Barry Diller, the chairman and CEO of IAC, just left the stage and left some zingers floating in the heads of folks here at the Brainstorm Tech conference.
On making money on the Internet: “We’re still at this point of mythology where the Internet is free. In reality it’s not, and it’s not going to be.”
On the video production company that IAC is launching in tandem with a team from College Humor: “This small team produces, really good quality video for $3,000, $5,000 maybe $10,000 a video. They write, direct, produce, act – each person on the team does everything – groups like these really are the future.”
On Twitter: “It’s not really my thing. I don’t go to the dentist. I don’t do things that cause me to emote.”
On Facebook: I don’t have any friends.”
On the upheaval the media world is experiencing: “Out of the shreds of this are going to come very vibrant business models.” Those models, in Diller’s opinion, will exist online. Media companies, including television, cable and others have to adjust to a world where the scarcity their businesses were built on no longer exists. “The Internet is absolute plenty.”
On spending the $2 billion in cash IAC has in the bank: “We’ll buy things, but we’re not going to buy things for the inflated valuations that still seem to exist.”