Is Facebook Really Worth $100 billion?

Is Facebook Really Worth $100 billion?

Today Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site with an active user base of over 750 million users making it the largest website in the world in terms of user base but, Facebook has long since evolved into substantially more than just being a website and in this article we’ll take an in-depth look at the social media giants evolution and why some are placing such a high valuation on it.

Facebook has grown so big in just seven years that going public is inevitable; the target date for their IPO is early 2012. The social networking giant currently has approximately 2.4 billion shares outstanding, according to the latest data from Sharepost, an online marketplace that links private companies and prospective investors.

Facebook has raised $2.2 billion in funding since its founding in 2004 and with estimated revenues of $4 billion for the year 2011, it is currently being valued at somewhere between $70-100 billion according to various firms.

Read More.....

Rethinking the Marketing Funnel in a World of Social Media

As the adoption of social media, mobile computing and new digital behaviors continues to deepen, businesses today are faced with the challenge of rethinking many of their basic strategic paradigms. In thinking about customers, businesses are facing a shift from a paradigm of individual customers to one of customer networks. At the same time, many models for marketing need to be updated as well.

From "The Network Is Your Customer," by David Rogers (Yale University Press, 2011) www.davidrogers.biz

Rethinking the Marketing Funnel in a World of Social Media

Five reasons Android can fail

ZDNet - I use Android every day both on my Droid II smartphone and my Barnes & Noble Nook Color e-reader/tablet. I like it a lot. But, I also have concerns about how it’s being developed and being presented to customers.

Before jumping into why I think Android faces trouble in the long run, let me mention one problem I don’t see as standing in Android’s way: The Oracle lawsuits Yes, Oracle claims that Google owes them billions in damages for using unlicensed Java technology in Android’s core Dalvik virtual machine.

I follow patent lawsuits and here’s what going to happen with this one. It will take years and millions of dollars in legal fees, but eventually Google will either beat Oracle’s claims or pay them hefty licensing fees. So, yes, one way or the other Google, and to a lesser extent Oracle, will spend hundreds of millions on this matter before it’s done. But, so what?

Read More.....
Five reasons Android can fail

The Power Of Pull

What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, notwithstanding the synapses that fire in your brain that make you check your email, your Facebook feed, or decide to research something on Google. In other words, people pull content themselves, rather than having that content be pushed — or foisted — upon them.

The best way of looking at consumer web applications is as a complex stack of “pulls” and “pushes.” Lest these terms be confused with an earlier generation of push: a “pull” is an unsolicited action by a consumer, whereas a “push” is a solicitation by a seller/producer. The consumer ultimately “pulls” from a mobile phone or computer. Everything else is “pushed” to the consumer, through ads, e-mails or other marketing efforts from companies eager to get business and traffic.

Read More............
The Power Of Pull

Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO?

The IPO window is now wide open, with everyone from Zynga to Groupon rushing towards it. Nobody knows how long that window will stay open (rule of thumb is 18 months), so better go public while you can. But today’s IPO filing from Zynga came particularly fast. According to one source, the actual writing of the 150+ page S-1 document was one of the fastest documentation processes for an IPO of this size, only taking two to three weeks.

CEO Mark Pincus abruptly cancelled a planned appearance at the D9 conference at the beginning of June, adding to speculation that was when Zynga decided internally to go ahead with the IPO. The three-week period referenced above was the time between what is known as the first “org meeting” with bankers and the final document filed today.

Read More....
Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO?

Google’s Six-Front War

Techcrunch - While the tech world is buzzing about the launch and implications of Google’s new social network, Google+, it’s worth noting that Google isn’t just in a war with Facebook, it’s at war with multiple companies across multiple industries. In fact, Google is fighting a multi-front war with a host of tech giants for control over some of the most valuable pieces of real estate in technology. Whether it’s social, mobile, browsing, local, enterprise, or even search, Google is being attacked from all angles. And make no mistake about it, they are fighting back and fighting back, hard. Entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Ben Horowitz laid the groundwork for this in his post Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO, saying Larry Page “seems to have determined that Google is moving into war and he clearly intends to be a wartime CEO. This will be a profound change for Google and the entire high-tech industry.” Horowitz is exactly right.

Read More.....
Google’s Six-Front War

I officially love Google+...Too bad I can't dump Facebook

I think Robert Scoble may have said it best in his review of Google+:

…it’s clear Google has turned a corner. They have now proven to everyone that they can do social and get on the playing field.

But they haven’t yet proven that they can convince your mom to use it…

He goes on to not only talk about how much he loves Google+, but also how he’s more than happy to have it remain the exclusive domain of the technorati (I’m paraphrasing, of course, but you get the point - He, like many of us at ZDNet and the broader sphere of geekdom likes the especially geeky features of Google’s new social tool). It actually harkens back to the early days of Gmail when it was invite-only and only the coolest of nerds had accounts. It was different and we were the only ones who “got it.”

Read More...........
I officially love Google+...Too bad I can't dump Facebook

Polycom Recognized as 2011 Microsoft Unified Communications Innovation Partner of the Year

Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), a global leader in unified communications (UC), was named the recipient of 2011 Microsoft Unified Communications Innovation Partner of the Year Award, for the company’s leadership in delivering innovations that provide powerful, enterprise-grade UC and visual collaboration solutions for customers. Polycom is being honored for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. Polycom will be officially honored at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2011 next month during the Vision keynote and at the WPC 2011 Award Winners Executive Luncheon.

Read More....
Polycom Recognized as 2011 Microsoft Unified Communications Innovation Partner of the Year

CA Technologies Delivers Next Wave of Mainframe 2.0 Products and Programs

Responding to continued customer needs to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their mainframe platform, CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) today announced enhanced products and programs aimed at reducing costs, simplifying management and improving operational efficiency.

“Lowering the total cost of computing is a priority for all IT organizations,” said Dayton Semerjian, general manager, Mainframe, CA Technologies. “The latest Mainframe 2.0 products and programs help them achieve that goal on the Mainframe by simplifying management, exploiting specialty processors and delivering services that drive operational efficiencies.”

Read More.....
CA Technologies Delivers Next Wave of Mainframe 2.0 Products and Programs

Big Data: The New Frontier of Analytics

It used to be if you wanted to run a big database, you got yourself a big computer. For a really big database, that meant a big mainframe or a cluster of hefty servers. But today, businesses and researchers alike are interested in vast collections of data that would swamp even a supercomputer and overwhelm any standard database management software.

Welcome to the world of big data. The exact definition of big data is a bit slippery, but Wikipedia does quite well: "Data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set." Examples of such data sets range from billions of Google searches conducted by millions of users to the data collected by millions of weather sensors around the globe to all the purchases of British supermarket shoppers.

Read More.....
Big Data: The New Frontier of Analytics

New World of Work Drives the Next Generation of Windows PCs

The world of enterprise computing looks a lot different than it did 10 years ago, driven largely by the demands of an evolving workforce. Increasingly mobile employees, demand for improved efficiencies and productivity, streamlined collaboration and communication, and a need to access and manage sensitive data are the business trends driving technology innovation across the PC ecosystem.

As a result, Microsoft is working with manufacturers to design PCs that support work from anywhere more easily and more securely — whether that means staying put in an office, running a small business or globetrotting from one business meeting to another, laptop in hand.

Read More.....
New World of Work Drives the Next Generation of Windows PCs

Global software market will grow by 8.2% in 2011 to hit $267 billion

The global business software market will burst into life this year, when it will grow by 8.2% to hit $267 billion, according to Ovum.

In a new forecast*, the independent technology analyst predicts that recovery from the global economic downturn will begin in earnest this year for the sector, which did not grow at all in 2010.

The promising outlook means the business software sector will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7% during the next four years, reaching revenues of $358 billion in 2015. The strong growth is driven by exploding volumes of data, increased enterprise mobility, the transition to cloud computing models, and the emerging markets.

Read More.....
Global software market will grow by 8.2% in 2011 to hit $267 billion