Social Networking —
Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, has a great post about advertising failing on Social Networking sites. He poses the question: what should social networking sites do to monetize their huge traffic? Have I got the definitive answer? Possibly not! In fact, I can tell you that we’re not working on social networking, precisely because I’m [...]
If you follow the blogosphere (yukkkk), the Twitterati (eurghhhh), the Facebookers, or the FriendFeeders, you might be forgiven for believing that these social networks are where all the action is happening right now. For example, high-profile bloggers, tweeters, and Facebookers such as Robert Scoble, and Chief Mahooligan, Jason Calacanis are in love with Twitter at [...]
You’ve no doubt seen the news that AOL is buying social network Bebo for $850 in cash. By any standards, that’s a great exit for all involved. Bebo was founded in 2005 and raised a single round of venture capital ($15M for 16% of the company, apparently) in 2006. They’ve been pretty successful in growing [...]
I’ve been following Facebook’s targeted advertising platforms since they were launched. Now that they’ve been running for a while, I have to ask: are the targeted advertising systems Facebook offers to advertisers fundamentally broken? I think they might be. Here’s my top three reasons why:
The targeting doesn’t work. The ads I see [...]
Facebook has just revealed the details of its new social advertising platform. At first glance, the ideas seems pretty smart, making excellent use of the key strengths of Facebook. However, I think there’s actually a massive potential problem with the new offering: a problem that might mean Facebook has no chance [...]
In a post entitled, “How to avoid sounding like an monkey” (sic), Dave Winer explains that anyone who uses terms from a branch of mathematics called, Graph Theory, in the context of social networking sounds like an “idiot”. Err…. what?
Graph theory is a well-established field, having been around for more than two hundred [...]
There continues to be lots of talk about the valuation of Facebook. One of Facebook’s founders has apparently suggested that they wouldn’t sell the company for less than $10B; and, as I wrote recently, people have been advising the owners of Facebook that it would be a big mistake to sell for $6B. [...]
Is Facebook worth $6B+? If so, should Facebook sell now, or sit tight? Well, it’s strange, but it’s true… people are actually advising Facebook not to sell for $6B. Fred Wilson says - selling the Company would be a huge mistake.
To consider whether that’s good advice, let’s do some back-of-the-envelope calculations… [...]
The Times newspaper reports that Yahoo! and News Corp. are in discussions for Yahoo! to give up 25% of its equity, worth $9B at today’s prices, in return for MySpace. Well, they should know - after all, News Corp. owns The Times.
What’s amazing about this is that the paper appears to suggest that [...]
Saul Klein from Index Ventures has a post about Imagini being on the Alexa movers and shakers list. Saul says Imagini’s social networking is “clearly addictive”. But is it really? I’m not so sure.
People might be finding it addictive. However, I think there’s an alternative explanation that fits the current [...]