Sure, sure, the FourSquare conference has become the East Coast incarnation of Allen & Company’s annual summer gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho, the incubator for all kinds of major and minor deals. But as Yogi Berra said, it was déjà vu all over again.
And if Chad Hurley, the chief executive of YouTube, was the belle of the ball at Sun Valley this summer, then Mr. Zuckerberg was the “it” boy of FourSquare. Hurley was also in attendance yesterday, still basking in the glow of his company’s sale to Google for $1.65 billion — and also wearing a blazer and jeans, though he had shoes on.
YouTube’s sale may be only a month old, but Wall Street had already appeared to move on to the next big deal with all eyes on Mr. Zuckerberg, who has been in on-and-off negotiations with Yahoo. At the conference yesterday, Zuckerberg could be seen standing amid a throng of high-powered would-be suitors. Analysts have estimated that Facebook could have a value of as much as $1 billion.
Many speakers and attendees at the conference, including Barry Diller of IAC/InterActiveCorp, Shari E. Redstone of National Amusements, David J. Stern of the National Basketball Association, Martin Sorell of WPP and Harvey Weinstein of the Weinstein Company, among others, attended a dinner the night before, where much of the conversation was about the YouTube deal and its astronomical price tag. Several people questioned whether Internet valuations had once again gotten out of control.
“We’ve seen how this movie ends,” said one executive at a traditional media company who nonetheless was still looking at a bevy of new media acquisitions. “But we all believe we can change the ending.”
Among the companies being whispered about as takeover targets were sites with user-generated content like Digg and other video sites like Brightcove.
Much of the conference also focused on how user-generated content was upsetting the traditional media model and whether it was a fad or here to stay.
Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, lamented the quality of the comedy on user-generated YouTube clips. “It’s terrible,” he said. Mr. Stringer retorted, “It’s funny to them.”
“I think of the entertainment industry and Detroit similarly,” Seinfeld said as he dressed down the television executives in the room for not being bolder in their programming. “They don’t have confidence in their instincts. Maybe they don’t have instincts to be confident in?”
Who cares? And why is TV programming being discussed at an internet-related conference, you ask? Precisely what we wanted to know.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/media-executives-find-their-new-it-boy/
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