As part of our new Super Fan podcast series, we met with Chris Adams after last year’s Digital Hollywood conference to discuss his experience working with both movie producers and web producers. We focused on how these two very different organizational cultures need to learn from each other to realize the potential for online video and social media. Having done lots of work with both web based companies and feature film producers, Chris is able to provide excellent insights into the challenges these companies face in this era of new media. He understands the differences between the cultures and the need for help in bridging the gap.

In this podcast, Chris provides some great perspective on the organizational and personnel challenges these companies face in the transition to new business models. He describes the role that social marketing and super fans played in helping properties like Syriana and An Inconvenient Truth break out and build audiences. This podcast interview provides a behind the scenes view into where things are now and some of the major changes to come.

 

 Digital Podcast 31 [44:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Chris is founder and president of Orbit Media Group, where he consults with media and internet companies creating partnerships, programming and relationships between and to the benefit of media, entertainment and online brands. His current clients range from Facebook.com, one of the fastest-growing internet companies on earth, for which he helped to create and produce “Facebook Diaries,” the first-ever hybrid user-generated video/reality TV show to be distributed on Facebook.com, Ziddio.com, Comcast VOD and linear television and the IFC Channel, to HBO to Comcast, the largest cable and broadband company in the US to HBO to Glam.com, the number one site for women to film icons, to Born4Sports, a social network, marketplace and ecommerce platform for sports and sports lifestyle with presence in Europe, Asia and soon, the US.

Prior to launching his own consulting company, Chris co-founded Participant Productions in 2004 with Jeff Skoll, eBay’s first President. Participant’s vision is to create entertainment that inspires audiences to make social change. In this capacity, Chris developed and executed on the business plan, was intimately involved in finding and hiring initial executive personnel and managed the company overall. Participant’s first slate of movies — Syriana, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon; North Country, starring Charlize Theron; Good Night and Good Luck, starring David Strathairn and George Clooney, and the documentary Murderball – were nominated for an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards. Chris is also proud to have identified and helped to develop former Vice President Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth which won the Oscar for Best Documentary and Gore’s work participated in his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition to the above-mentioned films, Chris developed and Executive Produced Participant’s first feature: American Gun starring Marcia Gay-Harden, Forrest Whittaker, Donald Sutherland, Linda Cardelini and Tony Goldwyn.

[tags]Chris Adams, Super Fans, social marketing, social media, Digital Hollywood[/tags]

The New York Times is reporting that:

The two companies said on Wednesday that Microsoft would invest $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. The investment values the three-year-old Facebook, which will bring in about $150 million in revenue this year, at $15 billion.

While I’m happy for the Facebook and Accel folks(Jim Breyer of Accel Partners bought into the promise of Facebook early on with a $12.7 million investment, now worth $1.65 billion on paper – Way to go, Jim!), it seems like an incredibly high valuation for a company with $150 million in revenue.

It goes to show the power of greed, liquidity and fear in driving up the value of a term sheet. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo all saw huge dollar signs available to whoever gets to serve ads on Facebook(the greed factor). Facebook has done an excellent job playing them off against each other to get some competing offers from Microsoft and Yahoo (the liquidity part) and to drive it home, Microsoft is desperate to stop the Google train somewhere(the fear part).

To put the valuation in perspective, Yahoo is worth $41.6 billion on almost $7 billion in revenue, so to me it’s hard to see how a $15 billion valuation makes sense on $150 million in revenue even if Facebook is on a revenue rocket.

So now that I have put my two cents into the discussion, I wanted to know what other folks think so I reviewed the Techmeme links to see what leading bloggers think about the deal. Here’s a few llinks that seem to round up the opinions

Don Dodge – This isn’t about valuation

Terrence Russell at Wired : Three Reasons Microsoft Underpaid For Facebook

Web Strategy – Why this deal makes sense

TechCrunch – Face Book is Now the 5th Most Valuable US Internet Company

TechDirt – The Difference Between Sense and Non-sense

And while they all seem to know that the valuation is wacky they do point out that Microsoft only put $240 million at risk, got a strategic foothold and perhaps blocked Google. Although Google has it’s own Facebook like site, Orkut which is on it’s own high growth path.

It will be interesting to see how the rest the social networking war plays itself out.

UPDATE: Apparently, the dumb money is flowing behind Microsoft’s strategic investment with two PE funds putting in another $500 Million.

[tags]Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google[/tags]