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Author Archives: ilkut
My stories in the FT this week
timb:
- The Facebook IPO: Zynga shows the importance of friends Facebook’s conundrum over mobile ads
- Facebook backers take stake in Zalando (a scoop)
- Google refuses to halt privacy change
- Hacker group Anonymous infiltrates call into its own case
- BSkyB in climbdown over iPlayer
- TripAdvisor censured over claims of trusted reviews
- Tech groups’ London office space doubled last year
- GOV.UK beta – one government website to rule them all
Article source: http://hijackedcontent.com/post/17145239487
The FriendFeed 70x Exit
When Facebook acquired FriendFeed in the summer of 2009, it was widely-reported to be a fairly straightforward “acqui-hire” deal. The price was more complicated.
$50 million sounded good on paper, but it was believed that only a small amount was in cash, the rest was in Facebook stock. It was Facebook stock which was just valued at $6.5 billion thanks to the DST investment. Some felt that it was overpriced, and as such, not a great deal for FriendFeed.
Boy were they wrong.
Looking at Facebook’s just-released S-1, Alyson Shontell of Business Insider noticed that in August 2009 (the month of the FriendFeed deal), Facebook issued just over 11 million shares of Class B common stock to ten individuals and one entity — this is most definitely the FriendFeed team, their individuals investors, and probably their lead VC firm, Benchmark Capital.
Today, leading up to their IPO, Facebook is worth just shy of $100 billion. Those FriendFeed shares are now worth around $330 million as a result. In other words, their August 2009 acquisition has shot up just about 7x in value since that time.
Certainly, some of the players have since sold off those shares in subsequent Facebook raises or on the secondary markets and have done well as a result. But those that didn’t have been rewarded very handsomely.
A 10x exit on paper magically turned into a 70x exit. And counting, by the way…
Now I’ll use this opportunity to once again link to the first post I ever wrote for TechCrunch in April 2009, four months before the deal: You Will Be Using FriendFeed In The Future — But It May Be Called Facebook
Article source: http://hijackedcontent.com/post/17148602560
21st Century Capital
Online reach is the next form of capital, you can invest in it with the currency of information.
Under maintenance
Status
Hi there,
I have just had to improve my site’s database, and due to lack to proper customer service I have to import the site myself. The actual content should be up by 2300 GMT 30.01.2012.
I apologize for any inconvenience, if any. In the meanwhile, please leave a note if you’d like to get in touch, for any reason.
: )
Thank you,
–
Ilkut
Style Hunt for a Concept Study
Gallery
This gallery contains 8 photos.
Started to draft a concept for a new idea. I am aiming the following to be my constraints during the process. I have used fffffound to collect these and tryied to provide sources, where possible.
Propaganda Times Rocks
Gallery
This gallery contains 5 photos.
I recently came accross a fantastic series of political posters at Flickr, by PropogandaTimes. Especially liked how simplified the terms & conditions between classes are emphasized. You can buy prints to these and many more designs at their website.
Momma Made Son Proud!
One of the items in the shows menu - via tuzekmek.com
A year and a half ago I convinced my mom to set up a blog about her cooking, which carries signs of a lifelong journey across Turkey, and her most recent stop Adana. And not long ago she is being out-reached by a tv programmer to be a guest at her show! Thousands of visitors a month, eye-filling mouth-watering piece of heaven food can’t be lying (or can they?), either way, good going mom!
You can tune in to watch the show here on 18th of January at 18oo GMT via TV link on the top right of the page.
You are advised to enjoy that show with a full stomach.
Update:
Patent Play, Directed by Microsoft.
David Hecker/AFP/Getty Images
I find it more & more intriguing that how emerging industries shape themselves and give birth to new business models, and force old players to re-invent themselves to adapt to new challenges.
Microsoft has announced that it has signed a new patent licensing agreement with LG Electronics, covering LG smartphones, tablets, and any other devices that run either Android or Google’s Chrome OS. (From Verge:Microsoft signs LG to Android patent-licensing agreement)
Patent protection agreements like these pushes Google and smartphone manufacturers to a corner as well as establishing a tone of terror to an eco-system that was meant to be open, by definition.
Google pushed Android to the ‘open’ before the very first iteration of iPhone, with the controversial escort of Eric Schmit. Back in those days, Microsoft’s work for mobile was limited to knock-off versions of Windows OS which were mainly distributed by companies like HTC (Also read MG Siegler’s – Why I hate Android for more detail on these). But after Apple & Google’s massive investments in their respective mobile-dedicated operating systems. Microsoft started to become obsolete to this trending market, and started to follow an indirect route to mobile. While Microsoft is slowly starting to push their own mobile OS with companies like HTC, they are also creating a strong presence with the lesser-complex mobile phone market with their partnership with Nokia (Follow @tomiahonen on twitter for his in-depth point of view on Elop’s involvement in Nokia).
Now, when we observe the mobile OS market; while the Android phones are leading (IOS & Windows Mobile) with the amount of most activations a day. The position of Microsoft as a challenger in the pushs them to attack to the market share piece by piece. This will allow them to;
1. Drive IP driven profit from every Android handset that’s ever sold(currently this means they are getting a cut from 70% of smartphone sales in USA alone).
2. Intimidate handset manufacturers from using what’s freely available to them (Android). As well as offering their own solution.
It’s saddening to see Google’s policy of openness for Android stands for, leave the eco-system out in the open/ unattended. They are destined to lose trust of the smartphone manufacturers as well as a great vertical for them to sell so-lo-mo based advertising. However I can’t deny how inspiring it is to see how Microsoft is attacking the herd sheep by sheep and using advantage of being the market challenger.
Bonus
This is a graph that shows which companies are in a patent war in the mobile industry, you can see how agressively Microsoft is positioned. You can also find the interactive version of this graph here.
Why Facebook is Hammering Nails to it’s Own Cuffin One Sponsored Ad at a Time.
There is a new interruption in town. They are called ‘sponsored story ads’, and they work very subtlely in order to take advantage of users’ interest in the content that mattered to them the most.
Avoidable (away from the immediate sight and quite) ads on content that is relevant.
That was what Facebook offered until 2012, everybody on this network knowingly or blindly accepted everything that was wrong about Facebook. Only for one single reason to find an interact with people that’s in our lives, and see what they are up to. This defined a new form of entertainment ‘sharing’ and browsing through what’s shared.
But what’s happening now is that at the top of the content that’s been made relevant to me by my network, I get to see a sponsored message. These advertisements are not presented very similarly to the content they are interested. So its very likely that users will be receiving the sponsored message (initially) considering it being from their social network. I understand the whole promise of ‘if someone likes a brand they would also like to hear from them’ This is why there are fan pages, if I care about a brand I still get to see what they have to promote or I can see their pages for more information. No one needs their news feed ‘estate’ to be sold because they liked a brand. Why would I like a brand if, they get in the way of me interacting with Facebook? (Seeing what my friends are up-to?)
Facebook now as the behemoth representative of what a social network is, now seeing the potential demand available in the advertising industry, and trying to benefit from it. It should have been the advertising industry who is learning to speak ‘Facebook’ not the other way around.
Also;
Sponsored Story Ads: is just a term to prettify the fact that “Hey, i am selling your time, and making money of it.” Ads are always paid for (means they are already sponsored), calling them ‘sponsored story’ is just the mere effort of putting a make-up on it.