Social Network Valuation
Jesse Chan | March 13th, 2008 | 2 Comments
With thousands upon thousands of social networks already launched, and more coming in the ongoing social network wars what are reasonable valuations? Is this irrational exuberance? Will the companies that buy them ever make their money back?
MySpace was acquired by News Corp for $580m in July 2005.
Facebook sold 1.6% of its shares […]
The Impact of Bandwidth Costs
Jesse Chan | January 17th, 2008 | 5 Comments
Bandwidth costs greatly impact profit margins of organizations that deliver enormous amounts of data. Several products and services that are immediately impacted by bandwidth costs are:
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Apple’s Strategy is to Partner with Leaders
Jesse Chan | December 17th, 2007 | 2 Comments
People seem to think Apple is a big, risk-taking company. That is true, but the risks they take are calculated ones. The switch from IBM PowerPC to Intel x86 chips was a big risk at the time — given the possibility of alienating Apple’s customer base. The risks to branch out their product […]
The Resiliency of Online Advertising
Jesse Chan | November 7th, 2007 | 5 Comments
The online advertising market is now finally mature. When the Internet and Web first rose to prominence in the Great Dot-com Bubble of 1995-2001, advertising was everywhere! Even annoyingly so, with pop-ups, advertising bars, etc. Have we returned to the same advertising “irrational exuberance” just 7 years later? Will the advertising market […]
Facebook Valuation
Jesse Chan | November 7th, 2007 | 21 Comments
Facebook is a well-designed social network. However, it is a closed system. This makes it difficult to determine its true worth. Microsoft invested $240 Million for a 1.6% equity stake in Facebook, thus, according to some, it values Facebook at approximately $15 Billion. Is this number a good indication of […]
OpenSocial - Social Unification
Jesse Chan | November 1st, 2007 | 2 Comments
Google laid the hammer down by announcing OpenSocial. For those out there that thought that Facebook was the next big thing and would lead to Google’s eventual downfall, think again. Google has done it again by strategically abstracting themselves from the social network wars.
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The Platform Is What Matters
Jesse Chan | October 17th, 2007 | 12 Comments
Today, Steve Jobs mentioned that the Apple iPhone will finally opening up for third-party application development in February 2008. Apple will provide a iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) for developers to create applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
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What Happens When a Social Graph is Compromised?
Jesse Chan | September 28th, 2007 | 1 Comment
Credit: Visual Complexity.
Ever had your MySpace or e-mail account hijacked? Recently, Gmail experienced a cross-scripting vulnerability. Luckily, Google was able to patch it quickly, and so far there are no reported cases of people losing information. Getting your e-mail hacked is becoming a major issue. Hackers do not usually care to […]
Social Network Wars
Jesse Chan | September 22nd, 2007 | 6 Comments
The interesting thing about social networks, like other forms of social media, is that users create the content. A social network becomes more valuable as more users join and get connected with other users. This is known as network effects.
It is not necessarily the best social network that wins — in terms […]
Mashable
Jesse Chan | September 14th, 2007 | No Comments
Mashable is the largest blog focused on social networking. Like TechCrunch, it has an amazing amount of coverage and, surprisingly, launched at nearly the same time. Mashable was launched by Pete Cashmore in July 2005. Currently, it has over 5 million page views per month, making it one of the most popular […]