Former Fox Interactive Media honcho Ross Levinsohn and former AOL
president Jon Miller were on stage together today at the Conversational
Marketing Summit in San Francisco's Presidio dishing dirt on their old
companies and talking a little about the new venture capital firm
they've formed.
Called Velocity Investment Group and backed with capital from General Atlantic Partners, the firm
will invest in digital media companies. Most of the conversation today
was spent talking about the retrenchment going on at their old firms
along with others such a Yahoo and CBS Radio. Miller criticized the
decisions of those companies to return to their comfort zones and bring
in new managers that either previously managed those companies or have
little experience on the Internet.
After suggesting that Facebook was not a direct threat to
MySpace, Levinsohn, who sits on the board of Napster, talked about two
problems the music industry is facing. Presumably, some of his time at
Velocity will be spent considering new music investments.
Miller noted that vertical search results are more satisfying
than general search results in specialized areas like health. He
expects vertical search to continue to grow in popularity. Aside from
search, Miller talked about his interested in new advertising
technologies. He thinks that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL are all
trying to create the operating system of advertising online but that
more advertising technology startups can grow before one of those four
companies succeeds in its goal.
For more on the Conversational Marketing Summit, see:
Peter Brondmo
LaSandra Brill
NotCot
Tags: conversational marketing, conversational marketing summit, cmsummit, aol, vc, venture+capital
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