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Thursday, July 20 03:31 PM |
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I Told You To Turn Down The Volume, NOW TURN IT OFF!
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Volume.com it seems may never get to turn it up. Its original strategy was to build a flashy urban portal with no clear strategy other than to have puff pieces and video clips of celebrities. Before they even launched they were ordered to scrap all the content they had and build a blackplanet-esque community site. AOL's merger with Time Warner put Volume.com under intense scrutiny. Evidently AOL wasn't impressed.
AOL has already scrapped much of its support for the, perpetually delayed Places of Color venture with Digital Mafia Entertainment. AOL was apparently indifferent to the 65% price cut DME offered on 4 million shares of DME stock for AOL to remain dedicated to the deal. The original Places of Color agreement allowed AOL to purchase 4,000,000 shares of DME common stock at $8.56 per share, now it can purchase those shares for $3, which is two dollars more then DME's current stock price.
The refocusing of Volume is merely the result of corporate rethinking within the AOL/Time Warner family. Some Volume staff members wont be waiting around for the end to come. Smokey Fontaine, who was recently appointed to the Chief of Content position to replace McLean Greaves, will not be sticking around for the end to come at Volume. He and former LaFace records Marketing VP Lisa Cambridge, who was the VP for Marketing at Volume, will be exiting before the end of the month along with several other members in the entertainment staff.
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What a waste of a perfectly good URL. |
WOW! Is this official? Is this Urban Portal death #2. Can anyone verify?
Artisha
art4short
(aka Jean Grey) |
Such a waste of a incredible domain name. What do you think the going rate is for that URL.
I think the people who post on UE should get together and do a real site rather than talk shit about other ones. Actually, talking trash is fun- as long as it's true.
-Boogieman |
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How long does is take to create a website? How long does it take to create a flash page that leads nowhere? How long will it take Volume to confirm my registration? What did I sign-up to get anyway? How much did they pay for the volume.com domain name? The company acts like it's 1994 and their new web site will blow away the world when it is launched. They might want us to rmain in a time out, but I'm afraid the game is over |
re: Volume/AOL/Time
It's a dern shame. So if Volume's demise was due to strict scrutiny from AOL, does that mean that strict scrutiny from AOL/Time could also mean the end of Essence? Whatupwitdat? Anyone look at essence.com lately -ouch!!!!
Back to volume...
A.J. - thanks to a cool book I read last weekend (www.phptr.com/essential/flash), I too can make a phat flash intro. And without any links and content behind it - - their sight can be created in an evening. (lil' longer if I run out of JOLT soda)
AND - I too fell prey to their registration ploy, never to hear jack from them since.
I'm trying to reform my hatin' ways... BUT what's with all these urban web sights that only sport flash intros and a (so far) empty promise of more to come? How many times does a brothah (or sistah) have to check back? When I register, why don't you at least send me a mutha-bleepin' confirmation email? Why don't you give me the option to skip the eff-in' flizzash intro? Why don't you at least gradually add something, ANYTHING to your sight!??!
Y'all gone make me lose my mind up in here!
Dr. Nathaniel Essex
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UE:
Since I'm already hatin'...
Wassup with y'all monitoring the BB, getting a tip from THUGLITE and writing a few sentences to post as the next news article on this sight.
Y'all could have at least went a little deeper into the story and tell us something that we did not already know!
What about the execs and staff behind volume? Does AOL have its own plan for this urban media space that stomps on what volume.com was gonna do and that's why the put pressure on 'em and eventually caused them to crumble? How much money were they eatin? Rumors? Gossip?
whatsthedealeeyo?
Angelo Espinosa
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SEE I TOLD YOU |
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thanks for noticing B COOL |
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VOLUME was the original named for VIBE magazine... |
aol had a dream team and fucked it up. |
Don't believe the hype...they ain't close down.
my cousin works their still. it didn't go up yet. they let go some of the wack people. |
OK...
Last time I checked, AOL was a $130+ billion company. How much scrutiny could the Time Warner/AOL merger have subjected Volume.com to? Time Warner must be taking due diligence to the next level!
As far as the aforementioned Volume.com executives go, I would guess that they have little control over their departures. Are we to believe that AOL is responsible for the Volume.com's difficulties?
And who said anything about Volume.com dying? Even if AOL flips the script yet again, it's difficult to compete with the Volume.com name and the AOL ubiquity, not to mention the imminent arrival of the Warner Music catalog. I predict that Volume will be kicking way past ten for years to come. |
alls i know is, smokey d. fontaine turned down a job as music editor of vibe for volume.com's big bucks. (hope he saved his chips)
they also had michael a. gonzales and david wall rice (former contributing editor to blaze) up for the downstroke.
but now what? |
hmm another dotcom seems to be biting the dust...or at least the ship seems to be sinking.....what is going on???
by the way I heard fontaine and cambridge (who was the chief of content) were let go too along with the rest of the people....doesn't sound like they kept to much of the talent......wonder what Greaves has to say bout all of this.....
Guess we will stil have to wait for someone to gather up talent like that again to create some new sites....When are the black netpreneurs going to get it together....
Wonder if 360hiphop will try to snatch up some of those folks??
As the OnlineGhettoTurns.....the saga continues |
mean while the few talanted people of color working at the big agencys shake there heads and wonder when heads are ever gonna get it right
and continues ............... and continues |
THere's no way to tell if they are dead at this point--they do everything at Volume way too slowly
Volume was started way before rs1w became 360, way before why2g, back when BET.com was still that horrible MSBET bastard child of two dysfunctional parents. And way before Steve Case and the AOL boys from Virginia ended up with the final say.
AOL has a track record that can be looked at re black/urban properties--they launched Netnoir (a.ka. Net-No-Idea) out of their Greenhouse incubator program years ago, back when you could make money on AOL just by hosting chat rooms and bulletin boards (when everybody paid by the hour). WHen Net-No-Idea traffic turned out to be disappointing, they had no problem putting on BlackVoices, a black property developed by a large media company (similar to Volume)
So their pattern is that they don't feel obligated to support just one contestant especially if they hvaent proved themselves (repeating again in the Places Of COlor vs Volume positioning)
I believe we will see a Volume launch eventually because
1) too much money already invested not to attempt a recoup and you cant do that without making the site live
2) no one dominates the space yet, so for all their problems they still have a chance
3) Folding it completely becomes a public embarrassment--Volume becomes a front-of-the-business section story if they have to publicly admit defeat
As for POC, it looks like little support was behind this deal besides the AOL name--certainly no real monetary commitment from AOL. Don't hold your breath.
unfortunately, the bottom line for Volume, POC and Essence is that they are all positioned so that their fate is not in their own hands |
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CNET
Friday July 21 09:00 AM EDT
HBO's Volume.com slashes work force
Volume.com, a newly formed HBO urban content company, has slashed about 30 percent of its work force--before its launch.
The company, which plans to cater urban cultural news to 18- to 25-year-olds, laid off 18 to 22 editors and producers yesterday, sources said. Company executives were not available to comment.
The New York-based site was formed last year and funded by Home Box Office, a unit of media giant Time Warner. HBO, a cable network, has managed to gain success at producing original TV shows such as "Sex and the City," but its ability to mirror that success online with an original content site has yet to be seen.
Although employees were told the cuts were a result of a budget shortfall, one employee was more skeptical.
"It doesn't know what it wants to be," said a source. "Will it be about having content, or just a site full of
hyperlinks to someplace else? That question hasn't been answered."
Last spring, employees began to suspect there were problems. Launch dates were repeatedly pushed back, bickering over the focus and amount of content to be posted began to erupt, and McLean Greaves, Volume's chief of content, resigned in June, sources said.
Employees who remain with the company are somewhat skeptical of its future prospects. Said one source: "They could shut (it) down completely...This didn't have to happen." |
Whoa!!! First THUGLITE scooped you (UE) and then I told you what to write about - and you go and update the story to add some more meat!?
At least y'all pay attention to the BB.
But what about my free prize for being the first mo-fo on this sight to reach over 50 Clout Points? What about developing the rest of the CONTENT y'all promised us like updating the polls (more frequently) and posting the movers and shakers mug shot on BigShots?!
Speaking of BigShots... Can you tell me why Omar Wasow is on NBC morning news e'ry (ok, so now you know I am originally from the dc erria)day talking about anything having to do with technology?! I give him his just due props for NYCOnline and BlackPlanet, but what the heezzee does he know about digital camera's? You don't see Stave Case telling us what flat screen TV to buy - do you? To qoute on of my favorite TV personalities, he needs to KNOW HIS ROLE - AND SHUT HIS MOUTH - WITH HIS CANDY @SS!
hatin,
T'Challa "King of Wakanda" |
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from the soul purpose.....
VOLUME.COM IS THE LATEST URBAN DOT.COM TO GO THRU LAYOFFS
We have received an unconfirmed report that Volume.com has laid off
close to 15 people. Volume.com is the Time Warner backed urban new
media venture that has been in development for a little more than one
year. The staff is made up of talented ex music and media folks
including Lisa Cambridge, Smokey Fontaine, Karu Daniels, Norma
Augenblick and Tamara Francois. |
Yo 'Urban' web heads,
Anyone know of a so-called urban company that offers web cast services?
One of my peoples works for a major magazine publishing company and one of their magazine properties is about to put out an rfp for web casting. I was tryin' to make sure that that person is aware of a (well let's just say it) Black company that could do it. The company has to be legit - cuase I don't want to recommend any suckers that will make me look bad.
They need to do a Live Web Cast and then have an Archived Web Cast (aka Video on Demand) from edited footage from the Live joint.
My contact over there is looking at:
next venue
akami
third eye media
and real networks
Hit me at one of my many fugazi email accounts w/ info....
c_francis_xavier@yahoo.com
Thanks - Prof. X |
it's gettin to be ri-goddamned-diculous...it's the R&B industry all over again...let's do remixes of the dead sites and put star producers on them.
Basically this among all the other failures prove that while some were really getting on with learning the internet and the design and marketing thereabouts...others were throwing parties and giving fashion shows. This is just embarrassing now.
Kozmo realizes their CEO couldn't hang so they replaced him with a suit. Are they the only ones who watched Remington Steele? Having a figurehead who can't/won't deliver is okay if you build a team who CAN and EMPOWER them.
This is how history is going to document Black folks pioneering on the internet. Nice. Our grand children will have FUNNY stories to fall asleep to.
Will all the ethnic sites with no business plan please form a line to the right? This is an express lane. |
After looking up the VOLUME story on CNET News. I ran into the following 'funny' story. Uhm... I apologize in advance for posting it here, but I fealt y'all needed to see this.
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Wells Fargo Web site pulls racial descriptions
By The Associated Press
Special to CNET News.com
June 22, 2000, 7:40 p.m. PT
SAN FRANCISCO--Wells Fargo overhauled an online home referral
program that described low-income neighborhoods as places heavily populated by blacks who "tend to purchase ... takeout food from chicken restaurants."
The San Francisco-based bank, one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders, took the action today, a day after a nonprofit activist group filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the racial descriptions violated the Fair Housing Act.
The bank's Web site also defined ``middle class urban'' neighborhoods as mostly black communities where residents favored wine coolers and classified "West Coast Immigrant" neighborhoods as heavily Hispanic communities with unusually high unemployment and poverty rates.
In a statement today, Wells said management decided to remove the descriptions "until we can determine if the editorial content is compatible with our demonstrated commitment to low- and moderate-income and minority home buyers."
Wells said the search service is linked to independently owned and operated Homefair.com, which is licensed to more than 2,000 other Web sites.
(Uhhm... There's more, but you get the point.)
T'Challa |
Fuck Volume... nobody's trying to hear that bullshit anyway!
Fuck UBO... they were supposes to launch on Thursday the 20th...
same shit... next day!
Fuck AKA... the owner is too dumb to explain what urban is... The Rifkinds are the great pretenders.
Fuck Hookt... the best thing there marketing dept can do is spend their t&e in the hamptons every weekend.
Fuck 360... the staff are just a bunch of Russell Ryders.
Thank you and have a pleasant day. |
if you merged all of the urban sites... what would you get....
a lot of NOTHING!
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Dear Mr. Venture Capitalist,
I would like for you to invest some money in my dream. I am build a web page on my commdore 64. I need $25 million in seed capital. I have absolutely no experience in the internet. I don't even own a modem. I haven't checked my email in a month. But last night while wathing re-runs of the Golden Girls I came up with this great idea.
www.elderlyhoes.com... a place where OC's (Old Chickenheads) can feel at home.
It's a great idea. Please let me know what you think.
Thanks. |
Max. Respect to B Cool and Thuglite for holding it down on this site. Their info is just as good-if not better than the info UE provides. Don't get me wrong, I am not hating on UE, but these two are are DOING IT right now!
Boogieman
-Shout out to all the cats at UBO who can't check out UE cuz their net access is restricted. Now who is really hatin'? |
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thanks AL BOOGIE
i dont gossip! i share! UE is for us to all share on! |
Thanks ALBOOGIE.
For all that heads who's opressive management attempts to block their access to this sight. (I hope your're still watchin from home.)
When you go into the office and just wanna peak (you won't be able to post) use a redirector proxy to bypass your bullcorn firewall software.
A redirector proxy will spoof the firewall into thinking you are going somewhere else while you are actually lookin at UE (or a porn, gaming, or hacker sight).
Check out
http://www.anon.de or
http://ctservice.de/taker/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi
Due to the way a redirector works you won't be able to get any cookies sent or recieved to your pc so you won't be able to log in as your UE user or post messages. But at least you can check out all the action.
T'Challa |
For Volume to fall off is not suprise. Smokey Robinson was a sucker who used to ride on Selwyn's coattails. Smokey learned how to kiss ass, flirt with male employees and make his site bullshit from the very best-- mr. selwyn 'shiny pants' hinds. Maybe Selwyn can recruit his fellow source homosexual editor into his birdcage of a site, 360. Birds of feather flock together, and 360 is as gay a hiphop site as was ever created. That's what happens when the homosexuals took over this industry. They right away get rid of aggressive political elements and focus on fashion. Smokey you piece of shit. Good for you. Now you don't have a job. Maybe you can go suck on Emil at vibe for a job, you little fag |
maybe smokey, emil, scott poultry bryan (UBO) and david limpwrist watkins can form a site. They can call it vibe magazine. Oh, I forgot that name is already taken. fuck every single uncle tom in this industry. This is what happens, you Uncle Toms. You get fired and have to rely on help from the very people you were shitting on when you thought you were on top. |
Here's the story....
Volume.com's CEO, teh unknown Kevin Dowdell, whose claim to fame was working with the Arthur Ashe Foundation, made the announcement that 75% of the staff would be "released" because of corporate pressure from HBO and their parent company Time Warner, which is now owned by AOL. Volume.com will model itself after a make-shift Blackplanet.com, with only a skeleton staff. On Wednesday morning at 10:15, Dowdell apologetically read from a script about the restructuring. Everyone with the exception of senior management was caught of guard. While other staff members were told to take their time to leave, rap stylist June Ambrose was asked to evacuate the premises immediately. While other laid-off employees were offered substantial severance packages (ranging from $10K to $80K), there were some of the old regime asked to stay i the sinking ship. They wanted packages too. When McClean left, that was an alert to some of the staff that HBO's $60 million venture was doomed. To date, Volume has spent $5.8 million dollars on developing content and marketing initiatives. Dowdell hired SUN Systems to put together a content management system that he, himself, couldn't even understand. SUN charged them $1 million, and left them in a bind. That's when things started becoming complicated. Dowdell had former LaFace Records VP Lisa Cambridge and former Source head honcho Smokey Fontaine build a staff of bonafide media players. While he kept everyone at arm's length, he felt that the people who were more close with Cambridge and Fontaine wouldn't be to loyal for him. He cut off their emails and made them sign a contract saying that they wouldn't work for another Internet company for another year. Some legal reps for the laid-off employees have already started talking to HBO. This is not the end of the story. And when the dust settled, supposedly, the sports producer Rich Byers, who after being brought in my Fontaine, was asked to stay. In an act of loyalty and defiance, he and Dowdell broke out into a fist fight in the Volume.com offices late on Thursday night. Volume.com is as over as over can be. You'll see. |
B cool, keep up the great posts.
Know It All, that is an amazing tale.
Piotr Rasputin
off to the takeout chicken restuarant
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see i told you PLEEESSEEEE, ur cousins days are dooomeddd... |
Lisa Warren:
Divide and conquer is the principle and
you are exhibit "a."
Hear are YOUR words:
"Birds of feather flock together,
and 360 is as gay a hiphop site as
was ever created. That's what happens
when the homosexuals took over this
industry."
Why don't you replace "gay" with "kike" or
"spic" or "nigger" and see how
enlightened that rings.
POSTS OF THIS NATURE HAVE NO PLACE
IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.
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If Know it all is right stick a fork in Volume. They are done.
Lisa you have issues Ma. Cogelo suave! I feel you but damn you're angry and very anti-homo. Your comments on the uncle toms are right on point. They need to keep it real and right. |
Damn. I haven't been checking these boards in only like three days and you guys are, as usual, out of control. So I thought that you all would be interested in this quote the I got from one of my many e-mail newsletters (self-described "haters" herein, should check for Mr. Wasow's name):
Is content king...or simply the means to the end?
Conference-goers ponder content strategies for Web sites
Is Web strategy all about content, or is content the means to the end? Those were the conflicting views put forth by the best in the online content biz at Screaming Media's 2000 "MalContent" conference (small "c" for conference, to convey extra attitude, thank you very much).
For Omar Wasow, executive director of Blackplanet.com, content is only the tool with which dot-coms, be they for-profit or not, build community (ie. connection) with customers/users. "The Web fundamentally is about communication and interaction between people, and content is a subset of that. That is not a subset of content," Wasow said. Wasow, by the way, knows whereof he speak: his site scored some 77 million page views in February, more than any other site targeted at African Americans. |
Smokey was not Chief of Content at Volume, he was in charge of Entertainment. |
SO IT'S ROCK EM' SOCK EM' Down at Volume.com?, HA-HA!
So why was it the June Ambrose was told to leave immediately? What the hell was that about?
Thanks for the interesting tibits. Now if all the rest of the wanna be spotblowers would just give the whole story instead of the bullshit
that they put on these boards. If you got something to say, shit just say it. Like quite a few people, have been promising
to drop Dime on the whole Daivd Watkins/Icon Media, thing for weeks now. I mean I know for self some shady stuff went down but damn.
If you got a story to tell, damn just tell it. If any of us are going to make it in this game we have to let the truth be known. Let's
Take out the trash now.
To the people of at UBO on lock down, can't see what you want?,
Make sure you actually buy a computer for your homes and log on to check this out, Learn
the real deal of the people "running" your company.
To the UE haters, (who also seem to be here everyfreakingday) What ever drama that may be caused
on the boards, this forum is needed in the community. POWER TO THE URBAN INTERNET, REVOLUTION, I'm glad Crispus and Crew fired the first shot. |
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Smokey was in charge of entertainment? He never has entertained anyone. That guy is really boring.
He also talks funny. Like he has something in his mouth. Anyone know what that is in his mouth? |
NEWS FLASH:
The remainder of the staff at Volume.com was instructed not to come into the office on Monday (July 24). On Friday, a barrage of media outlets had discussion with Dowdell. We hear Inside.com has the story of all stories. |
WOW!!! All this in only three days?
How the hell do you get $60 million for an Internet project and a year leter you;ve only spent 5.8 and have NOTHING to show for it????? For 500,000 they could have bought this site and at least got something going. Heck for 100K I'd build them a killer site that got bi-curious women from all over the country together to discuss issues and challenges with being Bi-curious.
I want a VC to give me money to start urbancyberdykewannabes.com. Any takers? It will target the 12 -35 demographic which is currently underserved online. We will be the dominante player in this market and will fi8le for an IPO before the end of hte year. Several noted Bi-sexual and Bi-curious authors with no Internet experience will create expensive content for more then an year and we will have nothing to show for it.
If you would like to invest the line forms to the right. If you would like to work for urbancyberdykewannabes.com the line forms to the left.
Artisha
art4short aka Kitty Pryde
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To KnowitAll:
More info please on the HBO situation. It is officially over? Can you please post anthing you have from the INside article so we dont have to wait all weekend. If noone is going on on Monday does that mean the venture is dead and if so who ets their computers? I got dibs on any flat screen monitors? Also if you have any video or audio clips of the fist fight between Kevin Dowdell and Rich Byers. Who won?
Please post the address of Volume.com, I'm going to stake out their dumpsters for any laptops or CD-RW's that are no longer gainfuly employed and give them anice home.
To Urbanexpose:
Mabey you guys should revise your Fight Club story based ont he new info KnowitAll has provided, it appears that Kevin Dowdell may be a challenger to Bo Kemp after all.
Artisha (Please sing my guest book on Blackplanet my screen name is "iknowmore")
art4short
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Dear Internet Industry Slaves (oops i mean workers!),
I appreciate your interest in my industry. After all I stole (i mean created) the whole thing.
I starting an urban portal. I'm calling it www.CrabsInABasket.net.
It's a place where all of you nigg (oops... i mean african americans) can come and be yourselves. I'm making it for you. You can go there to be held back and hold each other back while I get richer. I plan on having large corporate sponsors pay for ad space on the site. I'll make a tremendous profit while you destroy each other.
You see, I am the MASTERPLAN. You can call me God Digital. While you figure out a way to call each other homosexuals and other silly names I'm creating an industry. Keep wasting your time. The longer you do nothing with your lives the more money I make.
For me it doen't matter which portal stays up or dies... I don't care. They are all running on NT servers anyway... kaching! kaching! $$$
By the time you guys wake up out of your stupor of empty chat rooms and pennyless ecommerce platforms... I would have made another $800 million.
Peace.
Bill "i'm probably fucking your wife" Gates |
Oh! And by the way....
You don't need a million dollars to start a damn website.
I started my company with a $5 hit of acid and some corn chips.
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I'm one of the security guards from HBO that the punk CEO hired to protect his ass when he did the layoffs. Yeah, Rich Byers was about to go Lenox Lewis on the pansy from Princeton. June Ambrose was about to stick one of her spiked snakeskin heels up his candy ass when they made her leave. "Stormin" Norma Augenblack had a guard posted outside her office because they thought she was going to call Puffy's bruisers to do some damage. They canned 90% of the eigth floor and are squeezin whoever is left onto the 9th floor of the building. Thing is the dumb ass doesn't know where he's goin to put the $200,000 recording studio they put together on the 8th floor.
As a piece offering he bought about 40 pizza pies from Too Boots for the exiting staff. The staff let him know where he could put his pizza.
He told everyone that they would have two weeks to leave, but told his second in command to get everyone out soon so he could sublet the 8th floor and recoup some rent money. These conflicting stories caused one Refugee to throw a chair and threaten bodily harm.
All in all the situation looked pretty ugly. When the rest of the exiting staff (who made their livelihood working in the urban sector and brought their knowledge to HBO heads who didn't know shit) see the non-compete clause in the severence packages, I know I'll be called in for riot control. |
Oh hell, fistfights and chair throwings are common media events.
If someone was arrested at the Daily News everytime they threw a punch, half the staff would be in central booking.
Bet your ass that AOL watches their websites like hawks. That's what businesses do. They don't play this wannabe record executive shit.
Non-compete clauses in New York State are bullshit anyway. Have fun trying to get one enforced in NY. And with T-W's track record in court, I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
The thing is that you can bet all the money you have that HBO will use volume.com as a URL for a radio venture, sans all the drama and dramatics.
You will be able to hear black standards from Eminem, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and N'Sync.
These knucleheads are ruining it
for the rest of us trying to act like businessmen and women. The same writers, the same execs.
Black or white, the game sounds the same, hire the same idiots and cover their asses.
You want a good site, look at Slashdot, look at Obscurestore. Forget all these content plays, because they're all heartless monsters.
You'd probably make more money financing crip and bloods websites. At least they have an audience.
Until the hustlers find a new scam and people with something to say start saying it, these little drama will continue.
You can't create a content site and find an audience. You have to know the audience and build on their expectations because you're part of the audience in the first place. The site has to be what you need to see. Not what fits some Jupiter or Forrester research report.
And it can't emulate the same tactics in different media. This record exec shit is going to make some Inside.com or IS reporter a nice story one day. |
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I overheard one of the interns whispering that the entertainment crew was canned because they had questionable taste in story ideas. The last thing the music crew did was video tape Too $hort with two naked women in his hotel room"promoting" his new single, "Two Bitches". What the fuck were they thinking? Did they really think AOL was going to keep funding net porn disguised as "journalism"? Before that they taped Ike Turner (!) at the Impact convention mumbling some shit about titties and his drug addiction. Two of the sports pieces were called "Dreams of Fuckin' a WNBA Chick" and "Tiger Woods is a Nigger" for crying out loud.
Their Lifestyles section had articles about Tantric sex and an advice column from Ron Hightower. This is what happens when you give 50 horny motherfuckers digital camcorders and a budget. They tried to take the whole HBO image too far and AOL finally said enough is enough. Next!! |
The most important thing for all U would be dot-comers is: that you realise that the web is not a new WHEEL. It's the same as any form of "content" development industry. Especially ADVERTSING, DESIGN and PUBLISHING.
Follow THOSE existing models with GOOD ideas and you can't loose. QUALITY must pervade in every medium. Unfortunately, a lot of minority (run) companies have yet to catch up (with mainstream companies, that is). |
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I disagree benier koranache. the maintstream content companies are having the same difficulties.
the only difference is that minority owned companies don't have the same access to funding that "maintstream" companies do.
most 100% pure web-content plays are hurting badly, wether they are pop or urban.
it also could be argued that urban is mainstream. |
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to TANYA GREGORY regarding the ICON MEDIA situation .... its coming baby..... |
I'm surprised that more UE readers haven't commented specifically on Volume's change in strategy. Most of the urban focused New Media business experiments have been entertainment/hip hop dominated content plays. Despite huge marketing and editorial expenditures, none have generated much traffic. Then you take a Black Planet, who essentially provide tools that make it easy for their users to build personal home-pages and communicate with each other. BP is winning in the space despite a bare bones approach to marketing and creating original content.
So in my opinion, we should expect those that hold the purse strings, AOL-Time in this case, to follow the business model that seems to be working best. So, can Volume beat Black Planet at its own game? We'll see, but from where I sit, I don't think that its a bad idea to try.
Michael
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Ok...just heard from someone at a web company who was potentially going to provide licensed content for the site (not now cuz they won't be getting paid)....they said the only part of the site that had any legitimate and provocative content was the lifestyles section...articles on breast cancer, eating disorders for black women, the news team had some good stories they were researching too...they were always at odds with the entertainment people and got pressure to do "fluffier" stories..this was after Greaves let...the content went downhill...word has it the entertainment people never liked Greaves becuase he thought they wer beneath him. This is what happens when you have serious internet/journalist people on one team and frivolous entertainment people on another team and no leadership at the top.
I heard the news people were outstanding and there were several people who had extensive internet experience on the lifestyle side but entertainment always dictated what kind of stories would be on the site.
This content provider said that the lifestyle and news people had integrity and that is why they were asked to leave they didn't agree with the way the content was turning...
I also heard from another source that AOL/TimeWArner told them to get rid of the lifestyle section because of the acquisition of Essence not enough room for all that quality online...you know black folk are only interested in raunchy sex...Pimps up Hoes Down
And to that thing about the Two Short ...When will people in the music business realize you can do stories on sex without it being raunchy...Tantric Sex I can see if it was done right...but naked women..what's that more Luke two live crew stuff?,,
The bottom line is that what you do in the entertainment industry doesn't necessarily work in the dot.com business....s |
To Thuglite,
If you think you can swing it, bring it. Otherwise just let it be a dead issue. I know that ICON had more than their fair share of assholes. But if we gonna talk, then let's do this baby.
I for one think it's time to let all the people in this space know, the fools they are dealing with. But it's one of those thing where you go big or go home. |
It's funny how money changes situations...
Now that I told the story of how the shit hit the fan at VOLUME.COM, everyone's putting their little spin on things. I must admit, the sources are really close to the situation---especially about the Too Short and Ike Turner stuff. But did Urban Expose mongers know that Dowdell had no handle on any of it. We hear on Friday he was trying to ward off a barrage of calls from the press (including the Associated Press). HBO does not look good with this recent firing of 75% of a division at a Black operated spin-off. Not only does black people really look bad on the channel (Last week's "Keep It Real" episode of Sex And The City, black men imprisoned on Oz, Chris Rock tearing down OJ, Halle Berry playing a washed up, disillusioned starlet, and sweaty blacks and hispanics duking it out in the boxing ring), Black people won't produce content for their Internet ventures. Unlike most of some of the Urban Expose two-centers, i don't have a axe to grind about the Volume situation...I'm just in the know. But if HBO or Time Warner think that they are washing a little egg off their face with this Volume stuff, legal eagles will be all over the fact that Dowdell added the non-compete clause in the severance packages without any advisement from HBO. That niggas crazier than a Wu Tang rapper.
Question Of The Day: How can you fire a gang of people because you felt that they were'nt going to be any good to you and your vision...and then forbid them from working for another Internet company for another year? That would be a goodf question for Reeg to ask on Who Wants To Be A Stupid Black Internet Millionaire...
As far as Greaves is concerned, do you really think that he's not laughing his way to the bank about this. Not only did he leave in the nick of time...and got paifd for it, but he's also in the process of suing Inside.com behind that so called expose they did featuring him. And Lisa Cambridge and her entertainment posse (Smokey, Norma, June, Marcus,Tamara, and Karu); do y'all really think they won't bounce on their feets when the money run out at the end of the year...these people can get jobs anywhere with their extensive experience...Smoke is doing the DMX book, June was on Oprah, Norma is Puffy's bad girl and Tamara has heavy ties within the MCA/Universal and Seagram's family. They were only there for six or seven months...this ain't even a setback, this was just an extended vacation for them
Okay. This is enough of this VOLUME drama.
Let's see what's the next Urban Internet Player to Fall, and how well will their staff members do. Anyone want to hedge any bets? |
Ofcourse, David Watkins had something to do with Volume. Who do you think referred Lisa Cambridge & Smokey Fontaine to his newfound friend Kevin Dowdell? Well the fact that icon was their advertising agency, (yes, I was shock too), I’m sure he wanted to put as many friend over there to get his awful ideas approved.
[Before I move forward I want to address how exactly you become an ad agency. You wake up one day and decide that seems interesting I’m going try it. Well it wasn’t do to his or his staff’s experience. That became evident with the Phat Farm campaign, and all those misappropriation of funds by the dynamic duo Chris Sabin & David Watkins. The staff break down is as follows:
Ideas: David Watkins & his pal Scott. (NO COMMENT)
SVP: Sam “poor boy” . I hear very intelligent… no agency experience or common sense. Allows Mr. Watkins to get him into all kinds of situations
Trixie (never heard of her before now) worked over at mad dog, than came to icon. What experience does she have exactly? I guess being a receptionist over there would be more experience at an agency than Mr. Watkins. If she had so much experienced and a little bit of sense why would she be at a non-agency like icon.
Artwork: Some guy named Guy. Don’t think he directed an agency before.]
Back to the matter at hand…
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Ofcourse, David Watkins had something to do with Volume. Who do you think referred Lisa Cambridge & Smokey Fontaine to his newfound friend Kevin Dowdell? Well the fact that icon was their advertising agency, (yes, I was shock too), I'm sure he wanted to put as many friend over there to get his awful ideas approved.
[Before I move forward I want to address how exactly you become an ad agency. You wake up one day and decide that seems interesting I’m going try it. Well it wasn’t do to his or his staff’s experience. That became evident with the Phat Farm campaign, and all those misappropriation of funds by the dynamic duo Chris Sabin & David Watkins. The staff break down is as follows:
Ideas: David Watkins & his pal Scott. (NO COMMENT)
SVP: Sam “poor boy” Brown. I hear very intelligent… no agency experience or common sense. Allows Mr. Watkins to get him into all kinds of situations
Trixie (never heard of her before now) worked over at mad dog, than came to icon. What experience does she have exactly? I guess being a receptionist over there would be more experience at an agency than Mr. Watkins. If she had so much experience why would she be at non-agency like icon.
Artwork: Some guy named Guy. I don't think he directed an agency before.]
Back to the matter at hand...
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The idea for the volume ad campaign...The faces of volume. They proposed photographing celebrities, employees, and regular everyday people. The sell: these this is volume. Hoping the general public would relate to it ...positioning this group as young, sexy, cool, cutting edge trendsetters. I'm a volume member don't you want to be a member too (yeah, very original-My pet chimpanzee could come-up with that idea)
Lucky for Volume icon went out of business... in debt to the tune of $1,000,000. David stole away like a theft in the night owing creditors, employees, freelancers, and friends. He went right over to UBO.
Guess what!!! without telling his good friend Lisa Cambridge about the move...hmmm...
Now they are UBO's problem. Yes, they, that staff I named went right over with David. The group couldn’t pull it off independently...obviously someone over there has faith in them...Is that Adam Kidron just trying to give a nigga a break? No more affirmative action please...hire people for their skill.
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Knowitall and others,
I am running on second hand info and drawing my own conclusions.(Isn't that what UE is all about??) Since making my little post, I have been getting numerous defences of the content like ("we challenged artists like dead prez to defend smoking weed but calling for revolution in the same album and they eventually apologized for the contradiction. The Too Short piece was done to expose how much of a pimp he really ISN'T. When we taped him with the girls he was visibly shaken and couldn't look the girls in the eye.") This is just what I was told. You all can your draw your own conclusions about the validity. One thing they wanted to make clear was that there wasn't an overall beef between the Entertainment and Lifestyles crews, just certain individuals. The teams would often collaborate to give the areas strength. If music interviewed Bust Rhymes, they would get his views on politics and Education to give stuff to the Lifestyles people and vice versa. Granted, the Internet knowledge of some of the entertainment staff was limited when they started, but in the last 8 or 9 months they have become just as versed in producing for the web as any one at MTV.com. Even if the CEO didn't know the Content Management system, THEY did. So, you are right, the exiting team will be fine. They just wished they could've moved forward TOGETHER. If anything, now they know what NOT to do. |
To Knowitall:
What were thinking when you wrote >Not only does black people really look bad on the channel (Last week's "Keep
It Real" episode of Sex And The City, black men imprisoned on Oz, Chris Rock tearing down OJ, Halle Berry playing a washed up, disillusioned starlet, and sweaty blacks and
hispanics duking it out in the boxing ring), Black people won't produce content for
their Internet ventures. >>
I find it odd that you suggest that black people won't contribute to AOL-Time Internet ventures because of the Emmy Award winning Chris Rock Show, Halle Berry's portrayal of Dorothy Dandridge (a project that practically every black actress in Hollywood wanted to be involved in) or pro boxing. I'm not feeling Oz either, but wasn't it HBO that put on "Ms Evers Boys" about Tuskegee experiments, Spike Lee's documentary on the 4 little girls who were killed by a bomber in Birmingham, The Tuskegee Airmen story. With vc money for content plays so scarce right now, I don't think any serious New Media entrepreneur would turn down a check from HBO because he didn't like Chris Rock's OJ jokes. And as for 'Sex & the city,' a show a about neurotic white women who can't find a husband. Why should we be surprised if a brother on the show has his own issues?
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KJ bryce save all your ICON dirt for the ICON thread thats gonna be on here soon........ |
When are these urban portal shitheads going get this straight: the people who succeed in the internet industry are engineers and technologists.
You can't be no muthafuckin' entertainment whore, or a record producer and expect to compete with people who got their degrees and their expertise at places like MIT or AT&T Bell labs.
The companies that succeed in the internet industries are first and for most technolgy companies, built on solid, tried and true technology platforms.
The days of putting together a few pages and throwing em up are over. In fact, the whole idea that you could do that was a myth. And now everyone who tried it is getting burned.
People like Russell Simmons should stick to what they know - entertainment. Otherwise, as Volume's recent demise shows, they're just going to fail in a place that's totall out of their league.
You wanna make a business around following puffy and his lame-ass groupies - fine, start a muthafucking magazine. Put together a damn public access show.
The problem with Volume, 360hiphop and all these other ridiculous sites is they don't work - they don't do anything. Internet sites have an unbelievable potential connect, foster communication - all the babble we've been hearing for years now.
If you're going to be up a site, make it do shit. It can't just look good. |
Volume was doomed from the start because you had ducks like Smokey in the top position. The fact that someone like Smokey could be hired proves that Dowdell wanted someone malleable, some spineless hack who could be bought and paid for, and made to jump through hoops to keep his Big Salary. Volume's next mistake was in their overconfidence. Smokey felt that HBO's money would insantly lead to Volume running over every other site. One of my friends, who was up there, said Smokey would always say that other sites had no money, and they couldn't compete. If he said that, then he's wrong, and this site right here is proof of that. So much for Volume, another "dream team" that went up in smoke. |
And as for Smokey and his gang being able to walk right into better jobs, that is doubtful. Any reputable company would want nothing to do with the people who caused Volume to go bust. And when Smokey and many of these "talents" joined Volume, they did so after dissing the print outlets that supported them over the years. Don't be fooled: print editors will want nothing to do with any people who left for a higher paying online job. These writers and editors are no longer wanted at magazines, and any magazine editor can tell you that. |
This is not to insult anyone. Just to point out that people in the magazine industry need to learn to think for the future. Not just jump and abandon everyone and everything for a bigger paycheck. This Volume story holds a lesson for us all, a lesson about loyalty and greed. They wanted everything and now they have nothing. |
UrbanPro revisited:
<<I disagree benier koranache. the maintstream content companies are having the same difficulties.
the only difference is that minority owned companies don't have the same access to funding that "maintstream" companies do.
most 100% pure web-content plays are hurting badly, wether they are pop or urban.
it also could be argued that urban is mainstream. >>
With due respect, UrbanPro -- urban and mainstream are as disparate as, well, BLACK and WHITE.
I know this for a fact as I have been one of only about 40 black art director/designer/managers working at major agencies and design firms (jwt, y&r, think inc) in the entire *world* -- (no hubris intended, i'm actually lamenting here!)
The cold and common denominator is always racism -- a given -- yet my point was that we should do what "mainstreamers" have been doing quite successfully for eons: COPY THEIR METHODS. To the letter. *Not by* ostracising, humiliating and trying to assassinate each other's corporate character.
Don't believe me; ask the Japenese and Germans how they built the two largest economies east of Manhattan -- in the last 50 years(?)
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It is obvious that all of these companies need to close up shop and reevaluate all of their big talkin' and overactive spending habits.
Russle got pimped on 360-paying millions for a design that is not user friendly or practical, Darien doesn't know what in the hell he is doing and Placesofcolor's 4-leftover employees is proof of that.
Volume's demise is unfortunate but that is what happens when having a big name and being on the a-list at parties becomes more important then actually being a true professional and having some sort of experience in the Internet field. All I have to say is, brothers and sisters please take a look at the future, we have to be better than our white counterparts. Stronger than our greatest enemies and stand tall taking the hands of one another to help and receive help.
Russle? If you didn't know what type of business model you wanted 360 hip hop to follow, why didn't you just seek the advice of the audience that you are looking to attract. Focus groups work brother. Use them. It is evident that did not think of your audience--for the mere fact that if you don't have a DSL or T1 line, viewing your site is a real headache. As we all know, those mainly interested in the type of content your site supplies do not yet have access to DSL and T1 lines unless they work for a wired company. Look at some statistics brother and don't lock your greatest fans out of your website.
Darien? What's up with the way that you have treated not only your employees but you stockholders as well? The mission is wonderful...really. But where is your dedication to the individuals who turned down higher paying jobs for your charisma and your passion for the mission? You obviously are in over your head and you and I both know that your company is not in a position to launch by mid August. Why don't you just admit defeat and join hands with the other Urban Portal CEOs and Presidents to come to a common goal that could uplift the entire African American and Hispanic community.
If all of you would come together, no one could stop you.
Please..this is a plea from someone who was also duped by a "so-called" urban portal..use your heads, put them together and come up with a killer business model that will make eveyone in the Urban community jump for joy. Then you will see your stock rise and a return on the investment of time, energy, passion, love and dedication.
But until that day, all of these garbage-content, poor-designed and more poorly managed urban websites will die painful deaths. God bless all of you and goodnight.
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Well said, Carey!
I like when the big boys overspend though. They are creating the space. It's up to us to make use of the space.
What actually has to happen is the management of these companies have to realize that the "urban" is something you have "live" not just read about. These companies need "real" people in the pilot seat or atleast hire the right consultants to help them get where they need to be.
You also have to realize... that most of these people in the 6 figure positions don't surf for recreation. They don't know what's out there. They just know about aka, hookt, 360, volume, etc. There are a lot of sites out there that cater to the urban market and there are new ones popping up everyday.
Let them do their thing. It's a big hustle anyway. They know in the back of their minds it's only a matter of time before their investors start asking questions and start firing people. That's when it's really going to be on. And most of these people are going to have to run back to the music business for their jobs back!
It's all good, baby, baby!
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.agree almost 100% with the last 2 posts.
Even tho' I have design experince, and limited in web design-i make sure my designs are accsessable to the "average joe", not for my peers. Its nice to get High Fives from my peeps, but if my message gets lost on the audience im tryin to reach...whats the point?
many Industry cats dont buy/purchase or websurf ....so in the long run-who do you think im aiming to reach?..heh heh....thats why there such a damn hight turnover rate in the music biz...many forget to make music for the people... |
as for volume's woes...that's what happens when you don't do right. how you gonna hire a bunch of people you barely know yet don't give the time of day to those who supported you when NO ONE was feeling your idea in the beginning. several people, who worked with kd. before he was mr. portal couldn't get in the door to at least discuss any opportunities. such a shame but i guess his chickens are roosting hard on that doorstep. i wish him well but the comeback's gonna be hard. my prediction: HBO will make him two options, if they're feeling charitable 1. hire who THEY say to do what THEY want. or 2. he and his cronies (they know who they are" must get the *&^% out and HBO will take it from there. |
Some of these peeps on this site sound like they have major beef with the former Volume staffers. For the record, more people than the Entertainment staff were asked to leave. Lifestyle producers Tracie Cooper, former NY Times staffer Mike Ross and former ABC rookie Allen Edwards were also fired, along with some copyeditors and researchers. These were employees that had nothing to do with Fontaine. Learn it. If we are all going to spew anything, it shouldn't be venom. These are tough times here...for some of us.
Future Predictions: As far as the former Volume.comers, they WILL get jobs. These kids are not stupid. They are young, aggressive and truly talented in their fields. Do you really think June Ambrose is losing sleep from Volume? She was at a Real Stories panel last spring talking about grossing a million dollars a year, and keeping her name going strong. She's about to work with Michael Jackson. Can anyone on this site boast that? And then there's Lisa Cambridge. C'mon...LA Reid is at Arista with a whole lot of moola. And Lisa was in his wedding in Capri. Do the math. One person I forgot to talk up was A&R producer Riggs Morales. He virtually gave Eminem his big break. And who is Eminem these days? The fastest selling rapper in history. Tamara Francois got it going on with Real Stories. She's plugged into a lot of BLACK ENTERTAINMENT stuff at the labels, too. Karu Daniels and Rich Byers are published authors, who continued their freelancing while they were getting paid at Volume. As I said, Fontaine and his gang will land on their "feets." You heard it here first, fistfights and all.
And that response about loyalty and greed in the magazine business...HELLO! Let's not forget it is BUSINESS. Ask Clive Davis about it. If they can walk a money making jew out the building, what makes you think a puerto rican like Fontaine can't get canned?
No comparison to Davis, Fontaine didn't turn his back on anyone. As a matter of fact, he put a lot of people on in the magazine business and kept a lot of freelancers' rent paid. Amy Linden, Michael Gonzales, Scott Poulson Bryant, some of the old TRACE staff and a few notableswere on tha payroll. Meetings continued to go on with outlets such as The Source, The Hip Hop Foundation, 360 Hip Hop, VIBE, FEDS, 88 Hip Hop and okayplayer.com. Dave Mays was spotted up at Volume.com quite a few times.
If we are going to talk...let's talk what we know.
And although I am acting as an authority on the Volume.com sicheeation...I am NO TV critic. But HBO should be accountable for such a drastic measure in eliminating a gang of Black executives from an upstart that never saw the light of day. Someone should be and not Fontaine...he was just doing what he was paid to do--develop content for an Urban Internet Content portal. Can I get a witness?
In conlusion, there's a lot of player-hating going on. A lot of Internet and Media peeps were hating on the Volume.comers when they were working for the company...I guess, nowadays, peeps should still be hating being that these fomer Volume.comers are still getting paid throughout the year, and don't have to click a mouse.
More Predictions: Greaves will continue to blow up Urban Expose and represent for the dirty north (Canada). And Dowdell and his Volume will be reduced to a channel on AOL, if that.
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while you haters attack volume and other black companies, heres what white dotcommers think of you:
Race issues shake tech world
What looks like meritocracy can brim with bias
By Edward Iwata, USA TODAY
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The ugly images seem incongruous with the highflying, high-tech world often touted as the ultimate meritocracy, where talent counts more than skin color.
But racial discrimination appears to have found a home there, too, minority employees contend. Consider these racial discrimination lawsuits and complaints filed with state and federal agencies:
At 3Com, a veteran telecommunications manager who is black was shunned by his bosses and given a desk alone in a chilly backroom with computer equipment. The day after his lawyer called the company to request a mediation meeting, he was fired.
At NEC Electronics, a white manager waved a 6-foot bullwhip at meetings, confiding to a colleague that she used it to keep black employees in line, according to former NEC workers. White managers at the company frequently spewed racial slurs, legal filings allege.
At Oracle, a seasoned manager, who is Hispanic, was allegedly berated by her bosses and given minor tasks, from fetching coffee to typing name tags. After she was fired, it took months of therapy for her to regain her confidence.
More than a generation after the civil-rights movement swept the nation, legal and diversity experts contend the technology field is troubled by racist, hostile workplaces and blatant discrimination in the hiring and promotion of African-Americans and Hispanics.
''Clearly, (racial) discrimination is still a problem in the workplace, and technology is no exception,'' says Angela Alioto, a San Francisco attorney representing former employees suing NEC for discrimination and retaliation.
A major study last year of 250 Silicon Valley firms employing 142,000 workers found that 4% were black and 8% were Hispanic, reports John Templeton, co-founder of the Coalition for Fair Employment in Silicon Valley. In the San Francisco Bay Area, blacks and Hispanics make up 8% and 14% of the workforce, the Labor Department finds. ''Our patience has worn thin,'' Templeton says. ''It's unconscionable that their (hiring) numbers are so ridiculously low.''
A groundswell of legal and political activity on the issue of discrimination has spread nationwide to gleaming technology parks and corporate campuses:
In recent months, high-tech firms have been hit with dozens of lawsuits and complaints alleging racial discrimination. In the largest case, dozens of an expected 300 current and former employees of Nextel Communications have filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging racial and sexual discrimination. Nextel has declined comment until the firm completes its investigation.
Class-action law firms are hungry to sign on technology workers who feel they've suffered from racism. ''This may well be the next hot area for class actions,'' says Steve Sidener, a lawyer at Gold Bennett Cera & Sidener in San Francisco.
The political heat is rising in the high-tech, anti-discrimination arena. On Saturday, 100 people filled Emmanuel Baptist Church here for a workplace-rights seminar sponsored by the Coalition for Fair Employment, the NAACP and the EEOC. Minority workers in business attire shed a few tears and shared tales of anger about slamming into the glass ceiling at their Silicon Valley companies.
On Capitol Hill, the National Urban League and other black leaders are fighting the government's plans to double to 200,000 the number of H-1B visas for high-tech foreign workers. They argue that technology firms seeking to hire immigrants are ignoring well-qualified blacks and Hispanics at home. According to the Labor Department, there are 583,000 black and Hispanic engineers, computer scientists and technicians in the United States.
Activist Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition continue to lobby for more hiring and training of blacks and Hispanics. In recent visits to Silicon Valley, Jackson has met with Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, Intel CEO Craig Barrett, Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and other power brokers.
The EEOC is on the prowl. Criticized as a paper tiger in the high-tech field, the EEOC appears to be hunting more closely for workplace discrimination in Silicon Valley. The agency recently beefed up its San Francisco district office, nearly doubling its staff to 50 investigators and lawyers.
David Grinberg, an EEOC spokesman, denies it is targeting technology firms and says it investigates discrimination claims in all industries. But employment-law attorneys and government regulators say privately that race and age discrimination complaints by high-tech workers are slowly rising. And, as it does in other industries, the EEOC hopes to ''send a message'' by taking on a large Silicon Valley firm or two.
Are claims 'absurd'?
High-tech boosters hail their industry as one where vision and hard work are richly rewarded, regardless of race or ethnicity. Given the critical shortage of technology workers, anyone who can write software code can land a good job, they argue. ''Sure, there are individual cases of discrimination, but to claim there's widespread racial bias in our industry is just absurd,'' says T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor in San Jose and an outspoken critic of affirmative action.
Industry cheerleaders also point to the many firms — Cisco, IBM, Gateway, Applied Materials and others — that work hard on the digital divide issue. They fund scholarships for thousands of minorities and give money and computers to inner-city schools and training projects. They note that groups including the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the National Society of Black Engineers are working more closely with high-tech firms on recruiting, training and other issues. ''We're making progress, but a lot more needs to be done,'' says Leticia Vidal, executive director of the Hispanic engineers' group in Los Angeles.
But critics say that companies also must deal with racial attitudes deeply embedded in corporate cultures and managers. ''Silicon Valley prides itself on being a unique meritocracy, but of course there's discrimination there just as there is in every other industry,'' says Butch Wing, a spokesman for the Rainbow/PUSH coalition.
A shocking dismissal
Lindsay Brown, a tall, friendly man from Sioux City, Iowa, speaks proudly of his career accomplishments and his family. Before joining 3Com in 1998, he had worked 25 years for IBM, Rolm and Siemens as a telecommunications manager.
At 3Com, he was hired as a telecom analyst and promised management duties and training. He was told he would be a valued member of the team. Instead, he was ignored and given menial tasks, according to Brown; his attorney, Doris Nehme; and state legal records. He was not invited to project meetings. He was reprimanded for taking time off for his stepmother's funeral and another family emergency, even though bosses had approved the days off. He was shunted to work alone at a desk in a cold computer room although there was space in the main office, according to the filing.
Last August, Brown strolled into work and tried unsuccessfully to log on to his computer. A few minutes later, a shocked Brown was told by his bosses that he had been fired.
''I felt humiliated,'' says Brown, speaking at his three-bedroom ranch home in Sunnyvale. ''I had never heard of anyone else at 3Com being treated this way.''
Brown hired an attorney and filed a complaint with the California Fair Employment and Housing Department, alleging discrimination, retaliation and harassment by four bosses at 3Com. He also requested right-to-sue notices to clear the way for a civil lawsuit.
Todd Irwin, a 3Com spokesman, denies that Brown was the target of discriminatory treatment. In a written statement, 3Com says Brown was fired ''after careful consideration of his performance and after repeated written and verbal warnings. 3Com does not discriminate. Our culture and values as a company are so strongly supportive of respecting diversity, we are confident anyone who knows our company will know this is an inaccurate charge.''
3Com declined to release the racial breakdown of its staff, but Labor Department data from 1996 show that 3% of its 3,800 employees were black, 6% Hispanic and 20% Asian. About 14% of its managers were minorities.
Brown and his lawyer say they plan to sue in federal court soon. Brown, who is unemployed, estimates the firing cost him $100,000 in lost salary, benefits and stock options. ''I do not want to use race as a crutch, but I had to fight this,'' Brown says. ''My mother was a devout Baptist, and she taught us the ethos of hard work. She also taught us to stand our ground if we believe we're right.''
Passed over for promotion
For two decades, Eugene Shands, a burly former Marine, toiled first as a cop and an assistant dean of students at University of California at Santa Barbara, then as a security manager at Amdahl. When he landed a plum job as NEC's security director in 1990, he thought he would retire at the San Jose company.
But problems started surfacing. Nearly every day at NEC's offices and warehouses, white managers and employees uttered racial and sexual slurs, including many that are too vulgar to be published here, according to lawsuits. Despite his experience and glowing job reviews, Shands — who is black and Hispanic — was passed over several times for promotions by whites with less experience, the lawsuits say.
The most startling incidents involved a former warehouse manager who kept a bullwhip in her office, former NEC workers say. She strode across the warehouse snapping the whip; she took it to staff meetings. ''Get to work!'' she yelled. When Shands asked her why she had it, he says she replied, ''To keep my colored boys in line. That's what they understand.'' Shands, who was mailed the whip anonymously, says, ''I couldn't believe this manager was saying these things.''
Mark Pearce, an NEC spokesman, declined to address the allegations but confirmed the problem with the manager's bullwhip. ''It's true that several years ago, we had a serious but isolated situation in the company. We carried out a thorough, independent investigation and took decisive, responsible action.''
The manager and another supervisor were fired after NEC's investigation, according to the lawsuits. The manager could not be reached for comment. But the racial slurs continued. Shands also alleged that his new NEC boss undercut his authority, piled on impossible work assignments and set him up for failure.
Shands lodged a complaint with the EEOC in 1997. A month later, he was fired. NEC accused him of falsifying his résumé with bogus police and educational credentials. Shands showed USA TODAY original documents and certificates corroborating his credentials.
After months of receiving treatment for depression, Shands wants his day in court. He has sued NEC in federal court for racial discrimination, breach of contract and retaliation. NEC's Pearce declines to comment on the lawsuit. He says that NEC — a Japanese-owned company based in Tokyo — is a ''mini-United Nations'' that trains employees to respect different cultures. Managers who engage in discriminatory actions are disciplined appropriately, he says.
That doesn't appease Shands. ''I'm still angry. I had a pretty good reputation in this Valley. Now it's at rock bottom. I want a jury to hear my story.''
From a bonus to being fired
Maria Flores, a Honduran woman who was born in a Central American fishing village and raised in New York City, was hired in 1996 by Oracle after 15 years at IBM as a technical trainer and sales manager.
Developing training programs for salespeople, Flores did well her first year. She got a big raise, a bonus and a glowing performance review, according to her legal documents. During a corporate reshuffling the next year, Flores ended up with a new boss. Suddenly, Flores could do no right. According to her EEOC complaint and lawsuit against Oracle, she was given menial tasks, such as sharpening pencils. She says she was made the scapegoat of a poorly conceived project that flopped. And while eight white colleagues on her team with less experience were promoted, Flores alleges that she was ''criticized, belittled and treated differently from non-minority employees.''
In December 1997, her manager wrote up Flores and told her she needed to improve her performance. A month later, Oracle fired her. In court filings, Oracle's law firm, Keesal Young & Logan, deny the charges raised by Flores. A statement from Oracle also says Flores' allegations are ''without any merit.'' Flores was hired over two white job applicants, the statement reads, and the actions taken against her ''were in no way based on her race or ancestry.''
Oracle says the company enjoys a reputation as one of the best high-tech companies on diversity issues. Oracle actively recruits minorities, sponsors dozens of minority career conferences and recently donated $700,000 to the United Negro College Fund.
The fast-growing firm also appears to have hired more minorities in recent years. In 1996, minorities made up 26% of its workforce of 12,000 and 9% of its managers, according to the Labor Department. Today, 32% of its workforce of 44,000 and 25% of its managers are minorities, Oracle says.
Flores still was devastated by her firing. She sought comfort from friends and a counselor. She flew to Honduras for a month, visiting relatives in the fishing village and taking long walks with her elderly father.
''After all of my hard work, I did not deserve to be treated so shabbily by Oracle,'' she says. ''They had no legal or moral right to deny me the fruits of my labor.''
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Very simple: We (African-A
mericans) have to create our own institutions. When you are part of an organization that chooses to play those pathetic racial games, you either stay or get out. If you get out, you either leave it all or go to another company that may or may not engage in the same behavior...
Sadly, many Black tech execs. have to play along (they feel) with the B.S. and do not speak up about what goes on because they fear being shut out of the circle of $$ and influence. Reminds me of Paul Lawrence Dunbar's "The Mask"
"We wear the mask that grins and lies..."
If u don't build it or at least were not there at creation, you don't really have a whole lot of a say in how things roll until after the fact.
I could say more, but I think we could learn a lot from a book called the Jewish Phenomenon...They understand that at the end of the day it's about sticking together even when you have disagreements and are not 100% sold on this or that idea.... Results are what matter. Sticking together is what matters.
Black folk have to be willing to learn this. I do not want to hear about slavery, the media, or anything else. I control what I put into my mental hopper and what I understand about history.
It's easy to destroy, fairly easy to maintain a system someone else created...but the real effort is in creating something you built yourself with the intent of surviving for a long time.
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Knowitall:
Nice post. Expose needs to get you on board as a contributing editor or something.
I do question one of your comments though >>> But HBO should be accountable for such a drastic measure in eliminating a gang
of Black executives from an upstart that never saw the light of day. Someone should be
and not Fontaine...he was just doing what he was paid to do--develop content for an
Urban Internet Content portal. Can I get a witness? >>
I'd like you to address the larger issue and that is - is Volume's shift in strategic direction from a content play to a Black Planet community model a bad idea? Just look at the urban space. It's littered with entertainment/hip hop focused content plays that require huge marketing and editorial expenditures to generate traffic. (Correction - they have little traffic despite huge expenditures) Black Planet is winning in the space despite little original content and half hearted marketing iniatives. So why should we be surprised if investors want to follow the example that seems to be more successful.
Volume had the staff in place to provide great content, but I'm not sure that this would have resulted in a successful business. Salon and The Street.com both have great content, yet they hemorhage money.
You don't do this but many of the posters here often suggest that stupidity and flossin' are the primary reasons why the players in the urban space are having problems. Everyone is having problems; everyone is trying to figure this out.
Amazon has great management, a huge customer base, and customer friendly technology, yet they have cumulative losses in excess of a $billion.
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Just wanted to say again that when "black" sites fail to deliver, it's embarrassing.
Before, this it was embarassing in Hollywood, and before that it was embarrasing in music...oh hell, it still IS embarrasing in music.
But we all knew that already..sorry to waste time...
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Yo yesterday I read in the SILICON ALLEY DAILY (www.siliconalleydaily.com) that:
"Alley-based music and culture website 360HipHop.com received an undisclosed sum from Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. With plans to use the new green to develop multimedia programs on news, politics, lifestyle, commerce, and music, 360HipHop.com is also well-financed by company founder Russell Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Records. "
Anyone know if that is NEW money for 360? Or is the Silcon Alley Dailey slow to report on moneys they already had? If it IS new dough...
How the heezee did Mr. Simmons get mo' money even after his sight launch was a failure? Hey SONY and UMG - I have a bridge to sell you....
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Mgr27 and Knowitall
While you are right that many of the companies in the internet content space are having problems and yes content has had a rough time of it from the beginging but the urbansite rather then taking note seem intent of making the same mistakes other have already made. Knowitall's comments reflect a common mistake. Sure Fontaine was just doing his job but the real question is WHY was he hired in the first place. What did he know about creating compeling content for an online audience? What does he know about hte Internet, the technologies its based on and the ditrection of digital entertainment? I wagger from the post that the answer is he knows nothing, except magazines.
THE INERNET IS NOT A MAGAZINE!!!
Can everyone please repeat after me.
THE INERNET IS NOT A MAGAZINE!!!
The fault ultimately falls on Kevin Dowdell for making really bad decisions in who he hires and how he relates to his staff. HBO removing him wouldnt necessarily be a bad thing as suggested by Knowitall. If the CEO of any company cant produce a product, maintain staff, and capture an audience that CEO has to be replaced. Volume.com didnt get anywhere, they have been at it for more then a year and there is no site and no buzz. Making a change at the top isnt a bad thing.
I dont know any of the staff personally but I do know that the unemployment rate is something like 3% that means almost anyone can get a gig if they want one, so I doubt the staff that has been fired from Volume wont find another gig. I do think that the salaries and title will probably be hit hard since this is still america where race and connections matters more then skill and expereince (as noted in Janet Weers post). The tales comming out of Volume include things like Puffies former hairdresser being hired as the director of fashion for the Volume. Although I'll bet she is a great person and probably very fashionable, I doubt very seriously that Elle or Fashionmall is going to hire her at the same pay rate and title level as Volume, espcially since she probably has no Internet experience and no technology skills.
This is the worst failure in the space since its basically $60 million dollars wasted through disuse. They had $60 million and they could have done some really interesting things with all that money and yet they choose to try and replicate a magazine online and build a music studio.
1 year + 5.8 million + no website = a truly sad situation.
Artisha
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My sources inside that building tell me that lot of this stuff is hype. "None of that ever happened" is what I heard. I also heard..
*If people don' like the non-compete, they don' have sign it. But of course you have to sign it to get your severance pay! So people have to decide if they want to maintain "independence" or get paid. Other dot-coms just lay their people off, no severance man. This is generous by comnparison.
*June Ambrose was not told to leave "immediately"! She wanted her stuff shipped out same day cos she had a photo-shoot the next morning!
*There was no fist-fight. Nice story tho.
*There was no guard outside Norma's office. Norma was not "stormin'" at all.
*The # of staff laid off makes it about 30%, not 75%.
*Yes, Watkins was involved w/ Volume in the early days, as was Kioken. So Volume gifts Watkins to UBO and Kioken to 360-- these Volume cats are fiendishly clever. Yes, Lisa Cambridge of lafac was a Marcus ref, not sure about Smokey-- but it's possible. |
Art:
First I have to congratulate you and B Cool for being the only members of the over 50 clout club. Maybe Ue will give you some discount coupons to Pathmark or something.
You criticize Fontaine for not having previous internet experience at creating compelling content. I'm not convinced that this is required for success. Black Planet doesn't have the 'compelling content' that you describe, yet they have become the largest black site. The key in business success depends upon providing a service that your customers want and doing so at a price higher than what it costs you to do so. Those that ultimately win in this space obsess on the experience of their users, given the technological capabilities of those users. In other words, if your users have 56k access, then minimize the site's bells and whistles until bandwith is no longer a limiting factor. |
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B Cool..
Just curious cause i mighta missed this:
Where has it been said or reported that 360HipHop.com is a failure?.....im wondering due to the fact that they had a lil sumthin plugged into a particular night on the Central Park Summerstage, and on a NYC broadcast News Segment about how the site is registering heads....that dosent mean sucsess of course, but at least the buzz dosent remain in the confines of those of us with high speed connections...its profile gets to reach those outside th internet community...and thas what its all about-drawing more people to your product ..........
have they failed to deliver when they have just only recently started?
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B Cool i posted that last week about RUSSELL getting money... ur late... |
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360HIPHOP.com, the ultimate destinationpoint on the Internet for all things hip-hop, today announces that it has received strategic investments from leading music companies Sony MusicEntertainment and Universal Music Group. "With these investments from powerhouse entertainment companies Sony Music Entertainment and Universal, we are in a prime position to dominate the emerging online hip-hop marketplace," said Russell Simmons, founder and chairman of 360HIPHOP.com. "We are confident that 360HIPHOP.com will be thel eader in delivering hip-hop culture on the Internet."
"Russell Simmons is a visionary in the entertainment industry," said Fred Ehrlich, president, New Technology and Business Development, Sony Music Entertainment. "We are pleased to be working with him on his latest venture,360HIPHOP.com." Said Larry Kenswil, president of eLabs, Universal Music Group, "Russell has been both a pioneer and a leader in the development of hip-hop culture.We are very excited about extending our relationship with him to this new venture."
360HIPHOP.com aims to capitalize on the burgeoning hip-hop marketplace. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), rap and R&Bmusic accounted for an estimated 23 percent (or $3.1 billion) of all musicsales in the US in 1998. To meet this emerging need, the site will provide the latest in hip-hop trends and news across diverse areas including music, fashion and politics. The first web site developed to attract the wide range of patrons who areinterested in the total hip-hop experience, 360HIPHOP.com will utilize aunique multimedia program-development approach to deliver the latest in news,politics, lifestyle, culture, commerce and music. In addition, it will serveas a vehicle for positive social change by acting as an open forum for commentary on the vital issues facing the urban community today, including discrimination, police brutality and violence. By employing the Internet's capabilities in multimedia broadcasting, user interactivity and e-commerce, 360HIPHOP.com intends to create a virtual hip-hop nation -- the mostcompelling hip-hop lifestyle experience on the Net.
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speakin' of 360, music editor kris ex got fired yesterday. |
Thuglite:
My Bad... I must have missed your earlier post. You can have one of my clout points. (or one of my Pathmark coupons)
Ohsokool:
"Failure": I guess I would not call it a failure, yet. I was merely summing up the sentiment of most of the folks that posted on this site (aside from the homophobic stuff). At launch time, the site:
was late to launch
was too phat for 56K or smaller pipes
was content impared
was full of broken flizzash links
Only time will tell for 360... and I must admit that the last time I looked at it (just before this post) I could see that they DID fix some of the broke shizznit on the sight.
BUT, unless they put up a low bandwidth alternative to the current sight so that their target market can have access to the site, they will be a failure. (There is a constructive idea for what to do with all that new money.)
Bennet du Paris
aka B Cool
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ok B COOL ill take the clout anyday! |
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..its hard to remain ahead and a *visionary* if you wait for everyone to catch up to speed--Russ seems like he wants people to catch up to him which is the number one rule in bizzness.
Sony and the other record companies see that eventually, (reaaal sooon) everyone will have faster connection speeds---
but i understand what u mean.....the average user at his point
*seems* to get left out....but are they?
We up in here are critical of the very industry we're involved (or getting involed) with--and understandably so, but 360's initial target audience may indeed be those of us with high speed connections, especially college heads on campuses all over...
if the average website is now being created for those wilth cable modems and dsl...then 56k becomes a thing of the past which again, is real soon....
most major phone companies seem to be offering some type of dsl/cable plan, and the prices keep droppin for the average home user, who is being sold on the idea that faster is better.....and it damn sure is.....well sumtimes..:-) |
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..i guess the question is, duz anyone know for a fact who 360's target audiece is?...
You cant keep track of who's clicking on to your site as accuratly as a Soundscan report, BDS spinz, or a magazine subscription.....with the right publicity and marketing like it seems there getting, they can at least be assured to keep the buzz and name above ground, and here in deep in space..ultimately winning in the long run. |
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KRIS ex got fired from 360... like WHOA ... i bet hes humble now |
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Lal Salam... Lisa Cambridge was a David Watkins referral... not Marcus.... |
i am one of, what i believe to be, a very small number of POC ,(people of color), that
have been in the IT industry for 16+ years. developments over the past five years have
open doors for more of us than ever before to become involved in IT. in my early days
it was a rarity to go to a conference or seminar and see another person of color.
if you were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of each other it would be like a scene
from an old movie the two of you running through the crowd in slow motion trying to
get to each other, both overtaken by a feeling of relief, just knowing that in a broad sense,
you were not alone in the industry.
now love him or hate him Bill Gates has helped, by creating a niche' market, the microcompany.
now a single individual can get trained and certified and command a salary of 150-200k per year.
people who may for one reason or another been blocked out of the technology market
can now be viable participants.
i say these things to emphasise why i am disturbed by Urban Expose. Is this truly a site
run and operated by POC or is this really a covert attempt by some White Supremacist group
to destroy the presence and credibility of minority run web sites ? it seems to do nothing
to build up it only tears down. this site is contributing to it own demise.
no more urban web sites...no more urban expose.
why patronise such a thing ?
Now in regards to the crucifixion of volume.com. give it a rest.
some of you sound like very intelligent people. why are you taking a simple layoff
and blowing it out of proportion ?
developing software is like trying to hit a moving target. it becomes especially complex
if you are not targeting a specific vertical market like Accounting,Insurance,Finance etc.
if any of you have been following the IT industry you will know that over the past 6-8 months
the web portal market has dried. investors and consumers are looking for value and not just
information only sites. you must somehow find a way to generate revenue with your site. the major
portal players yahoo, amazon and ebay will be around for a while , but ASP's (application service providers)
and B2B sites are the future of the internet. With this thought in mind any company whose focus
was to be an internet portal will have to stop and refocus.
the employees who are still with volume need to realize that change is a part of the IT industry.
nothing is static ! it is constantly moving and changing and you must be prepared to change with it.
look at this as an opportunity to be innovative. and keep your heads up !
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re: 360's target audience/speed...
I guess until someone from 360 reigns in here, we're in the dark about their true target.
That said, it is true that us digitally devided afro-netizens are upgrading to faster speed access to the internet. But on a whole we are behind the curve when it comes to Cable modems, DSL, T1s, etc. Consider the following:
*Can a brother or sistah even keep his/her phone on for more than 3 months straight without service interuption? "the number you have reached... 777 - 9311 has been temporarily disconnected.." (you know who you are.)
*You know you can't get Cable internet service on a boot-legged cable hookup. (again, you know who you are.)
On second thought, maybe Mr. Simmons is looking to attract the EMINEM listeners out there in suburbia. Word! That sight is Fresh!
Mixleplict
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TO Everyone: (Off-Topic)
I have the answer to the Mclean controversy. I have information on my blackplanet page that proves that Crispus is not Mclean Greaves. If your interested check out my page on Blackplanet.
Artisha
art4short |
lighthouse:
I give you much respect because you have been in the IT industry for almost a decade more than I have. We young heads need to definitely respect our elders.
That said, respectfully... I disagree with your post. Everyone is entitiled to their own opinion... and I see your point about ASPs and B2B plays and the decline of Portals - though that decline came way more than 6-8 months ago.
In defense of this site. If you sift through a lot of the bullcorn, there is a lot of info here that a smart business person could use to -- at the very least -- avoid making the same mistakes as others have made in this urban internet market space. And if after learning from the few gems you may get from this site you are still so disturbed, then simply don't come up in here.
As for the crusi-FICTION of volume.com. That sight is not getting any more scrutiny than the rest. And there is no more scrutiny on urban new media here than scrutiny of mainstream DotComs on mainstream internet sites, bulletin boards and chatrooms. See www.fuckedcompany.com and others like it.
Everyone on this site needs to read the posts for the entertainment value in which they were meant, file it away and move on. If something interests you here, check the facts and go from there.
As for some White Supremecist creating this website as part of some mass conspiracy to beat down Urban internet plays, or as you called it, minority-run web sites... First off, some of the Urban New Media plays are not minority run. Second, aside from laughs or a few heated BB threads, what role does this sight really have in the grand scheme of things? Diddly dirt! (and I can say that because I have over 60 UE clout points)
As for your comments on refocussing from being a portal.... If you are an Urban Internet exec and your sight has not lauched (or has) DO NOT attempt to be a portal. None of us are going to change our start page or our email address. THE ROCK SAYS, KNOW YOUR ROLE!!!! Which is striclty Entertainment! Make me want to come to your site to look at your CONTENT. Otherwise, your company shall get flammed on this sight (and others) and die an ugly death in the real world.
flipper purify |
Jean,
Even w/o upping the counter on your website we already know it ain't McLean. Wassup with pluggin your own site? Nice try, but the real Phoenix would not do something like that.
Cyclopse |
to UE - re: Clout Points...
I see that we get clout points for posts, polls and votes, Did you know I can run up my clout points by voting on the NO BUZZ list over and over again, ad infinitum?
And by the way... the clout coupons y'all sent me were not accepted at Pathmark.
Whatsthedealeeyo?
Gator "I smoked Moma's TV" Purify |
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...damn..all this *clout* and still no i gets no Launch party Invite.. |
OK - so I know they will punish me for this, but let the record show... I know have 101 clout points!!!! (102 after this post) Watch 'em make it -3 by tomorrow.
Sean Cassidy |
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...hhmmm..wonder if anyone attended the Hookt.com joint yesterday..b4 10pm....i guess record company rule #4080 applies here in space as well?...please lemme be wrong, cause if not, im takin that sanitation dept test next month..:-) |
y'all think we POCs (read pocks) have the monopoly on internet industry scandles... check out the news article about the allegations facing the now-defunct Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) execs...
at www.siliconalleydaily.com
charges from rape, death, sex with minors... it goes on, but it only gets uglier.
peter wisdom |
Whoa... they got me... now I only have 21 clout points now. They took away 100 - ouch! I had over 60 legit points before I started playin with the numbers. Guess I won't be getting anymore free clout coupons to Pathmark!
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..never abuse your clout..be cool fool. |
due to the late entry on the no buzz charts.. I'm climbing back up the clout game.
UE... instead of punishing me, why don't you just fix the site. And what happened to "Hirsh does HipHop"?
racer X |
B Cool
It was I who took your clout away. Needed to run to Key Food and cash in your clout coupons for some cherry flavored Kool Aid mix. I thought it was on sale this week. I'm sorry bro. But due to your generosity, I'll be vitamin C fortified for the rest of the summer. |
This is courtesy of Impact 247. You all should check 'em and get your own copy of their newsletter. Don't hate though. They did speak with Volume CEO Kevin Dowdell.
By Catherine Kelly
As previously reported here last week, Volume.com laid off a significant number of the content staff. Kevin Dowdell, CEO of
the soon-to-be-launched hip-hop site, spoke with Impact247.com about his future plans for the domain, as well as how the
layoffs were simply “part of a change in the Internet economy. However, the rather dramatic exit of Volume senior managers
Smokey Fontaine, Lisa Cambridge and June Ambrose, along with hints of heavy handed involvement from AOL/Time
Warner and HBO leaves one feeling the layoffs were particularly abrupt, considering the site has a scheduled launch in
early June.
“There are two important elements that brought us to the recent reductions. First the entire dot.com industry has changed
in the last year. A year ago, the feeling was if you were in the category, you would be fine. Now what’s clear is that many of
the companies that are leading in their category are losing a lot of money. Our feeling now is like most companies—we
want to be profitable. Secondly, we are able to leverage the relationship with AOL, making it easier for us to get on that
profitability path. That’s the reason we didn’t need as much staff going forward. For us, it was a necessary restructuring to
get on the path that we need to be on,” says Dowdell.
Volume is making a transition from a content, commerce and community site that is heavy on the content and commerce,
to a more cost effective business that relies heavily on community, effectively lowering operating costs, explains Dowdell.
Following the layoffs, Volume.com currently has a staff in “the mid-30s.”
HBO has a serious financial commitment in the Volume project. When asked about financing, Dowdell responds, “HBO
agreed to fund the company until it became profitable. And it was never clear how much time that would take, but it was
anticipated that that would be millions to tens of millions of dollars.”
Perhaps HBO had a hard time stomaching the fact that they agreed to fund this internet project until profitability. The
venture has a number of obstacles to hurdle, including increased competition in the urban space, a new relationship with
AOL, and its own inexperience with running a
dot.com.
Originally Volume planned on seeking more investors, according to Dowdell. But since the site’s acquisition by AOL, he
claims it is “less likely we’ll need additional strategic partners.”
Despite the increased competition, Dowdell feels there is room for entry in the urban space. He explains, “360hiphop.com
and Hookt.com are hip hop, BET.com is black entertainment, Blackplanet.com is more black.
Most of the sites have a slice or lens that is somehow limited and are by definition less broad.”
However Dowdell has a big belief in the urban market and its potential. “There are a lot of groups within the urban market
and it is not monolithic. It’s hard to put a size on it. It’s not a niche. It’s a large and powerful market. That’s why so many
companies are pursuing (it.)” And going forward, Volume’s competitive edge may be its relationship with AOL/Time Warner,
HBO, and its access to their resources and experience.
A launch date for Volume is still unspecified.
So what do you think? If you want to sound off about Volume.com, send your take on the situation to
impact247daily@vanguarde.com and we will post them throughout the week. |
I wrote for Volume.com.
That is I was hired to do a punch up on a animated Webisode for Volume.com. The piece was of a really poor qaulity, not to mention racist. it was obvious that it was written by White People imagining how Black People talked. We did our best to punch it up, but it was hard considering what we were working with.
If the piece I worked on was typically of the Volume content, then the website has BIG problems.
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REAL big trouble, judging by the fact that they hire writers who use the term "punch up." |
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Damn, people are still talking about this.
Well, as for that cartoon, yes it was written by white people. Yes the pilot had some distasteful elements (Dr. Dre with titties and a giant phallic space ship). But it was a PILOT. As in first draft. If you go to www.urbanentertainment.com you'll find similar crazy sh*t. Some will hate it, some won't. But there is no way to tell how something will go over until people SEE it. It's called RISK. Everyone talks about the numerous urban plays that don't work (Y2G, hookt, volume, yada yada) but how many questionable films, TV shows, books etc got made or written before we ( read Black people) got it right? Donald Goines was hated when he was alive for his explicit content which is why he wrote under the name Al C. Clark. Wasn't till he died that folks started feeling him.
Volume's CEO and the former Chief of Content Greaves urged the staff to "be edgy' "push the envelope" "this is hbo" The staff (Smokey, June, Lisa et al.) did that and it just didn't work out -- this time. AOL wants to play it safe. But remember porn sites were the first e-businesses to be profitable. We will see successful urban content plays on the web. Just not from AOL.
Like it or not people will look to the web for info and yes, ENTERTAINMENT. Why wait 4 weeks for The Source when you can ( or will) get daily stuff on the web? If HBO wanted to build a site that appeals to 18-24 year olds who like (among other things) hip hop, why not hire people from the top selling magazine in that demographic? Are there tons of WEB professionals with years of experience in servicing that demographic? NO. Why watch 24 hours of the same music videos on BET when you can get variety on the web? The haters need to stop being ludites. No the web is not a magazine, but it will find it's place in our lives. Only through trial and error are we going to get it right. You have to start SOMEWHERE. Some will fail, some will survive. Blackplanet has established that we can succeed in ONE way. God bless them. But if we just followed successful models and didn't try our own shit, we'd all still be riding bikes instead of driving.
But the good thing about sites like UE is that as long as there are haters there will be motivation to prove haters wrong. |
Despite what Volume's CEO Kevin Dowdell said in the Impact247 peice something still smells fishy up in there. How could HBO/Time/AOL still be serious about producing Volume w/o its core influx of talent (no disrepect intended to dem dats still dere)?
Methinks AOL Keyword: VOLUME will be something entirely different than what was originally intended by HoBO. Perhaps the AOL spot for copping tunes off the net. Then all of that remains of the staff from VOLUME will be rolled into some other AOL urban play.
UE downed B Cool @ -15? (don't you hate it when people talk in 3rd person?) Whoa... I guess I won't be getting my free clout passes to the next Industry joint afterall.
Fred J. Dukes
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To Mrg27
Thanks for posting that article from Impact24/7, I've tried to sign up for their newsletter but I still dont get it. Although Mr. Dowdell sounds very articulate and makes a pretty good argument for why Volume isnt over all I keopt thinking was NetNoir.
When AOL pull the plug on paying for content and Netnoir moved to the web, they said the exact same tihngs. And yes they are still around but who here has been to Netnoir or knows anyone who uses that site? Sure Dowdell and crew may survive in some form but its very unlikely that it will be significant or have an impact.
Volume.com = Netnoir 2K
Artisha
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It's time people realize business is business....VC's will only invest in those portals that come up with a realistic revenue generating plan. I think it's going to come down to business to business and not as much entertainment.
What do you'll think? |
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What people fail to realize was that B-to-B was/is a very large part of Volume's business plan. Warehouses were bought, commerce deals were made. Entertainment was but ONE aspect of the plan. One thing Dowdell did know was that banner ads alone would not make money. And the other sad thing was that community was integrated into every story/ feature already. (You'll see how if/when they launch)
Nevertheless the whole thing boils down to mismanagement. Dowdell sold everyone who signed on a huge dream of what Volume was to be. Even before the merger he calld Volume "the younger, urban AOL." There would be original content, web links, commerce, search and community all rolled into one ball. As time went on and the ramifications of the merger become more real, the vision of Volume began to shrink and shrink. Inevitably, that shrinkage hit the staff.
But if anyone wants to know what a major source of the Volume launch hold up was, ask McClean Greaves.(1) Before deals were made to use a professional search engine, Greaves had the entire staff go home and make lists of sites in different areas that would serve as the Volume search engine.(2) Rather than outsourcing the site building, Greaves was convinced that it could be accomplished in- house with two freelance coders and a designer. (3) Every two weeks he would make drastic changes to the site design causing the freelancers to go back and do work over.(4) After focus groups rejected the aspects of the site he liked, he resigned leaving the staff to rework the mess he left them with.
Greaves is a nice person, no one is assassinating his character(at least not me). But he simply made some bad decisions. Two people and a laptop may gave been able to crank out Cafe Los Negros, but things dun changed.
"Every time I step in the booth, I speaks the truth."
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Urban Internet Execs need to stop havin' the black beauty shop mentality when it comes to building a web site. You know.... at the hair shop, aside from getting your hair did -- you can buy bootlegged videos, tapes, cds, books, clothes, and bean pies. They need to focus on thier niche (whether it is entertainment, or news, or music, or whatever) and stick to that.
We ain't gonna change our email addresses to whatever@brand-of-the-day.com. All searches begin at Yahoo or Lycos, etc... and not Brothah_Search.com. And free news can already be found at the websites of most of the major print newspapers, ie. NewYork Times.
Unless you do something different, or do something better, you will be wasteing your time.
Been there - done that.
Rere Drum |
Hello brothers and sisters,
I have been fired from 360 Hip Hop. I won't lie y'all. It was cuz Andrea Duncan and Serena Kim said I was sexually harrising them. They filed a report and my boy Selly had to act, or the company would be open to a lawsuit (under Federal laws against harrisment). So I don't have a job right now. I wish I could've stopped all my shit about the Dream Team. I used to tell everyone to live spiritually and what goes around comes around but I also kept fucking up and mistreating my female employees. So now I don't have a job. Does anyone want to hire me? Especially since I've been banned from the source and vibe and others and everyone knows I'm the drunk who puked in DMX's Jeep while on assignment and now got kicked out of 360 for bothering my fly ladies? |
to security/otis:
you know a whole for security guard !
I guess management was not that bad after all?
They kept everybody informed !
anyway just a quick clarification on B2B.
B2B sites support business infrastructure usually for a vertical market.
E-Commerce sites generally sell products directly to the consumer.
For volume to be a B2B, they would have to for example support the record distribution process of some large record label to say an HMV or a TOWER record store chain. Corio Inc is a good example of true B2B.
Its sounds like what you are talking about is more along the lines of E-Commerce which has also
played itself out over the last year.
As far as everything else it sounds like a normal software development shop to me. Specification always change ,nothing is written in stone. If you visit any software development company and ask to see the original system spec, I guarantee that it will only slightly resemble the finished product.
It’s the nature of the business.
What’s happening here is technology and entertainment are merging faster than ever before. And the nuances associated with each are starting to clash.
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Kudos to MS.VEERS for that informative article on discrimination in the "I.T." world. ;-)
-natch |
What does David Watkins have to do with Volume.com? I thought he was with UBO? (I'm new, bear with me.) |
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wanna be a player : reading is fundemental..... |
It took me a LOOOOOONG time to get through everything here but there's some great stuff in this conversation. Too much to talk about in one post.
I have to bite on Mixleplict-- wasn't he the ant-like creature that batman or superman or somebody had to make say his name, and somehow they tricked him by getting him to say it backward?
Anyway, I digress.
Dowdell said re: defining Urban. "It’s hard to put a size on it. It’s not a niche. It’s a large and powerful market. That’s why so many companies are pursuing (it.)”
Why, there ya go! That's the problem. Many many rugby players in a scrum around an invisible ball. Someone's bound to get hurt. I do believe in "urban" in a broad sense, but because it it is an aggregation of constituencies and not just one, each business has to define it for itself. I think a lot of companies have found themselves changing tack in midstream because they were going for black/urban, then underground/urban, or soul/urban, or hip hop/urban, or...wait, what direction were we headed anyway? And while you focus so hard on defining the audience, paradoxically, it becomes harder to create content that is just damned good in and of itself because you overanalyze it. (Said as someone who has been there, done that, and will do it again.)
I have gotten blunter in my language over time. When I mean non-white people, I say "non-white," not "minority" and certainly not "urban." We play games with language and the definitions of community.
Thanks again to janet weers for posting the article on discrimination in dot-com-ville.
"We ain't gonna change our email addresses to whatever@brand-of-the-day.com. All searches begin at Yahoo or Lycos, etc... and not Brothah_Search.com"
--This is the topic of the new Silicon Alley reporter w/ Omar, David, and Selwyn on the cover. But I haven't read it yet. Must get to...
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To Wannabe:
David Watkins was hired by his "BOY" kevin Dowdell to do marketing for Volume.com and develope music industry partnerships for them. David promised that he could bring Russell Simmons and Lauren Hill to the table, unfortuantely what Kevin failed to realize is that Daivid knew nothing about marketing, building a brand or doing biz with music mogals, David was and continues to be a decent party promoter, but nothing more.
To Lighthouse:
With all due respect to your history online and hte knowledge I'm sure you have amassed over the years, many in the IT industry have not made the best transition to the netowrked based economy. Sure there is lots of expereince and paraless between IT and Web based businesses. BUt there are also some VERY critical differences.
1) IT was always a back office operation not so with most web based ventures
2) IT's main function was managing information's movement within or across organizations, web businesses often have to produce and deliver it to an end user
3) IT is a necessary cost center for a company, many web ventures are not
To B Cool:
I wanted some of the DAMN blackplanet points. SO SUE ME! The post Phoenix Jean Grey would either telekenetically altered the fabric of the universe and made herself the head of Blackplanet with 10 billion blackplanet points or she would have telepathically forced everyone in the world to go to my site on Blackplanet, sign up for an account and post messages in my guest book. Since I cant do either one of those things I guess you found me out. I'm not a fictional comic book charecture.
DAMN YOUR GOOD!!!
Lets do some math. I have 61 clout coupons coming to me and you have -9... If your a really good boy over the next week I'll give you 10 of my clout coupons.
To Mgr27Robinson:
Thanks for the shout out. I wasnt suggesting that "compelling content" was required for all online ventures, in fact I love black planet because they stick to one thing community (ie Chat) and they do it well. But to create something like Black Planet, UE or Slashdot.org you have to have a good deal of net experince and a passion for what your doing. Smokey, Russell, Kevin, Rifkin et al have neither one of these traits. They dont have a passion for the net, the dont have expereince builind products online and they dont have a passion for the culture they want to produce a content for. I agree that the user expereince is critical but the best way to really underastand and connect with the user to BE A USER. You should be producing the site that you want to experience, a site that speaks to yourself first and the audience will gravitate towards it.
To Farai:
VERY good point about the niche nature of the content being being built for amny of these sites. Why would I ever use the financial segment of Volume.com when Business Week and the WSJ are available to me for free a click away? What does 360Hiphop search offer me that Google doesnt? The "everything to everyone within my niche" appraoch that many of these sites seem to be taking is pretty stupid.
Artisha
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To Art For Short:
Unfortunately I will have disagree with all 3 of your points. Its impossible to separate IT from web development. Web development is a part of Information Technology.
1) IT was always a back office operation not so with most web based ventures
IT can be both back and front office. Example, most companies have an intranet site as well as an Internet site.
2) IT's main function was managing information's movement within or across organizations, web businesses often have to produce and deliver it to an end user
IT always has to facilitate the delivery of some sort of product to the end user..
3) IT is a necessary cost center for a company, many web ventures are not
A company has a web site to have a global presence to increase their market share , if that changes an IT dept from a “BURN CENTER” to a “REVENUE GENERATOR”.
In closing we must remember that the WEB is just another avenue for developing applications. The programming languages have changed from mainframe and mini-computer based languages such as COBOL,JCL,RPG 2 to microcomputer based GUI development environments like Visual Basic , Visual C++ and Java. All of this is Information Technology.
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B Cool:
check out this site: |
Here's the URL:
MC-LYTE.com. For content without all the glitz, MC news, happenings, etc. check her shit out. And it's the REAL artist herself puttin it down. She responds to folk, she confirms your registration, etc. I like this shit. You don't get lost in the Media Matrix figures...it's REAL |
Sorry to get off the subject BUT there is too much talent around here to not try and tap into it.
I'm looking for constructive ideas and partners to help me reshape my site, BLACKMUSIC.COM into a strong urban destination.
I hope to begin reviving the site in the next few weeks.
Please email me at brian@blackmusic.com
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Gee, gosh, that site is wack. I registered too and fell into that black hole.. |
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