Online Real Estate Sector Struggling

Naturally. let’s take a closer look at ZipRealty and Move. ZipRealty, a full-service real estate site, has been reviewed here before. On November 7, 2007, ZipRealty announced 3Q earnings with an increase of net revenues of 7% to $28.0 million, up from $26.2 million YoY. And the number of Zip Agents grew by 30%. However,

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Web 3.0 & Google (Part 4)

Acquisition Strategy Google has made several acquisitions this year. The key acquisitions were Adscape, Trendalyzer, Marratech, FeedBurner, PeakStream, GrandCentral, Postini and Jaiku. Google is yet to complete its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., a global leader in digital marketing technology and services. Google’s acquisition strategy is different from most other companies. Google has mostly

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Web 3.0 & Google (Part 3)

Web 3.0 Framework discussion Below is a quick overview of the Web 3.0 framework for the Google sites. This is, in fact, an interesting analysis, since Google’s horizontal approach is pretty much against the grain of the vertical nature of my Web 3.0 framework.

Web 3.0 & Google (Part 2)

Vertical Strategy Google has adamantly maintained that a magically simple, clean User Interface is part of its key to world domination. This year, however, we have started seeing a clear trend towards verticalization of the web. In fact, my entire Web 3.0 thesis is based on verticalization, and Vertical Search, in particular, is a key

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Web 3.0 & Google (Part 1)

Introduction Google is the world’s largest search engine and online advertising network. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. It is the largest American company (by market capitalization over $217 billion) that is not part of the Dow

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Mercado Libre: Epilogue

I spent a lot of time locked up in a room with the Mercado Libre team recently, and came away with the following observations: * It is a very strong brand. Random “normal” people I asked about the company were familiar not only with the brand, but also knew what they did. * The competitive

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Blue Nile Needs to Up-Sell

Back in May I rated Blue Nile (NILE), the leading online retailer of diamonds and fine jewelry, very well in terms of Web 3.0. Blue Nile takes the approach of providing in-depth educational content and vertical search tools that aim to make consumers feel in control of the jewelry shopping process. Many males will admit

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eBay vs Amazon: My Take

So, I asked you to think about whether eBay or Amazon is a better company. I pointed out that Amazon’s stock is performing a lot better than eBay’s this year. One of you rightly pointed out that Amazon’s margins are a problem. Indeed, as I discussed at length in the series we just completed, Amazon

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