Economics of Social Media Conference

Delayed by a day, I’ve made it out to Rafat’s Conference here in Los Angeles.

Great crowd, lots of familiar faces and the panels look good — though in all honesty I have just made it in to see the last panel, on Deals, M&A and Social Media.

I am struggling to come up with a good question for Mike Lang (NewsCorp) and/or Quincy Smith (CBS)… Any suggestions? Quick, only 10 minutes left!

Update: Quincy reports that CBS will be acquiring for reach and for web native programming, “sooner rather than later.” Lang says Fox is most interested in all things video, and international.

Photobucket founder does a public “we kissed and made up” with Fox/MySpace.

Jason Hirschorn has the quote of the day:  “Backdating doesn’t mean girlfriends.” Another good Hirschorn line: Rafat asks (in effect), why didn’t you (ie, Viacom) buy MySpace? Jason responds “I am so going to smack you after this.” The guy is on a roll…

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Sadly, we wrapped up our trip, spending the last 3 days at the spectacular Hotel Punta Islita, where we got in some pretty tours but spent most of our time lounging around the beach pool and bar. Arrived back home Monday, only to be slammed by a nasty dose of Tropical Fever. Still haven’t had solid food.

Now it is back to reality. 

Rafiki Safari Lodge

An 8 hour drive through the Costa Rican countryside, onto rocky backroads taking us across rivers and deep into the rainforest, brought us to a real gem: the Rafiki Safari Lodge, accurately self-described as “a rainforest resort with a little touch of Africa.”

Before even making it to our tents, our gracious hosts, the Boshoff family, pointed us to the mandatory welcome at Rafiki: a refreshing plunge down Rafiki’s super high speed water slide. A great barbecue dinner followed, after which we fell into bed to the background music of toucans, tropical frogs and cicadas.

Day two at Rafiki will go down in Hirshland family vacation lore as a classic. Up (literally) at the crack of dawn, I watched the sun rise over the mist enveloped tropical mountains. The Boshoffs served us a scrumptuous breakfast, then put us on horseback — even 5 year old Lucy got her own horse — for a 5K ride up over the mountain range to the Savegre river. We made it safely to the horse-to-raft transition point and hit the rapids.

It didn’t take long for Hirshlands to join the “Savegre swim team” — in other words, bounce out of our rafts into the rapids.  The infamous “Gringo eater” rapids claimed my wife Ady and Henry (11), “roller coaster” pulled out both Henry and Oliver, and “washing machine” got Henry again. After pulling over for a delicious barbecue chicken lunch, we hit some more rapids, then splashed around beneath an absolutely breathtaking tropical waterfall.

Back at the Lodge in time for beers and another spectacular dinner.  All in all a spectacular couple days at Rafiki! Any of you out there planning to visit Costa Rica must check this place out. The scenery, activities, host family, food and overall experience are sensational.

Providence, Newark, San Jose, Arenal

We departed Sunday, flying out of Providence (a much easier airport than Logan). Or at least trying to…The storm coming up the East Coast shut down most mid-Atlantic airports, leaving us stranded for several hours, and the subject of a Providence Channel 10 News segment!

But we eventually made it to the Costa Rica capital of San Jose, found our shuttle, and landed at our first stop: the Lost Iguana Resort in Arenal, home of a real-life, active volcano.

Monday morning we awoke to a spectacular view from our balcony of the massive Arenal Volcano, which, due to nearly constant lava flow and accretion, has grown several thousand feet in height over the last 40 years! Our first encounter with the area was a tour of the rainforest in the Volcano foothills, via suspended “hanging” bridges that allow you to traipse through the forest at treetop level.

Then we got a huge dose of adrenaline, “zip lining” across cables, at speeds reaching 50 mph and across spans as far as a half mile. The kids loved it, though personally I have to admit in my old age I was as terrified as I was thrilled.

And to cap off our spectacular first day, we were treated to a series of eruptions, complete with smoke spewing out of the volcano top and lava flowing down the sides.

Spring Break in Costa Rica

We’re off to Costa Rica this week for the kids’ spring break, where I am blissfully unplugged from both email and cellphone. Going cold turkey has proven to be easier than I thought — and incredibly refreshing. Another reminder that the always-on, ultra-connected world we now live in is both a blessing and a curse.

Miraculously, I discovered this morning that the remote safari-lodge where we are staying for 2 days, 3 hours deep into the Costa Rican rainforest, has Internet via satellite. So, with the sun coming up over the misty jungle mountains, I decided to update the blog with a quick vacation journal.

But to keep my mind and soul cleansed, I am not checking email or RSS feeds…

“Mom My Ride”

This bears an uncanny resemblance to my wife’s minivan.

MySpace Blocks Photobucket; and the Broader Widget Drop Point Question

The ubiquitous Michael Arrington reported last night that MySpace has begun blocking Photobucket widgets from being used on MySpace pages. Interesting timing, to say the least, given the widely reported rumors of Photobucket looking to be sold. Although initially there was confusion whether this was a deliberate move or a so-called bug, from what I can tell it seems to be coming out that this was a deliberate policy decision by MySpace.

The reactions are falling into two camps. Not surprisingly, the most vocal camp argues that MySpace’s move is “so NOT web 2.0″ and ultimately will be be the social network’s demise. (The comments to Arrington’s post are chock full of this sentiment). Robert Scoble does a somewhat more thoughtful job taking the opposite side, arguing that sites that profit off the work (and audience) of successful audience aggregators are “parasites,” that it is entirely appropriate for free services like MySpace to block parasites like these, and that, if individual users want to be able to use them, they should be willing to go to the trouble of hosting their own blog instead of using free blog hosting services.

I am not sure just yet where I come out on this one. It is not a simple issue. There are some good arguments why a free hosting service might want to control which 3d party widgets/gadgets it enables, ranging from security to spam to business model. On the other hand, these services will need to be pretty careful not to alienate their users by categorically shutting out stuff that is quite popular with its user community.  Especially in the Web 2.0 world we live in, passionately happy users are the single most important business asset from both an offensive and defensive perspective.

A fair amount lies in the balance here, and how the various services like MySpace, WordPress, Facebook, etc., navigate this question will impact the balance of power in the Web 2.0 ecosystem. We should all be watching this one closely.