Web 2.0 is passé, so they say, and now the hot alley term is “Web meets world”.
Ad-based start ups aren’t getting funded anymore but new platforms that make real world activities faster, cheaper and more effective are all the rage.
Well Revolution Money is positioned right in that sweet spot, web meets world. Check out this piece in MarketWatch for a good example of a next generation social network and payments platform launched by Salon and powered by Revolution Money.
Web 2.0 video is hot. Widgets are hot. Social media is hot. Ad dollars are following new user habits. I am personally very excited about these kinds of consumer trends as are venture capitalists and investment bankers. Check out this article for some very interesting data.
Let’s see, I think in 1995 I started AOL Studios to build new brands to ride on top of the AOL network as well as the web at large. At the time, AOL was becoming the biggest virtual MSO in the sky but you just knew that there would be a billion people online and that new brands that rode on top of all distribution would garner the most value. In a sense this is what Google achieved. That distributed concept forshadowed the distributed web and Web 2.0 business models by a dozen years. We also were building a watermark that looked like today’s widget architecture to cross promote back and forth across the network.
AOL also created a Liberty Media-like holding company called Greenhouse in 1994, 14 years ago. 
It was all in the name of building out NEW brands and businesses without the AOL brand aside it. We believed in the power of the web to create a new medium and that new brands would emerge as favorites of a new consuming generation. I also believed that the value would accrue to the super setting brands that had distribution across all connections on a global basis. Content and utility brands always become more valuable than distribution brands in the long run. MTV is more important than Viacom cable. Did you even know that Viacom was once a big cable MSO company?
Let me count some of the non-AOL specific brands we owned and launched at the time via AOL Studios: Digital Cities (local); Worldplay Games (social gaming); Electra (women’s site); Entertainment Asylum (entertainment and celebrity); Thrive (health and wellness); The Hub (teens’ site); and Real Fans (the first sports blogging platform.) We also acquired and managed Moviefone and Mapquest. We launched Ozzie the Elf as the first cross platform character from Santa’s Home Page. He left the online world and became an ABC holiday special on network TV produced by Brandon Tartikoff. I could go on and on. How I wish we had continued to support the build out of these vertical sites and cross platform programming rather than continuing to invest in our dial-up marketing efforts.
Greenhouse also helped launch some great brands and first-of-their-kind programming efforts. We provided carriage and money in exchange for equity: Motley Fool; iVillage; Excite; Preview Travel/Travelocity; The Knot; WebMD; NetNoir(first African American site), PlanetOut; iGolf; Genieasy (horoscopes); and literally dozens and dozens of other new brands were launched and partially owned by AOL at the time. We also launched a precursor to the Flickr photo service.
As an old timer, it is wonderful to see strategies and concepts articulated more than a dozen or so years ago being reinvigorated and supported now. This is exactly the right strategy only now with broadband pipes and ad dollars available and internet advertising spending passing TV and cable spending, it won’t be seen as being ahead of its time. It will be seen as rational and wise.
The floodgates will now open. As I have been advocating and predicting, old media companies will now re-purpose their cash flow to buy new media companies again. This deal gives permission to newspaper companies – and broadcast companies - to park their cash into growth opportunities. CNet was the last big independent player of scale out there. Now traditional media companies will truly begin, in earnest, to roll up and consolidate and tuck in faster growing Web 2.0 media companies. This is a good move by CBS too. They have a money machine and can expand the revenues of the company. CNet was always an ITV company acting as a web company and they have a terrific publishing platform. Win/win situation here.