GM (Number 3 Advertiser in the US) is dropping paid ads on Facebook – Claims low consumer impact.
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Half of American call Facebook a fad
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Facebook raises anticipated stock price - High demand for shares.
This is going to get interesting!
Apparently, Microsoft offered to sell Bing to Facebook. Zuckerburg declined. I’ve heard rumors that Facebook is working on a search engine, this certainly would jump start that effort. However, it’s also loosing a lot of money right now ($2.5billion a year).
This could be an interesting way for Facebook to screw over Yahoo for their patent lawsuit, with Bing handling Yahoo’s search. It’s popular to believe these days that search (ie. Google) is in trouble as social media sites like Facebook develop profiles of their users that will be more useful to marketers and thus advertising dollars will move from search to social. I’m not sure I really see that. Sure, Facebook has an idea of what I like, what I’m doing, and who my friends are. However, Google knows exactly what I’m looking for, when I’m looking for it. I literally tell Google what I’m looking for when I type in a search query. There’s a huge value in that, and I don’t see that going away anytime soon.
Facebook buys Instagram for $1billion!
I hear the bubble inflating! This seems kinda crazy, just last week Instagram closed a $50million dollar investment at a rumored $500million valuation. Nice way to quickly double your money. Instagram only has 10 or so employees.
…if you want to know what direction the Internet and Internet technology is heading, take a look at Porn and the Grateful Dead (these days maybe the Jam Band scene more generally). According to estimates in this article, Porn sites likely make up around 30% of Internet traffic. One large Porn site alone accounts for 2%. Anyone interested in scaling website could learn quite a bit from these companies (although most are nearly as secretive about their datacenters and technology as Google is). Interesting to see the technologies being used (PHP, redis, nginx) by those who will share.
YouPorn (2nd largest porn site) Stats:
- Over 100 TB of porn hosted
- Over 100 million page views per day
- 950 terabytes of data transfered per day on average (28 petabytes per month)
- Peek 4000 pages per SECOND (100 gigabytes per second)
- Until 2011 primarily Perl and MySQL, then moved to PHP and redis
Interesting article from SF Gate: Non-Technical Founders Will Always Make Subpar Products That Fail Slowly. As a techie founder of a company, I certainly understand the thinking here. It was great that my time was the only investment I had to make to develop my website and when features were requested by my team and/or my clients I often would stay up late that night coding them. We landed more then a couple large clients that normally didn’t work with a company as small as ours based on our system’s technical capabilities. And I remember one of our largest client’s surprise when they asked for an integration feature, we had it ready to go in two weeks, they replied that they didn’t think anyone would be ready that quickly and they still needed a month or two on their end. And, or pivot on pricing model was quick and painless as I was able to quickly develop the technology needed to make the change.
However, in hind site, I also see many opportunities missed due to my and my team’s general limited business savvy. Engineers/Programmers/Designers/etc tend to think they know everything, but time and time again I’ve seen the real value that a good “business” person adds. Of course, “good” is always the key, in all of these positions. This why even I, a successful entrepreneur, is planning to get my MBA now. I believe that adding a strong, core business education to my techie/entrepreneurial background is a killer combination.
As an early stage angel investor, my favorite type of team is two people, a rockstar engineer and a rockstar business person. If the team is lacking one of these, I need to see a solid plan on how those needs are going to be filled. It is very true that in the Bay Area (and I think the market in general) good tech talent is at a premium, but so are great MBAs that have a true entrepreneurial spirit.
I understand the sentiment in this article, and would encourage anyone thinking of starting their own tech company to learn some coding, there’s no way it can hurt. But I also think it’s a generalization that doesn’t necessarily hold up. Did Steve Jobs code?
Can’t help but comment on James Whittaker’s recent “blog” post about why he left Google (blog is in quotes because it’s posted on his new/old employers website, Microsoft). Let’s get this straight, a Microsoft “Architect” (job title from his LinkedIn profile) leaves Microsoft to become an Engineering Director on Google+, then leaves Google and returns to Microsoft because Google+ is “ruining” Google and Google is no longer the “innovation factory” it used to be, it’s just another advertising company.
Is it just me or was it pretty clear to everyone in 2009 (when Mr. Whittaker joined Google) that Google is an advertising company? And is it just me, or does it seem kinda strange to complain that the product you were apparently a large part of creating is ruining the company? And it can’t be just me that finds it funny that someone would leave a company because it wasn’t innovative enough to (return to) work for Microsoft. Let’s be honest, innovation has never been something Microsoft has been known for.
To me, this post says a lot more about Mr. Whittaker then it does about Google. I’ve known a lot of people that have worked for both companies over the years and the type of person that both enjoys and succeeds at each company are very different. A much simpler explanation is that Mr Whittaker is much more of a “Microsoft person” and I’m sure he’ll be much happier in his new role.
I’m also guessing Google+ will benefit a lot more from Kevin Rose joining the team then they will be hurt from James Whittaker leaving.
There’s been a lot of backlash online towards the announcement that Yahoo! is suing Facebook for patent infringement. The comments seem to mostly be anti-Yahoo! as opposed to pro-Facebook. The general opinion is the patents are for bogus, simple technologies that will never survive a prior art defense, but it’s questionable whether Facebook will even bother with this defense and will most likely just settle for some nice pre-IPO shares. It’s funny, I’m in the middle of reading “In the Plex” and just read the part about how Yahoo! sued Google over some of the PPC patents it acquired from Overture right before Google went public. Notice a pattern?
Hard to be surprised here. Yahoo! is clearly a company that is grasping for straws, trying to stay relevant in the rapidly changing online world. I find it hard to feel sorry for Yahoo!. They had the first movers advantage (they were my first ever “homepage”), they’ve watched as many companies have passed them playing their own game. I’m reminded of dealing with them and Google in the early days of PPC advertising. Google was so easy to deal with, they did everything they could to make it easy to use Adwords. They went as far as setting up keyword lists for us, taking us out to lunch, and calling regularly to make sure things were going well. Yahoo!, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less helpful. The standard response we got from them felt like “we’re Yahoo!, so you’ll do it the way we say you will.” At the time all I was looking for was more traffic at a competitive cost (ie. to pay each of these companies more money). Google was charging me as much as 3x what Yahoo! was for PPC traffic and I was even willing to pay more. Google was sending me 3x as much traffic too. I just don’t understand how Yahoo! could sit still for years and watch Google. Who was running their stuff, who was building their technology?
So long Yahoo!, I’m sure you’ll hold on for the foreseeable future but continue to lose relevance to companies that are faster, smarter, and don’t resort to silly lawsuits. Running an Internet business is all about partnerships, especially a “portal” like Yahoo!. Who is going to partner with a company that acts like this?
I keep reading about Highlight and how it’s going to be the big thing at SXSW. It’s an iPhone app that connects to your Facebook account and if you leave it running it will tell you when you are near people that share “likes” and “friends” with you (that are also running the app of course).
I’m still pretty picky about what I’ll give access to my Facebook account, but I decided to give it a try and see what all the hype is about. I installed it last week while I was up in Tahoe. As I expected, nothing happened. Not even skiing at Squaw, I guess skiers aren’t up on to the “hip” new fad yet. But as soon as I pulled in to San Francisco yesterday afternoon my phone started beeping at me. By the end of the evening, after going out for dinner, I had been “near” 6 Highlight users.
I can see the attraction, it’s kinda cool to see people that share interests with you that are nearby. I could certainly see how it could be fun if you were out socializing at a bar or coffee shop. But I also think it’s a little creepy. I suggested to them that there should be an option that automatically turns it off when you are at home. It would be pretty easy for someone to figure out where your home is as this thing beeps as they walk by (I’m pretty sure I know where one user lives after walking home from the restaurant last night).
It also reminds me of a joke I played back when Facebook check in was first introduced. I was at my favorite taco place up in Tahoe and I checked in on Facebook. I noticed that another person was also checked in and saw her sitting at the table in front of the restaurant. So, I went up to her, greeted her by name, and started asking her how things had been, what she was up to, pretending like we obviously knew each other. She looked uncomfortable and played along for a few minutes before finally asking “do I know you?” I said no of course and explained that I got her name off Facebook and thought it would be funny. Yeah…spooky more like it.
I’m skeptical of applications like Highlight (it is one of many that do the same basic thing, apparently the best according to the talking heads of Silicon Valley and SXSW). Again, maybe when I’m out on Friday night at the bar, or at happy hour downtown in SOMA, but I just don’t see why I want to broadcast out where I am to strangers on a regular basis. I can already hear the stories about kids getting caught skipping school, employees getting caught taking sick days (or up a the ski hill when they were supposed to be working), and hit men using it to track down their target. I know there is a younger generation out there that is less concerned about their privacy then I am (and I generally believe privacy is a myth in this day and age), but I’m having a hard time seeing these passive tracking applications really gaining traction. It’s one thing to actively check in somewhere, it’s another to have the phone doing it for you.
Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. And all that said, I’m gonna leave it running through the weekend…
I only ate at a Chipotle for the first time less then a year ago, but I really like their food (ie, I think it tastes good). Seems like a good company to support too…
Way to go Willie!
Honestly, I’m not really all that into computer games (I bought a Wii over a year ago and it’s still sitting in its box). But I did work for a computer game company back in the 90s. During that time I had the pleasure of helping Ron Gilbert, Chris Taylor, and the Total Annihilation team develop a web presence for the game before it launched and maintain the website as the game came out and expansion packs were released on the site. I learned a lot about building and maintaining a high traffic website during those days, more than once the release of a new preview or expansion to the game crashed our poor old web servers (we initially were on a T1 line with a dual 200mhz processor server, probably about 512k ram).
So, I thought it was cool to discover this new project on Kickstarter, Double Fine Adventure. Apparently Ron has teamed up with Tim Schafer, and after not finding interest for a new point and click adventure game (looks like the old Humongous Entertainment games) from the big studios they decided to take the project to Kickstarter. They managed to raise the $400,000 they are seeking to develop the game in 8 hours! Currently, they are almost at a $1mil raised, with 33 days left to go.
I just may have to buy this game (I mean, support this Kickstarter campaign)!