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Saturday, October 20, 2007
Friendster Newsletter: Now in Chinese
Thursday, October 18, 2007
MySpace to Open Up, Too
MySpace to Open Up, Too
When media tycoon Rupert Murdoch surveys his empire, something looks amiss. His Internet crown jewel, MySpace, boasts 110 million users—more than double the tally for archrival Facebook. Yet Facebook is on the verge of taking a chunk of cash that could give it a value of $15 billion, while shares of Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS) family of businesses have barely budged this year, despite rapid online growth.
What gives? "It tells you that News Corp. is totally underpriced," Murdoch, the company's chief executive, said of his company's share performance at a Web industry conference Oct. 17. Earlier in the day, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of social networking site Facebook, told attendees that the company has nearly wrapped up financing that could value it at $15 billion (BusinessWeek.com, 10/17/07). This year shares of News Corp., which closed Oct. 17 at $23.64, are up just 1.4%, giving the company a market value of $69.61 billion—just five times Facebook's potential value, on nearly 200 times its revenue.
Third-Party Programs
Murdoch and MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe have a plan to change the parent company's online fortunes: They'll make it easier for outside software developers to build MySpace tools and then let them share in resulting ad sales. MySpace is following in the footsteps of Facebook, Apple (AAPL), and other tech trailblazers in harnessing the legions of programmers, many of them independent or affiliated with smaller companies, jonesing to craft the next big consumer application, be it related to games, photos, music, or other interests. "We are opening our platform within the next couple of months to all developers," DeWolfe said at the Web 2.0 conference put on by O'Reilly Media in San Francisco.
For News Corp., the aim is to generate revenue by courting new users and making current ones more active by giving them more to do on the site. Within the next two weeks, MySpace intends to publish a catalog of third-party programs that users can easily find and add to their pages. By December, MySpace plans to test with 2 million members a special portion of the site for installing applications that developers create using tools supplied by MySpace. Most of that software will eventually end up on the broader site, DeWolfe said.
Perhaps most important, MySpace will give outside developers a special page on which they can sell ads. That's big news for developers, whose businesses rest on the booming market for add-on "widget" software for Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks. Facebook's growth has boomed since May, when it opened up. Max Levchin, founder and CEO of widget software maker Slide, calls the ability to sell ads "the single most exciting opportunity for widget makers on MySpace," in an interview before News Corp.'s announcement. "Facebook's innovation was that you don't need a relationship with them to share revenue with them," he says. "They didn't invent the concept of widgets. But they got millions of people to stick around, and they actually made real money. Developers have a financial incentive to play."
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Why Google Won't Help Your VC Pitch
linky:
Why Google Won't Help Your VC Pitch
A conversation with a top venture capitalist yields three cautionary pieces of advice for Web startups seeking seed funding.
Why Google Won't Help Your VC Pitch
A conversation with a top venture capitalist yields three cautionary pieces of advice for Web startups seeking seed funding.
Ancestry.com parent sold for $300 million | Tech News on ZDNet
Ancestry.com parent sold for $300 million | Tech News on ZDNet
The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com, said on Wednesday that Spectrum Equity Investors will lead an investment of $300 million to buy a majority stake in the company. Spectrum, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based private equity firm with $4 billion in investments, has been a shareholder in TGN since 2003. Its portfolio includes a variety of financial services, media and communications companies. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Ancestry.com has collected more than 5 billion names from historical records and counts 2.5 million active site members. TGN owns a portfolio of sites including Ancestry.com and related international sites, MyFamily.com, RootsWeb.com and Genealogy.com. Other products include Family Tree Maker software and Ancestry Magazine.
The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com, said on Wednesday that Spectrum Equity Investors will lead an investment of $300 million to buy a majority stake in the company. Spectrum, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based private equity firm with $4 billion in investments, has been a shareholder in TGN since 2003. Its portfolio includes a variety of financial services, media and communications companies. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Ancestry.com has collected more than 5 billion names from historical records and counts 2.5 million active site members. TGN owns a portfolio of sites including Ancestry.com and related international sites, MyFamily.com, RootsWeb.com and Genealogy.com. Other products include Family Tree Maker software and Ancestry Magazine.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Seven Steps to Graphing Your Facebook Strategy
For nostalgic hippies in the SF bay area, this was the 40th anniversary of 1967’s famous Summer of Love. But for every Silicon Valley developer, entrepreneur, and VC who has a pulse it’s been the Summer of Facebook.
While it’s easy to put aside geeky exuberance over the latest insanely great technology, it’s impossible to ignore the growing size and scope of Facebook, and the impact it’s having on internet startups and traditional businesses alike. Over half of Facebook’s 43 million users visit every day, spend an average of 20 minutes on the site, and view over 54 billion total page views per month.
In a few short months Facebook has quickly become one of the most impressive user acquisition channels on the web, rivaling SEO & SEM strategies for priority with new startups. Over 60 Facebook applications have more than 1 million total users, and over 40 have at least 100,000 daily users.
With the groundbreaking launch of the Facebook Platform this past spring, and the subsequent runaway growth of Facebook Apps adopted by millions of users this summer, the question on everyone’s lips (including Google and Microsoft) has been: “So what’s your Facebook strategy?”. If you’re still scrambling to figure out yours, read on.
Seven Steps to Graphing Your Facebook StrategyMonday, October 01, 2007
Spotlight on Bebo
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