NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

[in4it]

Interesting read if you can connect the dots here. I highlighted the areas that I am talking about.


Connection to CBS and 12Snap
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:q0xXDbRNdHgJ:www.imediaconnection.com/bios/bio.aspx%3Fid%3D3280+...

Cyriac Roeding
Vice President, Wireless, CBS Corporation





Cyriac Roeding was named Vice President, Wireless, CBS Digital Media, in May 2005. He reports directly to Larry Kramer, President, CBS Digital Media.



In his position, Roeding is responsible for building the new CBS Corporation’s wireless business across entertainment, sports and news for CBS, UPN and CBS Paramount Television.



Since joining CBS, Roeding has secured deals with Verizon’s V-Cast and Amp’d Mobile in which select CBS and UPN content can be downloaded onto cell phones, partnered with Capitol Records for an integration of a ring tone download from Coldplay’s hit single “Talk” into the script of CSI: NY in an industry first, and introduced cross-carrier live premium text message voting on the Emmy Primetime Award Show and on Big Brother, which for the first time gave the power to the audience to alter the plot of the show.



Between 1999 and 2004, Roeding co-founded 12snap, Europe’s market leader for mobile marketing and mobile entertainment. Investors included Nokia, Vodafone and Apax Partners, among others. Clients include The Coca-Cola Company, adidas, McDonald’s, L’Oreal, Columbia Tristar and MTV Europe. Prior to that, he developed growth strategies at McKinsey & Company for global media, software and high-tech players in Europe and in the Silicon Valley.



Roeding is co-author of the McKinsey/Harvard management book Secrets on Software Success, published by Harvard Business School Press in Boston, and translated to Mandarin, Korean, Italian and German. At Roland Berger Strategy Consultants he led projects in Japan, Germany and the U.S. in the retail sector. Roeding’s background also includes an assortment of various jobs ranging from reporter to radio disk jockey.



He received a Masters degree in Engineering & Business Administration from Germany’s Technical School of Karlsruhe, an MBA in Corporate Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the University of Georgia, and studied Japanese management at Sophia University in Tokyo.



In 2001, Roeding was elected European Chairman of the global “Mobile Marketing Association” (MMA), and Board Member on the global board in 2006.







http://yahoo.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jul2006/db20060724_713810.htm
JULY 23, 2006

Top News
By Steve Rosenbush


Kazaa, Skype, and now "The Venice Project"
Serial entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are at it again, this time with a venture for distributing TV and other video over the Net

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the entrepreneurs who created the pioneering Web applications Kazaa and Skype, are working on a new communications venture, BusinessWeek.com has learned. The pair plans to develop software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web, according to people familiar with the matter. Advertisement

Working under the code name "The Venice Project," Zennstrom and Friis have assembled teams of top software developers in about a half-dozen cities around the world, including New York, London, and Venice. The teams are currently in negotiations with TV networks, although it's not clear whether any agreements have been reached. A formal announcement of the new venture could come as early as this fall.

The mortality rate for tech startups is high, but Zennstrom and Friis have defied the odds with a series of highly disruptive new businesses that have roiled the communications and media establishments (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/19/05, "Skype's 'Aha' Experience").

GOOD TRACK RECORD. They created the Kazaa file-sharing network, which consumers used for the distribution of music and video. The peer-to-peer network's system consisted entirely of its users' PCs. The controversial company, which bypassed the entertainment industry by allowing free distribution of content, was sold to Sharman Networks.

In 2003, Zennstrom and Friis launched a peer-to-peer phone service called Skype. The software allows users to make free, high-quality calls over the Internet, bypassing the traditional phone system. Skype was acquired last year by eBay (EBAY) for $2.6 billion in cash and stock and an additional $1.5 billion in bonuses that could be paid by 2009 (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/12/05, "Why eBay is Buying Skype").

An eBay investment in Zennstrom and Friis' new venture is possible, but a decision has not been reached. If the new network emerges as a platform for the legal trading of video, it could be a good business for eBay, which has expertise in commerce among individuals.

My comment how will they tag it?

STILL AT SKYPE. According to Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesperson, Zennstrom and Friis were always expected to look into new ventures because that's what they do well. "We have encouraged those guys to explore different ideas and different concepts that they find interesting," Durzy said.

Zennstrom and Friis will not be leaving Skype or spending less time there than they are now, if only because they would be walking away from their share of up to $1.5 billion in additional eBay payments over the next three years. The Venice venture will get an investment from Zennstrom, one person familiar with the matter said. But Zennstrom isn't expected to contribute much work, beyond strategizing at a very high level. Friis is expected to spend up to 20% of his time on the venture to help develop the business model. But it appears that he won't be active in an operational sense,and others are being recruited to run the project on a daily basis.

EBay had no immediate comment on the new video distribution project and whether the project had any direct or indirect relationship with eBay and Skype. But eBay CEO Meg Whitman said in a recent interview with BusinessWeek that the Skype founders remained committed to Skype. "They are really engaged. They were all fired up," she said, after meeting with them during a recent trip to London.

COOPERATIVE APPROACH. Zennstrom and Friis seem intent on avoiding the legal controversy that dogged earlier filing-sharing companies such as Kazaa (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/17/06, "Judge: File-Share Case Favors Hollywood"). Despite its enormous popularity, Kazaa's commercial prospects were crippled by legal battles with the recording and motion picture industries, which filed suit against Sharman in Los Angeles in 2002. That case is pending.

This time around, Zennstrom and Friis are inviting the cooperation of TV producers and networks. While the exact nature of their business model isn't clear, they are talking to every TV network in town, according to one person familiar with the matter. The idea is to become a dominant TV distribution company for the Internet era, just as companies such as Comcast (CMSCA) have dominated TV distribution in the cable era.

And just as Comcast has stretched into the media-creation business, even attempting to buy Disney (DIS), Zennstrom and Friis appear to have an interest in creating or packaging content for the Web.

COMPETITION TO COME. The Venice Project may find willing partners in the TV business. While music and film executives resisted even the legal distribution of their goods over the Web, TV executives have been much more accepting of the concept. Perhaps they saw the ultimate futility of resistance. Although the music and film industries won several legal battles, they failed to stop the consumer embrace of digital distribution platforms such as Apple Computer's (AAPL) iTunes. And maybe several years of technological evolution have simply convinced the TV execs that an economically viable digital-distribution system is at hand.

Regardless of the reason, viewers can now find more than 150 TV shows, from Survivor to 24, on iTunes. CBS's (CBS) Innertube Web site has eight full episodes of Big Brother: All Stars and other shows available for free. And NewsCorp.'s (NWS) Fox unit makes shows such as American Idol and Prison Break available for free at Fox.com's Video Central.

There will be plenty of competition, though. Startups—including Brightcove, Bittorrent, You Tube, Veoh, and Video Egg—already allow consumers and professionals to distribute video over the Web. Veoh, which also uses a peer-to-peer model, has attracted major investors such as Time Warner (TWX) and former Disney (DIS) Chairman Michael Eisner. Veoh announced a deal this month in which it will help promote Time Warner unit TNT's newest horror show, Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King.

With easy access to capital and loads of experience starting successful new companies, Friis and Zennstrom are bound to make their new venture a contender. And regardless of which companies win the distribution battle, it appears that the Web is evolving quickly as a legitimate distribution channel for TV. "I think that as peer-to-peer can improve the delivery of video to consumers, we're going to see a lot more of it," says analyst Richard Greenfield of Pali Research.

Consumers may balk at the limitations on viewing and copying digital content, but the ability to watch when and where you want is a huge draw. The evolution of TV on the Web isn't likely to look like a rerun of the legal battles over film and music on the Web.


Rosenbush is a senior writer for BusinessWeek Online, based in New York
With Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau chief


How will the big broadcasters tie in TV to Mobile?

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