Millions of people use your product, but none of them pay.

The SEC is investigating. 

You don't own the rights to the content, and the people that do are charging an arm and a leg.

You're stuck at number two.

A 5% stakeholder just started a proxy war.

Life as a tech CEO isn't easy.

Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, has got to prove Twitter is more monetizable than AIM or chat.

Costolo came to Twitter from Google, which he joined when Google bought his RSS advertising network, Feedburner.

That was a far out business idea that never caught on.

Costolo can't have that happen at Twitter, which investors and board members once believed would be the next Facebook.

New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is already dealing with a proxy fight.

Thompson only joined Yahoo earlier this year, but he's already under fire from activist shareholder Dan Loeb, whose hedge fund, Third Point, owns more than 5% of the company.

Thompson is about to fire thousands of employees and sell off Yahoo's ad tech businesses. That should buy him some time. But his predecessor, Carol Bartz, lost her job because she couldn't grow Yahoo's revenues, and the same thing will happen to Thompson if he can't either.

John Maloney isn't Tumblr's CEO, but he is the adult supervision.

Tumblr doesn't have a business model yet.

Tumblr has hundreds of millions of users and a valuation close to a billion dollars.

Investors are thrilled with where this thing has gotten, but if Tumblr doesn't monetize relatively soon, it won't be founder and CEO David Karp who loses his job.

Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.

See Also:

• The Amazing Media Habits Of 8-18 Year Olds
• Yahoo Is Trying To Weasel Out Of Its Deal With Microsoft And Give Its Search Business To Google
• Yahoo To Bring 'The Hammer' With Big Layoffs This Wednesday