Rafe Needleman is editor of CNET’s Webware, the increasingly influential blog about how "Web 2.0" technology is utilized by consumers. (It’s up to #26 on the Techmeme Leaderboard.)
Rafe’s been covering emerging technologies and start-ups for some time. During the last tech bubble, his daily newsletter for Red Herring, titled "Catch of the Day," was a must read in Silicon Valley and around the world.
I chatted with Rafe a couple weeks back at the NewTeeVee conference in San Francisco, which he was covering.
I asked him about his thoughts on this new boom in start-ups and innovation. He is pretty positive about things but says that there are too many online video ad networks whose business is predicated on sophisticated advertising management/insertion coupled with advertising sales. The field is now too crowded and most of these companies simply can’t do it all, Rafe says in this interview.
Update: Reuters reports that News Corp will launch an ad network next year.
— Andy Plesser
Full Disclosure: My PR firm handled Red Herring from 1999-2001 and currently represents CNET Networks.