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06 Dec 2010 09:50

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Tech: Did Groupon make smart move by not selling to Google?

  • what Groupon, the quickly-growing deals site, reportedly declined a buyout offer from Google for a whopping $6 billion over the weekend. That’s a lot of money to turn down.
  • why The company’s CEO, Andrew Mason was concerned about the strategic direction under Google and what would happen to his loyal staff. So an IPO’s next. source
  • » A mixed record for startups: Some tech companies that have passed on the major buyout offers, like Facebook (which passed on a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo! way back in 2006), have only gotten much larger on their own. Other tech giants that missed the buyout opportunity – Yahoo! turned down an epic deal from Microsoft in 2008 and nosedived ever since. Other companies who have taken the buyout have had success stories (YouTube, which is a cornerstone of Google’s offerings) and precipitous declines (MySpace, which is trying to make a comeback; and Bebo, which sold to AOL and then lost nearly all of its value when it was sold again a couple years later). Which is to say, it’s too soon to know whether Groupon screwed up here.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Oct 2010 10:21

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Tech: MySpace’s new redesign: Better than that crappy logo

  • This may lose us cool points, but we hate the logo and love the design of the new MySpace site. It’s clear that they actually gave designers a lot more freedom, and now it looks like somewhere we wouldn’t be embarrassed to find ourselves. We also hear that they’re limiting the amount of freedom you can have with individual page design, to which we say about freaking time! Leave the design to the designers, or at least set a high bar like Tumblr does. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Oct 2010 22:26

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Biz: To our friends in marketing and rebranding: Great work this week

  • Earlier this week: Gap The Gap, an ultra-iconic, ultra-basic brand of basic clothing, decided to redo its logo to look like every other logo on the Internet. People hate it. The company tries to crowdsource a new logo. People complain about that too.
  • Today: MySpace Apparently looking to up the ante, MySpace takes a cue from AOL and redesigns their logo in such a way that it can use secondary art. Too bad they took out the word “space” and replaced it with a madlib. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 May 2010 21:44

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Tech: “Fuzzy Orb”: Facebook has nothing to worry about, guys

  • Currently in the upper reaches of the Google Trends “Hot Searches” is this incredibly awful-looking site called “Fuzzy Orb,” which promises a more private social networking experience but in reality makes us seriously afraid of getting a virus. It’s getting force-fed onto Twitter right now. Let this be a reminder to you, kids – Facebook may have privacy issues from time to time, but this is the alternative. And it ain’t pretty. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Mar 2010 10:27

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Tech: Ha! MySpace still has hope of being successful

  • “We do not want to stay at 100 million (users) or 120 million. We want to grow to 200 million or 300 million.” MySpace, which has had a bit of a rough year, with management shakeups all over the place and a significant decline in influence, plans to relaunch its site to focus on media and music. The goal? To recover some of the audience that it lost. They want to be the first social networking site that regains its popularity. Our take: Don’t call it a comeback, because it’s not happening. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Feb 2010 11:52

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Tech: Tom doesn’t use MySpace anymore. Just like us!

  • 1/24 last time Tom Anderson, former MySpace President, logged into his MySpace account
  • 12/25 last time Tom updated his status, to wish us all a happy holiday; it’s Valentine’s day
  • no Tom isn’t your first friend if you join MySpace anymore; “MySpace Today” now is source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Feb 2010 09:48

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Tech: For teens, old hotness: Blogs. Not hot at all: Twitter. Hot: MySpace?

  • 73% of teens use social networking, a number that keeps going up
  • 18% of teens blogged in 2009, down from 28% in 2006
  • 70% of teens own a computer, most of those being laptops
  • The most popular site for teens? MySpace still, surprisingly. Facebook is generally more popular among adults, and just 8 percent of teens tweet, even though 19 percent of adults do. The average teenager is the modern equivalent of a ’90s AOL user. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

13 Dec 2009 10:37

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Tech: MySpace screws over its musicians big time with iMeem deal

  • lame Despite music being a huge bedrock of the company’s business model, MySpace paid less than $1 million for bankrupt iMeem, which ran the dead pay-for-music service SNOCAP (founded, BTW, by Napster founder Shawn Fanning).
  • lamer MySpace did NOT buy iMeem’s liability to pay royalties to musicians who used, umm, MySpace to sell music. Some artists haven’t been paid for over a year. And some of these artists are owed a lot of money. This is bull#)&!. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Dec 2009 21:29

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Tech: Wear a seat belt: Google’s real-time search means new results, fast

Google now has Twitter, Facebook and MySpace in its searches. Which means that you’re bound to get your hair tussled by the results whooshing by. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Nov 2009 23:55

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Tech: News Corp. admits to screwing up Myspace pretty badly

  • I think we got spread a bit wide and thin and what we’re focusing on is sort of the heart of our business going forward really being a social network around key content. We’re not trying to compete with Facebook or beat Twitter. We’re trying to create a unique experience.
  • News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey • Describing the ball of (#^(@-up the company’s 2005 acquisition of MySpace turned into. They let the site get lazy and fat and flabby. Now they’re just trying to turn it into a music and entertainment company or something. Tom is probably crying himself to sleep knowing that most of his friends are on Facebook now. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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