Geni.com

I always have to talk about new startups and this one is truly interesting. Its called Geni.com and it lets you build your own family tree and connect different members of your family, Geni.com recieved $10 million in venture capital so it probably needs to do something remarkable to turn there investors a profit. There are no advertisments on the site which presents no valid business model because its a free service. Check it out:

www.geni.com

Yahoo! is Making A Turnaround.

If you haven't notices Yahoo! has been making a lot of new decisions probably because they notice that Google is growing at an incredibly larger rate and Google is taking in a lot more in revenue. Jerry Yang the co-founder of Yahoo! has taken over as CEO replacing Terry Semel who reaped over $500 million in rewards when Yahoo! wasnt even doing that well. Yahoo! also is acquiring sports website Rivals.com, so as you can tell Yahoo! is going full steam ahead in hopes of better competing with rival Google.

SpaceX

Elon Musk the founder of paypal has started a new venture called SpaceX Technologies which plans to develop a more affordable way of traveling in space and they eventually would like to travel to mars. I think it is very interesting that a dot com entreprenuer is developing space technology. I think in the coming years you will see a lot of space travel. So good for Elon Musk and I hope his venture is successful.

Joost

Theres this new startup its called Joost and it allows you to watch live tv with some program you download off the site, now before you go download the software I have to tell you the service hasnt launched yet. Iam not sure when its going to launch, what I do know is that the guys the started also started this service so go to the Joost website and check it out for yourself.


http://www.joost.com/

Facebook not selling out!

Since the acquisition of YouTube almost every web 2.0 company has a rumored buyout offer. Earlier in 2006 Facebook got offered $975 million and they turned it down. I give them props because clearly money is not the most important thing to them, and based on reports they are one of the few web 2.0 companies that are actually profitable. There was a rumor that Google offered $2.3 billion to purchase Facebook. I think sometime in 2007 or 2008 we are going to see Facebook have a public offering, that way they will still retain some ownership. I think that would be great because there arent really any web companies having IPOs like they were in the 90s. I think its mainly because they know all the major companies are in a bidding war for the smaller web 2.0 companies so they know they can just wait and be acquired instead of having a public offering.

The best and worst dot com acquisitions.

The Best:

1.Myspace-$580 million. This might be the best dot com acquisition of all time because recent estimates have put myspace's value at $5-$6 billion.

2.YouTube-$1.65 billion. I think youtube was worth every penny google payed for it because youtube has a 64% market share in the online video market, despite not being profitable youtube was a major web innovation.

3.Applied Semantics-$132 million. Not many people know about this one in 2003 google acquired a company called applied semantics they developed what would one day be google adsense, today adsense and adwords make up roughly 90% of google's revenue that more than $9 billion in 2006.

Geocities-$3.57 billion. In 1999 yahoo acquired geocities to this day geocities is still in service.

Mapquest-$1.1 billion. AOL acquired mapquest in 1999 and mapquest continues to be an industry leader.

The Worst:

1.Network Solutions-$21 billion. In 2000 at the height of the dot com bubble verisign acquired network solutions for $21 billion in 2003 they sold it for $100 million to a private equity group.

2.Lycos-$12.5 billion. In 2000 terra networks bought lycos for $12.5 billion and then sold them for $95 million in 2004.

3.Broadcast.com-$5.7 billion. In 1999 yahoo acquired broadcast.com for $5.7 billion they later split the service into two and then shut it down.

iPhone

Apple is going no holds barred on there advertising for the iPhone. I had to have seen the iPhone commercial 5 times last night. I will be getting the iPhone when it comes out, because I have been wanting it ever since steve jobs presented at the keynote.