The ad features a greyhound race with a bulldog wearing Skechers’ new shoes that allow it to beat the speedy dogs. While Cuban only shows up at the end, he fits right in as the dog’s owner.

I’m sure he’ll talk about the ad sooner or later on his blog. It’ll be interesting to see what he has to say about it.

Twitter loves the man and he received a largely positive response for his role in the ad.

View more daily video round-ups here.

The Best of Twitter TV:

Twitter tests a new Timeline:

A pretty sweet zombie pumpkin:

Mark Cuban sings Purple Rain:

Mike Tyson quotes turned into an awesome song:

Google’s Matt Cutts talks blocking Googlebot from crawling a dynamically generated calendar:

Google parties at the Academy of Natural Sciences:

Spherical flying machine:

Appearing on the CBS What’s Trending show, he received a question submitted from Twitter about how he feels about the YouTube acquisition, now that we all know how big it has become. The latest figures show that about 1 in 4 Americans watch a video on YouTube every day. And that’s not even considering its impact around the world.

“I said it was a huge mistake back then, and I still think it’s a huge mistake.” he said.

He continued:

On one hand you say “Wow, YouTube has got all these people that come to their site,” but think about what’s really going on at YouTube.

And I really like Google – they are a good company that’s done a lot of great things. All YouTube is, is Google subsidizing the bandwidth of every individual in the world.

Check out the video below. He starts talking about YouTube around the 6:30 mark –

They haven’t really accomplished anything. There’s what – 9 zillion minutes – 9 zillion hours uploaded every minute and the reality is, people just use it to put up their baby videos to show grandma.

If you look at online video, there’s only one company making money and that’s Netflix.

There are some things that do well – you can name 100 people who are doing well and then there’s 9 zillion who suck.

So it seems that Cuban is focusing on the monetization of YouTube. But to say that they haven’t accomplished anything seems to be a stretch and to suggest that Google shouldn’t have acquired the video site? I mean, 3 billion views a day, and 3 billion monetized views per week globally.

Just think about it this way. What if Google announced tomorrow that it was shutting down YouTube. Can you even imagine the response? I’m sure it would trump the still impressive outcry of the Super Poke Pets shutdown.

Mark Cuban, (entrepreneur, VC, Dallas Mavs owner, blogger, Landmark Theatres owner, Magnolia Pictures owner, HDNet chairman, etc.) posted some thoughts on on patent law on his blog BlogMaverick. His solution to patent law is basically summed up in two steps:

1. End all software patents
2. End all process patents

“It is easy to complain,” he writes. “Much harder to come up with solutions. Many won’t like what I propose, but who wants to make lawyers happy anyway?”

He proposes that copyrights are enough to protect software, and the benefit of creating a new process is creating the idea and using it in a business to your advantage. “ Afraid that some big company might steal the idea ? That is life,” he says. “When you run with the elephants there are the quick and the dead.  That is a challenge every small company faces.”

He goes on to list benefits of eliminating process and software, such as: reducing courtroom costs, improving the efficiency of the patent office, ending “the ridiculousness current patent arms race,” saving jobs, etc.

Naturally, Cuban’s comments are drawing plenty of discussion in the industry. He’s been actively engaged in the discussion in the comments on his blog post, and has responded to a couple people on Twitter:

Larry Dignan at ZDNet says that despite all the “whining,” any reform on software patents is unlikely. “Nothing is going to happen. Congress is a mess. Patents will always take a back seat to things like making interest payments, debt downgrades, elections and an economy that is sucking wind,” he says. “As a result, the thermo nuclear patent game will continue. Companies can whine about lawsuits and sky-high bids for patent portfolios all they want. Their time may be better spent acquiring patents.”

In the meantime, the public “whining” will likely go on. It’s quite interesting to see how the big players have taken to not only public means of dispute, but their own PR vehicles (like the Official Google blog).

The “Hitler reacts” videos have been around since, well, it seems like since dial-up days, but that didn’t stop YouTube member “FairUseHitler” — undoubtedly making fun of the removal edict issued last year — from producing one about Hitler reacting to LeBron James’ failure. Clearly, James has become the lightening rod for the Heat’s loss to Dallas, and there’s content addressing that, as well:

Via Reddit

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say people were happier that the Heat lost than they were about Dallas winning. Actually, the following Twitter trend — #heatlockerroomplaylist — indicates as much. People were watching the Finals to root against Miami, as opposed to rooting for Dallas. Whatever the case, it makes for some fun Twitter reading:

As you can see, there’s much more rejoicing over the Heat losing than there is the Mavericks winning. With that in mind, I doubt that matters one bit to Mark Cuban, who, by my estimations, is probably eating breakfast with his newest toy, the Larry O’Brien trophy, thinking, “You guys can hate on the Heat all you want. It doesn’t change the fact that we are the champions, my friend.”

Obviously, the necessary delay that allows live television to be bleeped for language or what have you didn’t exist. It’s either that, or ESPN was also happy the Miami Heat didn’t win and decided to let Cuban have his fun.

While the latter explanation is doubtful, it does make for some nice wishful thinking. Of course, cussing with Hannah Storm was not the only way the newest owner with a title celebrated the Mavericks’ win. Considering Game Six was in Miami, it’s a safe bet that Cuban took his celebration to the streets, where enterprising social media users could take a picture of the continuing celebration:

Although, Cuban had to make it home safely before he could consummate his relationship with the NBA Championship trophy. Good thing he charted his progress:

If you need some explaining here, when referring to the “Big 3″ in relation to the NBA, normally, LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are the understood recipients of said label. However, thanks to the Mavericks winning the title, it may be time to rethink that. Whatever the case, one thing’s for certain, Mark Cuban will be riding this wave for the foreseeable future.

Oriinal Article: The always outspoken Mark Cuban has contributed his thoughts on the whole news aggregation/Google News/publisher debate, one that is most often credited to Rupert Murdoch. It appears that Cuban has a similar opinion on the matter.

Cuban spoke at a keynote address this week at the AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC 2010 Conference, and is quoted by numerous sources as calling Google in particular a "vampire."

"When you think about vampires, they just suck on your blood," he is quoted as saying, reportedly telling newspapers and other publishers to "show some balls" and block Google News and, "There’s absolutely no reason for you guys to be indexed on Google News … if they don’t pay you."

Michael Arrington points out that at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2008, Cuban said he’d like to be an investor in TechMeme, which provides a similar service to Google News and other aggregators. In addition, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land notes (in great detail) that Cuban is an investor in Mahalo, which actually "touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views."

While on the topic of the news industry debates, the topic of charging for news is always a conversation starter. The Wall Street Journal has taken down its pay wall for the day, giving users access to articles that would otherwise require a subscription to access. The effort comes as the result of a sponsorship from Acura (Via SIA).
 

Related Articles:

> News Corp. Blocks Content from News Aggregation Site

> Do You Have the "Right" to Link?

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Murdoch’s War with the Aggregators

> Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?

Cuban has been fined $25,000 by the NBA for tweeting about the refs. Fanhouse has all the details, but long story short, Cuban used the popular social network to vent his frustrations about a certain officiating crew, was fined for it, and has Tweeted about the incident since.

"Of course, the Twitter issue raises an interesting debate about whether or not Cuban should be allowed to discuss the referees in a place like social media or on a blog (obviously, speaking directly to a group of media members won’t cut it, but at what point do we start considering this a First Amendment issue?)", says Fanhouse’s Will Brinson.

Brinson makes a good point. His tweets were just as public as a press conference though (especially considering that the press often goes to Twitter for stories), if not more so. If he just wanted to make mention of the incident to friends, perhaps direct messages would have been the way to go.

The whole thing is just another instance of the " think before you tweet " concept. Cuban may have had an error in judgment, though the tone of his Tweeting hasn’t suggested that he sees the fine as too hard a hit.

In a blog post simply titled "What Yahoo Should Do," Cuban states that the chance of Microsoft acquiring either part or all of Yahoo is approximately zero.  Given the long list of other things that Microsoft could use its money for, the cost would be way too high.

 

So Cuban believes that Yahoo’s leaders shouldn’t worry about making nice and looking attractive.  Rather, "Their strategy should be to acquire every and any company that makes their traffic, services, content or monetization stronger. . . .  Yahoo should be the most aggressive acquirer on the planet right now.  In case you haven’t noticed, everything and anything owned by private equity firms in the media and technology spaces are on sale at a huge discount."

Cuban’s billions lend all the advice he gives a bit of credibility.  Since Cuban was on the list of men Carl Icahn once wanted to add to Yahoo’s board, he’s especially likely to be paid some attention in this case. 

Whether Yahoo can come up with enough money to make many important acquisitions – or whether other companies would even agree to be acquired by the struggling corporation – is a key question, of course.

Today’s front page of the Wall Street Journal features Cuban in his classic “I can’t believe that idiot referee just made that call against my team and I will have his head on a platter” pose. Are there any other pictures of this guy out there other them him pitching a hissy fit on the sidelines of an NBA game? His less than adult behavior has helped him ring up more than $2 million in fines during his tenure as the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. Considering his wealth that is just ‘throw around’ money but still why couldn’t he just feed some hungry kids rather than acting like one.

It appears that his impetuous nature has garnered him the 2 words that may actually be worse than ‘IRS audit’ and those are ‘SEC investigation’. Yikes, aren’t there usually big fines and jail time associated with those things? All of this stems from a 6% stake in Mamma.com which was sold by Mr. Cuban following some information that was given to him by the company’s CEO, Guy Faure. The details seem to be many but the one that stands out is the arrogance of this guy and his handlers. His lawyer, Christopher Clark had this to say:

We’re shocked. We find it incredible that with all the important issues that the SEC has to address with regards to today’s economy they’ve sought to bring a $750,000 case relating to a he-said, she-said about one trade against a person whose integrity has never been questioned before with regard to the securities markets.

Funny how he needed to qualify how Mr. Cuban’s integrity has never been questioned about the securities markets because it is questioned everywhere else due to his childish antics. Granted, the details seem a bit sketchy and the case may be one that doesn’t deserve this kind of attention but this guy thrives on attention. In his case, is online reputation monitoring or any type of reputation monitoring needed because nothing is secret with him? At what point does the persona end and the person begin? It will be interesting to see if this dings Mr. Cuban in any way since he has recently suffered some embarrassment about publically stating his desire to buy the Chicago Cubs but apparently not being able to raise the money he said he could.

So what’s the internet marketing angle? I would say it’s more of an internet angle in general. You need to be careful about what you put out there at any level because people are watching. Attitudes and actions are now monitored at a level unheard in modern times. I suspect that Mr. Cuban should have taken the more relaxed attitude he displayed on his blog last summer when he wrote:

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google?

Uh, Mark? This is reality checking in with you. Unseating Google appears to be the least of your concerns (and probably pretty far removed from reality). Maybe a few less alleged insider trading moves and some time off to try to exhibit some good behavior would be better?

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