Tag Archives: acquisition

Why did Disney only pay $4B for Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound?

November 1st, 2012

When I first read the news that Disney was acquiring Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound all in one deal I tweeted that I didn’t understand how all of these companies – along with the rights to Star Wars, partial rights to Indiana Jones, Lucas Arts and much, much more – were only worth $4 billion. But I may have figured it out; George Lucas knows they are worth more but wants Disney, and only Disney, to takeover the reigns. And, Lucas will make boatloads of dough on this deal too.

I’m not alone in wondering though. Jason Kottke:

Crazy. A non-Lucas non-prequel Star Wars film will hopefully be pretty great, but the purchase price is puzzling. Only $4 billion?

According to my research Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound have a combined team of thousands of employees. No doubt some of these will not be making the transition to Disney. But this is a solid workforce.

Take a look at ILM’s Wikipedia page. That is some filmography. At my count I see at least three if not five blockbuster releases per year. Depending on how those deals were structured, I’d be surprised if ILM didn’t get some sort of royalties for some of those films long after they’ve debuted. Not to mention the work done on Bluray/DVD releases.

And ILM’s pipe seems pretty full too. They have nine deals in the bag all of which are pretty high-budget projects.

And, even though Skywalker Sound is relatively small, they own the IP for THX and work on arguably the best films released each year. Perhaps they too can structure sweetheart deals.

So Disney, without a doubt, got a steal of a deal. But, we have to look at this transaction a little differently than just looking at the face value because Lucas took half of the money in Disney stock.

The $4 billion was split; half cash, half stock. Disney is promising to make Star Wars a much more international hit. As it stands, a huge percentage of the revenue from Star Wars comes from toys bought in the US. Disney can bring Star Wars to China, Japan and other nations where toys are a huge hit. Just not Star Wars toys. And, presumably, they can do something special in all of their parks worldwide to bring people into the parks. They can also fund, manage, and distribute new Star Wars releases, movies, games, toys – and George Lucas doesn’t have to lift a finger.

Brian Warner:

The fact that Lucas is taking half the deal in stock is a sign that he sees this transaction as an investment for the future, instead of just a quick way to cash out. Considering the fact that Disney’s stock is up more than 32% this year, from a low of $38 to a recent 52 week high of $53 per share, Lucas’ payday could increase by hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

So Lucas now owns 40 million shares of Disney. Effectively doubling his personal net-worth with a single signature. Some analysts project they will bank more than $30B on this sale in short order. Their stock is already up two points (that’s $1.8B in market cap) and it isn’t even lunch yet. To Lucas that’s $40M more than he expected. So I guess Lucas knows exactly what he’s doing.

Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound sold to Disney »

October 31st, 2012

The price? Four Instagrams.

Dean J. Robinson:

Lots of people I follow on twitter [sic] (pretty much all of them actually) are Star Wars fans of some description – and the general consensus is that while they are quite surprised by the announcement they don’t necessarily have negative feeling about it. In fact many seem enthused by the prospect of a Star Wars film that George Lucas isn’t at the helm for.

My little tirade on Twitter last night may have been seen by some as an indication that I’m mad or upset about the transaction. I’m not. Well, maybe I am.

If George no longer wants ownership of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc. etc., or the companies that have done the sound and special effects for countless films over the last 35 years there is probably no better home than Disney.

I am upset, however, at the current state that Star Wars is left in. A Star Wars without George Lucas is not the same Star Wars. Think about it. A New Hope was a smashing success in 1977. Arguably one of the biggest successes in film history on many fronts. And, economics aside, it is a great Sci-Fi film. Some say that Empire Strikes Back is one of the best sequels of all time. And, aside from the Ewoks, Return of the Jedi was about as good of a trilogy ender as anyone could hope for. And then, a slow plummet. The Special Editions. Episodes I, II, and III simply never had a chance. (By the way, I think Episode III was actually pretty great. The Emperor really comes out looking like a clear winner.) And the Bluray release.

The last thing George did was go in and fiddle with the originals and add Ewok eyelids and emotion to Darth Vader where no emotion was needed. As Dean said some are excited by the prospect of an Episode 7 that he has nothing to do with. I, on the other hand, was rooting for George to come back and make something great since I was very young. And now we’re left with George Lucas never doing another Star Wars. I guess I was always hoping he’d find that same spark he had in the 70s and 80s.

That’s what I’m most upset about.

Export your photos from Instagram with instaport.me

April 10th, 2012

Maybe you’ve heard; Facebook bought Instagram for a cool $1 Billion. Remember, I said it was a network not a camera. Well, some people are a bit miffed and are planning their escapes. Not nearly as many as I’d thought would though seeing how many people were up-in-arms about Instagram on Android.

Assuming you didn’t already share your Instagram photos to Facebook, Flickr, or Twitter and also assuming that you deleted all of the photos off of your iPhone without backing them up first – you could export your photos from Instagram using instaport.me.

I’m in no hurry to leave Instagram. But we’ll see what the next year or so means for the service.

Facebook buys Gowalla

December 3rd, 2011

The news is spreading that Facebook has acquired Gowalla. Many of the reports are focusing on the team being acq-hired to help with the Timeline or perhaps with Facebook’s mobile apps. But I think these angles are missing something – the fact that Gowalla’s experience could really enhance Facebook’s stickiness.

Here is something I wrote just after to the latest version of Gowalla went public.

“A check in is a very “thin” experience. There isn’t much to a check in besides; I’m here and so are these people. Everything else on these services revolves around the check in. Gowalla is trying to do something different and enhance that experience to make it more enjoyable and perhaps fun. That’s great. However, I think this is where Gowalla might lose me. I use Foursquare to check in because it is very quick to do so. I switched from Gowalla to Foursquare for this exact reason. And now with “stories” Gowalla seems to be trying to slow this process down even more. So they must be going after a very specific individual that wants to share their experiences with people in certain places, and who are willing to take the time to do that, rather than simply sharing their current location. I’m OK with this but it may not be for me. We’ll see.”

The part of Gowalla that made me switch could actually be the part of Facebook that keeps its users on the pages even longer than they are now.

I may have to let this sit a little longer. But I assume this will be good for the Gowalla and I’m happy they’ve seen something for their hard work.

Pownce is closing its doors, team joins Six Apart

December 1st, 2008

You may have heard the news (since both Twitter and Pownce is flooded with links to Leah Culver’s blog post) that Pownce is shutting down on December 15th and that a few of the team members; namely Leah Culver and Mike Malone – are joining Six Apart.

One could sit back and try to analyze why this is happening; with Twitter as Pownce’s main “competitor” (whether justly so or not) and with Pownce having a reasonable amount of uptime problems – you could say this is a result of these two, or many other things.  But I’m less worried about the “why” and more interested in the “what’s next”?

That is why I asked Mike Malone, one of the Pownce team members that is moving to Six Apart, to answer two simple questions (which he was happy to do).

Leah said, in the blog post announcement, that “we’ll come back with something much better in 2009″ – Does this mean that Pownce will come back as a better service? Or, something completely different?

“It is going to come back as something “very cool and very different”. [...] Whether it will be called “Pownce” is to be determined.”

Pownce seems fairly active still. Is there any direct benefit to shutting the service down within two weeks?

“The benefit is basically that we can concentrate on the new projects we’re working on.”

After asking Mike to elaborate on the second answer, he stated that it is generally tough to keep Pownce up and running and takes up a lot of time.  Shutting the service helps them to free up their time in order to focus their efforts on getting, what they feel, is a really valuable new service up and running quicker than they could have without shutting Pownce down.

Pownce, although I really liked the service, never really made it into my daily stops insomuch as other services like Twitter, Brightkite, and FriendFeed have.  So I can’t say I’m particularly saddened about its being shut down.  However, I do look forward to Six Apart and the ex-Pownce team creating something new and exciting in the New Year that hopefully will be a more focused and stable product to use.

Thanks to Mike for answering my questions.

Acquisition 2′s trial isn’t a very good trial

November 26th, 2008

I’m all for independent developers charging for their applications. In fact, I don’t mind really good indy devs to charge a premium for their product if they’re going to do their best to support their customers and build a great product.

I do mind when applications that cost money, which include a trial, do not really offer much of a trial at all.

Acquisition 2, a P2P and BitTorrent application, is probably the worst possible example of how I think developers should try to get people to purchase their applications. As irony would have it, Acquisition is an application most-often-used to steal applications, music, videos, etc. but that is besides the point.

While most application trials last for 30-days, Acquisition’s lasts for 1 hour. In fact, it doesn’t even last that long. The trial version of the application severely limits the use of the application in several ways. The unregistered version of Acquisition states that “search results [are] ignored randomly”. So you can never really tell how good Acquisition is at finding what it is you’re trying to download. After an hour Acquisition throttles the bandwidth that it uses for downloads. In my experience this limit is set to just under 10Kbps. Acquisition also shows you an “nag screen” ((A screen that asks you to purchase the application.)) that you can not hide even if you hide the application itself. It is a floating “window” that will not go away so long as you have the application open. These are thing things I found in my usage before turning the application off and uninstalling it.

Some trial.

While Eliza was painting our living room we had to unplug our Tivo so I needed to find the latest episode of Heroes. BitTorrent, my usual method for downloading TV Shows when things like this happen, wasn’t working for reasons I’ve yet to figure out. So, I thought I’d give Acquisition a trial.

To be clear; Acquisition is a very well designed application. Dave Wantanabe is a very good developer and has a few successful projects under his belt. I just think the unregistered version of this application is a bit too annoying for my tastes. It isn’t a question of quality, it is a question of methodology.

I am not sure what the solution to this problem actually is. My best guess would be to offer a real trial of the software, without any limitations whatsoever, for at least a few days. Then show the nag screen. Then, maybe, limit the software’s ability to download things quickly.  Having it not find the files you’re looking for makes the application seem crippled, not limited.

A few questions with Gary Vaynerchuk about Cork’d

May 15th, 2007

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk in London
Photo credit: The hard working Tara Hunt

For those that do not know Gary, Wine Library TV, or Cork’d – let me take a second to catch you up to speed. Gary Vaynerchuk is the Director of Operations for Wine Library and began his career in wine at the ripe age of 17 (someone call the cops). He’s visited every major wine region on the planet, has probably tasted more wine this week than most people do in their adult lives, and is single handedly trying to “change the wine world” (or, trying to bring the community into every aspect of wine instead of it being an elitist club as it has been for so long).

Gary’s main mode of attack has been Wine Library TV, his daily video blog, where he tastes wine and rates it “live”. Even though he has personal relationships with most if not all of the vineyards that have their wine in his store, Gary does not hold back with his criticisms nor his accolades. His honesty, charisma, and passion for wine has made his video blog one of the top video blogs on the Internet and certainly the number one vlog for wine!

Cork’d, the brain-child of Dan Benjamin and Dan Cederholm, is a social network centered on keeping a wine journal and creating a list of wines you’d like to try based on what you’re friends have had. Cork’d is well built, beautifully designed, and bustling with active fans of wine.

For all of the above reasons – the merging of Gary Vaynerchuk’s empire with Cork’d is synergy++.

So now that you’re all caught up to speed, I thought I’d ask Gary a few questions about his acquisition of Cork’d and what it will mean for his current WLTV audience (of which I’ve been a member of since the very beginning).

When did you first discover Cork’d and when did you get interested it in as a property for Wine Library?

Gary: “Last May and last May! LOL. I knew this was it, I have been dreaming of launching a name I own, ratingwines.com, for 6 years (look it up) and when i saw Cork’d my dreams were dashed :( ”

I thought it was interesting that Gary knew he wanted to do something like Cork’d from the very beginning. This alone shows his dedication to his mantra or “changing the wine world”. Obviously the entire industry has been geared more towards paying attention to only a select few for wine ratings. Now, using Cork’d, one can see the consensus of the entire community rather than just one person using one rating system.

To show a little history here, Dan Benjamin shows that Wine Library was the longest running sponsor for Cork’d, which shows that Gary was always in the prime position to tap into this community and that Gary was always trying to help Cork’d become the best it possibly can be:

“One of our longest running advertisers was Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk’s excellent wine videocast. Each month, Gary would call us and buy out the top-spot in the Cork’d sidebar. Behind the scenes, he was always talking about partnering with us, coming up with ways we could enhance Cork’d, tie us in to his huge database of wines and wine labels – he really wanted to see Cork’d succeed.” — [source]

It is this dedication to helping something that he didn’t even own at the time that shows that Cork’d is in great hands going forward.

The synergy between Wine Library, Wine Library TV, your wine label service, and Cork’d are obvious! How long before we start to see all of these services mashed together, and what do you think the first thing to be integrated will be?

I'm a Vayniac

I’m a Vayniac – at Seneca Lake, NY
Get your shirt!

Gary: “Very soon! Give us 30-45 days to start wowing you!”

I’ve already seen and spoke to the WLTV crew about a few of the things they are working on. Obviously, being Viddler‘s Community Evangelist, I was interested to know how each episode of Wine Library TV (down to tasting each wine) would fit into this deal. Look for some pretty cool tie ins between Wine Library TV, Cork’d, and Viddler’s “linking to any moment” technology. However, as a “Vayniac”, I’m even more excited about having access to Gary’s tastings across this entire network of sites.

What part of this entire deal has you the most excited? I know for me its being able to watch the video of you tasting a wine that I may have had right from the Cork’d site. What about you?

Gary: “The fact that people can share and enjoy each other. Cork’d has given the infrastructure needed to create the wine community I dream of. I can’t wait to see wines have 100 reviews on them each, that will be fun!”

This also supports his mantra. At the end of each show, Gary emphasizes “You, with a little bit of me, we’re changing the wine world. Aren’t we?” Well now more than ever Gary is trying to put that power into the hands of the community rather than himself. Sure he’s the ring leader (and a very good one at that) but now all of us have the ability to say what we think about the wine’s we’re tasting and actually have it matter instead of falling on deaf ears.

You’ve got a ton of loyal Vayniacs that use the WineLibrary TV forums right now. Are all of us Vayniacs going to have to sign up to Cork’d and manage both accounts, or will you try to tie those two systems together somehow?

Gary: “I think the Vayniacs and everyone else will see the use. We will have a function that allows people to post a review on Cork’d and allow that review to go right to the WL Forum’s tasting notes, making it a whole 360 experience. My hope is people will see the huge value in using Cork’d though since it will also cellar your wines, keep a wish list, ect.”

The Cork’d blog (currently going through some DNS issues) has been silent for awhile, and never really took off. Do you see this as having more potential than just a random post every now and then? Do you have any plans for the Cork’d blog? I know you have a wine related blog already – can they be tied together somehow or will they remain separate?

Gary: “Not sure on this front but I think this is Cork’d's voice and it needs to be talkative. We mostly want to share thoughts and interact, I’m sure we will explore all possibilities.”

I’m a big proponent of blogging so I hope to see some of Cork’d's future plans, updates, and community efforts verbalized through their blog and on WLTV.

What will the JETS record be this year now that you’ve gone to the draft?

Gary: “16-0 with an easy win over the EAGLES;) honestly the 1st 2 games are brutal but a 10-6 is possible for sure!”

I’m pretty sure that jab is directed at Chris but I’ll let him respond.

Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions Gary. Personally I look forward to the developments that are sure to come in the near future to tie all of these great things together and really help us change the wine world one day at a time.

Additional coverage

There has been a pretty good amount of coverage since this acquisition was announced. Dan Cederholm and Dan Benjamin both wrote some really great background on the entire deal. Read Cederholm’s post and Benjamin’s post on their personal blogs. CenterNetworks was the first to get wind of this deal, but without having all the specifics they covered only the redesign of Wine Library TV’s main site. I’m thinking that someone over there is definitely doing their job. Mashable covered the actual deal but failed to get into many specifics and even got a few of their facts wrong. I think it is interesting to see, when you have inside knowledge of a “deal”, just how accurate some of these stories are (or are not). All in all I think the best coverage comes from those that keep their ear to the ground, are willing to ask for information before they post it, and strive to get every fact straight before they are willing to publish.

Update: Here is a photo of Gary wearing a Viddler shirt on Digg Nation.

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