"Target bought the "Black Friday" trend on Twitter; Wal-Mart is trending nationwide for free." -- tweet from WSJ's Zach Seward
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Showing posts with label --. Show all posts
Showing posts with label --. Show all posts
Friday, November 26, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
eBay Not Involved In Groupon Sale Talks -- Looks Like It's Google's Deal To Lose
Groupon is reportedly entertaining a buyout offer of $4-$5 billion from Google.
In the process, it is shopping this offer to other potential bidders through the press.
One name that surfaced last week as a potential bidder was eBay. But a source close to the company tells us that eBay is not involved in the talks.
So will anyone top Google's $4-$5 billion offer?
Unlikely.
There are only a handful of companies that can afford to buy Groupon and have some strategic reason for doing so.
These include:
- eBay
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- Yahoo
Of these, eBay is apparently not involved, Yahoo can't really afford to pay $5 billion, and Microsoft has very little strategic reason to jump into this business. That leaves Amazon and Google.
Amazon buying Groupon would make sense--probably more strategic sense than Google buying Groupon. But we doubt that Amazon would shell out the $5 billion necessary to do it. Amazon's market cap is $75 billion to Google's $190 billion, so the relative cost to the company would be much higher. Amazon is also not as desperately in need of a new growth engine as Google is. So we suspect that if it came down to a bidding war, Google would win.
So now the question seems to be, when Groupon finishes shopping Google's offer, will it decide to pursue an IPO--or take Google's money?
Unless Andrew Mason has an ambition to build the next eBay or Amazon, the answer should be obvious: The company should take the money. $5 billion is not a bad payout for two years work. And there's enough that could go wrong in this business that it's likely worth letting Google and not Groupon take that risk.
See Also: Hell, Yes, Google Should Buy Groupon. And Twitter. And Foursquare...
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See Also:
- Groupon Leaning Towards Sale To Google, But Is Now Shopping Google's Offer In The Press
- Groupon CEO Refuses To Deny Google Deal Reports
- Why A Google-Groupon Deal Would Be A Huge Winner – Even At $5 Billion Plus
eBay Not Involved In Groupon Sale Talks -- Looks Like It's Google's Deal To Lose
Friday, November 19, 2010
MapQuest Introduces My Maps -- Wait a Minute
MapQuest's new tool allowing people to save and share their own personal maps is called My Maps. The MapQuest Blog introduces the feature. Are they absolutely sure that name is a good idea ... ?...
Post originale: http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2010/11/mapquest_introd.php
Post originale: http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2010/11/mapquest_introd.php
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Wow -- Check Out How Blatantly Our Government Misled Us With The October Jobs Numbers!
Remember last Friday's payrolls numbers--the ones that blew away expectations about the number of jobs created and got everyone talking about recovery again?
Well, even at the time those payroll numbers were confusing, because the other part of the jobs report--the "household survey"--showed yet another crappy number.
But by pointing to the crappy household number and ignoring the payroll number, the bears seemed to be trying to make lemons out of lemonade.
But it turns out that there was a simple reason why the payroll numbers looked so good--a reason that had nothing to do with underlying strength of the jobs market.
What was that reason?
The government changed the "seasonal adjustment" it made to the payroll numbers--and, in so doing, boosted the number of "jobs" created in October by 100,000.
Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens (via John Mauldin) explains:
" 'The seasonal bar which the payroll data must jump was (inexplicably and dramatically) lowered from prior Octobers.
" 'Thus, in October 2009, the BLS set the bar at 870,000 jobs, similar to the 840,000 it anticipated in October 2008. This year, by contrast, it lowered the bar to 768,000. Mumbo, jumbo, payrolls presented "an upside surprise" of 100,000.'
Alan Abelson of Barrons (again via John Mauldin) adds the following:
"According to John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics, the BLS' fiddling with the figures via what he calls 'seasonal-factor games' actually created 200,000 phantom jobs last month. John cites such finagling as the reason his prediction of an October decline and a rise in the jobless rate was wrong. It also explains why seasonally adjusted payrolls were revised upward by 110,000 in September, including 56,000 in August."
In other words, it wasn't that there were a surprising number of jobs created in October. It was that the government changed its "seasonal adjustment" assumption in a way that made it look as though there were a surprising number of jobs created in October.
Now, seasonal adjustment is an art not a science. And maybe the new seasonal adjustment is more defensible than the old one. But if our government is going to publish a number like this that represents such a major "surprise," we would expect it to at least be upfront about the reasons for the surprise. And in this case those reasons had NOTHING to do with the jobs market, and EVERYTHING to do with the seasonal adustment assumption.
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See Also:
- Those Jobs Numbers Were Much Worse Than They Looked
- This Is The First Respectable Jobs Report In Years... And It Was Still Full Of Problems
- Here's What No One Told You About The Supposedly Great Jobs Report
Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/FxrO3hC-eAo/wow-check-out-how-blatantly-our-government-misled-us-with-the-october-jobs-numbers-2010-11
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Here's How Amazon Took The Lead In The Billion Dollar EBook Market -- And Why We Think They'll Dominate (AMZN)
The most interesting thing about last night's report that the ebook market will reach $1 billion this year wasn't so much that number -- through it's impressive, especially considering the growth rate -- but that Amazon has a full 50% marketshare there thanks to its Kindle platform.
When Apple announced the iPad with its iBookstore many people thought the inferior Kindle would be toast, but by letting people read Kindle books on any device, Amazon has preserved, and even arguably gained, marketshare. Today, most of the people who read books on iPad do it on the Kindle app.
The ebook market is a battle of the titans. It's Amazon versus Apple versus Barnes & Noble versus Sony. It also crucially involves all the big publishers, who are scared of going digital but know they must embrace it lest they go the way of the music industry, and so have been taking two steps forward and one step back.
But Amazon played beautifully every step of the game. And now, in a market that is growing very big, very fast, and probably has strong network effects, it has an early lead which makes us think it will end up dominating it. In fact, we think Amazon's marketshare will end up closer to 90%.
Here's how it happened and why we think Amazon can't be stopped.Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- Nook Fanboys Agree: The Skeptics Are Idiots
- Who Says Folks Don't Read Anymore? EBook Market Reaches $1 BILLION
- Hey, Amazon, Tell Us The Kindle Numbers -- Or Shut Up About Them!
Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/aAjPCo8YMQg/amazon-billion-dollar-ebook-market-amzn-2010-11
Monday, November 8, 2010
Hey, Carol And Tim, Keep Talking! -- Here's Why An AOL-Yahoo Combo Makes Sense
We ran this post a couple of weeks ago. In light of the latest report that AOL just hired advisors to help it figure out how to grow faster and merge with Yahoo, it seemed to make sense to run it again...
The two struggling Internet giants of the 1990s, Yahoo and AOL, should merge.
Immediately.
(In fact, it's ridiculous that they haven't already).
This idea isn't new--we've been calling for it for three years, and, according to Kara Swisher, "big investors" are now calling for it, too.
"Big investors" want Yahoo and AOL to merge, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to become CEO of the combined company, and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz to become Chairman (which would be in keeping with what Yahoo's board is discussing anyway). We would certainly be open to that idea--assuming Tim can persuade us that he is tough enough to quickly and efficiently make the big restructuring moves (and cuts) that the combination would require.
But the management structure isn't as important as the combination itself.
Here's why the companies should merge:
Yahoo and AOL are both in the same business, and it is a business that benefits greatly from scale. Yahoo and AOL are both basically media companies. They both use technology extensively, but their core competency is producing content to attract an audience and then selling display ads against that audience. They also both operate duplicative mail, instant-messaging, sports, finance, news, maps, and other services, all of which currently compete with each other. That is senseless. By combining, Yahoo and AOL would achieve greater scale and reduce duplication.
There is huge and needless duplication of services at AOL and Yahoo: "Portal" page, finance, sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, games, mail, instant-messaging, ad network, search window (outsourced), chat, etc. There is no reason for these services to be duplicated. And by splitting the market, Yahoo and AOL are splitting the market and thus losing more ground to their competitors. Take "mail," for example. Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail are critical traffic drivers to both company's content empires. They keep users coming back many times a day. But both Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail have lost ground to Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter, and Microsoft Outlook is still a major competitor. Left on its own, AOL Mail will die: AOL just doesn't have the resources to keep it competitive with the offerings of far-richer companies like Microsoft and Google. Yahoo Mail may survive, but it would have a better chance with the added scale and resources of being combined with AOL Mail. And the same can be said for instant-messaging, voice-chat, and all of the other areas above.
AOL is affordable, even for Yahoo. AOL's enterprise value is about $2.4 billion. Yahoo's is $16 billion. Yahoo could probably get AOL for $3 billion, maybe $3.5 billion. That's only 20% dilution. And if Yahoo didn't want to take the dilution, it could always buy AOL for cash. Yahoo doesn't know what to do with its cash anyway. (It might have to borrow a bit of money to pay cash, but money is free right now. Alternately, it could sell off its Alibaba stake and raise the cash that way. The stake adds no strategic value whatsoever.)
The combination would be instantly accretive for shareholders. In combining, Yahoo and AOL could not only boost revenues, but cut hundreds of millions of dollars of costs. Both companies are already gushing cash, so the combination would immediately goose cash flow.
The combination will eliminate a major competitor for both companies--both in display advertising and, importantly, in the consolidation of the burgeoning online content industry. AOL just bought TechCrunch for ~$40 million. Yahoo should also have bought TechCrunch--and we suspect that AOL's move might just wake Yahoo's M&A team up. In future sales, therefore, AOL and Yahoo might be competing with each other for companies like TechCrunch. That will drive prices up...unless they're working together.
Combining AOL and Yahoo would make the combined platform a "must buy" for any display advertiser. The display market isn't growing as fast as the search market, but it's still a huge and fast-growing market. Right now, the two companies' sales forces are duplicated. They needn't be. And the combination would offer advertisers even greater reach, inventory, and targetability. This, in turn, would reduce content production costs as a percentage of revenue.
The combined search businesses would have (slightly) more leverage to get better terms with Google or Microsoft. AOL only owns 3 percent of the US search market, but that 3% is still worth ~$500 million a year. Search is an economy-of-scale business, so the added scale would likely allow the combined company to squeeze better terms out of Microsoft or Google.
The combined distribution business would have more leverage with Hollywood, the music industry, and other content creators. Why is the cable industry so powerful? Scale. Once again, the more people you reach, the more valuable you are as a distribution platform. This combination would bring more distribution scale.
AOL's New York media headquarters would give Yahoo an even stronger beachhead in the media and advertising capital of the world. New York still matters, especially in this industry.
Yes, putting the two companies together would be challenging and require painful cuts. But it's not rocket-science. And it also wouldn't involve combining enormously different cultures and businesses, the way, say, the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger did. These two companies are essentially in the same business. As long as management took a disciplined approach to the integration, the merger would stand a good chance of being very successful.
Unless it radically refines and focuses its business, AOL must combine with someone--Yahoo or Microsoft. There is no way it can survive as a generalist all-things-to-all-people brand when it is so much smaller than everyone else in the business.
Yahoo has less need to do this deal--Yahoo already has enough scale--but the combination would help Yahoo. And, as discussed, it would also eliminate a major competitor.
Merging Yahoo and AOL is not "the answer" to both companies' woes. Once they combine, they'll still have to execute. But it's a good step toward for both companies.
They should do it immediately.
See Also:
Well, AOL, We Love That You're Playing Offense Again--But We Still Don't Know What You're Doing
Yahoo's Board And Partners Are Getting Sick Of Carol Bartz's Mouth
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Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/EfSAtkKRzAg/aol-yahoo-deal-2010-11
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