Why Tumblr will Rewrite Yahoo's History

The combination of Tumblr + Yahoo! is expected to grow Yahoo’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by ~20%.

Similar to Instagram, what many seem to miss is that Tumblr isn’t just a blogging or content platform that thrives online and ports extremely well to mobile, it is a bona fide social network.

Yahoo sees this acquisition to power its web 3.0 users who are Mobile savvy, well aware of current trends on Technology news and  Entertainment. Before this Acquisition Yahoo was and ( will continue ) to be seen as a web1.0 company “and also ran technology start up”

The Basic difference among Yahoo , Google, Facebook  and Twitter is its engagement ecosystem. Users once connected tend to stay there interact and engage setting up a viral marketing mechanism. The  Famed Google Algorithms today powers Google Plus, Google Adsense as well as the Google Adwords program and Blogger...While Google has straddled a complex mix of users partners and cocreators  and advertisers where its virtually owns the products along with the entire network of distributors ( Adsense/Adwords/Blogger/Video/Image/Maps and a web mail along with several others (products which are  often discontinued  in the name of consumer feedback..)..

Similarly Facebook and Twitter  straddles a entire product ecosystem where users stay connected and real time...

Comparatively Yahoo failed in selling its core Proposition”  By trying to do too many things at the cost of nothing new ,and not to mention the musical chairs of CEO coming and trying to give a direction of their own without  idea of a roadmap where the Company would like to go

What Yahoo lacked was  getting their 3C’s right Consumption, Cocreation and Curation. The 3C which is so essential to connect with online users...

Tumblr will help Yahoo get the 3C’s right (hopefully this time) Marissa Mayer knows this.. and Tumblr acquisition this might   the start of the New Yahoo . If anyone can change Yahoo its their current  CEO .. 

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3 Reasons why Linkedin's Acquisition of Slideshare will Benefit Users

LinkedIn and Slideshare

View more presentations from LinkedIn

Slideshare has just been acquired by  LinkedIn for approximately $118.75 million,  for approximately 45%  cash and 55 % stock .Linkedin , with 161 million members   is one of the fastest growing social networks, in the social career vertical , and has last year  was among the the first major US social-media company to raise  $352.8 million in an  IPO

Slideshare has been often termed as  “YouTube for slideshows,” SlideSharehas and enables users to share and upload presentations, documents, PDFs, videos and webinars since 2006.

Linkedin  with  107 million unique monthly visitors and 161 million members can now leverage slideshare's highly engaged user base  with Linkedin 's  own  user data , enabling its users to add presentation, documents, and infographics.This acquisition is a perfect fit to Linkedin , as it   enables linkedin professionals discover and share content,  data and information 

SlideShare attracts 58 million unique monthly  and 16 million registered users , and  hosts more than 7 million presentations, which have been embedded on nearly 1.5 million different domains. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner says SlideShare’s purpose “aligns perfectly” with his company’s mission.

SlideShare was voted amongst by the World's Top 10 tools for education & e-learning in 2010 SlideShare's biggest competitors include Scribd.com, Issuu and Docstoc. Some of the notable users of SlideShare include The White House, NASA, World Economic Forum, State of Utah, O'Reilly Media, Hewlett Packard and IBM. LinkedIn, recently acquired real-time search startup IndexTank in October 2011 and email startup Rapportive this February.

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Motorola Timeline : From a Hardware Giant To Search Bot

Google Inc's purchase of Motorola Mobility marks the end of its 81-year story including its invention of the cellphone in the 1970s, its spectacular success with the Razr phone a few years ago, and then its slide into crisis and now its takeover.Here is the Timeline of how The Search Giant Google and Motorola fared as individual companies along with their Timeline. Special thanks to Reuters

1928: Galvin family establishes Galvin Manufacturing. Its first product was a power converter.

1930: Changes name to Motorola.Three generations of Galvins lead Motorola until Christopher Galvin's 2004 ouster.

1973:Motorola's Martin Cooper makes the first mobile phone call on a prototype of DynaTAC.

1984:DynaTAC becomes commercially available. It is later known as the "brick" when surpassed by lighter, smaller phones.

1989:Launches MicroTAC, its first flip-phone, which has a plastic cover that flips open to reveal its keypad.

1994: Motorola dominates global cell market with a 32.5 pct share, versus Nokia's 21 pct, according to Gartner.

1996: Motorola Launches StarTAC, the first of its signature clamshell phone range with a lid that hinges open.

2000: Motorola's market share is 13 percent vs Nokia's 31 percent, and it hovers in the mid-teen range for years.

2004: Motorola launches Razr,an ultra-thin phone that becomes a design icon with 500 million Razr phones.In 2006,market gets saturated with Razrs and by year-end it is being given away for free.Motorola market share peaks around 23 percent.

2007:Activist investor Carl Icahn starts pushing Motorola to split up, buy back shares and fire its CEO. Apple Inc sells first iPhone. Motorola ends year with 9 percent share.

2008: Greg Brown replaces Zander as CEO. Motorola posts a loss for three out of four quarters of that year.

October 2008: New Co-CEO Sanjay Jha reveals plan to bet future entirely on Google's Android platform. Cuts thousands of jobs. Motorola ends year with less than 7 percent share.

November 2009: Motorola unveils first Android phone with Verizon Wireless kick-starting the successful Droid brand.

January 2011: Motorola Inc is split into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility. Announces plan to launch first tablet based on Android to compete with Apple's iPad

July 28 2011:Motorola delays new products until September. Ends second quarter with a 2.9 percent market share.

Aug 15 2011:Google announces deal to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.

Market share data from Gartner and Strategy Analytics ( source  Reuters)

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21 Year old myYearbook Founder Gets Richer by $100 Million

Quepasa, the Facebook for Latinos has merged with social networking company myYearbook for $100 million, approximately $82 million of hin Quepasa common stock and approximately $18 million in cash. 

 

myYearbook derives its revenue from three sources - advertising, virtual-currency sales and monthly subscriptions. Advertising makes up two-thirds of its revenue, with the other sources making up the rest.myYearbook is seeing over 1 billion page views on mobile platforms and 1.2 billion page views on the web each month. In fact, it is the top web site in the comScore Teens category with more visits, minutes, and pageviews

In 2010, myYearbook generated $23.7 million in revenue, up 53% year-over-year, and EBITDA of $4.9 million, up 315% year-over-year.

 Via BusinessInsider

In 2005, Catherine Cook and her brother David had an idea for a startup on social network.The high schoolers flipped through a yearbook and wanted to make a digital version.

The 15-and-16-year-olds got to work and created MyYearbook. In the 6-year span, the duo raised $17 million in financing, grew the site to 70 million users, and generated 1.2 billion monthly pageviews. This site was  launched in 2005 and saw 400 people from her school signup in the 1st week.Today myYearbook.com has over 32million members, is growing by almost 20,000 people each day and does 30 million a year in revenue.

Today, a publicly-traded Latino social network, Quepasa, announced its $100 million acquisition of MyYearbook. The majority of the deal, $82 million, is Quepasa common stock. The other $18 million is cash.

Geoff Cook, MyYearbook's CEO and sibling of Catherine and David, wrote a letter to his 100+ employees:

"I don’t consider this an exit or the end. I consider it the end of the beginning, and I believe we have a lot more innovative products to create,"Welcome to retirement Catherine, Geoff and David! Although we're sure this won't be the last company they create.

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