TiesMorskate.nl

Great post on TechCrunch, a must-read if you are into the G+ vs FB debate. A quote from Zuckerberg from last night’s boring announcement of videochat (wasn’t that available 3 years ago on google talk?).

The definition of groups is . . . everyone inside the group knows who else is in the group

If you don’t understand this jab you should definitely read the post on Techcrunch!

The Google+ marketing has been so successful that even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has opened a Google+ account. “Why are people so surprised that I’d have a Google account?” Zuckerberg recently texted to tech blogger Robert Scoble.

Many people are wondering: Will Google+ dethrone Facebook just like Facebook dethroned MySpace?

1. Facebook so big it will fail (IPO & valuation)
2. Another nail in Facebook’s coffin (FB Games & Credits)
3. First sign’s of Facebook’s stagnation (lack of growth)

De Merkelijkheid wrote a great article about the ad that was featured yesterday on the back of the FD business paper:

So the main question is: Why would &Samhoud want to compete directly with McKinsey for their clients? If they truly believe in their positioning and distinctiveness &Samhoud would not need to be concerned when a couple of Excel Emperors enters their field of expertise. Or is it something else?

Full article

And another tech company going for an IPO very soon; Zynga. Developer of Facebook games like Farmville and Empire and Allies, commanding millions of daily player on the world’s biggest social network. With the IPO, Zynga would value itself somewhere between $15 – $20 billion. By comparison, Electronic Arts is worth only $ 8 billion, and Activision Blizzard has a market cap of about $ 13 billion. So, once again, I feel an IPO coming up that is too highly prices. I understand; it’s climbing together with the huge Facebook valuation, but still, the current major publishers have better and more sustainable businesses than Zynga has right now.

Some arguments? Activision Blizzard has 12 million subscribers for World of Warcraft, and that’s for the past 5 years, Blizzard’s development studio has the #1 IP’s in the world and they actually have a trackrecord of being able to adapt to change; what’s Zynga going to do when Facebook fails? Which I know for certain it will.

VentureBeat wrote a more objective article about it here.

A nice new initiative, supported by among others Vodafone; Appsterdam. The movement, started by Amsterdam based app developers and spearheaded by Mike Lee is aiming to make Amsterdam the Silicon Valley of Europe for App builders. The description on the site says it all:

If you want to make movies, go to Hollywood.
If you want to make musicals, go to Broadway.
If you want to make apps, go to Appsterdam.

Sofa will try to enable the movement by offering office space and sponsoring events and speakers while Vodafone is just a general sponsor (pays for drinks!). But what’s funny is that this Amsterdam based company has just been acquired by Facebook and will move to Palo Alto. Which is quite strange because Mike Lee was just explaining why California is not the best environment for a movement like this because of the ridiculous expenses, over-funding and general system that has failed (homelessness and income gaps).

I think it’s an interesting movement and I hope they succeed. I hate the iOS focus (Apple) that they communicate and I think that in order to be successful Appsterdam should be platform independent.

My recent post about the latest tech IPO; Pandora, already detailed doubts around the succesful IPO in an industry under siege. And this prediction seems to have come true.

The post-IPO price of $26 per share on Wednesday saw a quick drop tp #17.42 at the end of the day. Currently the share is trading for $13.26 according to Yahoo! Finance.

Pandora is facing significant losses for the second quarter, which doesn’t give much hope for continued high performance. The only success story up untill now is that of LinkedIn which is currently trading at $68.27, up by $23 from it’s IPO share price of about $45.

I will not keep the closest eye on ‘P’s’ performance but if there is any big news I’ll report.

I am a firm believer that Facebook will not be as big as it is today in a few years. I’ve said it before in at least two posts (found below) and the past few days the first signs are surfacing.

Inside Facebook reports a very diffuse image of Facebook’s growth/performance. The graph in this post shows the various measurements by the main sources of statistics.

Facebook has made a statement on these numbers:

From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50 per cent of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.

I believe the reason for this statement is not that they want to correct a wrong interpretation of statistics but that they want to save their upcoming IPO. I think the expected valuation is way too high and I hope the market will grow to be more skeptical. I do believe Facebook could be a valuable investment, but that should be at a much lower valuation.

My previous two posts detailing why I think Facebook will not be the leading media company it’s clearly aiming to be:

1. Facebook so big it will fail (IPO & valuation)
2. Another nail in Facebook’s coffin (FB Games & Credits)