DMD
In-depth analysis and expert insight into the intent driven vertical content network.Facebook Updates Facebook now offers ads optimized for “Objectives” such as likes, installs, or ad clicks. That should bump up the low bids, raising the effective CPMs for their pages. It’s unclear how popular any of these options are, though. Zynga’s OMGPop purchase has raised their estimated Daily Average Users by about 25%,…
Google Updates SEOmoz analyzes how Google handles local results. In most cases, Google puts Places results ahead of local organic results, but generally behind at least a few national results. This is something worth tracking over time, though; Google has shifted their local-versus-national and Google-owned-versus-web leanings several times in the past. Google is truncating results…
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…
Buddy Media Raises $54mm for Facebook Marketing
Buddy Media, provider of high-end Facebook pages to large brands, has raised another huge round to fund further expansion. Facebook seems eager to have companies raise money in order to expand on their platform. This, despite Facebook being ranked the worst API in a survey of developers.
Opt-In Privacy on…
Demand Media’s Bizarre Price Fluctuations
After-hours on Tuesday, Demand Media’s stock spiked up 17% before settling slightly down for the day. On Wednesday morning the shares hit $10.75, but closed at $8.45, again down slightly for the day. This, after a very positive quarter. One reason is the combination of their lock-up expiring and the…
The Worst Business Story in the World
Yesterday, we argued that the worst business stories were of the “X nearly reaches Y” genre. We could have cited the example of the “Index reaches round number” stories, but we chose the ever popular “Apple’s earnings/market cap/etc. approach Microsoft’s.”
What Monday was to the S&P, yesterday…
What the Crash Means
Investors should prepare for an economic and financial climate as bleak and unforgiving as last September, when the S&P was about where it is now.
Outsourced Pessimism
The irrepressible Jason Calacanis has a fairly new blog covering tech stories. Calacanis has long been notorious in the SEO field for
Social Media Plays
LinkedIn’s IPO is strong evidence that investors are looking for ways to invest in social media as a trend. But LinkedIn itself is a bad bet on social media:
LinkedIn already has a revenue stream. And it’s not based on anything especially “social”—LinkedIn sells leads and pageviews, both of which are businesses that…
Web.com has announced that they’re buying Network Solutions for $405mm in cash, and shares worth $155mm (or $207mm post-announcement—more on that later).
As ReadWriteWeb notes, this is less than the $800mm that General Atlantic paid for it in 2007. And much less than the $21bn that Verisign paid in 2000. There’s a decent chance that General Atlantic…
Most popular web-based businesses are deflationary. They substitute expensive forms of content consumption for cheap ones, they make it logistically easier to deliver discounts to people who will respond to them, and they create numerous financially cheap forms of social status. As more activity moves on to the web, the main effect on the economy…
Recent Research
Digital Due Diligence Weekly
