Posts Tagged ‘Google’
This Rug Merchant Missed Out On $50 Million In Facebook Stock
Pejman Nozad could have made $50 million today.
In 2005, he had a chance to invest roughly $50,000 in Facebook, he told the Wall Street Journal. Facebook’s then-president, Sean Parker, was keen on nabbing space in 165 University Avenue, a building Nozad and his partners, the Amidi family, owned.
Park sought out Nozad, who’s known as a matchmaker in Silicon Valley—a role he developed as he sold carpets in a well-placed business, the Amidis’ Medallion Rug Gallery in Palo Alto.
Google and PayPal had previously occupied 165 University Avenue, which is now thought to be a lucky one for startups. (PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel was an early investor in Facebook.)
Facebook not only wanted the lucky space, but hoped the the lucky angel investor would take a stake.
The leasing department turned Facebook down, and Nozad said he didn’t fight the decision. Facebook found other office space along University Avenue.
Don’t feel bad for Nozad, though.
He and the Amidis now run Amidzad Partners, which sold startups like Danger Research and Powerset to Microsoft and shopping search engine Milo to eBay. Dropbox is a current investment.
UPDATE: Here’s the conversation we had with Nozad on Twitter about this story:
@owenthomas all good here!
— pejmannozad (@pejmannozad) May 18, 2012
That’s a relief!
DON’T MISS: These People Walked Away From Early Jobs At Billion-Dollar Companies
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If Facebook Built An Ad Network, How Much Money Could It Make?
Today on Geekwire, Estately CEO Galen Ward argues that he’d bet his entire retirement fund on Facebook.
He assumes that Facebook will build an ad network, and points out that Google AdSense, which has revenues of $10 billion per year (see Network revenue, chart 1).
He argues that as soon as Facebook’s network offers slightly better ROI than AdSense, advertisers will switch.
There are a number of flaws with this argument. Most notably, as we pointed out in our special report on Facebook’s growth potential, ad networks are a highly competitive and mostly commodity business (there are more ad networks than Google AdSense), and Facebook has plenty of work to do to increase ad sales on its own sites, where margins are higher.
But the main flaw with this argument is that Google reports GROSS revenue for its network sites.
That’s revenue before it pays its ad partners their required cut.
A better measure is NET revenue, which is quite a bit smaller — about $3.1 billion according to our calculations, based on statements in Google’s earnings reports. (see chart 2):
So even if Facebook builds an ad network and takes every single AdSense customer, it won’t really be making $10 billion a year in any meaningful sense.
Google also sells ads on its own sites — mostly search — and made $26 billion in sales last year from those ads. But as Henry Blodget argued late last year, Google’s search ads are a uniquely good business, because Google places them in front of consumers exactly as they’re planning to buy something.
Facebook mainly sells display ads, which are much less effective.
There’s also another Facebook business which everybody seems to be ignoring: Payments. As we argued yesterday, this could be a multibillion dollar business by the end of 2013, if Facebook expands the types of goods it offers.
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THE PLOT THICKENS: Check out This Message That Was Posted On The Website Of The Greek Prime Minister
if you missed the last hour of newsflow, here’s what happened: There was a report that Angela Merkel had asked Greece to hold a straight up referendum on staying in the Euro.
This pissed off Greek political leaders, who accused Merkel of treating Greece like a “protectorate.”
Then Merkel denied she had ever said such a thing.
But there’s more!
Via Faisal Islam, check out this (Google Translated) message on the website of the Greek Prime Minsiter’s website
Contact Prime Minister Panagiotis Pikrammenou with political leaders
NOTICE Spokesman
Athens May 18, 2012
The Prime Minister Panagiotis Pikrammenos on call he had with the President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias, contacted political leaders: A. Samara, Chairman of the Southwest, Al. Tsipras, President of the Parliamentary Group of SYRIZA, Ev. Venizelos, President of PASOK, P. Burn, chairman of the Independent Greek, Al. Papariga, General Secretary of KKE, N. Michaloliakos, Secretary of the People’s Association – Golden Dawn, and F. Kouvelis, President of DIM.AR, and informed them of the contents of the conversation that had the President with Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel.
Mrs. Merkel reiterated EU support Greece’s efforts to overcome the crisis. She also mentioned that the EU intends to consider strengthening policies for growth and combat unemployment in Europe. The issue of development is also a key issue to be addressed by the Special EU Summit on 23 May in Brussels.
Also transferred to the President of the Republic thoughts about a referendum alongside elections, the question whether Greek citizens wishing to stay in the eurozone. It is obvious that the issue is outside the responsibilities of the caretaker government.
Thoughts?
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Could What Happened to MySpace Happen to Facebook?
Google has just launched a new service called Google+ that has the blogosphere asking if it is a Facebook killer. So the question I want to explore is whether or not what happened to MySpace could happen to Facebook?
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Google Is In Total Denial About Its Huge Problem With Google+ (GOOG)
When is Google going to admit the obvious?
Google+, the “social spine” of CEO Larry Page’s counterattack on Facebook, is a flop.
That’s according to a detailed analysis of user activity by research firm RJ Metrics for Fast Company.
RJ Metrics selected 40,000 Google+ users at random. It then analyzed their public posts.
What they found is that a lot of people start sharing on Google+, then stop. 3 out of 10 made a single public post, then never posted again. Even among people who made five posts, 15 percent had stopped posting.
RJ Metrics said this “decay rate” was disturbing.
Other analysts have found that people spend an average of 3 minutes a month on Google+, versus 7 hours on Facebook.
Now, it’s possible that many Google+ users are not posting publicly and are sharing privately instead, as Google+ allows. That’s Google’s timeworn excuse when asked about Google+ engagement. But Google has refused to give clear statistics about activity on Google+.
“Google is just refusing to answer the question for its own reasons, which is probably because Google+ has far less activity as a standalone social network than either Facebook or Twitter,” wrote Google expert Danny Sullivan recently.
Go see the gory details on Fast Company >>
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