categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
acquisition
Tom Tom + Tele Atlas: Perfect Match
If there is ever a perfect marriage, this could be it. Tom Tom’s (AMS: TOM2) planned acquisition of Tele Atlas (AMS: TA) is perfect in more senses than one. For one thing, both are Dutch companies, with synergistic businesses, and a merger integration will be dramatically easier based on that reason alone. But of course,
The Last Rajah
Business Week has a wonderful profile of Ratan Tata, titled The Last Rajah. It is simply incredible what Tata’s acquisition of Corus and the more recent bid for Jaguar/Land Rover is doing for the image of India, Inc. Reminds me a bit of the time when India defied the international powers and did the first
More on the LOCM Patent Situation
Here’s a must-read analysis of the patent by Marty Himmelstein, formerly from Vicinity. Marty also wrote to me privately: “Hi Sramana – I read your post on local.com today. As I tried to make the case in my post, the Local.com patent is fatally flawed. First, the copious prior art makes the patent irrelevant. I
Online Music & Web 3.0 (Part 5)
M&A and VC activity In May 2007, CBS Corp. acquired Last.fm, a UK-based music community site that allows fans with similar tastes to connect, for $280 Million, in a bid to attract young audiences. Napster acquired AOL Music’s subscription service for $15 million in cash in January 2007. The acquisition gave Napster 350,000 subscribers of
Financial Media Comparison Chart
I did some digging into the various business and financial media sites last night, and here are some stats. Alexa Ranks: (Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money are not included in this list, because I cannot find Alexa ranks for them.) * CNNMoney.com: 76 * Forbes.com 483 * Marketwatch.com 1,032 * WSJ.com: 1,043 * Businessweek.com 1,310
Building the Electronic Arts of Casual Gaming: PlayFirst CEO John Welch (Part 4)
SM: Sounds like Shockwave was a great place to experiment and learn! JW: During this time I built a friendship with the principal software architect of the project, Brad Edelman, who is now co-founder and CTO of PlayFirst. I also met three other great people who now work at PlayFirst. Unfortunately, Shockwave spent most of
Local Search Bonanza Stirs Patent Investigation
Last year in Feb the Kelsey Group made the eye-catching forecast that the global online local search market is set to explode from $3.4 billion in 2005 to $13 billion in 2010. This put the growth rate at a handsome 30.4% over the next 4-5 years. Interestingly, the same report was emphatic that the classified
Online Music & Web 3.0 (Part 3)
Business Model Music sites primarily earn revenues from subscriptions, music downloads, advertisements and the different products sold through its sites. Most music sites are allowing downloads at approximately 99 cents per song and analysts say it is not enough to cover the costs. Currently most of the music sites are losing money. Napster (NAPS) and
