Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) – Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Last week Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion dollar all-cash offer from Facebook. Apparently Facebook was worried about losing the teen demographic, or perhaps they were unnerved by the 350 million photos […]
Facebook Acquires Onavo
Earlier this week Facebook acquired the mobile data analytics company Onavo. The original spin was that this was a great fit with Internet.org, given that Onavo’s apps are focused on monitoring data usage and maximizing the amount of data you get per kilobyte. Onavo said as much in their blog post announcing the acquisition: As […]
Overstating the Consumerization of IT
Marco Arment, in Underscore Price Dynamics: This is the real reason why Apple doesn’t care about upgrade pricing: there’s no demand from customers. The market has shown that free apps will be downloaded at least an order of magnitude more than paid-up-front apps, and smart use of in-app purchase in a free app is likely […]
There Are Two Twitters; Only One is Worth Investing In
There are two Twitters. One is for special occasions only, while I am obsessed with the other. The ultimate value of the Twitter stock (TWTR?) is fully dependent on which of these two Twitters is on offer. Twitter #1: What’s Happening? The first version of Twitter isn’t hard to find: Welcome to Twitter. Find out […]
Twitter Acquires MoPub
When Yahoo Acquired Tumblr, I wrote about the Signal-to-Ads Cycle: The result is the signal-to-ads cycle: Information is gathered from first-party sites via analytics, 3rd-party sites via ads, buttons, etc, and owned-and-operated mobile apps tied to your identity (think Instagram) Highly targeted ads are served in search results, display ads, and natively, primarily on PCs […]
Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Great News
“Strong opinions weakly held” is a core principle of mine, and while I think I’ve demonstrated strong opinions aplenty on this blog, today it’s time to give credence to the “weakly held” part. Specifically, I have been wrong about Facebook. I’ve been a bear about their long-term prospects, and now I am a bull. My […]
Yahoo, Tumblr, and the Signal-to-ads Cycle
Tumblr is worth far more to Yahoo than $1.1 billion, and worth far less as a standalone company. That makes this acquisition a win-win; Yahoo is buying three important parts of the signal-to-ads cycle, and Tumblr’s investors are getting a nice exit. There are three ways to improve advertising revenue: Sell more ads Sell more […]