In a recent interview Mark Cuban spoke about many controversial tech topics at the Code/Media conference. The self-made billionaire entrepreneur and recent television star is a major player in the tech world mainly because he has most of his money invested there. The interview starts out with Mark's thoughts on YouTube and how he considers it to be a underwhelming asset for Google. Immediately taking a standpoint many people would disagree with, Mark continued to argue that YouTube is not a money making company.
Although Mark admitted to not having access to the numbers to backup his claims, he said about 99% of YouTube videos are uploaded and only seen by friends and family. So what exactly are we compromising in terms of bandwidth to have the YouTube stars which do have many hits which he claims, is purely due to numbers. YouTube tried the subscription thing before and failed, but now they are trying again, still failing. They don't have a clear road-map of where they are going and they are sorta just fumbling around, which one could argue some very profitable fumbling. He also claims that internet video is the ultimate 'a la carte' industry, which seems to be a reoccurring theme of the interview.
The interview then shifts to Marks main point which he tries to get across many times that is "Bits are Bits." No matter what form of video consumption a user chooses, it's all the same. In the end it all comes from the same place and uses are total bandwidth. He claims broadband will never get better because no matter how much we produce it will always be consumed. But Television is just an application specific network, being delivered digitally just like YouTube. Even though Mark doesn't see the profitability and claims they are wasting our bandwidth, he still admits that YouTube is a compliment to traditional media.
Then on to net neutrality, which Mark says "will fuck everything up." There is a place for the government and there are places the government should stay out of, this being one. Although he doesn't really give any evidence of what will go wrong with net neutrality in place, he does make it clear that the thought of the FCC in charge of the internet scares the shit out of him. But the question that was presented was "Shouldn't the government have a regime in place like it did for the telephone service?" To which Mark says no, and that this is nothing more than a demonetization of these major companies. They also mentioned the throttling incident between Netflix and Comcast in 2008 which they ended up working out, "like big companies do."
The interview got a little off topic when someone asked the question everyone wanted to hear, what is it like to be a TV star on the Shark Tank? He said it was great to be able to reach 8 million people live every Friday night and teach them and their children about business. Although it does come with its difficulties, because managing some of the companies is hard, he likes helping entrepreneurs build companies; it's rewarding. He also revealed some fun facts about the show such as most of the pitches are around 2 hours long before being edited down to 10 minutes, and 20% of them don't even make it on the air. Although I do love Shark Tank, Mr. Cuban maybe doesn't always like helping entrepreneurs, considering a lot of times he offers them money to walk away from their company.
Mark manages to switch the conversation back to technology by talking about one of his start up companies that he found, Cyber Dust. One of the interviewers who was clearly responsible for setting up the meeting seemed quite offended at the fact that Mark wanted to message through Cyber Dust instead of email. But Cyber Dust is "very much like the early days of twitter" without the character limit. It is a messaging service built on the foundation of privacy and security. All messages between people are kept private, so he says it discourages trolls because no one gets to see it. Also, nothing you send ever touches a hard drive, so if they get subpoenaed there is nothing to recover; there isn't even server logs, intentionally. Cyber Dust has 2 million downloads with 15% active user base, which makes it's money through offering commerce for thirty seconds at a time.
Mark Cuban seems to be the bad boy of the tech industry constantly taking the controversial stance. Although it is obvious why he is against net neutrality, most likely because he is in favor of big business. But many people have a hard time believing that YouTube isn't profitable. He also ends on high note by bringing up Cyber Dust, which many people in the audience were intrigued in. In a recent interview with President Obama, they discussed encryption which the President said to be in favor of. But at the same time he was cautious to the fact the law enforcement need to do their jobs, and are held responsible to protect us. However, it does not seem like Mark Cuban shares these concerns.
Mark Cuban probably would have been a more relevant speaker at a technology school, but Daymond John is cool too.. If you have any tech questions for Mark, you can find him on Cyber Dust @AskMark
http://recode.net/2015/02/23/mark-cuban-vs-the-world-the-full-codemedia-interview-video/
http://recode.net/2015/02/15/white-house-red-chair-obama-meets-swisher/
https://www.cyberdust.com/
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