Has it really been seven years since the first release of WordPress? It seems like just yesterday we were fresh to the world, a new entrant to a market everyone said was already saturated. (As a side note, if the common perception is that a market is finished and that everything interesting has been done already, it’s probably a really good time to enter it.)
The growth over the past year has blown me away. Since our last birthday we’ve doubled theme downloads to over 10 million, and doubled plugin downloads to 60 million. Most importantly, we continued to grow the development community to 1,528 people active on Trac and 13 committers, both numbers the highest in the history of WordPress.
That’s 1,528 people pouring their hearts and souls into GPL software we all own, we all build on, we can use as we please, we can all make better. We’ve evolved from a simple script to a web platform.
We’re on the cusp of version 3.0, with a release candidate coming out any minute now.
If you’d like to celebrate WordPress’s birthday with us — tell a friend! Help them upgrade their blog or find the perfect theme. Talk about how WordPress is built by and for a community. Drop in to help test 3.0, including all the plugins you use. Write something to take advantage of the new 3.0 features, or teach your friends how to. If you buy any themes or plugins, make sure they’re GPL or compatible just like WordPress. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, it’s important that we not forget that Open Source got us this far, and is the only way we’re going to get to the next level. The whole of what we can build together is far greater than the sum of our parts. Spread the good word. 
Hewlett-Packard won the bidding war to buy Palm for $1.2 billion. But a new filing reveals that the courtship was a frenzied affair with serious offers from five companies.
Palm said in its latest statement to shareholders that it realized it needed to do something about its sagging sales in early February. On Feb. 17, Palm chief executive Jon Rubenstein organized a committee to explore options. From Feb. 25 to April 1, Palm contacted 16 companies about a possible deal, which could have been anything from licensing Palm’s WebOS operating system to a sale of the company.
Five companies made offers, but the filing only identifies HP (Other bidders named were Lenovo). Palm was most interested in offers from HP and two other companies, while the last two wanted to license Palm’s patents. In early March, Palm’s board decided a sale was the best option. HP made its first actual offer on April 13 for $4.75 a share for $1 billion. It asked for 30 days of exclusive negotiations. A second company offered $600 million in cash, and a third company offered a stock deal that would take longer to complete than the other deals.
Palm told HP it would not give an exclusive negotiating period unless HP improved its offer. HP declined. Palm told the other two companies that their bids were not competitive and those companies dropped out. A fourth company then offered $6 to $7 per share with a transaction to take place within 14 days.
On April 18, Palm sent both HP and that fourth company a draft of merger agreements. HP and Palm executives met starting April 20 and HP increased its offer to $5 a share on April 22. Then the fourth bidder dropped its offer to $5.50 a share with provisions that included a $60 million penalty if the deal did not go through. Palm and the fourth bigger tried to work out a deal from April 23 to April 25, to no avail.
Rubinstein told HP on April 24 that its offer wasn’t competitive and that it had to “significanty and immediately” improve its offer to stay in the bidding. HP raised its offer to the winning $5.70 a share bid that day. Rubinstein told the fourth company that he had a better offer on April 25. Then that company responded by telling Palum it would offer to buy its patents and take a non-exclusive license on the WebOS for $800 million.
Palm’s board considered that offer and turned it down. Then HP and Palm locked into negotiations from April 24 to April 28. On April 28, the merger was announced.
Companies: Hewlett Packard, Palm
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Successful business people are always looking for their next rock star employee. The question is where do you find them? The good news is that the latest LinkedIn stats – 60 million professional profiles spanning 200 countries – would indicate this is a good place to look.
Many of us already have a LinkedIn account, and if you don’t, LinkedIn is free and easy to maneuver. The trick is incorporating some strategies (habits, if you will) into using LinkedIn.
Below are five easy things you can add to your LinkedIn strategy to give you greater exposure to top talent.
In the course of your daily business, you never know where your next sale is going to come from. The same can be true for recruiting. It’s important to connect and build relationships with a variety of different people. For example, my LinkedIn profile has connections from prior jobs, clients, and local entrepreneurs I do business with. It’s great when I can make introductions between people with varied needs.
In addition to being a part of groups for your personal and/or professional benefit, join a couple of groups that might help surface candidates. Let’s say you’re always looking for sales professionals. There’s a LinkedIn group – The Sales Association – that you might want to join as a way to connect with possible candidates. They have almost 20,000 members, are affiliated with a national association, and have a job posting system when you’re ready to let people know about your next opening.
Once you start connecting with groups, look for opportunities to engage with people in discussions. Notice people who share your culture and enter into a conversation with them. I belong to a group called Social Media in Organizations. This group offers multiple channels to talk about workplace social media – discussions, webinars, articles, a book club, etc.
This is a quick and easy way to recognize people for promotions, awards, and accomplishments. People will remember you. Since much of your LinkedIn profile is static, this is a way to regularly let people know what you’re up to. I’ve seen some of my connections post in their status “Looking for a Senior Accountant. Got a lead? Let me know.”
Keeping up with all of the information available can be a daunting task. That’s why I like the mobile version of LinkedIn for my phone. I can check updates while I’m waiting at appointments, so staying on top of the activity doesn’t have to be a time-consuming chore. LinkedIn offers versions for the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Palm.
Over the years, LinkedIn has taken some hits for being nothing more than an online repository of names. But these days, more and more people are becoming reacquainted with it. Since most people have a presence on LinkedIn, it’s an obvious place to keep tabs on what’s happening in the marketplace. And as small business owners, you can easily leverage LinkedIn to find talent.
- Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Foursquare
- 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
- Web Entrepreneurship: Does the City You Live in Matter?
- HOW TO: Integrate Paid Search and Social Media for Better Marketing Results
- How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media for Real Results
Tags: business, human resources, linkedin, List, Lists, small business
Last month, Windows 7 crossed into double-digit market share numbers. Microsoft disclosed that it sold more than 60 million copies of Windows 7 by the end of 2009, and now we know this very quick growth has continued through the first quarter of 2010.
On the whole, between February and March 2010, Windows dropped a sizeable 0.54 percentage points (from 92.12 percent to 91.58 percent). More specifically, Windows XP dropped 1.03 percentage points (from 65.49 percent to 64.46 percent), Windows Vista dipped 0.50 percentage points (from 16.51 percent to 16.01 percent), and Windows 7 jumped 1.31 percentage points (from 8.92 percentage points to 10.23 percent).
At Ars, our readers have embraced Microsoft's latest operating system much faster. Windows users accounted for 65.01 percent of our visitors last month. Of those, 31.23 percent use Windows XP, 10.85 percent Vista, and 21.85 percent Windows Vista. One in 10 users on the Internet are using Windows 7, compared to one in five on Ars.
Even if Windows is slowly losing share, Windows 7 is doing phenomenally well. Above, you can see how quickly the OS has been gaining share in its first few months compared to Windows Vista's first few months. In the two quarters after their respective releases, Windows 7 grabbed 10.23 percent while Windows Vista only managed only 4.54 percent of the market.
Read the comments on this post
As a professional social network, LinkedIn hasn’t ignored the mobile interests of its 60 million plus users. The company has consistently updated its sleek iPhone app, recently launching a new version. Last fall, LinkedIn announced that a powerful BlackBerry app would be on its way. And the app is an important connector to the enterprise crowd, which generally tend to use BlackBerry devices. Tonight, the new app officially launches. You can download the app here.
The LinkedIn app for BlackBerry is as feature-rich as its iPhone cousin. You can visualize your feed of network updates, search across direct connections and the entire LinkedIn network, access any of your connections to get get profile information, and message contacts. You can also access your LinkedIn inbox, send and accept invitations and see all of your messages. And the app will suggest new connections to you.
LinkedIn has been working with RIM to develop a native application that leverages the phone’s technologies. Users can integrate their LinkedIn connections with their devices’ address book, and view the profile of any contact directly on a device. LinkedIn invitations and messages will show up in the BlackBerry device’s inbox. Users can also view the LinkedIn profile of the sender of any email they receive. And users can view the LinkedIn profile of an attendee of a meeting on their BlackBerry devices’ calendar.
There’s no doubt that the LinkedIn app for BlackBerry will be popular; especially considering the significant use of the device in professional environments. LinkedIn has been consistently upgrading its platform over the past few months, adding two-way integration with Twitter as well as opening up its API to developers. LinkedIn also recently unveiled a significant integration with Microsoft Outlook, allowing users to access parts of their LinkedIn accounts from Outlook.
BlackBerry users, LinkedIn has finally arrived; The business social network has just launched LinkedIn for BlackBerry, version 1.0.
The new LinkedIn BlackBerry app, which you can download now online or very soon from the BlackBerry App World app, not only provides users with access to their connections, invitations, and messages, but provides deep integration with BlackBerry Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, allowing you to integrate contacts, get LinkedIn mail in your inbox, and a lot more.
Here are the details, along with a boatload of exclusive screenshots of LinkedIn for BlackBerry that we’ve obtained:
LinkedIn’s new BlackBerry app is not as feature-rich as LinkedIn for iPhone, simply due to the limitations of the software and hardware. In fact, you’re going to need a BlackBerry, Tour, Curve, or Bold with BlackBerry OS v4.3 or later in order to run this bad boy.
Still, for a BlackBerry app, it does everyone you’d want a LinkedIn app to do and then some. The app is divided into six key modules: Network Updates, Search, Connections, Invitations, Messages, and Reconnect.
Each of these features is self-explanatory, which is why I’m going to let the screenshots do most of the talking. Jump down below to learn about some of the app’s other features.
1. Network Updates: This module provides you access to your friends’ status updates and allows you to update your own.
2. Search: Search focuses around both finding your connections and searching any of LinkedIn’s 60 million+ members.
3. Connections: Browse and check out your connections; simple as that.
4. Invitations This one’s self-explanatory.
5. Messages: Not only do you get access to your messages, but it has a killer feature: integration with BlackBerry Mail. Whenever you receive a LinkedIn message, it’ll appear in your inbox just like any of your other messages.
6. Reconnect: The final module provides suggestions for new people to add to your connections.
In addition to the six modules, LinkedIn’s also gone ahead and integrated the app with three of BlackBerry’s native apps: Contacts, Messages, and Calendar.
1. Contacts: Take your LinkedIn connections and drop them directly into your BlackBerry contacts, giving you quick access to the LinkedIn profiles of your business associates.
2. Messages: LinkedIn messages appear directly in your BlackBerry Inbox as if they were emails.
3. Calendar If an attendee of an event on your calendar has a LinkedIn profile, you can quickly pull it up.
Clearly, the company took a lot of time and energy to make sure they got this app right. The integrations with native BlackBerry features seem to be its greatest strength, especially the BlackBerry Inbox integration. Business users who rely on LinkedIn to look up prospective leads, employees, or customers will now have a powerful tool in their hands.
BlackBerry users, what do you think of the app? Are you going to download it? Let us know in the comments.
Tags: blackberry, business, linkedin, Linkedin for BlackBerry, Mobile 2.0, RIM
Seven years after it was supposed to be completed, CityTime has cost NYC $722 million more than its projected price, and still the city continues to sign fat checks to consultants for the now-notorious biometric timecard system. Mayor Blooomberg went so far as to call CityTime a “disaster,” city Coptroller John Liu labeled it a “money pit” and enraged Brooklyn Councilwoman Letitia James demanded an immediate investigation, according to the Daily News. "The city should get a partial refund because they were overbilled," she said. But it doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon.
CityTime was actually supposed to save the city up to $60 million by doing away with the old, easily-scammed punch card system, by which city employees keep track of their hours. But more than a decade after CityTime launched, only a third of city workers use the computerized hand scanners, and the project is way, way over budget.
That’s because about 200 consultants get salaries of $400,000 or more (complete breakdown here). Eleven are paid upwards of $600,000 and for what? "It's a difficult project," said Constantin Stanca, who for more than a decade has collected a salary of over half a million as a development manager for CityTime. A veteran technology manager who once worked for the project questioned him. "In my three decades in the business, I've never seen salary levels like these," he said.
Since the discovery of these wild, uncapped salaries Bloomberg’s been none too positive about the project. (The large pay-outs came as a surprise and originally he didn’t see to know who in his administration was in charge of CityTime.) But he's now making excuses for the mangled undertaking, and a full-stop seems unlikely. "People who worked on this aren't stupid and aren't lazy," said the mayor, when urged by Liu to stop payments to CityTime consultants. "Some projects are so big and the world changes so fast while you're building them, [you realize] maybe that's not a good way to do anything."
these people should be fined. also the politicians who are getting kickbacks.
- felix
What do Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Redpoint Ventures have in common? Besides being tier one venture capitalists, at least one thing: They are all fighting furiously to be the lead investor in Foursquare’s next venture round.
All that competition is driving the valuation massively upwards, too. A couple of weeks ago we’d heard that the deal would likely be closed at around a $50 million valuation. Today we’ve confirmed that the final price will likely be $60 million – $70 million. They’re raising around $10 million, which means when it’s all over Foursquare will be worth up to $80 million on paper.
The front runner in the deal is Gideon Yu from Khosla, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Yu is tight with both Jack Dorsey (he’s an investor in Dorsey’s Square) and Chris Dixon (likewise, he’s an investor in Dixon’s Hunch). And Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley is relying heavily on the advice of his close friends for the deal. And those close friends include Jack Dorsey, who’s an investor in Foursquare, and Dixon.
What a choice, though. Most entrepreneurs would sacrifice a kitten to get anywhere near any of these investors, and Crowley has his choice of any of them. A final decision is expected in the next few days, say our sources.
it's not surprising FS is a fantastic product potentially worth billions in Attention
- Thomas PowerFour VC Firms Battle For Foursquare, Valuation Goes Stratospheric http://bit.ly/dg4pmg (can you imagine it!!)
- Alister CameronFour VC Firms Battle For Foursquare, Valuation Goes Stratospheric
- Rob Diana$80 million for Foursquare? My word. *whistles *The bubble is still going strong.
- Roberto BoniniFour VC Firms Battle For Foursquare, Valuation Goes Stratospheric
- Robin Dindayal
Google Denied Trademark on Android Nexus One http://bit.ly/ceJnPE
It's been a rough day for Google's Android phone, the Nexus One. First we learned this morning that initial sales have been far weaker than the iPhone saw when it first came out of the gate. Now it's being reported that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected its application for a trademark on the name Nexus One.
Nexus One was ruled too close to Portland, Oregon based Integra Telecom's own registered trademark for its Nexus fixed bandwidth integrated voice and internet T1 product.
Sponsor
Mike Rogoway, of Portland's The Oregonian newspaper, got the following statement from Integra:
"We appreciate that the PTO is protecting our trademark rights. Integra has over $60 Million in annual revenue associated with our Nexus brand and it represents millions of new revenue for the company each year. Google hasn't contacted us since the PTO issued its objection but we hope we can work together to achieve our respective business goals."
Does that mean Google will rename the Nexus One, or that it will end up paying the trademark holder for the privilege of using the name? Google just expanded the Nexus One onto the AT&T network today.
Either way, we wouldn't be surprised if the hunt for a new name is already on. What would you suggest, readers?
It's tempting to say this is another example of the Patent and Trademark Office moving too slow, but note that Integra was granted its trademark in December 2008. The Nexus One was just release January 5, 2010.
Meanwhile, the open Android operating system marches on. XML co-creator Tim Bray announced this weekend that he has joined Google to work on Android. He called the iPhone in a blog post "a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger."
Discuss
5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix http://j.mp/aDTSD1
From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness.
LinkedIn, however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. But since its creation, LinkedIn has been geared toward the professional business crowd.
If you haven’t already incorporated LinkedIn into your online marketing mix, consider the latest statistics:
Get started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy today with these five tips:
1. Build a Network, Then Start a Group
Getting started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy involves two important steps, the second of which is dependent on the first:
2. Make the Most of Your Profile
For the LinkedIn community, your profile will be this first item they see, so treat it as you would any landing page. To make the most of your profile:
Include links in your LinkedIn profile using anchor text.
3. Leverage Third-Party Applications
Today, there are a host of third-party applications available to help you make the most of your LinkedIn activity. For example:
For an upcoming trip to Dallas, my contacts that will also be there are identified.
4. Update and Engage Frequently
Think of LinkedIn marketing efforts as you would blog, Twitter or Facebook marketing efforts: The more activity and interaction, the better the results. To consistently engage with your network:
5. Promote Your Profile
In order to expand your network, LinkedIn marketing efforts – like anything else – must be promoted in other channels. Include a link to your profile on your website and blog, in individual blog posts, in email signatures and even on business cards. Be sure to optimize your profile for important and relevant keywords. Allow enough of your profile to be public so search engines can rank that content accordingly.
These tips, of course, are just the tips of the iceberg when it comes to LinkedIn marketing tactics. What specific tactics have you found successful for marketing on LinkedIn?
© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com
When GGF announced that it would take over The Pirate Bay, the company bombarded the press with optimistic plans which indicated the site would become the largest online media store. The attention later shifted to the troublesome financial position of its CEO, but all along the company had confidence in its plans for the new and ‘legal’ Pirate Bay.
This fall, however, it all turned out too good to be true. After GGF’s shareholders agreed to acquire the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, the company had a month to come up with the proposed $7.8m (SEK 60 million). What followed was mostly silence and the deadline passed without an official response from the company.
From the moment it was announced the planned Pirate Bay acquisition had been surrounded by controversy. However, behind the scenes GGF CEO Hans Pandeya was drafting an even bigger deal with BitTorrent’s number one indexer at the time – Mininova.
“We will try to buy as many torrent sites as possible,” Pandeya told TorrentFreak back in August. In common with their plans for The Pirate Bay, GGF hoped to turn these sites into large media stores where users could download content with the full permission of copyright holders.
Little information has been made public about the “other” sites Pandeya was aiming at and how serious this interest was. Unlike all the other plans and deals that leaked out previously, no other torrent site has been publicly connected to GGF, until today where Pandeya’s connection to Mininova was exposed.
TorrentFreak has learned that GGF and Mininova already finalized a contract last summer to sell the torrent index for no less than 20 million Euros. This deal and the amount have been confirmed by several independent sources close to Mininova and GGF. One of the sources who confirmed the Mininova buyout plans was Hans Pandeya himself.
One of our sources further said that the deal had already been signed off by Mininova, and that GGF would wait for the verdict in Mininova’s appeal with the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. This verdict was due one day before the GGF shareholders were set to give the green light on the Pirate Bay deal.
A positive outcome for Mininova in that case would have certainly made the site a valuable asset, but as we now know Mininova lost in court and was forced to proactively filter titles and remove a great number of infringing, and indeed non-infringing torrents to ensure absolute compliance.
Sources from within Mininova have confirmed the existence of the 20 million euro acquisition offer but denied that the contract was already signed. Instead, Mininova would have liked to see some proof that GGF could pay the proposed sum before signing.
Although there seems to be some disagreement on the details, there is no doubt that GGF had set course to get the two major BitTorrent sites in possession. In fact, Mininova was brought in during licensing negotiations with several senior executives at one of the major record labels.
During a meeting with the label in London, Pandeya was assisted by his short-lived business partner Wayne Rosso. In the meeting the executives were asking for some traffic metrics and out of the blue and to the surprise of Rosso, Pandeya picked up his mobile phone and rang a Dutch number, claiming that it was a “company of his” close to Amsterdam that could provide some insight into the traffic question.
The person on the other end of the line provided some information to the label execs and plans were made to head over to The Netherlands to do some due diligence. When Rosso later asked Pandeya about this mysterious Dutch company Pandeya revealed that it was in fact Mininova.
“It’s Mininova. I’m going to buy Mininova too and eliminate all the competition,” Pandeya told Rosso explaining the Dutch connection.
At the time of this meeting the contract was already drafted but not signed by both parties. If it would have gone through GGF would have had the option to buy out the two largest BitTorrent sites online. Of course we now know that the deal didn’t go though. GGF didn’t have the money and Mininova might not have been worth it after the negative verdict in their case against BREIN.
In the months that followed Mininova removed over a million torrent files making it a less lucrative asset for Pandeya. On the other hand it also shows that a torrent site with only “authorized” content will quickly lose most of its regular visitors. Despite this knowledge and all the failed attempts to pull investors in, Pandeya said a few days ago that we haven’t seen the last of him yet.
“I have a lot of secret plans I’m working on,” he warned.
Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
Ed. note: This belongs to a series of posts on how web sites and services are integrating LinkedIn functionality using the LinkedIn API. Thanks to Marc Gingras, CEO and Founder at Tungle Corporation for his thoughts on the added value this integration brings to both Tungle and LinkedIn users.Wouldn’t you love to know, each time you are invited to a meeting, the title, role and background of the people attending the meeting? Imagine if you had access to the power of a network of over 60 million business professionals – like LinkedIn – inside a calendaring application like Tungle.me.
Think about it… one-click access to a network of business professionals from across the globe, directly from a Tungle.me meeting invitation. Here’s a quick demo. More details after the jump.
How cool is that?
Now, when you access a meeting invitation that you’ve organized or been invited to through Tungle.me, you’ll see LinkedIn icons next to each attendee with a LinkedIn profile.
These icons give you one-click access to all the pertinent business information you want prior to the meeting (in this case the participants’ LinkedIn profile).
That’s pretty powerful, and that’s what comes when you combine the scheduling power of an application like Tungle.me with the world’s largest business professional network – LinkedIn.
This integration was really straight forward thanks to the thoughtful engineering of the LinkedIn team and their API. The amount of time it took to add this capability to our services, is dwarfed by the benefit it will bring to busy professionals using Tungle.me’s easy scheduling service.
Sign up for Tungle.me here. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Tungle.me integrates with LinkedIn to make scheduling meetings even easier
- Sarah PerezF
orce10, the networking gear maker founded in 1999, filed for an initial public offering today, as part of a rush of companies seeking to hit the public markets while the window seems open. IPO filings are up more than 900 percent in 2010 according to Renaissance Capital, which tracks the IPO market. Despite its relative youth for an IPO filer this year, Force10 represents not a hot new startup seeking access to the public markets, but a grizzled 11-year-old veteran trudging toward an IPO because it simply has to exit, and no buyers have emerged,
At least 13 venture firms firms have invested more than $205 million in Force10 within the last five years alone. The company seeks to raise $143.75 million through its offering. But given the amount of time its investors have waited, a history of losses, a complicated balance sheet thanks to a series of transactions, and a slew of larger competitors, Force10’s IPO looks a bit like a shotgun wedding.
Force10 sells telecommunications networking gear as well as 10 gigabit Ethernet gear for the data center. It’s the data center market that’s growing most for Force10, although the opportunity to provide aspects of the core network and backhaul components for telecommunications providers as they switch to all-IP architectures is another mid-term opportunity.
Three years ago, after a $60 million Series F round of funding, Om wondered when Force10 would IPO. But any company that didn’t make it before the fall of 2008, and was stuck staying private thanks to the economic freeze and the credit crunch. In 2009 it purchased Turin, a maker of wireless backhaul gear. It reported pro forma sales (which combined Force10 and its Turin acquisition) of $199.2 million in 2009 and a loss of $76.3 million.
Force10’s IPO may not reflect the return of the big ticket technology IPO as much as it reflects a lack of buyers for the business and the chance to get an exit while IPOs are possible. Instead of comparing it to Tesla, the electric vehicle maker that recently filed to go public, or Silver Spring, a smart grid startup that is expected to file soon, a better comparison would be Calix, the telecommunications gear maker that has raised a similar amount of money in its long history, and filed late last year. Given that too many hot IPOs can overshadow older candidates, perhaps it’s better for Force10 that popular online businesses such as Yelp or Facebook are holding off on IPOs this year.
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Babelgum founder Silvio Scaglia was taken into custody by Italian police last Friday. Law enforcement officials had issued a warrant for Scaglia’s arrest earlier last week as the result of a wide-scale money laundering investigation, and he is expected to be questioned as early as tomorrow, according to a BusinessWeek report.
Scaglia founded Babelgum in 2007 and has been single-handedly bankrolling the London-based video startup ever since. A Babegum spokesperson went to great lengths today to tell us that the investigation won’t have any negative impact on the company. “Babelgum’s business plan is fully funded for 2010 and beyond,” she said, without going into specifics. Still, the arrest isn’t exactly helping the startup that has been struggling to find its place in the online video world for some time.
Italian law enforcement officials allege that Scaglia was part of a 2 billion euro ($2.7 billion) tax fraud and money-laundering scheme during his time at Fastweb, the Italian ISP he founded in 1999. They issued a total of 56 arrest warrants last week, and the Financial Times is reporting that police confiscated a number of paintings and other works of art that were purchased with the fraudulent money. Scaglia was abroad when officials issued the warrant, but returned to Italy Friday and was taken into custody at the airport.
Babelgum’s spokesperson refused to provide details about the amount of money Scaglia has invested in the startup so far. The company announced in 2008 that Scaglia had invested 50 million euros and was planing on shelling out another 40-60 million euros annually throughout 2010. All in all, Scaglia committed to spend as much as 350 million euros on Babelgum.
The company has shifted focus multiple times in recent years. Babelgum originally emerged as a competitor of the P2P video service Joost, but shifted to web-based streaming early last year. It originally envisioned itself as a destination for full-length indie feature films and documentaries, but has recently been investing more money in original short-form web content like the viral video hit Little Jersey Shore. It’s also been securing deals for exclusive music video premieres from bands like Coldplay and Weezer, potentially competing with music video venture VEVO.
Babelgum significantly reduced its staff at the end of last year, shuttering its Dublin headquarter as well as its Nice, France-based R&D office. It also reduced staff at its New York office. The company called the cuts result of its growing focus on content, and its spokesperson went out of her way today to assure me that these efforts are not hampered by the investigation. “Mr. Scaglia’s assets have NOT been seized and the company’s functioning and effectiveness has not been impacted in any way,” she wrote in an email (emphasis in the original), adding that Babelgum’s operations are not part of the investigation.
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"60 million Americans don't use the interwebs" - http://digg.com/d21Jk0V?t4 #lis48801 #lis48820 (via @digg_technews)
[Direct Link]Report: Time Spent On Social Media Sites Increased By 82% Year Over Year http://bit.ly/a4hP6U
Consumers spent more than five and a half hours on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in Dec, 2009, according to a report by Nielsen. The amount of time spent on social media sites has increased by 82% from the same time last year, when users only spent three hours on social media sites each day.
Facebook was the most popular social network (hardly any surprises there) with around 206.9 million unique visitors in Dec, 2009. In addition to this, 67% of the global social media users now visit Facebook at least once a month. Facebook has also become more addictive, with time spent on the site increasing to six hours per month on average.
Blogs and Social Networks were the most visited online category, followed by online games and instant messaging. The time spent by users on social networks and blogs increased by 210% year-over-year with the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year.
Facebook and Twitter once again managed to outpace the overall growth in the social networking category by posting year-over-year growth of 200% and 368%, respectively – yes Twitter’s growth rate is even better than that of Facebook. A look at the growth rate for the month of December alone shows an even rosy picture for Twitter, as it posted an increase of 579% in unique visitors from the same time last year – growing to 18.1 million unique visitors from 2.7 million uniques in Dec, 2008.
Twitter has also released some internal stats, which reveal that the social network now sends out 50 million status updates every day, and is fast approaching Facebook – which boasts 60 million status updates on a given day.
Leap Wireless is teaming with Pocket Communications to expand its footprint in South Texas in an apparent effort to primp for potential dance partners as the move toward consolidation continues in mobile. The companies said today that Leap will control a new joint venture that will acquire both companies’ licenses and operating assets in markets including San Antonio, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley. Leap will own a 76 percent stake in the venture and will buy some of Pocket’s South Texas assets for about $38 million in cash before the deal closes, then will contribute to the business with its own related assets.
Pocket, a regional flat-rate service provider that also operates a network in New England, claims 320,000 customers in South Texas while Leap’s Cricket provides prepaid service to about 400,000 users in the region and 5 million nationwide. The companies believe the move will result in additional contribution to Leap’s OIBDA (operating income before depreciation and amortization) in the range of $50-$60 million within two years.
Notably, the deal includes a provision that forces Pocket to sell its stake in the joint venture to Cricket should Leap change hands. That’s a scenario that’s increasingly likely given that Leap has hired advisers to explore a sale or merger in the face of an increasingly brutal prepaid market. A tie-up with MetroPCS has been rumored recently, and the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Leap had reached out to both AT&T and Verizon Wireless. So like a lonely girl hoping someone will ask her to dance, Leap is doing everything it can to make itself a little prettier as the industry continues to move toward consolidation.
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Image courtesy Flickr user betsssssy.
This afternoon Twitter announced that the company now receives over 50 million status updates per day. Compare that with Facebook who states they currently receive over 60 million updates per day. Despite Twitter being a fraction of the size of Facebook, the company now owns a massive percentage of the total status updates posted each day on the web. The latest statistics should revive discussion over ongoing Facebook versus Twitter war.
While Twitter is not releasing statistics about the percentage of users tweeting on a daily basis, a report published last week suggests that the percentage of Twitter users posting updates each month remains relatively low (somewhere around 16 percent). So what information can we derive from the latest statistics?
Despite being a fraction of the size of Facebook, Twitter has a large enough sampling of information on the web since they appear to have the most active users on the web. While we don’t know the exact volume of tweets per user, the top users continue to remain active. The behavior of a Twitter user also differs significantly over Facebook users who arguably don’t post updates as frequently.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter how many users a company has as long as they have the most connected and most active users. Even Google knows that a fraction of the content on the web isn’t updated regularly and much of it is irrelevant. As long as Twitter can capture the most important segment of the social media market, the company has a shot at competing in the real-time web wars.
One important factor that would determine Twitter’s grip on the real-time web is the percentage of tweets being sent directly to Facebook.
Despite Twitter’s dominance in the “status update” world, one needs to include the fact that more than 700 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared on Facebook each day. That’s in addition to the 60 million status updates. In theory the volume of links and news stories should be included in the comparison to Twitter. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t break out the volume of links posted each day, but we could make a wild guess and say that at least 100 million links are posted each day in addition to the status updates.
Facebook should be concerned about the latest statistics from Twitter. While it’s difficult to say how close Twitter is to competing with the volume of relevant content being posted on Facebook each day, the growth continues to be impressive. At this rate, Twitter could eventually be a direct competitor to Facebook in terms of status updates and links shared if the growth continues.
Is Twitter going to be competing on the level of Facebook anytime soon? Probably not since their user base is still a fraction of Facebook, however it’s pretty clear that Twitter has some of the most active internet users on the web.
Local cost-per-click marketplace Reply.com wants to raise $60 million in an initial public offering. The company filed its offering statement with the SEC this morning.
Reply.com is a cost-per-click ad network which targets ads for local businesses. Its strategy is to gather more information from consumers who click on their ads by inserting a “middle page” between that pops to ask them where they live or what brands they like to improve targeting before showing them an ad.
Revenues rose 75 percent in 2009 to $32.6 million. The company operates with a 50 percent gross margin, and turned its first net profit in 2009 of $2.5 million. The business produced $4.7 million in cash flow in 2009, but it ended the year with only $1.3 million in cash (hence the need to raise more). Since 2005, the company has raised $27.5 million from Scale Venture Partners, Outlook Ventures, ATEL Ventures, and Debi Coleman, a former CFO of Apple.
Click on the tables below to see its consolidated income statement.
How much traffic does Facebook now send to other web sites? Analytics firm Compete says 13 percent of US traffic to big web portals — Yahoo, MSN, AOL — came from it in December, the most out of any traffic source. What does Facebook itself report about this data?
The company doesn’t typically share a lot of about the traffic trends it sees internally, but we can glean some new information from the Statistics page it occasionally updates. Facebook usually updates some stats on the page when it makes larger announcements about its traffic, and it did so earlier this month when it said it grew from 350 million monthly active users at the beginning of December to 400 million now. Out of all of the items with new numbers, content-sharing (like posting links to content on a web portal from within Facebook), is way up. So are stats for Pages.
We go into more details below, based on our ongoing coverage of these stats as Facebook has updated them; for reference, see our posts covering the other updates, from last December, September and July.
All in all, Compete’s content-sharing data appears to be directionally correct, as it and other third-party data services usually are about Facebook traffic.
Status updates: In December, Facebook said that more than 35 million users update their status every day. This number has not changed today, so either the number of people posting status updates has not gone up along with its 25% user growth, or Facebook hasn’t updated the stat, or both. However, Facebook says that the number of status updates is going up, from 40 million in September to 55 million in December to 60 million as of February. The rate of status-updater growth appears to have slowed considerably, in contrast to the site’s overall growth. It’s not clear why, although a series of news feed and home pages changes starting last fall have de-emphasized status updating as a feature.
Photo uploading: The rate of photo uploading also continues to grow, although not as fast as it had earlier this year. Now, Facebook says more than 3 billion photos are being uploaded every month, up from 2.5 billion in December, 2 billion in September and 1 billion in July.
Sharing pieces of content: Defined as “web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.” — so, the source of the new traffic Compete is showing to portals — this category has been seeing massive growth. Facebook reported 1 billion items shared a week in July, 2 billion shared a week in September, then a big jump to 3.5 billion in December, and another big jump to 5 billion a week as of earlier this month. This is a key metric in Facebook’s vision of helping people to share more, and the many big and small changes the company has been making to the site are apparently having a significant impact.
Events creation: For whatever reason, Facebook has only intermittently updated this stat, and it hasn’t done so since December, when it said 3.5 million events were created every month. It didn’t report new numbers in September, but it said 2.5 million as of July. Growth here hasn’t been huge, as far as we can tell; the new home page redesign makes events more prominent, so perhaps we’ll see more stats, soon.
Pages: There are now more than 3 million active Pages on Facebook, nearly double the 1.6 million it reported in December. While it didn’t previously disclose the same Pages stats, Facebook began doing so that month; compared against the latest update, they show new pattersn. Pages that Facebook defines as local businesses went from 700,000 actives to 1.5 million. In other words, local businesses comprised half of the overall increase in active Pages over the last couple of months. Facebook separately says that the average user becomes a fan of 4 pages every month, double the December average. However, it has not updated the number of fans from December, which as 5.3 billion.
And, for a fun look at just what the latest updates looks like in graphical form, check out this guest post from Muhammed Saleem on Mashable.
Hmmm
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