Articles of the Day
Pushing Print Online - When the grand, gray lady of newspapers, The New York Times, changes its tagline from “All the News That’s Fit to Print” to “All the News That’s Fit to Click,” there can be no question that momentous changes are underway in the publishing world. “It’s wake-up time for the publishing industry,” said Lisa Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Newspapers and Magazines Online: Content Is Still King. “eMarketer projects that US newspaper and magazine publishers will spend nearly $537 million this year to advertise their print and online brands.
Is Facebook An Operating System? - Microsoft’s $240 million investment in Google could easily be interpreted as a sign that we are truly in the midst of Internet Bubble 2.0. After all, Microsoft’s acquisition of 1.6 percent of the company sets Facebook’s valuation at $15 billion, or about 100 times the company’s estimated ad revenues of $150 million this year. In scrambling to rationalize the sky-high price tags being assigned to social networks such as Facebook, some experts argue that these sites–and even big search sites like Google–are the operating systems of the future. Because these companies have opened their inner workings enough to allow third parties to write add-ons, known as widgets, analysts draw a parallel between Windows or Linux and the applications that are created to work on the Web-based systems.
Microsoft’s Facebook Stake No Big Deal - Much of the attention this morning is on Microsoft’s $240 million investment in Facebook, a deal that gives the software giant two things: a 1.6% stake in the company and the right to sell international remnant advertising. That’s right, “remnant” as in leftovers; those ads Facebook doesn’t want to sell itself. In fact, most industry pundits agree that Microsoft didn’t win very much at all at the end of the day. The company invested $240 million for a crumb of equity (1.6%) and a sales-repping job for a company that now appears to be obligated only to treat Microsoft like any tiny minority investor (i.e., send them some financial info once a quarter).
Google Touts Search Ad Improvements - Google’s annual analyst day was sabotaged somewhat by the announcement that the company lost out in its bid for a stake in Facecbook to Microsoft, but the company did make predictions on Google’s future. Riding high from last week’s news that Google recently made even bigger gains in search advertising monetization, Nick Fox, the company’s director of advertising product management, declared: “There is still substantial headroom” in eking out more money from Google’s existing user base. A paramount concern for the company is improving the relevancy of its search and contextual ads.
Facebook To Telecoms: Open Up, or Else - The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association is supposed to be a forum for the telecoms to soapbox about the future of proprietary networks and exclusive partnerships with handset makers. However, social networking giant Facebook stole headlines at the annual conference this week as the site’s 23-year-old co-founder Dustin Moskovitz lectured telecom executives on the benefits of open platforms.
Publishers Poised For Blog Land Grab - Blogs may be the Web’s next big land grab, the financial ratings firm Standard & Poors says in a recent report. They’re extremely cheap to run, and the most successful ones reach large, loyal audiences. That’s a business model traditional publishers would love to emulate as they crossover to digital media. Not only that, but TechCrunch, GigaOm, Gawker, Boing Boing and the Huffington Post have become major media voices, which makes them attractive takeover targets for major publishers like Dow Jones and The New York Times Company.
Microsoft Beats Google To Facebook Punch - Microsoft will invest $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook–a deal that values the hot social network at a staggering $15 billion. Beating out Google on Wednesday, Microsoft also won exclusive global rights to sell third-party banner ads on Facebook.
Friendster Follows Facebook With Open Platform - Facebook will need to find itself another major differentiator, because developer platforms are becoming commodities just like social networks themselves. Regarding third-party developer platforms, Facebook rivals have followed CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s lead. Friendster’s platform announcement comes just a week after MySpace; Google is next expected to unveil a similar third-party program.
Friendster Announces Developer Platform; Can You Say “Commodity”? - Good thing we launched the CrunchBase widget, because you may need it to refresh your memory about a certain social networking company called Friendster that’s announcing its own developer platform today (okay okay, to be fair, they do have 50 million users and are very popular in Asia). Friendster’s platform announcement comes five months after that of Facebook and not even a week after that of MySpace, the company that usurped Friendster a few years ago. Looks like Facebook will need to find itself another major differentiator, because developer platforms are becoming commodities just like social networks themselves.
