Valleywag: Imeem

Imeem lays off 20, seeks buyer

Owen Thomas — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:00:00 PDT

Imeem is laying off a quarter of its 80-person staff, PaidContent reports. The music-centered social network has been more adept than many of its rivals at navigating the cutthroat music business. But one of its backers is Sequoia Capital, the ruthless VC firm which has ordered its portfolio companies to slash expenses. Imeem is also seeking to sell itself, with the help of investment bank Montgomery & Co. Imeem may be better than most digital-music startups — but it is still a digital-music startup, faced with fickle consumers, thin margins, and antagonistic partners in the record labels.

MySpace Music -- like Muxtape, except people who wear deodorant will use it

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:00:00 PDT

MySpace Music, a joint venture between the News Corp. social network and music labels Universal, Sony and Warner,finally launches next week, says Fortune, though it still won't have a CEO. MySpace users will be able to listen to and organize playlists full of songs from all three music labels for free. (EMI is the lone holdout, which means no coldplay.) Playlists will include affiliate links to Amazon.com's MP3 store. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe says ad revenues and song kickbacks are going to save the music industry, replacing lost CD sales.

Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell, whose company already offers a similar product,

MC Hammer proves he's the original fake-startup guy

Owen Thomas — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:40:00 PDT

Rapper turned startup advisor MC Hammer recently swanned through the San Francisco offices of Imeem, praising the music startup for its "beautiful women." Why are startups so prone to opening their doors to the man formerly known as Stanley Kirk Burrell? Attention from a pop star, however marginal, however faded, provides the insecure geeks who run these companies with priceless external validation. Their work must be important — why MC Hammer came to our offices and ogled our female coworkers! The sad thing is that Burrell has been working the startup circuit since the last bubble.

I remember when he swanned into the offices of eCompany Now, a long-gone tech-business magazine I worked at, in 2000, camera crew in tow. They were working on a documentary about a "startup" that never materialized. There you go: Even that part of Julia Allison's business plan isn't original.

MySpace incubator succeeds at reeling in wayward employee

Owen Thomas — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:40:00 PDT

Little has been heard from Slingshot Labs, the startup "incubator" News Corp. formed in February, in the months since its creation. The $15 million fund for spinoff ventures did succeed in keeping MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe in place: We hear that he made it a quid pro quo before signing a new, lucrative contract with Rupert Murdoch. He's not the only MySpace employee Slingshot played a part in keeping down in Los Angeles. We hear Nick Granado, a top engineer behind MySpace's iPhone version, first flirted with a job at Facebook, then worked briefly at Imeem, before getting lured back with a gig at Slingshot.

Will Slingshot actually produce anything besides cushier jobs for restless talent at MySpace? Yahoo's Brickhouse is a cautionary tale. The San Francisco office was meant to house creative new projects — like Flickr, but built in-house. In practice, however, it's nearly impossible to pay employees as richly as the startup stock-option lottery does. A sinecure at a big company is less risky, and less rewarding. Will the likes of Granado produce a big payoff for MySpace? Unlikely. But it must be worth something to put studs out to pasture, rather than see them running with the herd at Facebook.

Shawn Fanning might never have to pitch Volkswagens again

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 09 May 2008 08:40:00 PDT

Finally, Napster creator Shawn Fanning will make a little bank. After Napster went bankrupt and he sold Snocap to Imeem for not much at all, Fanning and cofounder Jon Baudanza have sold social network startup Rupture to Electronic Arts for $30 million. The best part: Fanning and Baudanza did it without launching a product out of beta. All Rupture ever built was a still-in-beta network for World of Warcraft gamers. Investors cashing in on the Volkswagen pitchman's payday (see video) include Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, and Baseline Ventures.

Shawn Fanning's Snocap purchased by music startup Imeem

Jackson West — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:20:00 PDT

Snocap, the company started by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, has been acquired by social network Imeem. What the fate of Fanning's sophomore effort proves: There may be second acts in the Valley, but they're usually not any good. Imeem had been using Snocap's digital registry to identify uploaded music for over a year. It also reunites a number of original Napster employees, like Snocap COO Ali Aydar who will be the new VP of operations at Imeem. Snocap had been rumored to be for sale for some time after slashing jobs. The 15 remaining employees will be absorbed into Imeem's growing San Francisco office — which added the staff from Anywhere.fm earlier this year.

What would a Facebook music store look like?

Tim Faulkner — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:06:43 PDT

Allfacebook.com is reporting a rumor that Facebook will take on Apple's dominant iTunes by introducing its own music store. Few details are provided, save that they are actively looking to hire someone to head the project and discussions with studios have been ongoing. Music applications such as iLike are popular on the social network, and digital music is a natural fit with the site's original college-kid demographic. But could Facebook really pull this off? At this point, we don't really know what a Facebook music store would be. We do know, however, what it's not.

Amazon.com has set the example of a Web-based store, unencumbered by annoying digital-rights-management software. By eschewing DRM, Amazon's downloads play well with any music gadget, including iPods. Would Facebook follow this model — or, like its photos, keep users' content locked into its website interface, playing music, say, on Facebook user profiles? The latter, however, would likely spark a user rebellion, if only because it might remind them too much of raucous MySpace profiles, which start blaring music the moment you load the page.

An obvious fear: Facebook's music store might draw users away from popular third-party Facebook applications like iLike and iMeem. But Facebook could instead design its store to work seamlessly with them, giving them access to an on-site store to close a sale instead of sending users off to iTunes or other stores, as they now must do.

One last option: Facebook might agree with Microsoft, the advertising partner with which it's negotiating the potential sale of a stake in the company, that subscriptions are the future of music.

Whatever Facebook decides on, one thing is sure: The site ensures a captive user base. If the Valley is swooning over Facebook's advertising potential, imagine the reaction when they add an e-commerce revenue stream.

What we do know is Facebook will not offer unrestricted file sharing. How do we know that? They've tried that before. Capitalizing on music sharing's popularity amongst its former core audience of college students, Facebook experimented with a peer-to-peer application called Wirehog in 2004. That legally questionable application has quietly faded into obscurity since Mark Zuckerberg opted for Wall Street and Valley acceptance and wealth over popularity with the college kids. Wise move. By following that path, he's ended up as even more of a rock star.

5 lessons on how to triumph in the face of adversity

Tim Faulkner — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:36:10 PDT

Dalton Caldwell, founder of the little-known social network and media sharing site iMeem, is in the news because Warner Music has dropped a copyright suit against his company Instead, Warner has granted Caldwell's users free access to the label's entire music catalog in exchange for a portion of iMeem's advertising revenue. Caldwell may not be the most powerful social-network CEO, but he's certainly the scrappiest, and this is just the latest example in his history of responding well to adversity. You could learn a lesson from him Or five lessons, actually:

1. Your main business becomes legally problematic, as iMeem's file-sharing service did after a landmark case? Stay low profile — in iMeem's case, by recasting itself as a messaging network and warn users to uphold copyrights.
2. Desktop peer-to-peer applications go out of style? Migrate your site's functionality to the Web.
3. MySpace permanently bans your widgets? The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Caldwell's response? Build a Facebook application.
4. Your growth rate draws the attention of copyright owners? Make a deal for appearance's sake with Snocap to collect and distribute ad revenue to the artists. (Don't worry if the majors do not sign.)
5. A big media company sues you? Turn that legal frown upside down into a business-development smiley face. Instead of fighting it out in court, strike a deal.

Caldwell's willingness to bend but not break has kept iMeem afloat as it grew to a reported 16 million active users. The social-networking landscape iMeem competes in remains filled with also-rans who weren't as flexible. Caldwell's tenacity stands out as an example to any startup faced with threat after deadly threat.

Who's who in Newsweek's "Putting the 'We' in Web"

ndouglas — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:53:42 PST

Everyone knows that Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield were made for pretty photos. Flickr's founding couple does a great job sexing up the cover of the latest Newsweek as the poster children for the new feel of the Net. In case you missed the last three years of what Newsweek calls "the Living Web," here's an intro to the cast.

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake: Founded Flickr, a photo-sharing site. Sold to Yahoo. Current occupation: showing that Yahoo can nurture the Flickr brand.
Joshua Schachter: Founded social bookmarking site del.icio.us. Also sold to Yahoo. Current occupation: reminding people where those dots go.
Mary Hodder: Founded Dabble, a video-sharing site. Current occupation: hopefully pulling Dabble out of private beta to play with all the other vid sites.
Tim O'Reilly: Defined "Web 2.0" in an epic essay. Current occupation: Running O'Reilly Media; secretly crafting "Web 3.0" essay.
Dalton Caldwell: Founded social IM service imeem. Current occupation: throwing parties.

Next up: Wow, Newsweek gets it.

The New Wisdom of the Web [Newsweek]

Party with imeem at SXSW

ndouglas — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:43:43 PST

One SXSW party invite stands out today — social IM site imeem (or, properly, "imeem!" but that sounds like a Broadway show) is ending ~~SXSW Interactive~~ SXSW Film (what the hell, imeem?) and kicking off the Austin fest's music leg with a big Tuesday-night party. And they booked a little band named Sleater-Kinney.

How is imeem paying for these things? This isn't the first big bash that imeem's thrown; they held a big party at Macworld and regularly throw events in San Francisco.

But whoever's going to these isn't calling imeem back the morning after; word is, the company's running out of cash fast, with no one stepping up to buy. Why would they? It's more fun to watch the IM startups fight it out — like a cage match full of skinny featherweights.

After the jump, imeem's invitation. Get a few imeem-sponsored drinks in yourself and ask them who's paying the bills.