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Posts Tagged “

Rob Glaser

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ipo

RealNetworks to spin off its games business

RealNetworks' games business grew revenues 33 percent since the first quarter of 2007. CEO Rob Glaser thinks it could grow even faster on its own. RealNetworks announced today it plans to spin off the casual games business and "may precede the spin with an initial public offering and sale of up to 20 percent of the shares," according to a press release. RealNetworks will also buy back $50 million worth of stock.

2:40 PM on Thu May 8 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
276 views, 3 comments

copyfight

Thanks, Rob Glaser -- now my mom cares about DRM

Intellectual property is, in many ways, my family's business. And over the years my mother Mary Deaton and I have had more than a few heated arguments about copyright reform. That said, my mom has been using Microsoft Windows since before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shed his diapers, and was ripping CDs to MP3 since I bought her a Rio MP3 player for Christmas with my dot-boom winnings. Since then, she bought into the system and signed up with MTV's now defunct Urge digital music service. But thanks to digital rights management, or DRM, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser is punishing her for such law-abiding ways — and charging her $14.99 a month for these "feature." Seems that in being migrated, like other Urge users, to Real's Rhapsody service, my mom lost the ability to transfer her music to her MP3 player or burn it to CD as promised. What ensued is a case study in bad customer service and the consumer-punishing idiocy that is DRM, and it's all after the jump. More »

4:20 PM on Wed May 7 2008
By Jackson West
1,128 views, 10 comments

Latest by Sir Winston Thriller: justdafactsmam: She didn't have just a subscription service. URGE had a mi of both. You could get a monthly all-you-can-listen to model, and if you wanted to listen to the music somewhere your played didn't go, you could putchase the more »

party report

Kevin Rose's parties bid SXSW goodbye

I've always loved to watch Mark Cuban dance — but Tuesday night I got to see the billionaire booty-shaker up close. The venue: PureVolume Ranch in Austin, Texas. The occasion: The Bigg Digg Shindigg, South by Southwest Interactive's closing party. "You guys always picked the worst photos of me," Cuban said. Mark, as I said at Sunday's panel on gossip, I live to serve. Digg packed PureVolume's dance floor and backyard tents with hundreds of partygoers. Besides Cuban, Moby was there, as were Digg CEO Jay Adelson and cofounder Kevin Rose, iLike CEO Ali Partovi, StumbleUpon's Garrett Camp, and Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser had just flown in from Florida on a private jet. But for me the most interesting person was newly hired Digger Aubrey Sabala, who put the party together in three days — after Digg had given up on the idea. More »

4:36 AM on Wed Mar 12 2008
By Owen Thomas
26,267 views, Comment

realnetworks

Why Rob Glaser desperately wants to be a player

RealNetworks purchased Macrovision's games business for $4 million. Last year, it bought a casual games site called Gametrust for about $20 million. It's all part of RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser's plan to be a player in casual games. Just like he planned to be a player in online music. You know, before Apple crushed him. Or like how he planned to be a player in online video. Before Adobe's Flash laid him low. We give Glaser this much credit: He keeps spotting opportunities. The best business plan going seems to be to watch what markets Glaser enters, follow him, and do a better job.

12:40 PM on Fri Feb 22 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
639 views, 5 comments

Latest by n/a: I think Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures said it best in this post: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too-> [avc.blogs.com] more »