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Google Secretly Invested $100+ Million In Zynga, Preparing To Launch Google Games

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, FaceBook, google, internet, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some news from Techcrunch.

“Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The company has raised somewhere around half a billion dollars in venture capital in the last year alone, including $150 million from Softbank Capital last month and $180 million late last year from Digital Sky Technologies, Tiger Global, Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The Softbank announcement was never officially confirmed by the company, however, and the Google investment was likely part of that deal as well.

The investment part of the deal closed a month ago or so. A larger strategic partnership is still in process.

The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures, say our sources, and it’s a highly strategic deal. Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see PayPal being replaced with Google Checkout as the primary payment option. Zynga is supposedly PayPal’s biggest single customer, and Google is always looking for ways to make Google Checkout relevant.

And there’s more. These same sources are saying that Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 will be a stunning $350 million, half of which is operating profit. Zynga is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011, say our sources. This blows previous estimates out of the water.

Zynga continues to work on high level strategic business development deals. The reason these deals are so attractive to companies like Yahoo and now Google is this – Zynga allows them to rebuild the massive social graph, currently controlled by Facebook. For whatever reason people love to play these games and get passionately addicted to them, coming back day after day. That’s helped Facebook become what it is today. Google, Yahoo and others want some of that magic to rub off on them, too.”

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U.S. Facebook growth sputters in June

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

What goes up must stall and… Here is an interesting article on Facebook´s growthfigures from SF Gate.

“The number of new Facebook users in the United States dropped dramatically in June, with the popular social networking site losing more than a quarter of a million regular users between ages 18 and 44, according to figures collected by a market research website.

Inside Facebook, which analyzes user data that the social network provides to advertisers, noted that in the last 31 days Facebook registered 320,800 new active members – first-time users and those who logged into Facebook for the first time in over a month. The figure is notably low compared with the astronomical 7.8 million new active users registered in May, which represented a 6.7 percent monthly growth.

According to the latest company figures, Facebook has 500 million registered users.

“In terms of the overall trends in Facebook’s U.S. growth, this was a flatter month than usual for Facebook, which has seen about 3 to 4 percent monthly growth in the U.S. on average over the last year,” said Inside Facebook founder Justin Smith.

In contrast, June’s monthly growth was only 0.3 percent.

What’s more, 253,840 American members ages 18 to 44 didn’t even log on to Facebook in the same 31-day period. The largest group – more than 100,000 – was women ages 26 through 34.

Analysts believe it’s too early to say exactly what these numbers mean because a month’s data is not enough to detect patterns. The decline might be something as simple as a glitch, a reporting mistake from Facebook or a seasonal fluctuation.

Ray Valdes, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, said many people travel, graduate and get married during the summer, which may keep them away from their social networks.

“Less excitingly, the negative growth could simply be a blip. But in the years we’ve been tracking the demographic data, we’ve rarely seen a dip like this, so we would tend to favor the idea of a root cause,” Inside Facebook’s Chris Morrison wrote on Tuesday.

The data could also be a reflection of the saturation of the U.S. market, which Smith said they have been anticipating for some time. According to Inside Facebook, the social network giant had achieved a 41.1 percent market penetration as of the end of last month.

And there’s even less room to grow among young adults in the United States, said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with technology research firm Forrester.

“It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if we have seen growth among users between ages 18 to 34 reach its maximum,” he said. “Of course, once you do that, the only way to go is down.”

Bernoff said the decline in new active users might be a calculated consequence of a shift in Facebook’s growth strategy. For one, given the saturation of the young adult market, Facebook has been focusing on attracting users in older demographics.

“Growth among people 35 years old and up is always accompanied by a decline among people 18 to 34,” he said. “The reason is quite simple: Once your dad is in there, it’s not cool anymore.””

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Andreessen Horowitz To Win The Foursquare Investor Badge

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, FaceBook, google, Investments, Market research, Microsoft, mobile 2.0, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, Venture Capital, Web 2.0, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good Techcrunch article about Foursquare.

“A months long fundraising process for Foursquare is in its last stages, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and Andreessen Horowitz looks to be preparing to check-in to Foursquare to take an investor badge.

The company has delayed committing to new venture capital as they considered buyout offers – negotiations went deep with both Yahoo and Facebook, and possibly Microsoft. The Yahoo discussions ended weeks ago, and Facebook passed on an acquisition earlier this week, we’ve heard.

That means the company is raising that big new round of financing. And a slew of venture capitalists, including Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Spark Capital and First Round Capital were all rumored to competing heavily for inclusion despite the $80 million or so valuation, say our sources.

Andreessen Horowitz, despite rumors that they were pulling out of discussions with the company weeks ago over concerns that too much information was leaking to the press, is the last venture capitalist standing. The fact that founding partner Marc Andreessen is on the board of directors of Facebook, a key partner or competitor of Foursquare, may be the factor that put them over the top.

Existing investors OATV and Union Square Ventures will also participate heavily in the new round, we’ve heard. In the meantime they’ve likely already loaned additional capital to the company.”

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Viacom copyright suit against YouTube dismissed

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, internet, Market research, Marketing, mobile 2.0, Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from SF Gate.

“A federal judge dismissed Viacom Inc.’s landmark copyright lawsuit against YouTube on Wednesday, a major victory that potentially reinforces legal protections for a wide array of online companies.

The decision doesn’t necessarily spell the end of a legal drama that’s already played out for more than three years, because the New York media giant promptly promised to appeal the decision. If ultimately upheld, it may also make it more difficult for content creators to protect their work in the digital era.

The $1 billion suit was widely viewed as a test case for the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. The law states that Internet sites, hosts and providers generally aren’t legally liable for the behavior of their users, as long as they remove infringing or illegal content when properly notified.

In this case, YouTube users allegedly uploaded tens of thousands of unauthorized copyrighted clips from Viacom-owned television shows like “The Colbert Report” and “South Park.” The owner of MTV and Comedy Central sued YouTube in March 2007, arguing that the San Bruno company knew the clips were posted without permission and failed to take them down.

In court filings, Viacom argued that YouTube fueled its meteoric rise by fostering piracy, and cited a series of e-mails that suggested its co-founders were well aware of copyrighted material on the site. Largely because of YouTube’s rapid growth, Google Inc. bought the company less than a year after it was formed for $1.65 billion.

Obligations met

In the 30-page summary judgment issued Wednesday, however, Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected Viacom’s argument that YouTube had an obligation to remove material because of a “general awareness” that unauthorized content was posted on its site. He said the protections of the digital copyright act aren’t dependent on a publisher monitoring its service, as long as it responds appropriately when notified of copyrighted content by rights holders.

He added that YouTube had met these obligations, noting that when Viacom asked that it take down about 100,000 videos in early 2007, virtually all of them were removed by the next business day.

In granting YouTube’s motion for summary judgment, Stanton essentially said Viacom’s legal arguments were too weak for a trial to proceed.

“In the main, it’s a victory for innovation,” said Jennifer Urban, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley. “It’s a victory for the companies that are creating new kinds of technologies … that allow people to speak and create on the Internet.”

She added that it clearly places the onus on content owners to track and request the removal of unauthorized uses of their works, which is precisely what worries many media companies. Monitoring the Internet for infringing uses of large catalogs of movies, television shows and music is an enormous and never-ending challenge.

“We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress, and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions,” Viacom said. “We intend to seek to have these issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible.”

Content partnerships

Since the case was filed, YouTube has entered a series of partnerships with major content companies. It appeased them largely by building a sophisticated tool that detects and identifies copyrighted media.

The Viacom suit covered content on the site only before the Content ID tool was put in place in late 2007. The media company participated in tests of the system, providing thousands of content files, according to documents that were unsealed in the course of the lawsuit.”

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Google puts Apple on notice over mobile ads

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, google, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from SF Gate.

“Google Inc. executive Mike Steib is courting customers such as Progressive Corp. and touting tools that let marketers create the snazzy, interactive ads that rival Apple Inc. has been using to snatch mobile-ad business.

“We have a significant investment in mobile, and competition is going to push us to be really, really good,” Steib said in an interview the day Google closed its $750 million acquisition of AdMob, which places ads on mobile programs and Web pages.

As Google’s head of mobile advertising, Steib leads the effort to build his company’s next $1 billion business from sales of ads on wireless devices – and lessen its dependence on Web-search ads. With a team based in a former cookie factory in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, Steib is striving to persuade advertisers they will win over more consumers by working with Mountain View-based Google than with Apple.

“It’s safe to say Google will respond to iAd and respond very strongly,” said Michael Collins, chief executive officer at Joule, a mobile-ad agency that’s part of WPP Plc. “They have too many assets to pull from, too many arrows in their quiver.”

Staying ahead may not be easy, now that Apple is luring advertisers to iAd, a service that places ads inside applications that run on its iPhones and other mobile devices. Apple has sold more than $60 million in advertising on iAd since it was announced in April, CEO Steve Jobs said at a conference Monday. That represents about half of the mobile display-ad market for 2010, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Tension between the companies escalated Wednesday when AdMob accused Apple of barring developers from using Google ad services to create ads for the iPhone – a move that may threaten AdMob’s ability to get revenue from the device.

This year, AdMob and Google together may generate more than $100 million in U.S. mobile-ad sales, according to IDC in Framingham, Mass.

Apple won business as Google awaited a green light from the Federal Trade Commission for its $750 million AdMob acquisition, announced in November, Joule’s Collins said.

Introducing iAd “gave Apple the opportunity to suck all the oxygen out of the room,” he said. “Apple is on a tear these days with the iPhone, iAd, the iPad.”

As sales of smart phones rise, more users are viewing ads on handheld devices in addition to – and sometimes instead of – computers or televisions. Spending on mobile ads in the United States is expected to reach almost $500 million this year, from $220 million in 2009, according to IDC.

In the next three years, as much as one-third of global digital ad spending will be devoted to mobile, according to Alexandre Mars, who oversees mobile ads for Publicis Groupe SA.

“You’re seeing advertisers who see mobile marketing as a significant business driver,” said Steib, who joined Google in 2007 from NBC Universal. “This is a big part of the conversation.”

Google’s strategy includes creating tools that help developers embed videos and make ads more interactive, similar to what Apple’s iAd can do. Google also wants to sell more ads tied to a user’s location and deliver coupons for nearby deals, said Steib, Google’s director of emerging platforms.

The company is keen to make money from delivering coupons for nearby businesses and selling ads alongside a tool that lets customers take photos of an item and search for it on the Web, said Steib.

That way, a bistro could offer free appetizers to a nearby customer who’s searching for a place to eat, and the user could later see where to buy a bottle of the wine paired with dinner. The restaurant and wine seller would pay Google for the ads.

Google and AdMob together had 21 percent of the U.S. mobile ad market in 2009, said IDC analyst Karsten Weide. Quattro Wireless, which Apple acquired in January after losing out on AdMob to Google, had 7 percent.

‘Short-term disruption’

Steib says iAd may create “short-term disruption.” Still, Google can contain the fallout in part because it has experience letting customers manage campaigns on multiple Web sites and it can change ads on the fly based on performance, said Steib, who himself is an avid user of Apple products. He owns about a dozen iPods, iPhones and the new iPad.

Bank of America Corp. went from buying an occasional mobile campaign to paying Phonevalley, the agency run by Publicis’ Mars, a $1 million annual retainer. Google’s AdMob is among the ad-placement companies used by the financial institution, the largest U.S. bank by assets.

“We did take a hard look at iAd and we passed on it,” said Kathryn Condon, a vice president of digital marketing at Bank of America. She said she’s not convinced it will provide more value than AdMob and the other companies the bank uses.”

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