Bambi Francisco

Video - the next acquisition for CBS?

CBS, which just recently swallowed up CNet for a cool $1.8 billion, is still on the prowl. That’s according to Mike Marquez, the head of mergers and acquisitions and business development for CBS Interactive. “We still are very active on the acquisition front,” said Mike, who stopped by the Vator studio in San Francisco for this interview, and to be our guest host in our upcoming Vator Box show. He and Quincy Smith, the President of the online division for CBS, are always looking for ways to “accelerate growth through external actions,” he said.
So, what is he looking for? In this interview, Mike seemed to emphasize "video” a lot. Is that video search, video ad networks, user-generated or produced video content? I asked? You'll have to watch to hear what he had to say. Go to Vator.tv for the rest of the story.

Seesmic expands video comments with Disqus

Pretty soon, video commenting will be a requisite feature on traditional media sites. And, Seesmic - in partnership with Disqus - hopes to be that underlying platform. 

Seesmic, a video Twitter with aspirations to be a 'worldwide talkshow in video, and Disqus, a hoster and aggregator of comments across blogs, are partnering in Seesmic's effort to be the video commenting platform across publishing sites. Disqus, a two-person team co-founded by Daniel Ha last year, hosts comments for 13,000 blogs, including my personal Bambi.blogs, as of yesterday. (Thanks Daniel for helping set that up on TypePad).   

It's a good partnership as Seesmic, which has $6 million in funding from some high-profile angels, like Ron Conway, seeks to ramp up its user base, which now stands at 15,000. As Seesmic CEO and founder Loic Le Meur will tell you himself, at this point, it's all about getting users, users, users! He's determined to reach 1 million, though he won't commit to a date he thinks he'll reach that milestone. (Watch Loic's Seesmic pitch in this video.) 

Given that the site is invite-only, once he opens it up officially in mid-June, I'm sure the adoption rate will accelerate, especially with partners like Disqus. By partnering with Disqus, all of Disqus members will automatically be part of Seesmic. That could be 100,000 new users immediately. Daniel says that he has an active commentator base of 100,000. An active user is someone who comments in the past seven days. Moreover, Disqus' approach to getting new users is pretty clever. Partner with the most active blogs that generate dialogue and claim users commenting as your own.

Read the rest of the article on Vator.tv

What Scott Banister looks for as an angel

f you're an angel investor, I bet you'd love to have Scott Banister's line-up of angel deals.

Scott is an investor in Facebook, Powerset, Hi-5, Zappos and Zivity - a company he co-founded with his wife Cyan and helped raise $7 million for. Zivity recently announced that it hired Jordan Ritter as is CTO. Ritter co-founded music-sharing site Napster. (Also watch my interview with Cyan and story about Zivity, titled: You know it when you see it.)

Scott is also best known for being a co-founder of IronPort, which he sold to Cisco Systems for $830 million last year, and being an early investor and Board member of PayPal, which was sold to eBay back in 2002. Apparently, Scott has made some good bets and has a solid circle of business relationships. To this end, what Scott thinks is a good investment and what he thinks of the current investing climate is worth listening to. "Things have slowed down," he said. "Anytime the financial markets get shaky, then people have a tendency to want to retreat to cash." Indeed, if you were an investor in Bear Stearns, I'm sure you would be feeling pretty strapped.

Zivity - You know it when you see it

Capturing the female body in an artistic form can be tricky. The subtlest of adjustments can move a piece from inspirational to offensive. The former attracts a female audience, the latter – more likely males. Zivity wants to attract both, raising questions as to whether men and women, when dealing with “art” that dallies in moral obscurity, really want the same thing.

Seems to me that there is a reason that men read Playboy, women read Cosmo, and men read Playgirl. Essentially, men tend to like photos that help them get right to point while women generally like photos to show them how to be beautiful. Plus, women like to spend a bit more time on the experience. Zivity may have its work cut out for itself trying to please both.

If Zivity slips to the wrong side of that fine line between smut and beauty, it risks losing the female audience. And, it'll be pretty obvious if it does slip. As Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart prophetically stated about obscenity vs. art “I know it when I see it.”

Zivity is a new experience oriented, subscription site for females to share risqué, provocative and sometimes nude photos. It’s attracted about 100 amateur female models, including Zivity’s founder Cyan Banister, as well as Bella Sioux and Doll (both can be seen in Zivity’s Vator profile). Many of the models bare it all, though Zivity keeps the ratio of nude to non-nude to 50%, said Cyan in her interview with me.

(Go to Vator.tv to read the entire piece.)