Sunday, April 5, 2009

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Chinese Social Networks ‘Virtually’ Out-Earn Facebook And MySpace: A Market Analysis

Posted: 05 Apr 2009 08:42 AM PDT

Editor’s Note: Social networks are taking off in China. The following guest post by George Godula. David Li, and Richard Yu explores how Chinese social networks are pursuing different business models than their American counterparts, relying more on micropayments and the sale of virtual goods. George Godula is the founder of Web2Asia, an East Asian incubator and also a consultancy for Western startups trying to enter markets in China, Japan and Korea. David Li is a developer of social networking applications such as Growing Gifts, and he also was the developer of OnChat, an early in-browser graphical avatar chat system. Richard Yu is a Seattle native living in China, where he consults for Shanghai-based web startups while writing his blog.


chinese-sns

Despite China's massively growing internet market, international giants like Google and Facebook are having trouble making gains with the 300 million Chinese online users. China's netizens are on average very young – 66.7 % of them are younger than 29 years old and 35.2 % of them are teenagers—with social networking and entertainment applications being the most popular.

While companies like Facebook struggle to conquer market share in China and to create viable business models everywhere, their Chinese clones have built lucrative cash machines literally earning billions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, adopting Chinese methods may not help American social networks due both to cultural differences in Chinese user behavior and industry practices. Below is our analysis of the Chinese social networking scene.

Chinese Social Networking is Dominated by Local Players

Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) have long played the dominating role in Chinese Internet life and still continue to be one of the most popular online platforms for social interaction. Registered user accounts, which are mostly anonymous, surpass 3 billion (users have multiple accounts) and 80% of Chinese sites run their own BBS. However in the last year social networking services, most of which require real name registrations, have shown explosive growth in China with 19.3% of netizens using them regularly.

Despite the popularity of social networking in China, the social networking market is dominated by local Chinese players, and Western networks have trouble adapting to Chinese culture and user expectations. Facebook does not rank among the top 15 asocial networks in China while MySpace has only 6 million users (vs. the goal of 50 million users after 2 years initially proclaimed by Rupert Murdoch).

Meanwhile, China's leading social network Qzone, which is targeted at teenagers, may even be the largest in the world. Tencent, Inc., the company that runs Qzone, recently announced group revenues of over $1 billion in 2008.

As ad sales slump in the recession, only approximately 12% of Qzone's revenue stems from online advertising with the rest coming from virtual item sales such as applications and avatars. Internet ad spending in China is expected to reach $1.7 billion in 2009, which is about 4% of total ad spend. In comparison, the US is estimated to spend $25.7 billion reaching consumers online through advertising. These comparably low online budgets in China are largely spent at four large news portals, which earn the majority of online ad revenue. This forces most "smaller" portals to find more innovative ways to monetize their traffic.

51.com, which targets working class adults from rural parts of China, is the second most popular social network in China with 130 million registered users. Concurrently, Chinese students flock to Xiaonei with approx. 40 million users. It is backed up with $430 million in funding from its parent company Oak Pacific Interactive and investors like Softbank. Kaixin001, which skyrocketed out of nowhere to 30 million registered users from the middle of last year, targets white collar workers in China’s largest cities by employing controversial invitation techniques and copying apps directly from Facebook.

Yet the astronomical growth of China's social networks can be attributed as much to its massive market size as to its cultural norms and values. Social networking apps can hit hyper-viral levels in China due to a higher tolerance of intrusive app invitations. It is not uncommon for apps to essentially force new users to invite people and perform tasks before being able to join their friends online. Once friends have joined they are required to interact much more with the apps and advertisements than on Western applications. While this model is not replicable for the US market, certain aspects of this strategy/cultural mindset are necessary if companies like Facebook or Myspace want to compete in China.

Open Social Networks are Not So Open in China

In the middle of 2008, Myspace was the only social network to support OpenSocial in China. Despite Google’s effort, the adoption of OpenSocial was slow among the major social networks. Eventually, other platforms caved into the partnership with Google and gave half-hearted support to OpenSocial. Apart from some of the large social networks mentioned previously this included City!N, Yiqi.com as well as the business network Tianji and BBS Tianya. Other social networks such as Douban, Hainei or news portal Sohu had originally announced to join OpenSocial but then never implemented it, choosing an F8 style API instead. Today, only one of the top 50 apps in China’s social networks runs on OpenSocial despite the hard work put in by the Google team in China.

xionaivsmyspacevs51

When Xiaonei and 51.com at first opened their own platforms, their terms of services outraged the developer community with clauses that practically blocked all monetization opportunities and a shared user base with their own websites. The developers launched several public protests against the social networks including the website www.anti-opensocial.com to rebel against hypocritical support for these “fake open” platforms. The executives from these social networks did respond quickly to the developers demands and changed the terms of service to more reasonable terms, allowing limited monetization opportunities for the developers.

Unfortunately, most social networks continue to ignore "Open Social" practices, opting for the more familiar "Guanxi paradigm" in business practices with third parties. The term ”Guānxi” describes the basic dynamic of gaining influence and receiving favors within social relationships, and is a central concept in Chinese society. For social networks, this means that rather than developing an open ecosystem, they focus on dealing with third parties individually and face to face. New Open Social Networking platforms (or better put, "selectively opened") such as Yahoo’s Guanxi, Tencent's Xiaoyou and Tianya court established third party app developers like Five Minutes while largely ignoring the wider developer community.

Additionally, ad sales are also strictly controlled by the social networks themselves even though 51.com set a threshold of a $35k fee to be paid for app developers to operate their own ad revenue -based applications (which until now no developer was willing to pay).

Keso, China's most widely read tech blogger, who we asked to contribute to this article through China's online expert panel BloggerInsight, summed up the situation by saying "Despite an open platform strategy, Chinese SNS are still competing with each other on the application level".

top-apps-xiaonei

top-apps-51com

Imitation of Facebook was only a Launching Point

Chinese sites are notorious for their C2C strategy, or “Copy to China”. This applies to the app market in the same way as it did to the social networks and all other Web 2.0 and eCommerce services. A year after Facebook introduced the F8 open platform, Xiaonei.com followed suit and announced its open platform in July 2008. The developer group xCube on Xiaonei attracted individuals and companies interested in third-party apps. Yet Chinese outsourcing developers such as Apptz and Ismole armed with experience working on Facebook applications made significant inroads by launching several apps and attracting millions of users in just a few short months.

At about the same time, the apps space also felt the power of C2C with copies of popular apps on Facebook such as “Friends for Sale” and “Parking War” popping up on just about every social network in China. Other leading social networks such as 51.com and Comsenz!'s Ucenter Home (similar to Ning.com) launched their own open platform soon after Xiaonei’s effort.

Chinas 51.com first social network in the world to open up payment API

While Chinese social networks started out as mere clones of existing sites, they've managed to innovate the business models to create a very lucrative market by cementing the relationship between application developers and the site's user base. Happy Farm, the most popular app in China reportedly collects well over $75k a month through installations on various platforms, and according to Chinese application tracker, Appleap, the value of the total social network’s apps install base is approx. $4.5 million.

happy-farm

Opening up the payment system was one of the most anticipated announcements from Facebook’s developer conference F8 2008 but the company failed to create an integrated ecosystem for users to buy and sell apps. China’s socail networks took the great leap forward in this area when 51.com became the first social network in the world opening up its payment system to third party developers in 2008. Users pay money to 51.com and receive virtual coins which they can then again spend on third party applications. The revenue is split 50/50 between the social network and the developer.

Facebook on the other hand currently does not offer developers access to its payment system. If a third party application redirects Facebook users to their own website and payment processor, they usually lose the advantage of Facebook's trusted brand name and the majority of potential revenues.

At the same time, companies like Becomedia are cooperating with 51.com to bring OfferPal-style cost-per-click/cost-per-action (CPS/CPA) for virtual currency models to China. CPS/CPA is one of the fastest growing sectors of Internet ads in China. This means revenues for the developers by trading their virtual currency for hard cash.

Season Xu from Five Minutes, the maker of China's most popular app, confirmed the three basic revenue models for apps in China: shared ad revenues, income through virtual currencies, and customized development for branded applications. However he and Herock, a leading figure in the Chinese tech blogosphere whom we also spoke to, expect a consolidation in the app development market soon with larger companies taking over and benefiting from effects of scale, rather than individual developers still being able to produce top apps.

What can Facebook and Western social networks learn, if anything?

If monetizing a social network is so easy, then why hasn't Facebook opened up its payment API to third party developers? While the aggressive and intrusive hyper-viral aspects of the apps in China may not be replicable in a Western Market, the problems for creating a more viable business model run deeper. Western companies cannot innovate in the same way due to institutional problems stemming from their own struggle for an identity and revenue.

Facebook has just recently announced a "credits" system, but it seems to miss the mark. The new system demonstrates little incentive for users to shell over money, and does not speak to the same need as paying for a social application that all your friends are already on and talking about. Facebook may be afraid to become a marketplace for applications, because they are reluctant to be labeled as a social gaming network or a social app store. Instead, they are a self-styled guru of dynamic human interaction. If they opened up their platform to become an apps store, their major revenue streams would put them into a pigeonhole, calling their $15 billion valuation into question. They obviously don't want to be labeled as a "gaming platform" either, and don’t want to fully depend on selling digital trinkets.

Like during the American gold rush in 1849, where Chinese merchants prospered while most prospectors went bust in search of striking gold, it appears that building viable, scalable businesses for Social Networking sites may still be an ancient Chinese secret for Westerners.

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Google Loses A Round In Sponsored Search Litigation

Posted: 05 Apr 2009 07:27 AM PDT

Google has lost the most recent round of litigation over alleged abuse of sponsored search, the sale of keywords based on corporate trademarks, and misdirection.  No, this decision does not change anything in Google's business practices. It does not prove that Google did anything wrong. And it does not create financial liability for Google. It merely sends one case back to court for another trial. It should not send Google stock plummeting. But it does require that we in the online tech community think carefully and debate carefully about Google's business model.

Some readers, and indeed some fellow bloggers, have complained that my calling sponsored search misdirection rather than advertising was outrageous, and that they have never heard anyone but me complain about it.  The jury is, quite literally, still out on this one, but a recent appellate court ruling against Google suggests that the issue is still hotly debated in the courts, even if not quite as hotly as in the blogosphere.  MediaPost reports the details:

A federal appellate court handed Google a defeat today in a trademark lawsuit stemming from AdWords ads. The 2nd Circuit ruled that allowing a trademark to trigger a search ad is a “use in commerce.”

The decision doesn’t mean that Google will ultimately lose the case. It also doesn’t stop Google or other search engines from allowing companies to use trademarks to trigger ads. But it makes doing so riskier: If those ads are found to confuse consumers, search engines could be on the hook for trademark infringement.

Here, Google was sued by computer repair shop Rescuecom for allowing rivals to appear as sponsored listings when consumers typed “rescuecom” into the query box.

The case (Rescuecom V. Google) has been public since the initial decision was reached in 2006 but it does not appear to have entered into our collective consciousness.  Google is innocent until proven guilty and this latest decision does not prove it guilty of anything; it merely remands the case back to the lower court for reconsideration. But again, we in the online tech community need to understand how businesses are affected, positively and negatively, by Google and its use of its very considerable market power. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that there are freedom of speech issues, and others believe that sponsored search increases consumer choice by counter-balancing the power of the largest corporations. The issues surely are complex enough to demand our attention. The ruling is embedded below:

Rescuecom v Google 04-03-09 Rescuecom v Google 04-03-09 Legal Writer

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Grok This: Forget The Business Books, Go Sci-Fi To Stoke Your Imagination

Posted: 05 Apr 2009 03:22 AM PDT

One thing I get a lot of are review copies of various business books. A very few are worth the read, although mostly I like the case studies for learning about business and technology history, rather than the lessons they necessarily teach. Most books are a chapter of advice with a whole lot of additional junk thrown in to make it book thickness.

There are exceptions, of course, and we’ll occasionally review a business book here on TechCrunch either because it is exceptional or because it provides unique historical insights. But my advice for most entrepreneurs is to ignore most business books. Reading too many of them will only confuse you anyway, since so many of them have conflicting advice on how to grow your company, or how to be a better manager, or how to get more done by working less. Most of the really successful people I’ve met certainly don’t read them - they’ve forged their own path to winning.

If you really want to stoke your imagination, spend all those hours reading science fiction instead. Every good entrepreneur needs a certain amount of imagination to envision the future. Science fiction books tend to keep the imaginative juices flowing. And the better ones have moral or other life lessons that are a lot more fun to read entwined with the drama of an unfolding story that involves spaceships, time travel or other worlds.

Here are a few of my favorite science fiction books, and what I learned from them (they are roughly in my favorite order):

Dune (Frank Herbert, 1965): 20,000 years in the future, a noble family leaves pleasant planet for hopeless desert planet called Dune at order of emperor. Tragedy ensues, but the son fulfills his destiny to become a great and powerful leader. This is my favorite all time science fiction book by a long stretch. Besides giving us an incredibly rich and varied view of an interstellar empire, Herbert has a lot to say about leadership, heroism and strategy in crisis. Dune is the kind of book you really don’t want to end. Herbert wrote five sequels: Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune. Skip the 1984 movie though, it didn’t do the book justice.

Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov, 1951-1953) These three books are a small part of what’s now called the Foundation Series, but they’re the best in my opinion and can be read on their own. I read these when I was very young and plan on hitting them again soon. It’s a massive story, covering a thousand years of galactic empire meltdown far in Earth’s future. The key plot line is that a group of scientists become able to predict the future, given very large population numbers, and seeing the bleakness that’s coming they decide to preserve what’s known of art, science, and technology and begin a new empire. It’s massively entertaining and has had a tremendous impact on science fiction writers ever since (for example, the Encyclopedia Glactica in the Foundation Trilogy is humorously mentioned in HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: “In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words “DON’T PANIC” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.” A key takeaway from the novel, besides the importance of guessing the future: resource constraints are actually a competitive advantage. Those with less do more with it, which also explains why so many startups shoot ahead of huge, well capitalized companies and essentially perform their R&D for them before they are acquired (or become disruptive and take the top spot).

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams, 1978-2001): Not sure what you’ll learn from HHGTTG, but it’s one of the funniest series of books of all time and if you haven’t read it you pretty much have to. It’s actually a five book series that’s called a trilogy, and if Adams hadn’t died of a heart attack at age 49 in 2001 there would have likely been more books written. HHGTTG and the WWII epic Catch-22 are among my favorite books when contemplating the meaninglessness and hilarity of life (HHGTTG begins with the Earth being destroyed to to make way for a hyperspatial express route). Like Dune, skip the movie, it doesn’t do the books justice.

Anathem (Neal Stephenson, 2008): I read Anathem about six months ago when it was first released. Neal Stephenson is another author where I drop everything and read whatever he’s published as soon as possible. I’ve read all of his books: The Big U (his first book), Zodiac (eco-thriller), Snow Crash (world chaos, envisions a future Internet called the Multiverse), The Diamond Age (nanotech), Cryptonomicon (cryptography, computer history), and The Baroque Cycle (historical). Anathem is completely new and deals with an imaginary world where monk-like mathematicians have segmented themselves from the rest of society, mostly ignoring their wars and other petty issues. The avouts occasionally venture out from their sanctuaries to mingle with everyone else. Besides creating an entirely new vocabulary and writing a beautiful story, Stephenson also shows how even large problems can be overcome with intelligence, if you have enough time on your hands. Just don’t give up on the book early, it gets better and better as it goes on. And when you’re done, go read everything else he’s written.

The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks, 1984): A creepy book narrated by the 16-year old protagonist Frank Cauldhame. It’s not really science fiction but it was Banks’ first novel and well worth the read, and he has become a giant of science fiction since. Make sure to read all of his Culture novels that may very well lay out the future of humanity. Humans and computers live together harmoniously in a vast galactic empire. Computers are vastly more intelligent than people and treat them with a sort of paternalistic compassion. Whole planets are created to allow larger populations, and people are genetically modified to look however they want. They also tend to live for as many centuries as they like until they get bored and off themselves. These books are very entertaining, and the scope of imagination needed to create this universe is staggering. I highly recommend reading the Wasp Factory and then jumping into the Culture novels. You won’t be unhappy you did so.

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein, 1961): Valentine Michael Smith is a human raised by Martians on Mars, orphaned when the crew of a human expedition to the planet died. He comes back to Earth as an adult when a subsequent expedition finds him. He is initially weak because of the high gravity of Earth, but recovers. He’s superhuman and psychic, and teaches these skills to others. Just about everyone in power on Earth wants him and his followers dead. In addition to being an absolutely great book, Heinlein also coined the term grok for the first time in the novel. He also invented the notion of the waterbed in the novel.

Frankenstein (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1818): Shelley wrote this book as a teenager, and most of us read it in high school. Often credited as the first science fiction novel. You can read just about any political viewpoint you want into the book, and there are strong undertones that technology isn’t all good. But what I get out of it is the creativeness that can come with solitude, and how new technology can be misunderstood, even perhaps by the creator (see Twitter). Key thing to remember: Frankenstein is the name of the scientist/creator, not the Monster. Everybody forgets that.

There are, of course, many other great science fiction novels - these are just a few of my favorites. The point I want to make is that time spent reading books that make you think about what could be isn’t necessarily leisure - you may just get the juices flowing enough to come up with the next great product that just yesterday would have been considered science fiction itself. So get to work, people. And let me know what your favorites are, too.

Author’s note: If I do ever write a business book, and I may, don’t go pointing back to this post and criticizing me. I promise to make it as entertaining as possible.

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The Next Web Is Just Around The Corner (The Conference, That Is)

Posted: 05 Apr 2009 03:12 AM PDT

The Next Web Conference 2009 in Amsterdam is quickly approaching, and it’s promising to be a good show again this year even if it won’t be Erick Schonfeld moderating the event this time. TechCrunch Europe’s Mike Butcher will be there though, and so will I, so hook up with us if you’re heading down to the conference too. In case you haven’t registered yet, there’s a page set up for TC readers where you can get a 20% discount on the ticket fee.

Speakers this year include Jeff Jarvis, Matt Mullenweg (Automattic), Bradley Horowitz (Google), Chris Sacca and author Andrew Keen. The full list can be found here.

A web conference would be nothing without a good old startup competition, and today the organizing team of the event have announced the 19 finalists that will be pitching the audience on stage. I’m one of the jury members that will be deciding which European startup takes home the prize, so I’m looking forward to seeing what these have in store:

yellowBird - currently in stealth mode, something to do with 3D

Contextured - provides a platform that supports customers on search engine marketing and optimization

Prezi - an application that allows you to create ’stunning’ presentations

E - a service that integrates all your existing social services into a so-called “E•ID”, which you can share with anyone in the real world

Aroxo - stealth model start-up that promises to offer ‘a completely new way to buy and sell online’

Silentale - store all your digital conversations in one place and access them from anywhere

Klomptek - software development company that creates advanced Mobile Device Management and Security Solutions for enterprises

Shout’Em - a platform on which you can start your own co-branded microblogging social networking service

Quick TV - a web-based 'Video-as-a-Service' platform

Mimic Media - enables online shoppers to fit clothes online with a personalized 3D model and shop real time together with their friends

YourTour - a decision support system to plan fully-customized trips

plista - a social recommendation service that follows what you like and don’t across sites and personalizes your Internet experience

Yunoo - social personal finance platform, looks like a Dutch version of Mint

Mendeley - social software for managing and sharing (”the Last.fm for”) research papers

Huddle - combines unified collaboration with social networking

IRLConnect - ‘visual’ social network that allows you to map where your friends are & what they are saying

Visibuild - another interactive 3D environment creation application

tarpipe - makes it easy to share content across different social media applications

CoTweet - a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter

The startups above were selected out of total of 200 companies that submitted their profile for consideration. Each of them will get 5 minutes of stage time to impress the audience and the jury.

We’ll let you know which ones kicked ass.

Hope to see you in Amsterdam!

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CrunchGear Visits Gadget Maker Thanko in Tokyo

Posted: 04 Apr 2009 02:45 PM PDT

For a geek, living in Tokyo has many advantages. Being tempted to go check if infamous crap gadget vendor and USB specialist Thanko is for real, isn't one of them. But I finally went to Akihabara, the world's geek heaven in the center of Tokyo to find answers. And the rumors are true, Thanko does exist. Thanko is a manufacturer that attaches a USB cable to everything. Drink warmer? Check. Humping dog? Check. Cigarette? Check. Mouse containing a floating duck? Check. So when we discovered they were a real company, we were flabbergasted.

Video: New Microsoft Commercial Makes Giampaolo Happy For $1,500

Posted: 04 Apr 2009 02:42 PM PDT

I'm sensing a trend here. Microsoft is working with a formula for its new advertising campaign, dubbed Laptop Hunter. The gist: A good-looking yet accessible actor goes into a mall. They look around, decide Macs are too expensive/cool/exciting for their down-to-earth lifestyles, and then buy an HP, in this case an HP with bad battery life. While I'm totally down with attractive people being happy, I wonder what, exactly, Microsoft is selling here? Design? Laptop quality? Even HP? It's definitely not selling anything it makes. First we saw the Seinfeld commercials. That hot mess took the PC totally out of the picture. It made Microsoft all about Bill Gates (much as Apple is about Steve Jobs) but because no one would want to drink beers with Bill they added Jerry for charm. Again, nothing about Windows.

Actor Kevin Pollak Jumps Into Social Media, And Is Swimming Quite Well

Posted: 04 Apr 2009 02:03 PM PDT

Actor Kevin Pollak (A Few Good Men, Usual Suspects, etc.) met Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis at a poker game and learned all about Twitter - a few weeks later and he has over 160,000 followers (although he jokes “I just don’t know what that means”). Calacanis also talked him into hosting a video show as well, which is two weeks old and already has 1,000 or so people watching live every Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow he’ll have Tesla founder Elon Musk on the show at 5 pm.

Mahalo basically duplicated the Charlie Rose set (all black, single round table) for a total cost, he says, of $20,000. He says he can create a HD show for $300/episode for an editor, makeup, etc.

The show is good, and it’s fun to watch a professional actor begin to understand the power of social media, where you can gain a lot of devoted fans very quickly - with the only downside being that you have to listen to what they say back to you. Pollack is handling it well, talking about the chat feature on the video show and how bewildered he is by Twitter. And he also seems to like the fact that he can do literally anything on the show that he wants - swear, be silent, talk for as long as he likes, whatever. Between his talking about what it’s like for a professional actor to do whatever he likes without interference, he throws in a few good comedic bits as well. My favorite - a damned good impersonation of Jack Nicholson at about the 2:15 mark of this video:

An email from Kevin:

Although we are only two weeks old, and are still the lil’ show that could, we’re hoping to improve the creative content on the internet, if not the future of “Intervision.”
As you have been told by Jason, and can clearly see, we are utterly grassroots, but you should know we are determined to stay that way. While the quality of the production will improve as we work out the kinks, I never want it to feel too professional and NEVER tv-slick. Basically, we’ve got a barn (Calacanis’ Mahalo studio) and some costumes (whatever my guests want to wear) and we’re puttin’ on a show!
FYI, the show is every Sunday at 5pm, PDT, streaming live on Kevinpollakschatshow.com, and we take questions LIVE from the chat room on the site, as well as from Twitter.com at @kevinpollak. Also, a day later each episode is available on iTunes as a free podcast, as well as on blip.tv, and then shortly thereafter available at Kevinpollakschatshow.com.
A list of upcoming confirmed guests:
April 5th: Actor Jason Antoon and Tesla Motors and SpaceX Founder/CEO Elon Musk
April 12th: Star of the documentary “Super High Me,” comedian Doug Benson, who will be discussing California’s effort to legalize marijuana, and the “Pit Bull of Comedy,” “Yid Vicious,” and a new star of the Las Vegas strip, Bobby Slayton.
April 19th: Academy Award winning writer of “The Usual Suspects,” Chris McQuarrie

Others Confirmed:
Felicia Day: Creator/Star of the internet comedy MEGA-hit, “The Guild”
Jon Hamm: Golden Globe winner/star of “Mad Men”
Jon Favreau: Director of Iron Man (and just started on the sequel)
Alex Albrecht: Co-Creator/Host of Diggnation and The Totally Rad Show,
John Krasinski: Actor, “The Office”
Luke Wilson: Actor (Old School, etc)
A ton of other VERY recognizable names and faces that I am still reaching out to from the tech world and showbiz, not to mention YOU, if you’d care to come on and chat…
Thanks VERY much for your time and interest in helping our lil’ show.
-Kevin

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