“For me, failure is not an option.”
-Jim Clark

Co-founder of Netscape Jim Clark earned about $2 billion when his company had an IPO.  His son-in-law Chad Hurley made millions when he sold his company YouTube to Google.  And now Clark is officially married to Australian supermodel Kristy Hinze.  The wedding took place this past weekend.

Clark and Hinze’s wedding was a four-day event that took place on Richard Branson’s private Necker Island and the Virgin Gorda.  About 120 people attended the lavish affair and there was a no-shoe policy when riding on Clark’s yacht The Athena.  This is Clark’s fourth marriage and he turned 65 this past Monday.

Clark is the only man in history to have started three multi-billion dollar companies.  Clark is currently worth about $1.1 billion.

Hinze is the host of Project Runway in Australia.  She has been a model since age 14 and has graced the cover for Sports Illustrated.  Hinze is also a Victoria’s Secret model.

Hinze and Clark have been dating for several years now.  Clark was married to Forbes business reporter Nancy Rutter for 15 years.  Through the divorce, Rutter made about $100 million in cash, stocks, and bonds.  Rutter also received $24.6 million in property, $600,000 ownership stake in a Citation V jet, racehorses, furniture, and jewelry.  Hinze is 10 years younger than Clark’s own daughter.

[via NY Post]

Facebook is a student that values the teachings of web veterans whether it is by allowing investments from Microsoft, hiring open-source experts slash Firefox founders, poaching executives from Google, or getting advice from the founder of the original web browser. Given Facebook is a young company and has grown exponentially in terms of finance and talent, the company could use all the guidance it can get from the experts.

Google was no different when they first started. Google valued Eric Schmidt’s experience at Sun Microsystems enough to appoint him as CEO. Facebook is the new Google.

Facebook poached former Googlers, Gideon Yu (a former YouTuber), Sheryl Sandberg, Eliot Schrage, and even took the Google chef, Josef Desimone.

To gain a better understanding of the power of open source, Facebook acquired Parakey in July 2007. Parakey was started by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, two of Firefox’s main contributors. Firefox is a web browser gaining market-share quickly and was created with the help of open source developers.

And in today’s news, Facebook is pursuing the recruitment of Marc Andreessen as an advisor. Marc Andreessen co-founded Netscape, the world’s original mainstream web browser. By having all of these individuals contributing ideas to Facebook, there’s no telling where the $15 billion social network will head next.

According to Kara Swisher, Marc Andreessen has verbally accepted the offer.

Ning Background
Ning is a company that creates custom social network platforms for small businesses and enterprises.  The company was founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini.  Ning is Marc’s third startup company.  Marc previously founded Netscape and Opsware.  On Marc’s personal blog, he posted that he was delighted that Ning crossed the creation of 200,000 social networks.  Ning means “peace” in Chinese.

Ning Statistics
Over 70% of the social networks created using Ning are active.  Of the 200,000 social networks created using Ning, less than 1% are related to adult content.  Based on the current growth rate, Ning anticipates reaching 300,000 social networks in the next few weeks [Source: pmarca.com].

Funding
Ning’s total funding is at $44 million.  The funding was provided by both Andreessen and Legg Mason Inc.

[Information Source: DigitalPodcast]

Apple.com 1998

Apple.com 2008

Google 1998

Google 2008

Yahoo! 1998

Yahoo! 2008

Netscape.com 1998

Netscape.com 2008

Microsoft.com 1998

Microsoft.com 2008

Digg.com 1998

Digg.com 2008

Thomas L. Friedman, a contributor to The New York Times and author of best-selling book, The World is Flat wrote that there are “10 flatteners” that contributed to mass-globalization. The 10 flatteners are:
1.) Collapse of Berlin Wall (11/9/1989) – The end of the Cold War allowed those on the other side to join mainstream economics
2.) Netscape’s IPO (8/9/1995) – Netscape’s IPO was offered at $28 per share, but raised to $75 on the first day of trading. The web became hot from that point on and people saw money in it… lots of money.
3.) Workflow software – Machines ability to talk to other machines
4.) Open sourcing – Collaboration of online projects (such as Wikipedia)
5.) Outsourcing – The ability for companies to split services into components across the globe, saving money and increasing production possibilities
6.) Offshoring – Manufacturing outsourcing
7.) Supply chaining – Streamlining sales, distribution, and shipping
8.) Insourcing – When a company’s employees perform services for other companies (like UPS).
9.) In-forming – The ability to find information about so many things with services like Google
10) “The Steroids” – mobile phones, iPods, PDAs, IM, and VoIP

When Netscape had their IPO I was 12 years old and often times found myself using their browser to get on Yahoo.com and search for the information I needed to put together middle school assignments. Yahoo!’s creation and Netscape’s IPO msut have worked out harmoniously because that is the only web site my friends and I knew and we always used Netscape. Without the mainstream use of Netscape, who knows how big the Internet would be today? Internet Explorer’s existence would certainly be questionable since Bill Gates rounded up his Microsoft cadets and made sure they had a way to compete against Netscape.

In January 1998, Netscape started the open source Mozilla project that is now especially known for producing popular browser, Firefox. Based on my observations, I have seen Apple and Google endorsing Firefox more than Internet Explorer.

On November 24, 1998, America Online acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion through a tax-free stock-swap. This acquisition gave a way for America Online to become less dependent on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer was deeply integrated throughout America Online’s ISP portal. In May 2003, Microsoft paid Netscape $750 million to settle a monopoly lawsuit and also gave AOL the rights to distribute Internet Explorer for 7 years royalty-free. About 2 months later, AOL’s parent company, Time Warner disbanded Netscape and laid off most programmers.

Red Hat, the company that produced the Linux operating system bought a large portion of Netscape’s Enterprise Suite in 2004. DevEdge, Netscape’s popular development web site that contained popular articles were republished on Mozilla’s web site. And since 2003, Netscape put together a new programming staff that would keep their open source browser updated and was supported by AOL.

One of Netscape’s latest projects was Propeller. Propeller was a social news website that was similar to Digg in functionality. Jason Calacanis, a Sequoia Capital EIA and founder of Mahalo, attempted to poach top users from Digg, Reddit, Newsvite, and Flickr to speed up the popularity of Propeller. This caused a slight animosity between Jason Calacanis and Kevin Rose (founder of Digg), but they seemed to have resolved their issues on The GigaOm Show (powered by Revision3). Calacanis also co-founded Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs that AOL bought for roughly $25 million.

About a week ago, Tom Drapeau blogged that Netscape would officially halt security updates for Netscape. Further versions of the browser will stop being made because the time-cost tradeoff for AOL to support Mozilla is not feasible. AOL has to compete with some of the search powerhouses including Google, Microsoft, Ask.com, and Yahoo! Old versions of Netscape will be available in a Netscape Archive link. The actual web site, Netscape.com will be available as a general Internet portal.

It is always sad to see a part of Internet history struggle to compete with today’s hypercompetitive markets. Netscape was the first mainstream Internet browser and it will definetely go into the history books.

[image credit: Wikipedia]

Netscape announced on their company blog that they are moving away their social bookmarking web site to a different location on Sept 6.  And then yesterday Netscape announced that they have found a new home, Propeller.com.

There is a lot of controversy that surrounds the Netscape social bookmarking site as the idea itself is a replication of Kevin Roses’ Digg.com.  Both Rose and one of the key developers in the Netscape social bookmarking site, Jason Calacanis had often verbally expressed their disapproval of each other especially when Calacanis offered to pay for top Digg users to join Netscape.

Regardless of Calacanis’ actions, Netscape made a good move by switching names.

(more…)

“Visitors to Netscape.com will see a more traditional news experience very soon. Don’t worry, the social news site isn’t going away! We will keep you updated on where you will be able to find the social news site as we get closer to making the switch,” wrote Tom Drapeau on the Netscape Blog.

Jason Calacanis is often associated for Netscape turning into a Digg clone and is often seen as Kevin Rose’s arch-enemy, but did not seem to act that way on the second episode of the GigaOM show.  Calacanis was also known for hiring top users of social bookmarking sites Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, Flickr, etc. and having them shift over to Netscape.

The new Netscape homepage will look like netscape.aol.com, but Netscape’s social bookmarking platform hasn’t found a new URL home yet.  Calacanis no longer works as a General Manager at Netscape, but is instead invested heavily in his search engine start-up, Mahalo.com.

Turf wars don’t just happen in the streets.  They also happen in Valleys.  For example, Kevin Rose’s Digg users saw Rose as a victim to theft from Jason Calacanis’ influence on the redesign of Netscape.  However, Kevin and Jason clearly presented mutual respect for each other on the last episode of The GigaOM Show.

If I were to take anything away useful from the entire episode, I would say this would this dialogue would be it:
Om: “Are you two Facebook friends or no?”
Rose: “Yeah, we are.”
Joyce: “Top friends?”
Rose: “Uh, I haven’t added that stupid Top Friends application, I refuse to do it.”

In this episode, I was happy to see that I wasn’t the only tech-savvy person annoyed by some of the useless applications appearing on Facebook.  Another part of the episode I liked is when Om asked Calacanis why nobody likes him.  I didn’t envision Om to be so blunt.  I think I’m actually starting to like The GigaOM show better than Diggnation already.