Almost a year ago to the day, news surfaced that Yahoo! purportedly offered $1 billion for Facebook, an amount that seemed astronomical at the time. Some people, and I think I was one of them, suggested that Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO and guiding force behind the meteroic social networking platform, should take the money and run given the vicissitudes of the Internet.
It looks like Zuckerberg outsmarted everybody. According to the Wall Street Journal today, Microsoft is in talks to gain a 5% stake in Facebook for $300 million to $500 million, which places a value on the platform of around $10 billion. Not only that, but the Redmond software titan, which hopes to beef up its ad revenue strength by leveraging Facebook's seemingly endless possibilities, is in competition with Google.
Both powerhouses want a slice of Facebook, a contest that can only mean even more upward pressure on the service's valuation. Zuckerberg is apparently holding out for an investment stake that would put the value of the company at $15 billion.
In a year, then, Facebook has multiplied its value by at least ten-fold. Sometimes taking the money and running is a bad idea.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:44 PM | Print | Comments (0)
In what Henry Blodget deems "one of the worst business ideas we've heard in years," a company called Pudding Media is planning to offer free phone calls over VoIP. The hitch? It gets to listen to your conversations in order to sell targeted ads based on the content of the conversation.
So, let's say you're planning to sneak away from the wife with your mistress to a sweet hotel by the shore (ed. note: I don't condone this example) and you're on the phone with her making plans. Pudding Media will listen to your conversation and zap some ads to you for suntan lotion or beach umbrellas or...worse.
Pudding Media defends this creepy scenario by saying that it won't keep records of the conversation or logs of the content of the phone calls. But advertisers no doubt will want some correlation between the ad that was delivered and the content of the conversation and, presumably, the recipient of the ad.
So, the suntan lotion company will, at a minimum, know that you were talking to somebody about something having to do with the beach on a certain day. While not as invasive as a recording or a transcript, this kind of record-keeping might nevertheless be worth something to somebody some day. Perhaps the records of ads served up on your phone would be of interest to your wife as she sues for divorce.
Pudding Media claims that what they plan to do is just what Google does now -- monitor the content of emails to deliver up relevant advertising. That, in fact, is precisely why Pudding Media's plans are very, very bad for privacy, because emails are discoverable in a divorce, or any other legal proceeding, including those instigated by the government. Every ISP and email service provider and Internet companies get thousands of police investigation or litigation-related subpoenas a day for emails and other personal data.
The content of phone conversations are not subject to discovery right now unless that content is recorded. And although Pudding Media won't be keeping records of the verbatim content of its customers' calls, they'll have files that arguably can give third parties the gist of what you said.
That's not the worst part, though. What if someone got the wrong idea about what you're doing based on the advertising served. It's easy to see how this might happen and could turn out to be falsely incriminating evidence in the wrong hands.
All in all, just say no to Pudding Media.
One Laptop Per Child, the initiative that aims to provide $100 laptops to children in developing nations, is now aiming for the hearts of households in America and Canada. From November 12 through November 26, the organization, headed by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, is offering consumers the opportunity to buy two of the low-cost but fully functional devices, now known as XO computers, for $399 with the proviso that one be donated to a child in a developing nation.
The new push, called "Give 1, Get One," is a result of a shortfall in direct sales of the XO laptops to countries, such as Nigeria and Brazail, that had promised to buy them. If the campaign generates donations of nearly $40 million, then One Laptop Per Child will have 100,000 laptops to sprinkle around the globe. The goal is to seed some countries with the helpful devices, planting the idea that those nations purchase even more laptops later on.
The two-for-one donation program can be found here.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:52 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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