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The Web and Consumption Equality
Andy Kessler argues that there are few material differences between the rich and the rest of us (or at least fewer and fewer). One likely reason for this is that more goods are either physically goods bought on the web, or virtual goods consumed there. The math of selling to consumers…
A few weeks ago, Warren Buffett announced that Berkshire Hathway was the single largest investor in IBM In an interview with CNBC, Buffett explained:
We went around to all of our companies to see how their IT departments functioned and why they made the decisions they made. And I just came away with…
Quick timesaving tip: this edition of DDD Weekly will be abbreviated, but most people aren’t interested in lots of business reading during a near-vacation week, anyway. To save time on other sites, ignore any stories whose headlines include “of 2011″ or “for 2012.” These are uniformly filler.
Gogo files for an IPO
Gogo in-flight wireless…
Too Many Investors, or Too Many Powerful Investors?
GroupMe’s founder argues that more investors mean more time spent arguing with investors. That makes intuitive sense when you move from one investor to two. But it doesn’t seem to follow during an IPO, when a company moves from a dozen investors to thousands. The difference:…
“Local” is a big part of the bull case for the web right now, but it’s not rigorously defined. Right now, the fundamental unit of local marketing is the street address, just as the fundamental unit of SEO is the link, and the fundamental unit of social media is the status update.
But this abstraction…
Amazon.com recently offered customers a “Brick-and-Moral dilemma” through their price-check app, which offers shoppers quick discounts if they scan a barcode and find what they’re buying on Amazon for less. It’s provoked protests from some bookstore owners, and disgust from others.
But it should provoke optimism. When Amazon sees someone run the…
Gowalla Update: Talent Acquisitions and Fiduciary Responsibility
Last week’s Gowalla acquisition illustrated another weird facet of talent acquisitions: the potential conflict that arises when a talent acquisition gives founders a good job, and investors a low payout. A Gowalla investor chimes in to say that, basically, he’s not upset enough to do…
How Search Engines Decide Whom to Trust
Bill Slawski does the usual patent deep-dive, evaluating how Google decides which writers to trust. As Google moves from domain trust to author trust, this will hurt the dwindling number of online media companies that rely on cheap, mass-produced content. (One surprising side effect: this will make…
Facebook just bought Gowalla . And they’ve announced a New York office.
These events aren’t specifically related, but they illustrate the same principle. Why would Facebook invest in:
Gowalla lost the checkin war. As Foursquare’s Engineering lead put it, “Once you’re beating someone by a factor of over 100:1 you move on…
It’s a little bit surprising that basically every mainstream critique of Groupon over the last few months was completely wrong.
Groupon was blasted for having an unsustainable, commoditized business. Their #3 competitor justlaid off most of its staff and engineered a quick sale to Gilt Groupe. Investors called Groupon’s accounting shaky because they highlighted…
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