Fred Wilson has an interesting piece today on how some blogs have moved from being a vehicle for individual voice to a more “corporate,” newspaper like function.

I commented on his post making reference to our mission at bschoolers.com. I thought our readership would find the comment interesting:

As everyone seems to agree here, it’s difficult to call one form of blogging “better” than the other, they are more simply “different” and both serve important purposes.

While I love the personal and singular “voice” of certain blogs, I also think there is real value with multi-author blogs. Blogging is a conversation - it is about sharing perspective, insight and intellect. In some blogs the conversation takes place in the comment sections. But on others, the conversation often takes place through the top-tier blog content as well.

As a business school student, I launched an “open” business school blog called bschoolers.com. The blog is “open,” meaning anyone interested in anything business school related can post top level blog postings. We chose to launch in this open way precisely because we valued the diversity of opinion and perspective an open forum would provide, and frankly, we believed our readership would be more interested in the breadth and depth of the open forum rather than hearing from three individual students.

At the end of the day, no matter which method of blogging you prefer, we can all agree that blogging has benefited us with an explosion of information and depth of the beautiful conversation.

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For those interested, this article from Fortune is probably the best explanation of the recent meltdown in the subprime mortgage market I’ve seen. It’s a little technical and the case used is extreme, but it thoroughly explains how the mortgage securitization market works and why investors got slammed with subprime securties.

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I just heard Vinod Kohslod (former founder/CEO of Sun and former partner of Kleiner Perkins) talk about alternative energy – and it really seems like we are all barking up the wrong tree. I think alternative energy is where the internet was around 1997 – way overvalued, probably funding companies that don’t deserve it, but on the brink of unleashing the next wave of Googles.

Think about it this way, building internet apps is easy at this point, no one is talking about the technical difficulties needed to be overcome…those issues were solved 5 to 15 years ago. Anything and everything that is created on the internet can be replicated in a matter of months (except for a networked effect??? – please, consumers are fickle and some marketing dollars can get any new service the initial traction needed)…aside from a very limited number of areas (video distribution, and maybe contextual search) everything is a matter of coming up with an idea and putting it out there with three off-shore developers and $5k. Vinod said something super fascinating – that he would rather invest/bet on technical risk than on market risk…and I think he is right. The true value added innovations that can be turned into sustainable businesses need to win on the technical side…it just doesn’t make sense to invest on market risks (which is what every single app being developed now is doing – do you doubt that a facebook app might not work? Of course not, the questions whether the market will adopt it…). Everything happening on the internet is valuation / faddish bullshit. No real business will come of it, just features to be bought or copied by the big guys…

In order to really make it big, to change the world, to create the next Microsoft, Sun, SAP, Google, RIM, Apple you need to tackle the complex technical problems that no one else can solve. Every interview I hear, book I read, or article I see about innovators, it was always about how to solve a technically difficult problem that no one else knew how…I am officially off the web 2.0/3.0 bandwagon and onto finding really difficult problems out there that need to be solved. I don’t want to create the next del.icio.us and have a 3% chance of selling to yahoo for 30mill…it’s a terrible value proposition.

Do you guys think I am totally off here?

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Note: as usual, I’m here writing about some online business issues that should be of interest to most b-schoolers. If you’re not a tech person, give it a read anyway - I think there’s a good lesson here for all.

On May 16th of this year, Amazon boldly declared that they would be opening an all mp3 music download store and that store quietly launched recently.

The power of mp3 is that it involves no DRM (the digital rights management systems that means you can’t do what you want with songs you’ve bought). It also makes it the only major store other than iTunes that sells a la carte downloads that you can use on the world’s #1 mp3 player, the iPod.

Of course, this flies in the face of what the 4 major music labels have demanded from online sales. They want DRM in order to help ensure that illegal copies of the music don’t float around. Of course, the absurdity of that system is that these same labels prefer to push CDs, which offer no such protection against pirating. The bottom line is whatever the record companies do, pirating is out there.

So Amazon took a stand. “Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” CEO Jeff Bezos said at the time, and clearly that is important. It is an mp3 only store and they won’t work with any record companies that won’t play by their rules.

So far the catalogs of EMI and Universal are available on this new service. EMI was the first on board, as they were with Itunes DRM free music. But ITunes DRM free is still not actually mp3 and so still won’t play on some “mp3 players.” Universal is the big gain here because they’re the biggest label and thus usually the slowest to experiment, in stark contrast to EMI’s willingness to try new angles (at least as of recently). Also, Universal is now threatening to not renew with iTunes, so Amazon may become THE store for most of the world’s biggest artists (it’s already the only place to find Radiohead).

Empowered by this bold stance and the success Amazon had getting the labels on board, Yahoo! looks ready to take a stand too. Yahoo! Music VP of product development Ian Rogers recently gave a line in the sand presentation to some top level music execs. He gives a written version of that presentation online at fistfulayen (Rogers’ own blog).

I’ve pulled together a truncated version here:

“Amazon’s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that’s simple and works with any device . . .

“Inconvenient experiences don’t have Web-scale potential, and platforms which monetize the gigantic scale of the Web is the only way to compete with the control you’ve lost, the only way to reclaim value in the music industry. If your consultants are telling you anything else, they are wrong.

“Yahoo! Music demonstrates this scale discrepancy perfectly. Yahoo! is the world’s #1 Internet destination . . . Between 10 and 20 million people watch music videos on Yahoo! Music every month. Between 5 and 10 million people listen to radio on Yahoo! Music every month. But the ENTIRE subscription music market (including Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo!) is in the low millions (sorry, we don’t release subscriber numbers, but the aggregate number proves the point), even after years of marketing by all three companies. When you compare the experiences on Yahoo! Music, the order of magnitude difference in opportunity shouldn’t be a surprise: Want radio? No problem. Click play, get radio. Want video? Awesome. Click play, get video. Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us. Yahoo! didn’t want to go through all these steps. The licensing dictated it. It’s a slippery slope from “a little control” to consumer unfriendliness and non-Web-scale products and services . . .

“I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

“If, on the other hand, you’ve seen the light too, there’s a very fun road ahead for us all.”

Yahoo! is clearly feeling empowered by Amazon. At the end of the day, with Urge folding in favor of Rhapsody, there are basically only 5 major players in online music. Real (Rhapsody), Apple (Itunes), Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft. You really only need one of those major 5 to make online music truly work. But you need all 4 music labels to make that one venture a true success. If all 5 online players band together, maybe the labels’ hands will be forced and the right decisions will be made for them.

Is Amazon’s new mp3 store the answer? Probably not. But its a huge step. As Rogers says, “there’s a very fun road ahead for us all.” The entrepreneurial spirit can win over if the labels will only let it.

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Check out this very insightful blog posting on Guy Kawasaki’s blog detailing the projected and actual costs associated with launching the startup company Redfin. This is critical reading for any tech entrepreneur.

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Fortune magazine had a very interesting cover story this past weekend on the best companies for developing leadership talent. Most interesting to me was the discussion on the various tactics used to develop leaders. For those interested in becoming a leader in any capacity (startup, general management, non-for-profit, etc.), this is a great read…

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There was a very interesting article published this weekend in the NY Times on the merits of attending business school, specifically in relation to the costs and benefits of an MBA for work in the private equity and hedge fund worlds.

The article questions the value of investing in an MBA when riches abound in the lucrative hedge fund and private equity industries. Top talent in finance no longer need MBAs to achieve ambitious career goals. The hedge fund industry, in particular, seems to place very little value on the educational merits of business school – instead, more heavily emphasizing on-the-job / “real-world” experience or more financed-focused programs such as the CFA or Masters in Financial Engineering.

I happen to agree with the jist of this article – there are professions, many of them in fact, for which an MBA may not be worth the heavy costs. Furthermore, many individuals, no matter which profession they are in, have personal factors that compel them towards or away from an MBA.

I would, however, caution readers against underestimating the value of an MBA. For many of us who do not direct our careers by the mantra of making as much money as possible as quickly as possible (which seemed to be the consistent theme of those interviewed in the NY Times article), the MBA provides some serious benefits. See my detailed posting on the subject here.

I’d like to emphasize one thing - while there is important “door-opening” power of attending business school, I don’t believe short-term career opportunity is the most compelling reason to pursue an MBA. The most meaningful value of an MBA is long-term – it is the knowledge and intellect gained that will serve you throughout your career. At some point in everyone’s career what is written on their resume becomes much less important than what they know and are capable of doing. An MBA provides a holistic understanding of business, from all angles – marketing, finance, strategy, sales, etc. This big picture purview is critical (or at very least, a serious competitive advantage) to excelling in many areas of business. For me, this is the primary value proposition (to use a very business school/consulting term) of an MBA and it is why I am a business student today.

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The Forté Foundation is an organization dedicated to encouraging women to pursue careers in business leadership by providing access to information, scholarships and
networking opportunities. Obviously this is an important topic for everyone in business to be aware of. The vast majority of b-schoolers are still men, and that quite simply means that the business school experience is not as well rounded as it should be.

This fall, Forté is coming to cities across the country with its Forum
series, featuring top women business leaders sharing candid advice drawn
from their own career experiences.

They’ll be joined by admissions officers from the top MBA schools, who will
answer questions and give advice about the admissions process.

The event includes plenty of time to mingle with corporate and school
representatives for one-on-one networking opportunities.

The schedule of events is as follows:
Boston, September 17th (register by September 13th)
Washington DC, September 18th (register by September 13th)
Chicago, September 19th (register by September 13th)
New York, September 20th (registration is closed)
Atlanta, September 24th (register by September 20th)
Houston, September 25th (register by September 20th)
San Francisco, September 26th (register by September 20th)
Los Angeles, September 27th (register by September 20th)
New York, October 1st (register by September 24th)
London, October 9th (register by October 1)

To register for any of these events, visit
http://www.fortefoundation.org/forum

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