Monthly Archives: April 2008
eBay vs. Craigslist, An Equity Battle
“Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions,” stated Mike Jacobson, eBay’s General Counsel. “We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay’s stockholders and preserve our investment.”
One of the worst things that can happen to a company is if the owners do not get along. eBay owns a portion of Craigslist. eBay bought 28% of Craigslist in 2004 for $13.5 million.
eBay started a Craigslist competitor called Kijiji, a free classifieds web site. Craigslist mentioned that this action nullifies eBay’s rights as a shareholder. In response, Craigslist found a way to dilute eBay’s share in the basic classifieds site. In the Craigslist blog, eBay claims that eBay is using their power to dominate the classifieds market. eBay launched Kijiji in 2005.
eBay has an interest to acquire the rest of Craigslist if they offer according to former eBay CEO, Meg Whitman. A former Craigslist executive sold his or her shares in the company to eBay directly.
Information Source:
[1] Craig Newmark’s blog: Tainted Love
[2] Associated Press: EBay makes public its complaint against Craigslist by Amanda Fehd
Categories craigslist, eBay
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Microsoft Still Considering The Yahoo! Deal
Microsoft Corporation management met today to strategize what to do about Yahoo! Yahoo! believes that the offer that Microsoft is offering is too low to accept. Microsoft may be willing to spend $32-$33 per share. The original offer is about $29.12 per share. It’s rumored that Yahoo!’s board wants $35-$37.
CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer and Bear Sterns’ CEO, Alan Schwartz are working with major Yahoo! shareholders to figure out what the options are. Microsoft may walk away from the offer which could cause the search engine company’s stock plummet.
Yahoo! is still thinking of merging with AOL. Maybe even an ad deal with Google.
Information Source:
[1] Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Board Mulls Yahoo Bid But Price Remains Key Issue by Kevin J. Delaney, Robert A. Guth and Matthew Karnitschnig
Categories Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo!
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Cox Enterprises Planning To Acquire Ad Network, Adify For $300 Million
“We’re absolutely convinced at Cox that online revenue is continuing to grow,”stated John Dyer, EVP of Cox Enterprises. “If you look at Cox’s history, we’ve not necessarily been the first into a space… But we’ve prided ourselves in the course of history in being early investors.”
Cox Enterprises, the communications company that owns a large number of TV, radio, and newspaper companies is planning to acquire Adify Corporation. Adify is an advertising company that brokers ads for publishers and spreads advertisements for marketers. Cox plans on acquiring the digital advertising company for $300 million.
Adify’s clients include Martha Stewart Living Omimedia and several finance web sites created owned by Forbes Inc.
Early investors in Adify include NBC and Time Warner. These companies will cash out and won’t have any further influence on Adify’s operations. NBC will still be a customer. Cox also owns Autotrader.com.
Categories Adify Corporation, Cox Enterprises Inc., NBC, NBC Universal, Time Warner
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United Cats & Dogs Gets A Golden Collar From Skype’s Founders
“UDC has a monolithic team that can guarantee fast growth and be successful in putting all pets in the world to the web.”
-Tauno Tats, CEO of ASI
United Dogs and Cats, Ltd. (UDC) made a call to the Skype founders for an investment. And Ambient Sounds Investments (ASI), the company formed by the 4 engineers behind Skype answered the call. Ambient invested about $235,000 into the pet social network company recently. United Dogs and Cats runs UnitedDogs.com and UnitedCats.com, a couple of social networking companies for pet owners.
Between both sites, there are only 40,000 users. This is not a whole lot. The design of the homepage is pretty sloppy too. If I was United Dogs and Cats, I’d hire a user interface expert. UnitedDogs and UnitedCats has profiles, blogs, and photo sharing.
United Dogs and Cats will be opening a new platform and languages over the next few weeks. UDC also has a Facebook Application and allows users to find each other via Google Maps if interested.
Ragnar Sass is the CEO of Estonian-based UDC.
Competitors include Dogster, Catster, My Dog Space, and My Cat Space, Petster, Pawspot, Fuzzster.
Information Source:
[1] UDC Blog: Pet Owner’s Social Network Secures Additional Funding from ASI by Ragnar Sass
[2] TechCrunch: Skype Co-Founding Engineers Invest In Pet Social Network by Duncan Riley
Shel Israel Interviews Alex Albrecht (Revision3). 1938 Media Is Hilarious.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZayaW979j_g[/youtube]
Information Source:
[1] 1938 Media: Shel Israel Interviews The Other Guy From Diggnation by Loren Feldman
Other useful information:
[1] Wikipedia bio of Shel Israel
Warning: Graphic language.
Categories 1938 Media, Revision3
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iGoogle Has The Symptoms Of A Social Network
There is a lot of hype in the Web 2.0 community revolving around setting up an ideal homepage. Within the last decade, a simple search engine was common to have as a browser starting point. But today’s web users want widgets quickly telling them what their stock values are, how much money they’re making on AdSense, who wrote on their Facebook walls, what their favorite blogs wrote about today, and how to dress to plan for today’s weather. We want all this information consolidated and fast because we’re all an executive in some way and don’t have time to look at each page individually.
Now developers can apply for sandbox, a plethora of OpenSocial APIs available for developing applications on iGoogle. OpenSocial is a Google initiative where many other social networks and mobile companies are coming together to create a united platform. Some see this initiative as a way to compete against Facebook Applications.
When a user updates information in their social network, it can be connected to an Updates widget within iGoogle. iGoogle is an RSS and widget consolidation web site to enable users to get personalized information faster.
Below is a sample of what the OpenSocial APIs can do from an Updates standpoint. It works very similarly to the Facebook profile Mini-Feed and homepage news feed.
Facebook’s response will be interesting. With OpenSocial emulating one of their ideas and all of the investment Facebook has received for building the company to a bigger level, I expect more interesting things to come out than just an IM platform.
Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: Hints of iGoogle Turning Into Its Own Social Network by Erick Schonfeld
Categories Facebook, Google
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Dilbert.com Gets A Web 2.0 Look & Feel
Dilbert.com, the United Media cartoon authored by Scott Adams has upgrade it’s web site to the styles of Web 2.0. Each reader can share, embed, subscribe to the RSS, and and embed widgets of today’s strips into social networks of blogs. The widgets support MySpace, Facebook, MyYearBook, Vista, Yahoo!, iGoogle, Netvibes, Live.com, and Hi5. Users can also comment on and vote for each strip as demoed below.
Below is a screen shof of the new Dilbert homepage. You’ll notice several features such as animation and mash-ups were added.
Mash-ups will have 3 features. The first feature is for the user to submit their own punchline. Next month, users will be able to write the dialogue for the entire strip.
The Animation section is a quick humorous piece of a Dilbert sketch through the use of Adobe Flash. The animation is produced by Scott Adams and produced by RingTales.com. These animations have a share button that can be sent to Digg, Facebook, and/or del.icio.us.
The mashup system has filters to prevent users from profanity when creating the comic dialogue. With these new features, United Media and Scott Adams want to make Dilbert more viral and encourage readers to keep coming back to the web site.
To see Scott Adams take a beating in Second Life, click here.
Information Source:
[1] Dilbert.com relaunches with Web 2.0 flavor by Daniel Terdiman
Categories Dilbert.com, United Media
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Central Desktop Raises $7 Million To Take On Google Apps And Microsoft Sharepoint
“We think there is a chance to grab a sizable chunk of the market.”
-Isaac Garcia, CEO of Central.
Central Desktop is a web-based tool intended for project collaboration. Some of the tools available include online docs and spreadsheets, creating databases online, abilities to set up web meetings, calendar software, the ability to build charts, tasks, reports, etc.
Central Desktop is based in Pasadena, Calif. in 2005. Central Desktop made about $2.5 million in sales per year from 2,000 subscribers. They are anticipating $100 million in sales within the next 5 years.
OpenView Venture Partners provided this round of funding. Managing partner, Scott Maxwell and partner, Mark Berry stepped up to Central Desktop’s Board of Directors.
Below are a couple screen shots of the software’s capabilities. The dashboard looks pretty cool.
Information Source:
[1] Red Herring: Sharepoint Assassin Snags $7 Million by Scott Martin
Categories Central Desktop
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Google Finance Needs A Better Blog Post Aggregating Algorithm
Blogs have important role in corporate affairs. The upper management of major corporations have started their own blogs to show that they are transparent. The importance of content published in blogs in epitomized by an occurence of when Engadget published an article related to iPhone and Leopard operating distribution delays, instantly knocking down market cap by $4 billion. After it was announced that the delays source was untrue, the share price went back up.
Google Finance aggregates blog posts that are relevant to the companies that they have profiles for. However, for Sequoia Capital, I noticed that there are irrelevant blog posts showing up. Blog posts that Google Finance aggregates for Sequoia Capital are primarily related to the Toyota Sequoia automobile.
What does this mean? Google Finance needs a new way to aggregate blog posts to filter out irrelevant content. Perhaps only detecting blog posts with the words “Sequoia” and “Capital” used consecutively. After all, if Sequoia invests in a company that they think is the next YouTube, I don’t want to be reading about Tundra/Sequoia/T100 New TRD LSD for sale/trade on YotaTech Forums.
Categories Google
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