Fox Business Archive

Last week Fox Business ran a special named Buffett U which brought together a bunch of business school students from the top schools across the country to Warren Buffett’s headquarters in Omaha. I searched the Fox Business site for the video from the event but all I found was a couple of very short clips.

During the event one of the students asked what Buffett would change in business schools with regards to the education provided to the students. Buffett explained that he believed that communication skills (both verbal and written) aren’t taught to grad school students because he believes the institutions believe it’s, "beneath them". He went on to say, "your ability to convey your ideas to others will be an enormous determinant to your success".

I completely agree with Buffett regarding how important communication skills are. I required all of my staff over the past 15 years to spend time speaking in public – to clients, to our team, etc. Typically I would get pushback from developers who said that they were just sitting behind a desk coding and didn’t need to learn how to properly communicate. That excuse never held water with me because while a developer may sit behind a desk today, what about tomorrow?

Look at how many people are losing their jobs on a daily basis lately. What if that developer loses his/her job tomorrow and needs to find a new job. How important are good communication skills when you are trying to beat out 10,000 other developers for a job? Or what about when you want to pitch your startup to investors? How important are communication skills (again, written and verbal) at that moment?

Buffett explained that he took a Dale Carnegie class when he was very young because he was very afraid to speak in front of people (he actually met his wife at the class). Another popular course for public speaking is Toastmasters. There are also plenty of courses at local colleges around public speaking in the evenings or on the weekend. The ability to communicate with an audience is something that will return benefits for the rest of your life.

comScore is out with their June Ad Metrix analysis of the top online display advertising publishers and advertisers in the U.S. On the publisher side, Fox Interactive Media leads the pack with 52.3 billion ad views. MySpace accounted for 51 billion of the 52.3 billion hence my story title. Facebook came in sixth with 3 billion ads and Glam made the report in tenth with just over 2 billion ads.

On the advertiser side, Microsoft leads the pack with 5.5 billion ads purchased. In second place is the University of Phoenix with 4.7 billion ads – guess they have some open seats. Vonage and Netflix came in eighth and ninth respectively with just over 3 billion ads purchased. Experian Interactive is the company who pushes the dancing women/bear/monkey ads for Lower My Bills and the FreeCreditReport ads.

Sarah Lacy appeared on Fox Business this evening on their "Happy Hour" show to promote her upcoming book. Host Cody Willard should stick to financial topics – whenever he crosses over to tech, it just doesn’t work. See our previous example for another example where Cody explains how Facebook’s Beacon works.

Sarah begins by defining Web 2.0 as, "basically the collection of companies that started around 2002-2005 and the hallmark is user-generated content, social media and social networking." She names Facebook and YouTube as Web 2.0 companies.

Then Cody shows his real intelligence by explaining that Web 2.0 is a "Ponzi scheme." Sarah tries to explain that none of the Web 2.0 companies have gone public and that’s why we will never be in a bubble.

Sarah then attempts to use her one line which she believes makes her look like an insider, "Facebook actually makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year." She’s used this line on every video/audio interview I’ve seen/heard lately. 

Sarah tells Cody that LinkedIn is the next Web 2.0 company to be a success. Cody then replies with the following, "LinkedIn is a crappy site, no one is going to use LinkedIn." Sarah gets very loud in explaining that LinkedIn has the best business model on the Web today. I agree with her that LinkedIn is hot without being in the 250. Check out our LinkedIn coverage including Mark’s LinkedIn guide.

Overall Sarah comes across smart and knowledgeable in this very short interview. Great book placement behind her left shoulder – not sure she could have asked for a better placement!

Side note, I have purchased a tripod so videos should now always be nice and still. And this weekend the video card will be connected to the cable and future tv captures will be perfect. Thank you for your patronage.

This afternoon Hulu CEO Jason Kilar appeared on Fox Business to discuss the public release of the Hulu online video/TV service. I’ve captured a video from the brief discussion and it’s embedded below. Here is a transcript of the important parts (my emphasis):

"Already the business model is proving itself, which is we support the service through advertising and there’s a strong enough demand that we are actually getting higher rates than on broadcast, specifically even in primetime tv…advertising is sold on a CPM basis and we are very fortunate to be in a position that the advertising bought on Hulu is even higher than that on primetime."

"The common thread between the two is that Amazon is one of the best companies in the world at focusing on the user experience. And that’s exactly what Hulu is, in obsessed as well. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, why we show up to work and often times stay until 3 AM in the morning."

Perhaps Kilar has been reading the also LA-based Calacanis Employee Manual.

Tonight on Fox Business Channel, Cody Willard, Rebecca Gomez and Andy Levy discuss Facebook and Beacon. You must watch this video to learn about how Beacon works. Here are the highlights:

• Cody begins by botching the opening text he was provided on the teleprompter
• Andy is not on Facebook because he is "over 12"
• Andy doesn’t get how Facebook is valued at $15B as it’s a free service
• Andy believes the opt-out message should come from Will Smith and say "oh hell no"
• Rebecca explains that Facebook uses "cookies" to create Beacon and then explains about a guy who purchased a ring on Overstock and then all of his friends were notified and his wife knew about the holiday gift
• Rebecca further explains that if you surf for porn and find Debbie Does Dallas, your friends will now know you are a perv
• Andy says you have to be a better surfer and clear your cookies
• Rebecca Gomez always clears her Internet search history
• Finally Andy notes that Beacon is like Columbia House 12-for-1 cds back in the old days

Here is the video (yes, it’s captured via an old tv, deal with it!):