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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Alternative Ways To Invest In Facebook

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is some interesting ideas from SF Chronicle.

“Founded in February 2004, Facebook, Inc., the company behind the social networking website of the same name, is a privately held company in Palo Alto, California. While you may think that only qualified investors who have a net worth of at least $1 million have an opportunity to buy private company shares, investing in companies and funds that are closely aligned with and/or associates of Facebook, is actually a viable option.

The Nielsen Company
As said by John Burbank, CEO of The Nielsen Company (online division), a successful research marketing business that offers trade information to global marketers, “Facebook is an increasingly vital link between consumers and brands.”

Thus, it was only natural for the two companies to form a strategic alliance in order to determine important statistics to meet business goals, such as increasing Facebook’s advertising profits.

While Nielsen is privately held, contact their Investor Relations team, easily accessible on their site, for information on their 2009 investment results and additional information.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)
Not only does Microsoft have a 1.6% stake in Facebook ($240 million), they have also extended their relationship globally and are Facebook’s current ad-serving partner, having the right to sell advertising directly on Facebook, while providing full access to Bing search characteristics.

Bing’s search engine provides a substitute for Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) after Microsoft beat out Google to claim a stake in Facebook. According to Bing General Manager Jon Tinter, “Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook.” This partnership continues to aid in Facebook’s traffic growth.

Additionally, since the majority of Microsoft’s business is the development and sale of unrelated software products, if Facebook’s market value results in a drastic change, it would have only a modest impact on Microsoft’s share price. Investing in Microsoft shares might be a safe option to play.

Retail Companies
Retail companies have successfully marketed and advertised through Facebook. According to a 2008 Rosetta study, 59% of 100 popular retailers developed Facebook pages to advertise their brands. Facebook pages bring customers that may not have been aware of the companies without it. Additionally, it is easy to update, appears in search engines, and accepts live feeds from blog pages.

Well-reputed retail companies that use Facebook to advertise and also have public stock options include Saks Fifth Avenue (NYSE: SKS), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), J.Crew (NYSE: JCG), Gymboree (Nasdaq: GYMB), Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) and many others. (What people buy and where they shop can provide valuable information about the economy. Lear more in Using Consumer Spending As A Market Indicator.)

SharesPost
SharesPost is a private equity market; it shows available company stock and completed deals, gives estimates on the worth of private companies, spots which companies are backed by venture capital, and promotes trading.

Chief Executive Greg Brogger says SharesPost “…facilitat[es] the sale of equities in companies that have not been able to unlock their stock value because the initial public offering (IPO) market has virtually shut down.” SharesPost boasts private shares and currently values Facebook at almost $12 billion.

Invest in Facebook’s Competitors
Although Facebook is reportedly the number one social media service, competition still exists presently and possibly in the future. Similar companies, such as Myspace.com, are publicly owned.

Buying a share in a competitor follows the logic that an increase in the social media market could quite potentially raise the market for all competitors in the industry. When investing in social media, pick those with a known record of increasing sales and profit.

Look Out for a Facebook IPO
There is the possibility that Facebook might have a future IPO, which would make it one of the biggest in recent memory. The current value of Facebook has been estimated at $11.5 billion, but if it goes public, the company is projected to be worth more than twice that. As Zuckerberg told The Wall Street Journal: “We’re going to go public eventually, because that’s the contract that we have with our investors and our employees.”

Some say Facebook’s postponement of an IPO helps to evade the associated hassles, including investor analysts, shareholders and stakeholders, and the media. But Facebook does not need the money. According to Zuckerberg, “if you don’t need that capital, then all the pressures are different, and the motivations [to go public] are not there in the same way.””
Read more here.

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Do Companies Like Facebook Still Need To Go Public?

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on March 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from The Big Money.

“That’s not the frame of this insightful Wall Street Journal story, but it could be. Journal reporter Ben Worthen flags the widening gap between cash-rich tech companies—Cisco (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Oracle (ORCL)—and everybody else. By keeping tens of billions of cash on their balance sheets, Worthen writes, “these companies can afford to take risks that smaller companies can’t at a time when the economy remains fragile.”

This notion is so far outside of conventional wisdom that it can’t even get in the same room. For decades we’ve been told that the nimble startup would run circles around the corporate dinosaur. But Worthen’s piece is a great reminder that a crucial way for companies to obtain and maintain their advantage in rapidly developing fields is through acquisition. And in order to make the right acquisitions, you need currency (cash is best, but stock is also a valid currency under the right conditions).

This issue is too often ignored in discussions of a Facebook IPO, which the company’s investors have publicly ruled out for 2010. There is a line of thinking that says that Facebook is already flush with cash, and since it is now cash-flow positive, it ought to be able to stay that way. Other tech startups, too, argue that open-source technology and cloud computing keep their costs substantially lower than those of their ‘90s counterparts and therefore they don’t need to go public.”

Read the complete article here.

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Microsoft’s Ballmer: “For the cloud, we’re all in”

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting article from SFgate.com.

“Microsoft is betting the cloud will deliver it and its customers the most opportunities for innovation and development. And according to CEO Steve Ballmer, five key reasons are driving the company’s confidence in — and technology strategy for — cloud computing in the coming years.

Microsoft’s 2010 task: Make the cloud clear

“For the cloud, we’re all in,” said Ballmer during an address and live Webcast at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering in Seattle. “Literally, I will tell you we are betting our company on it.”

In addition to Microsoft’s Azure platform, Ballmer said the cloud and its potential is behind Microsoft’s technology strategy and that the company, while perhaps behind in some areas such as phones, is with the market leaders when it comes to cloud computing.

“The cloud fuels Microsoft and Microsoft fuels the cloud,” Ballmer said. “We have 40,000 people employed building software around the globe, about 70% of the folks that work for us are doing something designed exclusively for the cloud or designed to serve one of the five points I spoke about today. A year from now, it would be 90%. How we are thinking about delivering it really builds from this cloud base.”

During the hour-long address, Ballmer detailed the five key dimensions of the cloud driving Microsoft, the first being that “the cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities.” That means it provides people the opportunity to create and share content “instantaneously,” but also requires a responsibility around privacy and confidentiality. “It is a dimension of the cloud that needs all of our best work in my opinion,” Ballmer said.

The second key dimension is around learning, what the cloud learns about the world and about users, bringing data together to enable better decisions.

But the cloud, like many disruptive technologies, is not a static entity, he suggested. “The cloud needs to learn about you and needs to keep learning and figure out about the world that has been described virtually,” Ballmer said. “The cloud itself needs to learn, it has to represent the real world and keep getting smarter and better to help me learn.”

The next dimension Ballmer detailed involves how the cloud “enhances your social and professional interactions” and enables people to connect on multi-faceted levels.

“The ability to really connect people and help people connect is just beginning to be tapped,” Ballmer said.

Using an example of Xbox Live tapping into British television service Sky, Simon Atwell, senior program manager at Microsoft’s XBox division, showed how users could virtually watch TV together, interact via prompts and connect socially using the gaming platform, without actually having to be playing games the entire time. While the demonstration suffered from “4,700 miles of geographic latency,” Atwell was able to display the experience in part.”

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Goodbye PC, hello smartphone

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on February 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good commentary from San Jose Mercury News around Microsoft´s new mobile launch.

“The era of the PC’s dominance is officially over. We have crossed over into the age of mobile computing.

This transition has been building momentum for a while. Some might argue that the iPhone was the dawn of this era. Others might say it was really the rise of the BlackBerry. Or maybe even Android, Google’s mobile operating system. Good cases could be made that any one of these marked the start of the mobile era.

But Microsoft’s announcement of its new mobile-phone platform this week signals a clear end to the old PC era and an epic shift in computing.

But why Microsoft? The reason has little to do with the details of Windows Phone Series 7 that the company unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday.

I haven’t touched it, and it won’t be available to consumers for months.

This isn’t about specific features or its design, or whether it will help Microsoft regain lost momentum in the mobile market. Rather, what struck me is how Microsoft did this.

For years, the company took its Windows operating system and created a miniature version for smartphones. While initially good enough for many users, this was the approach of a titan aimed at protecting its turf, rather than a nimble tech firm trying to innovate. It was safe, which is often the enemy of creativity.

Along the way, Windows Mobile was surpassed by the iPhone, Android and Palm’s webOS in terms of elegance and features.

Rapidly losing market share in this critical space to those competitors, Microsoft eventually decided it was time to reboot. For the new version, Microsoft scrapped the Windows-based version completely. The need to think mobile first was so critical, the company was willing to risk undermining its biggest franchise, Windows, which brings in billions of dollars a year.

Rather than let that fear of change paralyze it, Microsoft built the new operating system for smartphones from the ground up. And it did it for the right reason:

“The phone is not a PC,” said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows phone program management as he demonstrated the new platform.

“Well, duh,” you say. That sounds obvious. It’s not.

The success of the Windows operating system bred complacency. The temptation is to make sure everything you do reinforces the cash cow.

To cast that aside, to start over, is a fearless move.

I chatted Tuesday with Karen Wong-Duncan, a manager in Microsoft’s mobile communications systems, who said the rapid change and adoption in the smartphone market required more than just incremental changes. This time around, Microsoft was trying to think big.”

Read the full article here.

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Microsoft, Yahoo deal gets regulators’ OK

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Microsoft, tagged , , , , , , , on February 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an interresting article from SF Chronicle.

“Regulators have cleared the way for the landmark search partnership between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., creating a unified front in the battle to crack the dominance of Google Inc.

Seven months after announcing the agreement and following several years of merger flirtations, the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission approved a deal that tightly allies the No. 2 and No. 3 players in the search space. It also marks a pivotal moment in the history of Yahoo, as it cedes territory where it was once a pioneer.

Under the terms of the pact, Microsoft’s Bing search tool will become the exclusive platform on Yahoo’s sites, funneling queries through the Redmond, Wash., software titan’s increasingly popular algorithm. The Sunnyvale Web portal will sell advertising tied to online search for both companies, and Microsoft will pay Yahoo for the traffic it generates.

The deal promises to give the companies control over nearly 30 percent of U.S. online searches, based on the current market share reported by comScore Inc. The combination will deliver improved results for consumers and better returns for advertisers and publishers, the companies said.

“Together, Microsoft and Yahoo will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation,” Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said in a statement.

But analysts are skeptical about how much the deal will really reshape the search industry. Google holds a commanding lead of more than 65 percent of searches, and Yahoo has been bleeding market share for years.

“I don’t think there’s a big shift in power here,” said Carl Howe, analyst with Yankee Group Research Inc.

Rather, he said the agreement provides incremental benefits, opening up a bigger channel of advertisers for Microsoft and lowering research and development costs for Yahoo.

Yahoo previously estimated the agreement would add $500 million to its annual operating income and save $200 million in capital expenditures, though not until two years after the deal was approved.

Implementation will begin in the coming days and could be complete in the United States by the end of the year. The goal is to transition U.S. advertisers and publishers to the new platform before the holiday season, but the companies acknowledged it may take until 2011.

“This breakthrough search alliance means Yahoo can focus even more on our own innovative search experience,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in a statement. “Yahoo gets to do what we do best: combine our science and technology with compelling content to build personally relevant online experiences for our users and customers.”

Read the whole article here.

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