Coupons.com raises $200M to meet booming deal demand

The business of helping people save money on the web just keeps getting bigger. Digital coupon company Coupons.com has closed on a $200 million funding round brokered by boutique investment bank Allen & Company.

Coupons.com raises $200M to meet booming deal demand

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Comment on Demand Media: Search Spam or the Future of Content? by Matt

It seems that as people depend on search for finding quality results, if those results are producing worse quality, the search engine is also flawed. However, in near monopoly environments where everyone just makes a choice without thinking, maybe the results over time just get worse and worse without anything noticeable for most users. Makes you wonder how bad it's already gotten, how much farther to go before eventually getting better. Maybe the IPO will be a good thing to shed some real light on the activities, we'll see.

Comment on Demand Media: Search Spam or the Future of Content? by Matt

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2011/01/31/demand-media-search-spam-or-the-future-of-content/#comment-584255

Demand Media Prices IPO: Could Raise Almost $140 Million

Demand Media has priced its IPO in a new S-1 filing with the SEC, and now estimates the IPO could raise almost $140 million for Demand and its shareholders. (Via Kara Swisher.)

Demand itself expects to raise about $60 million, and could be worth about $1.3 billion after the IPO. (Roughly 5X its 2010 revenue.)

Specifically, Demand Media is offering 4.5 million shares from the company and 3 million shares from current shareholders. And the underwriters -- Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have the option to purchase up to another 1.125 million shares from both Demand and its selling stockholders, in what's known as the "greenshoe."

Demand estimates the IPO share price between $14 and $16 per share, which means at the high end of the range, the IPO could be worth almost $140 million.

Demand says, "We expect to receive net proceeds from this offering of approximately $58.1 million, based upon an assumed initial public offering price of $15.00 per share, which is the mid-point of the range set forth on the cover of this prospectus, and after deducting underwriting discounts and estimated offering expenses payable by us."

As Kara Swisher notes, Demand also addresses the controversial accounting techniques it uses to recognize costs over 5 years, a longer period than is typical. It's sticking with them, argues that it's in the company's best financial interest to so do, and says it will regularly review "the operating performance of content published."

One big risk is Demand's reliance on Google for traffic and "a significant portion" of its revenue. The word "Google" is listed 62 times in its S-1 filing.

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See Also:

• Come On, Demand Media, Just Drop The Bogus Accounting
• Demand Media IPO Delayed, Tripped Up By Questionable Accounting Practices
• Here’s Why I Like Demand Media (And Why I Think That Bo Peabody Got It Wrong)

Demand Media Prices IPO: Could Raise Almost $140 Million

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Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown

A chorus of complaints about spammy results in Google searches highlights a growing problem the search company is going to have to solve -- and doing so will inevitably bring it into conflict with Demand Media, currently planning a high-profile IPO for later this year.

Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown

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Comment on Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown by ronald

Didn't you forget about the content scrapers? If I would know that the content originated at a certain point I would look around more, since I found something interesting to begin with. If one looks around on a content scraped site its just noise. So what Google needs is a Context driven system. But unlike many Journalist who think Google spreads itself to thin with autonomous cars I'm not sure. I studied vision too, for my foray into a Context Orientated language. I mean any vision system organizes more data into context with a ?Mhz system than most data centers can do with TFlops systems. Why? Certainly there must be something better than OO for that kind of modeling, which [not] surprisingly has got some attention from other companies working in that field. Either Google is up to something, or they are just a big company not knowing how to use [their] research to improve their own main product. In other words I find it curious that they research autonomous cars. If they build a context driven evaluation system the content farm problem solution will be a fallout. Another fallout is identifying the originator of a given text, given some previous/other texts. But on the other hand they are not comparing ideas with other people, there are only very few people working on context without statistics (see above) for modeling as an example. So either Google will surprise us or they will be in for a surprise. Based on how long it took to get here it's most likely the later, but who knows.

Comment on Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown by ronald

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2011/01/07/why-google-and-demand-media-are-headed-for-a-showdown/#comment-571695

Comment on Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown by Jon

I don't think that Google will have to change to much to get rid of these content farms. What these content farms have discovered is that it doesn't take much to rank in Google for oddball terms because there isn't very much competition. Over the next 5 to 10 years I think a lot of these demand media companies are going to be pushed out by sites like StackOverflow. Q and A sites like StackOverflow and the like capture a lot of long tail keywords, but actually provide much better information and they do this without paying the writers.

Comment on Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown by Jon

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2011/01/07/why-google-and-demand-media-are-headed-for-a-showdown/#comment-571472

Comment on Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown by Mathew Ingram

Thanks for the comment, David. I have read a lot of Demand articles, although I have not done an exhaustive comparison of them. While I'm sure there are some that are excellent quality, there are quite a lot that are poorly written, confusingly worded and contain little useful information apart from the keywords they require to maintain a high search ranking.

Comment on Why Google and Demand Media Are Headed for a Showdown by Mathew Ingram

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2011/01/07/why-google-and-demand-media-are-headed-for-a-showdown/#comment-571339

Comment on Freelancer.com Reports Surge in Demand for Mobile Developers by Dave

Wow good snapshot of the freelance work that is out there right now. Interesting that resumes is #3. I wonder if that's because the job market is so competitive right now.

Comment on Freelancer.com Reports Surge in Demand for Mobile Developers by Dave

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/collaboration/freelancer-com-reports-surge-in-demand-for-mobile-developers/#comment-554631

Digg Of Europe Wants To Become Demand Media Of Europe

Wikio Group has raised 4 million euros (~$5.3M) to build a content farm a la Demand Media, the company announced yesterday.

Wikio is a very interesting European company. It may look like a Digg clone, but it was founded by Pierre Chappaz, the founder of price comparison engine Kelkoo, a dotcom bust survivor which was acquired by Yahoo for $579 million. And unlike its US counterpart which has lost much of its luster, Wikio is thriving as a news portal and blog search engine.

Wikio recently merged with Overblog, one of the biggest blog publishing platforms in Europe, and acquired eBuzzing, a blog-focused ad network. So Wikio is on an aggressive and interesting warpath to building a European social media powerhouse.

Its odds to build a European version of Demand Media's content farms are good for a very simple and obvious reason -- the language barrier. It's going to be a slog for Demand Media or even Yahoo's Associated Content to build localized versions of their content farms, complete with editors and checking, whereas Wikio can get started in several languages right away. And there's no reason why pages designed to tap long tail searches in European languages can't be as successful as they've been in the US.

Now read: The French Startup Market Is Hot Hot Hot!

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Digg Of Europe Wants To Become Demand Media Of Europe

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New Threats Demand Organisational Changes, says IT Security Expert

The information security threat landscape has changed in 2010, taking on a highly targeted form and creating new issues for organisations. To meet this challenge head on, IT Security expert Richard Stiennon from IT Harvest USA has recommended a new organisational structure be adopted.

Speaking ahead of his presentation at CeBIT Australia’s IT Security Conference, Mr Stiennon explained it was not until 2010 that many organisations identified the changing form of threats.

“It’s only in the last 12 months that organisations have begun to realise a fundamental shift in the threatscape”

And as the types of threat evolve, the structure of a security team needs to evolve too, says Stiennon.

“New threats and new environments do require organisational changes. I think that’s what has to happen pretty quickly”

“Only through this organisational change is a company or government organisation going to get on top of this new level of threat”

Stiennon has recently released a suggested structure for a new "cyber defence team".

“I’ve recently gone public with a description of what a cyber defence team would look like. There’s three elements; there would be a research team who is responsible for understanding that threat environment, to understand what’s going on so they can translate those in to what it means for their internal organisation”

“You then need an operational team who goes after already successful attacks”

“The internal operational team would work with the existing infrastructure you’ve got now for handling viruses and patch management but would look deeper in to countering unique instances that have occurred”

“Then finally, a third element is essentially a “red team” - people who are acting as insiders and attempting to find vulnerabilities and methods of attack before the bad guys can”

This proposed team would then report to a new position who would then sit under the CIO, says Stiennon.

“Then working all together and reporting up to a new role - call it a Cyber Defence Commander or something else if you don’t care for the military terminology”

“That person would be responsible probably to the CIO, for making them completely aware of not only the threatscape but the level of exposure that the organisation has”

Stiennon described the Stuxnet attacks as being a recent example of these new types of threat.

“We saw just in the last several months the development of Stuxnet, which is the very, very sophisticated attacks against some control networks inside a manufacturing facility - and possibly a nuclear refinement facility”

This new form meant that the attacker and the target took on a much more personal role, he explains.

“Now, it’s some adversary who has selected a target, which is your data and they are going to be prepared to do whatever they can to get at that data”

Stuxnet and similar attacks meant that traditional forms of protection were now no longer adequate, he said.

“It’s completely different than using classic signature based anti-virus or ITS to just protect your networks from the constant background radiation of attacks that’s always been with us”

Richard Stiennon is presenting at CeBIT Australia’s IT Security Conference, taking place on 29 November in Sydney.

This conference brings together industry leaders to exchange ideas and advice about how they are minimising security threats to their organisations while taking full advantage of today’s open and connected environment.

Find out about the program and full speaker line-up at www.cebit.com.au/it-security.

DiceTV: Take Advantage of Demand for Network Administrators

The Script

Wow, just look at all these openings for network architects, engineers, systems admins and LAN admins! Right now, I see over two thousand opportunities for qualified network administrators.

So how can savvy IT professionals cash-in on this bounty of career opportunities? I¿ll give you the answers during a segment we like to call, "Ask Cat." I'm Cat Miller and this is DiceTV.

Here's the first question: Is there a shortage of network administrators?

Absolutely. In fact, experts estimate that there are currently 60,000 unfilled positions in the U.S. and by 2012, an estimated 14 percent of the IT professionals in North America will work on IP networks - why that's almost 780,000 workers!

What skills are in-demand?

Network administrators still need general skills like basic networking, active directory, mail applications, storage and security. And organizations still want administrators who can design, install, manage and secure a network infrastructure. But now there are so many types of networks and so many different levels that networking roles are becoming specialized.

How will specialization impact the role of network administrators?

Over the next five years, network administrators will need specialized skills and certifications in emerging areas such as risk management and business development. Currently, there are more than 11 different roles for network professionals in security alone.

Will network administrators need additional certifications?

To compete for these new-age networking jobs, IT professionals will need a bachelor's degree, Microsoft certifications like an MCSE and advanced users skills. But they¿ll also need specialized certifications designed around specific roles like a CWNA or CWNP to work on wireless networks or a CWSP to work on wireless security.

How can experienced IT professionals transition into the network field?

If you have some network experience and want to transition into an administration role, start with a small network that runs on familiar operating systems and hardware to get your feet wet while you earn additional certifications. And you¿ll need detail orientation, a curious nature and great communications skills to succeed no matter what role you select.

I'm Cat Miller and this has been Dice TV. We now return you to your regular desktop.

 

Post originale: http://career-resources.dice.com/articles/content/entry/dicetv_take_advantage_of_demand