SharkJumping

We have had a big couple of weeks at Meez. 

The first launch was Dancing.  We started introducing dance moves about 2 weeks ago, and it's been such a big hit that we've now launched a set of them (Moonwalk, Electric Slide, Booty Dance, Brush the Shoulder, BreakDance etc) since they really show off the power of an animated Meez, as well as provoke peals of laughter, as you can see from the ones below if you click on the images.  If anyone has suggestions of more moves, please send them in - yes, the "Vogue" is coming...

The second announcement was the launch of our CAUZ brand of virtual clothing, which is our way to partner with non-profits to help them market to a younger, more wired audience.  You can read the press release here, but the key win for us was getting so many well known brands (Outward Bound, Youth Noise, Music for America, etc) to agree to have their brands translated into virtual clothing and backgrounds.  In addition to the CAUZ line, we also launched our first 2 indie band t-shirts for the bands Stroke 9 and the Pinder Brothers - we'll be doing a lot more of these items since it's a great way for fans to show their appreciation for a band by wearing a Meez-created band t-shirt on MySpace, Tagged or Live Journal.  Finally, we added another Premium Collection partner with Blik (www.whatisblik.com), which is providing us with our first 3rd party backgrounds (see the colorful one below), some for free and others as premium items.  For Blik, which is an incredibly cool provider of funky wall decals, this is another way to reach their college and twenty-something audience online where many of them are spending increasing amounts of time.  Look for more to come as brands continue to look for ways to reach users online, and Meez is a great vehicle!

I spend Summer weekends up in the Lake Tahoe region and we often spend Sunday nights in Tahoe City at the Commons Beach for their weekly free concert series - it's a relaxing and beautiful place where we can picnic, play ball with the boys, and listen to some music.  It normally features a pleasant but somewhat forgettable band, but I was struck last week by the lyrics and overall storytelling strength of artist Brett Dennen (his MySpace page ), as well as a great musical beat  - it just felt good to sit there and hum along. 

As the Rhapsody editorial team will tell anyone who will listen, I have incredibly pedestrian music taste, but I tend to like storytellers with guitars, and Brett Dennen certainly fit the bill.  For the first time in 5 years, I actually spent $15 for a CD (his new one So Much More which hits retail next month), and immediately went home to listen to his earlier self-titled CD on Rhapsody (here).  I continued to listen to it all week, and I can truly recommend that everyone give it a try.  His new release is on Dualtone, one of my favorite Nashville labels, and I think he'll do very well with the greater exposure they can give him, as well his current tour opening for John Mayer.

Rob Reid, the founder of Listen, married a wonderful woman last night, so the old Rhapsody gang was mostly reunited for an evening here at City Hall, and it was good to see that everyone is doing well in their post-RealNetworks lives.  Here is a quick update of the Listen.com "where are they now?"

1.  Rob Reid - Chairman and founder - just got married, and has been living in LA working on a couple of great media ideas, as well as helping out a few companies like us at Meez.
2.  Sean Ryan - CEO - started Donnerwood Media 18 months ago, home of leading avatar service Meez, as well as popular casual game
3.  Dave Williams - VP Product - is CMO and GM of Games at , which was just purchased by Viacom last week for $200M!  Nice job
4.  Ranah Edelin - VP Business Development and Label Relations - now CEO and co-founder of karaoke and talent platform - recently named by Time Magazine as one of the top 50 websites on the Internet.
5.  Niranjan Nagar - VP Engineering - now CTO and co-founder of karaoke and talent platform - recently named by Time Magazine as one of the top 50 websites on the Internet.
6.  Tim Bratton - VP, New Technology - in typical brilliant but quirky Brattonian style, he's working on a series of cool technology ideas, but also took the time to purchase an RV park in Texas (see site here), which is already throwing off cash.  Might be our next offsite location...
7.  Zahavah Levine - Legal Boss - now General Counsel at , having gone from the frying pan into the fire, but YouTube couldn't have hired a better person for the job.

There are many other Listen alums scattered around the Internet, but it has been good to see everyone doing so well.  What is clear is that most of us appear to have abandoned the masochistic digital music business outside of the SingShot gang, which I think has found one of the few viable business models in online music.

As part of our original business plan at Donnerwood, we licensed the non-Second Life rights to the wonderful new casual game Tringo, created by Nathan Keir in the virtual world as the first virtual game ever licensed for real world use.  As Donnerwood morphed as a company to focus on the deployment of avatar service MEEZ, we decided to re-license the IP rights to Tringo where it made sense.  To do so, we used a cheap off-shore coder to bang out a very simple web version of Tringo (available ) so that possible developer and publisher partners could understand the basics of the game before entering Second Life to see the full multi-player implementation.

We have since rolled out a GBA version from Crave, and signed a broad agreement with Yoo Media to publish an ITV and skill-based version of the game - but what is surprising is how the beta web version explodes upward with periodic, but regular activity.  In addition, there is a lot of feedback on how we can improve the web version, although it was never intended to be anything but a showpiece for more polished offline versions. 

First it was the press associated with the GBA release, then it was Bit Torrent's founder Bram Cohen's generous mention of us in his blog (thanks Bram - he has the highest score we have ever seen, at an astonishing 320!), and last week it was a on cool casual game site JayisGames.com, which was then picked up and enhanced by multiple Japanese sites, leading to more than 30,000 players last week!

Although it's a good feeder for Meez.com (can get a special Tringo t-shirt in Meez), we would rather do developer/publisher deals for the remaining rights - wireless, casual PC, XBox Live Arcade, PSP/DS, as well as the other inquiries we get, such as board games and joystick games, so drop us a line at if interested.

Less than 3 weeks after launching, Rhapsody alumni site (see my earlier post here) has been named by Time Magazine as one of the Top 50 Coolest Websites of 2006 (see article here).  Given that they're still in beta, and still have some great announcements and improvements coming later this year, it's a great endorsement of their service, as can be heard from some of the truly amazing singers on the site, as well as the future William Hungs...

It's also a great site for kids who are looking to sing, or just like reading lyrics on the screen.  Check out my godson Finn's rendition of London Bridge...

Or my 2 year old son Quinn's rendition of favorite song Twinkle Twinkle...(starts a little slow)

MTV Networks/Viacom announced (see ) this week that they were acquiring (home of Shockwave.com, Atom Films and Addicting Clips/Games) for approximately $200M.  I want to be clear that I'm biased about Atom since CEO Mika Salmi is a friend, as are some of the other executives, but this is a simply great move by MTV, and it appears to be a fair price by both sides.

With Atom, MTV gets a great creative team, a select group of popular sites in games and video with 20M+ monthly unique visitors to plug into MTV's strong advertising team, and  another source of content for the rest of MTV Networks.  I have to tip my hat to the executives and investors of Atom who persevered for the last 7 years through the bubble mayhem, the downturn carnage, and now the steady upswing in their properties, with the end financial result being quite positive for all involved - plus it's yet another great outcome for a RealNetworks alum, as so many of us are.  I love casual games, and I think this purchase vaults MTV Networks right into a strong position in this rapidly growing category, and the Atom/Addicting video assets are a strong fit for both iFilm and for MTV's more mature video properties as a "farm team" or modern A&R team to find upcoming talent.

Great move for MTV Networks, and kudos to the Atom team for sticking it out through the grim times.  I think this move is being underestimated by the market for how much it will bring to the company.

As detailed here, Minnesota today had its proposed law against sales of violent video games to minors thrown out by a state judge who, shock of all shocks, ruled it was unconstitutional.  This joins a long line of decisions against similar laws in states such as Illinois, California, Michigan and others.  I understand that it's an election cycle for the House and Senate, and that presidential contenders are already jockeying for position for 2008 on supposedly moral issues like this one (see Family Entertainment Protection Act post here), but this waste of taxpayer money and politician time is starting to get about as tiresome as debating constitutional amendments against flag burning. 

Violent video games are no different than violent movies - they have a voluntary industry-rating system which probably works as well as the movie one does, keeping most underage children from consuming inappropriate content.  As a parent of young children, I would definitely not like them to consume M rated games until they are old enough to understand the situation, but I also can't imagine why games should be singled out above movies, and apparently neither do judges in most states.

Online Karaoke platform just launched, run by two amazing former colleagues from Listen.com.  Check out a couple of of my pitiful recordings and then go record one of your own - it's a lot of fun for both adults and kids.  If you're over 21, I'd recommend having a cocktail first...

SingShot is also a great example of one of the few reasonably good business models in digital music, and it fits really nicely into the expanding social media and personalization wave, just like our avatar service Meez.