strapped entrepreneurs worried about 2009.

Clip one:

Clip two (featuring moxie!):

More Pain Coming for Online Video

My sympathies go out to the people behind the shows canceled on Revision3 last week. Clearly, a lot of fans were upset. You could see it in the comments on CEO Jim Louderback's blog: People loved the shows that were canceled and outraged that Rev3 would do such a thing. That outrage fed itself as they read each others comments. "See! Other people loved these shows too! How could you cancel them?!?!?!"

I have no doubt they were loved and no doubt Jim did the right thing. And that weird dichotomy shows why we still don't have full-fledged original content channels online: Video is hard to do well and video is expensive.

That causes two problems that are still hurting original video content online especially as we enter a protracted downturn: Audience and money.

Is Your Startup Going out of Business?

My guest today on TechTicker was Keith Rabois of Slide. Before Slide, Keith was an early member of the PayPal mafia and an early exec at LinkedIn. He also has an advisory role with Sequoia Capital -- where among other exploits he pretty much hand-delivered YouTube to the firm. In other words, in a sea of engineer-minded entrepreneurs, Keith actually knows a thing or two about the business side of startups. He also has opinions and isn't afraid to voice them.

I had to de-Southern myself before taping as I usually sound like I'm saying "Rab-a-way" instead of Rabois. No joke, Mr. Lacy thought it was spelled this way for about the first six months I knew Keith. Ah, the downside of being on camera-- proper pronunciation!

The funniest backstage moment this morning was when the control room told me my guest was ready and I sat down, shuffled my notes and looked up to see a very, very old man in the monitor. "Um, that's not Keith," I said. Oddly enough, the guy sort of looked like a 50-year-older Keith, so I half-wondered if the downturn was just aging him. Turns out, the studio was just confused.

So here are the clips in case you didn't make it over to TechTicker today. The first one is on all the layoffs in the startup world last week (some 250 jobs all together and counting) and what separates companies that are seeing opportunity in the downturn from those seeing doom and gloom. The second clip is about how all those layoffs and hard-to-get-series-b-rounds will ripple into Silicon Valley's macro economy. And the third is about Slide itself: a company planning to spend its way out of the downturn.

Flight to, er, No Returns?

When I took the job at TechTicker, I had no idea a massive credit and banking crisis would become the dominant story of the markets. As I wrote before, it makes me feel a tad irrelevant as someone who focuses on tech companies and startup culture. But the plus is it's forced me to stay very engaged in the news flow of this crisis, and re-engage with my finance reporter roots.

Fun fact: I actually started my career covering finance. The reason I don't have a Southern accent? I used to get mocked when I called Wall Street and said things like, "What do y'all think about this market?" Good times.

Anyway, during the last downturn I talked to experts over and over again who talked about a flight to quality-- ie focusing tech holdings on the big, safe tech names-- as the way to survive the turbulence. Similarly, I have CNBC on in the green room all day and all I hear is that same advice. OK, so let's see how you did if you took it: According to this chart you would have lost money on nearly every name.

Now, I KNOW, people will say ten years isn't long-term enough. Tell that to someone who was ten years away from retirement in 1999, first of all. Also, that should be considered long-term in technology, shouldn't it? It reminds me of something Peter Thiel once told me that flicks to the cultural difference between Silicon Valley and Wall Street: A bet on, say, Microsoft isn't actually a technology play. Because Microsoft wants things to stay the same. It's actually a vote against innovation.

What if instead of keeping the bet on Yahoo ten years ago as the experts told you to, you bought Google at the IPO? Or instead of SAP, you went with Salesforce? Young risky companies, yes. But, per Peter's point, it seems that's a wiser bet if you're a believer in the fundamentals of tech, because the fundamentals of tech involve change and disruption. Very few companies can stay on top of multiple market and technological shifts. Investors should think long and hard about that conventional wisdom this time around.

More Fun with Paul Kedrosky

You too can be like Buffett!

...and a bad time for peer-to-peer lending

As a side note, I really like my pirate-y shirt/vest ensemble today! It was actually the result of Twitter. Diane Von Furstenberg Twittered a link to the site with a big sale on shoes and - duh- I clicked. I didn't buy shoes but did buy this shirt and vest and a few other things. Later tonight, when Mr. Lacy looks at me exasperated and says, "Where did THAT shirt come from??" I plan on blaming Twitter. Hot outfit AND an alibi? Don't tell me there's not a business model in there somewhere...

Oh Wait, I Didn't Mean to Say We'd Totally Buy Yahoo on the Cheap and Laugh Maniacally While Doing It...

Much ado about this Steve Ballmer "slip up" at the Gartner conference today that sent Yahoo's shares way up in anticipation that Microsoft may come back to the table. Here's a segment Paul Kedrosky-- better known around the TT studio by his rap name "P-Ked"-- and I did on TechTicker this morning. Speaking of TechTicker, a word on the degree to which we're kicking ass and taking names as Wall Street burns all around us: (from the USA Today)

"Yahoo Finance, the largest finance site on the Internet, has experienced its biggest weeks for viewership in the second half of September. Activity is up 40% on Yahoo Finance message boards. Its video news program, Tech Ticker, drew a record 2.5 million streams on Sept. 15. "People are asking what is going on, how it affects them and where it may be headed," says Yahoo Finance general manager Mark Interrante."

That's more than three-times the audience of CNBC for our not-even-one-year-old scrappy show. Boo-ya, Jim.

 

"Ommmmm..."

That kept getting chanted around TechTicker headquarters yesterday morning. No, we weren't particularly into meditation, although you'd think looking at Yahoo's stock lately, Mr. Yang would offer some new zen program for all those stock-laden employees. (Bonus Prize: One-thousand of you may be also getting pink slips soon!)

Rather, Om Malik was our guest. Remember when the early GigaOm tagline had something to do with "...just close your eyes and say 'Ommmmm'"? That was, of course, back in the day when blogging was Om's sideline job, not his empire in the making.

He's so busy that yesterday was Om's TechTicker debut, and even though he was late to the nice SF studio we booked him so he could avoid a 50 minute drive to Sunnyvale, he was a lovely guest. I look forward to having him back soon! One reason I like Om? He has strong opinions and doesn't mince words. He gets slightly more rabid as these clips go on too. Enjoy!

Om and I on Gartner's strangely rosy IT spending projections:

Om and I on why newspapers are now losing money ONLINE too:

Om and I on Jeff Bezos, aka the new Steve Jobs/Bill Gates (I gotta say, Om is right here and WTF Seattle gets ANOTHER one? Step it up, Valley!)

Om and I on, well, GigaOm and all that funding amid an ad crisis [UPDATE: THERE'S AN EMBED CODE PROBLEM HERE THAT'S PULLING THE WRONG CLIP. WILL POST THE RIGHT ONE ONCE IT'S SORTED. SHAME BECAUSE IT WAS MY FAVORITE OF THE FOUR!]:

When Tech Reporters Become Irrelevant

In some ways, 2008 has been a great year for TechTicker to launch. The biggest tech story was, after all, the continually botched-then-even-more-botched deal between Yahoo and Microsoft. It was a story we surely had some implicit authority on, and one that allowed us to prove we'd cover Yahoo as reporters not employees. (I have the denied access to Yahoo's intranet to prove it.)

But the bad news is that's been pretty much the only big tech story. Mostly it's been a year of financial news. So, especially lately, TechTicker is looking less "tech" everyday. But, hey, people want to kvetch over the economic crisis, and we are here to oblige. If you haven't been watching Henry and Aaron's excellent coverage from the Nasdaq, you should start. Mostly, to see how excited Henry is about all of it. He is quite literally flying out of his chair in some clips. (Judging from these eye-popping numbers, few of you aren't watching TechTicker. I'm glad I wasn't missed during my month on tour. Sniff.)

In a semi-desperate attempt to have a value-add again-- or at least show off my latest DVF splurge-- I did a few segments with Paul Kedrosky around the crisis, trying to hew to tech as much as possible. If you're one of those people who needs an economy fix, clips are on the jump.