Barry Diller interview

Nice podcast of an interview with former media mogul (now Internet mogul) Barry Diller. Diller recently added Ask Jeeves (which bought its search technology from Teoma) to his list of Internet properties, which includes Match and Expedia. Diller reasons very cogently about risk taking and business strategy, and seems to have a much firmer grasp of where Internet technologies are heading than most media-industry transplants. His description of the assumptions behind the Ask acquisition, and of his partnership with Rupert Murdoch in FoxTV are both revealing. I don't agree with everything he says (he's quite negative about the prospects for user-generated content, and overconfident about the efficiency of talent-filtering in our current system), but it is definitely worth a listen. It amuses me greatly that Diller has a better intuitive grasp of the term speculative than many researchers (string theorists) in my field :-) He refers to the $2.6 billion Skype acquisition using that term, as well other recent transactions.