At the DLD conference I stepped away from “social media” for a moment to speak with Central Films film producer Fernando Sulichin, one of the judges of the competition that’s currently going on at theCrane.tv.  You may know him as the producer of great films like Malcolm X and Alexander.  I talked with Fernando about his films, his inspiration and his strong opinions about the direction modern day film is taking.

When asked about how he decides which films he is going to work on Fernando responded in jest “usually ego– because I want to be important.”  However, he went on to say that he decides which films to produce for the prestige, out of necessity and even by chance.  In fact, twice he and his partner chose a script, didn’t read it and tried to finance it without opening the script.  They were able to finance without even reading the scripts and, in the end the result, Love Liza, went on to win Best Script at the Sundance Film Festival!

Fernando also spoke of political motivation as a major factor in determining which films to work on.  He says, “I am moved by politics” and, as a filmmaker, he believes that film is a precious tool that will be seen and it is important to do something positive with it.  He wants to make films that will make people think for a chance and believes that in the fast-paced world of today people are too busy thinking with their brains and don’t have the time to think with their hearts.  He wants to make films that give people the chance to slow down, reflect and “feel with their heart and not just with their brains.”

I asked if Fernando thought that filmmaking has deteriorated in recent years and he responded with, “Now there are no good movies– not even the ones that I’m doing!”  He strongly believes that people have lost sight of the true sense of storytelling.  “We need to go back to storytelling times of the 70s.  Everything today is so fast paced that people don’t have the time to see a movie with their heart.”

Fernando is currently working on a documentary about the new leaders in South America with Oliver Stone, as well as another film project with Tim Robbins.  To see my full interview with Fernando watch the video below.

At the DLD conference I stepped away from “social media” for a moment to speak with Central Films film producer Fernando Sulichin, one of the judges of the competition that’s currently going on at theCrane.tv.  You may know him as the producer of great films like Malcolm X and Alexander.  I talked with Fernando about his films, his inspiration and his strong opinions about the direction modern day film is taking.

When asked about how he decides which films he is going to work on Fernando responded in jest “usually ego– because I want to be important.”  However, he went on to say that he decides which films to produce for the prestige, out of necessity and even by chance.  In fact, twice he and his partner chose a script, didn’t read it and tried to finance it without opening the script.  They were able to finance without even reading the scripts and, in the end the result, Love Liza, went on to win Best Script at the Sundance Film Festival!

Fernando also spoke of political motivation as a major factor in determining which films to work on.  He says, “I am moved by politics” and, as a filmmaker, he believes that film is a precious tool that will be seen and it is important to do something positive with it.  He wants to make films that will make people think for a chance and believes that in the fast-paced world of today people are too busy thinking with their brains and don’t have the time to think with their hearts.  He wants to make films that give people the chance to slow down, reflect and “feel with their heart and not just with their brains.”

I asked if Fernando thought that filmmaking has deteriorated in recent years and he responded with, “Now there are no good movies– not even the ones that I’m doing!”  He strongly believes that people have lost sight of the true sense of storytelling.  “We need to go back to storytelling times of the 70s.  Everything today is so fast paced that people don’t have the time to see a movie with their heart.”

Fernando is currently working on a documentary about the new leaders in South America with Oliver Stone, as well as another film project with Tim Robbins.  To see my full interview with Fernando watch the video below.

I met with Katie McMahon, VP Business Development at Shazam,  last month at the DLD Conference.  Shazam is a unique technology that launched in 2002 and enables music lovers to identify and capture songs from any location using just their mobile phone.  Shazam users can take a sound sample, using their mobile phone, and Shazam will return the song title and artist name.  Additionally, once a song has been captured by Shazam, users also have the option to preview or purchase the song, watch a clip of the video or check out more information about the artist or album.  Users can also share songs with friends and catalog or tag songs or information for future reference.

Shazam is the world’s leading mobile music discovery provider and has launched in 75 countries worldwide with a variety of products.  Their leading product is their iPhone application, which is free to download and easy to use.  Using the built in microphone (or an external device if using the iPod Touch) you can capture a song by holding your phone up to the music.  Results are displayed instantly.

Another interesting feature of Shazam is that they allow you to add a photo to a tagged song and share it with friends.  This is a great way to capture memories by pairing memorable photos together with the songs that were playing in the background.  This is just one of the many ways that Shazam is changing the way people discover, share and listen to music.

To see my full interview with Katie McMahon, watch the below video.

My friend Yoav Leitersdorf is founder of YL Ventures, a VC fund that is also a Network Partner at Microsoft BizSpark.  BizSpark is an innovative new program that serves to support and accelerate the success of startups by uniting them with entrepreneurial and technology resources.  BizSpark is uniting a global community of entrepreneurs to help guide new startups through the ups and downs of creating a new business.  Their tag line, “Turning today’s most promising startups into tomorrow’s most successful businesses,” says it all.

The founders of YL Ventures started their fund just after exiting their last startup and, as entrepreneurs that have experience with molding their own successful startups it is no surprise that they have partnered with Microsoft on the BizSpark initiative.  As Network Partners, YL Ventures would like to extend free access codes to startups that can prove that they are less than three years old, have made less than $1 million in revenue and are in the business of software development, creating a new “software as a service”.  Send proof of these items (incorporation documents, company financials, etc.) to info@YLVentures.com and you will be granted an access code to take advantage of all that BizSpark has to offer.

This is a great opportunity for startups to get an edge up on the competition and, if you meet the criteria, it is definitely worth your while to apply.

My friend Yoav Leitersdorf is founder of YL Ventures, a VC fund that is also a Network Partner at Microsoft BizSpark.  BizSpark is an innovative new program that serves to support and accelerate the success of startups by uniting them with entrepreneurial and technology resources.  BizSpark is uniting a global community of entrepreneurs to help guide new startups through the ups and downs of creating a new business.  Their tag line, “Turning today’s most promising startups into tomorrow’s most successful businesses,” says it all.

The founders of YL Ventures started their fund just after exiting their last startup and, as entrepreneurs that have experience with molding their own successful startups it is no surprise that they have partnered with Microsoft on the BizSpark initiative.  As Network Partners, YL Ventures would like to extend free access codes to startups that can prove that they are less than three years old, have made less than $1 million in revenue and are in the business of software development, creating a new “software as a service”.  Send proof of these items (incorporation documents, company financials, etc.) to info@YLVentures.com and you will be granted an access code to take advantage of all that BizSpark has to offer.

This is a great opportunity for startups to get an edge up on the competition and, if you meet the criteria, it is definitely worth your while to apply.

I attended an interesting panel discussion at LeWeb, moderated by Scott Rafer CEO of Lookery, about the trends in social advertising.  The discussion, which was called ”Social Advertising: Where’s the Love?,” focused on media proven revenue streams for social software and social networks in our current economic environment, primarily on the approaches of Brand Advertising vs. Performance Advertising.  Panelists included Philip J. Kaplan, Founder and Chairman of AdBrite; Travis Katz, International Managing Director for MySpace and Fox Interactive Media; Lorenz Bogaert, Co-Founder and CEO of Netlog.com; and Seth Sternberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Meebo.

The first question the panelists were asked was how their business is split between brand advertising and performance advertising.  For those of you that don’t know, brand advertising is advertising that places a strong emphasis on the company brand and spreading awareness by simply having potential customers seeing the ad.  In this method, advertisers are paid for impressions, simply for displaying the ad with the company’s name and logo.  Performance advertising, on the other hand, places the emphasis on direct response.  This means that advertisers are paid when users click, fill in a form or fulfill some other specific action.  The panelists responses uncovered an interesting trend– while in the past brand advertising accounted for the bulk of social advertisements, a trend towards performance advertising is becoming more and more apparent.

Philip from AdBrite, the 5th largest ad network representing over 90,000 sites and serving over 1 billion page views on a daily basis, says that he used to preach brand but has found that as of late even huge brands like Toyota are moving towards direct response, wanting to see results.  Direct response currently accounts for 80% of advertising at AdBrite, versus 20% brand advertising.  In his words, “direct response is where the big money is.”

Seth Sternberg talked about how, when Meebo started out with advertising, they thought branded ads would be best because of their long session times and wanted to charge the companies they were advertising on a cost-per-click basis, but companies tended to prefer paying based on impressions using a cost-per thousand impressions (CPM) model in which they would adjust the CPM based on click-rate.  However, Seth says that 2009 is showing a trend towards performance over impressions.  Companies are moving away from the CPM model and towards cost-per-click.

MySpace, on the other hand, is still placing slightly more emphasis on brand advertising than on performance with 60-70% of their advertising efforts on branding.  However, Travis says that their success in branding is due largely to their sophisticated ad-targeting technology known as MySpace HyperTargeting, which allows advertisers to achieve a higher number of relevant impressions as it targets branding campaigns to users that are receptive to them.  He also gave the example of MySpace’s partnership with McDonalds for the Big Mac Chant-Off, a contest where users could upload videos for an opportunity to be in a McDonald’s commercial which sparked a lot discussion and dialogue around the McDonalds brand.

It will be interesting to see how trends in social advertising will continue to change over the next year, largely due to the current economic situation.  While Philip of Adbrite and Seth of Meebo put the emphasis on performance over brand I have my doubts that performance advertising will overtake branding.  The true measure of a company’s success is customer response.  In my opinion, this can be much more accurately determined by online response and conversation than by the number of people that click on an ad.  Travis of MySpace talked about how social branding campaigns allow brands to interact with their customers and this, to me, is the future of advertising.

To see more watch the videos of the panel discussion below.

On March 9th and 10th I will be attending the Social Networking World Forum in London, a two day conference dedicated to social networking.  At the conference representatives from leading social networks will be talking about everything from their revenue models to the future of social networking, global brands and corporations will be presenting case studies about how social media can be used to build a brand, advertisers will discuss their means of using social networking to create revenue streams and content providers will discuss their strategy and development when it comes to approaching social networks.  It seems like this conference is going to cover everything, from A to Z, on social networking.

Conference speakers include Anthony Lukom, Managing Director at Myspace UK; Kate Burns, Managing Director and VP at Europe for Bebo & People Networks; Gerrit Mueller, Senior Director of Mobile Products at Connected Life Yahoo! Europe; Mark Watts-Jones, Head of Development and Innovation at Orange UK; Sean Kane, Head of Mobile at Bebo; Henry Clifford-Jones, Director of Media Sales Europe at LinkedIn; and Natalie Johnson, Manager of Social Media Communications at General Motors.

In addition to speakers there will also be an exhibition hall at the conference where different social networks and social networking applications booths will be set up.  Exhibitors include BT Tradespace, Lithium, PlayJam, KickApps, Elemental, Ecademy, Reality Digital, FourRoads and Webjam, amongst others.

The Social Networking World Forum is shaping up to be the perfect event for professionals looking to learn more about social networking and the future of social media.  The conference aims to address core issues such as monetization, future technologies/services, engaging social groups with brands and how businesses can get the most out of social and business networks.

If you’d like to attend the Social Networking World Forum the organizers are offering a 20% discount to all Blonde 2.0 readers.  Call the booking hotline +(44) 0117 321 8303, email Mark@sixdegs.com or fill out the PDF booking form here and quote ‘blonde20′ to claim the 20% discount.  If you are attending the event I’ll see you there and for those who can’t make it I will be covering the conference on my blog, so stay tuned.

At the DLD Conference last month, I had the privilege of meeting with Victor Cho, VP and General Manager of Internet and Software Services at Kodak.  We spoke about a few of the new and innovative things that Kodak is doing right now.  One of the company’s current focuses is on creating connected devices such as cameras and video recorders.  One of these devices, the Kodak Zi6 HD camera, was generously given to me and I love its simplicity and ability to capture great footage. Since many social sites on the Web integrate photography, Kodak is improving user experience by pulling value from these various social Internet services. 

One of Kodak’s key products is the Kodak Gallery, in which users can share and manage their photos online.  Additionally, these photos can be transformed into tangible products such as prints, photo books and cards. Users can upload high resolution photos and store them indefinitely, as long as you purchase something from the gallery each year.

The Kodak gallery is simplifying the way photos are shared.  You can not only send your photos to friends and family online but also purchase unique gifts such as photo calendars, books, collages, mugs, and mousepads.  Wouldn’t you love going to bed each night with your Mom’s smiling face on your pillows and blankets? If you are more the traditional type, you can opt to have your photos framed or printed on canvas instead. Regardless of which of the many options you choose, these are great gifts for family members and friends.

One of the more interesting points that Victor and I discussed was how it’s becoming increasingly difficult for individuals to manage photos on the Web since photos can be scattered in various places such as Flickr, Facebook and Picasa. As Kodak moves forward, they are looking to simplify photo sharing and uncover a new way to manage your photos.

To see my full interview with Victor Cho, watch the video below.

Last December at the LeWeb conference in Paris I sat in on an interesting panel discussion entitled Love in Motion: Why are Mobile Social Networks Booming?  The panelists, Antonio Vince Staybol of itsmy.com, Dr. KF Lai of BuzzCity and Ewan Spence of WuBud, talked about what mobile social networks are, who uses them and what they use them for, how mobile social networks are monetized as well as where they are going in the future. 

Did you know that there are 4 billion mobile phones in the world?  There are only 1 billion Internet users and 1 billion television sets so, as you can see, mobile is a huge force.  In fact,in many parts of the world mobile phones are the only screens and mobile is the only way for people to get on the Internet.  That’s where mobile social networks come in.

Users of mobile social networks are different from regular social network users because, for many of them, mobile social networks are the only way they are able to access the Internet.  The mobile social networking platform is popular amongst truck drivers and cab drivers who are on the road a lot and far from their computers, as well as in countries like South Africa, India and Indonesia where many people just don’t have personal computers or Internet.  Soldiers are also big users of mobile social networks.

Antonio Vince Staybol offered up a few interesting facts about itsmy.com, which illustrate how mobile social networks are being used.  itsmy.com has a total of 2.5 million users who, on average, spend 52 hours a month on the itsmy.com mobile site.  60% of these users don’t have an email address and 46% have never used an online social network and may not even know what one is.  The bulk of these users are aged from 21 to 35.  However, mobile social networks are growing in popularity amongst the older crowd with users up to 60.  According to the panel, the reason for this is that mobile social networks are easier to understand– there are only 9 buttons on a phone so the whole process is much more simplified than social networks on the Web.

Want to learn more?  Watch my videos of the panel discussion below.

At DLD I had the opportunity to speak with David Sifry about his new project, Offbeat Guides.  Offbeat Guides, which launched publicly in November, is the first company to create fully customizable travel guides.  Unlike many travel guides which were written over a year ago by a travel writer who quickly popped in and out of the city you will be visiting, Offbeat Guides are customized with the most up-to-date information written by locals and put together by travel editors and curators.  They are currently offering customizable guides for 30,000 of the most popular cities worldwide.

All you have to do is go to the Offbeat Guides website, enter your name, your destination, where you are coming from and, if you have accomodation, where you are staying.  Offbeat Guides will then compile all of the most relevant information, events, festivals, bands and more just for the specific days of your trip.  They even gather together information about the weather, currency exchange rates, location of your country’s embassy and more.

Once your travel guide is complete you can preview it online, make changes and customize chapters.  You can then purchase a printed version for $24.95, a PDF version for $9.95 or view your travel guide online for free.

For me, one of the most frustrating things about traveling is trying to gather together all of the information about the cities I’m visiting.  Searching around for the simple things like the weather forecast, currency and exchange information, local spots and events can take a lot of time and effort, so I think that it’s wonderful that Offbeat Guides does all of this for you in seconds.  In addition, I hate feeling like I am going to tourist places as opposed to where the locals go. With Offbeat Guides I can check out the local hot spots. I look forward to using it on my upcoming trip to Paris, London and Geneva.

David Sifry is a software entrepreneur and blogger.  He is most known for founding Technorati and blogs at Sifry’s Alerts.  For our full interview, watch the below video.