Archive for the 'business' Category

The Coke Machine Fairy: Coca-Cola joins growing list of companies in Australia using Foursquare.

Published on September 1, 2010 in Australia, Foursquare, Twitter, business, mobile and social media. Comments

Further to my recent posts, Local businesses: to use Foursquare (yet) or not, that is the question’ and 10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing, it seems that Coca–Cola has now jumped in with its own contribution to Foursquare markeing. Enter, The Coke Machine Fairy.

I just noticed this a few minutes ago when I visited my local shopping centre, Broadway Shopping Mall. There was a “Nearby Special” banner on display as I checked-in.

It appears that Coke will be leaving “goodies” in Coke machines around Sydney on a daily basis. Instructions on how to play the game can be found here.

Coke machine foursquare

COKE Machine Fairy

Coke machine Fairey Twitter

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Connectivity equals productivity, here’s a powerful reminder.

Published on August 30, 2010 in business, mobile, technology and video. Comments

I think this TED Talk by Iqbal Quadir is a poignant and powerful reminder that connectivity equals productivity. For those of us who use the web and smart mobile devices daily, it’s easy to forget just how much these enable greater productivity, even if some of our time is spent on more trivial or entertaining activities.

In this inspiring, embedded video, social entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir tells how his experiences as a kid in Bangladesh, and later as an investment banker in New York, led him to start a mobile phone operator connecting 80 million rural Bangladeshi.

In the process, he became a champion of bottom-up development, rather than giving increasing amounts of aid money to top down development, which seems not to be working very well, if at all. In fact, he maintains that it only empowers authorities to maginalise citizens. Even in countries that have grown rich from oil reserves, autocratic regimes have grown hugely wealthy, while poverty among citizens remains entrenched.

Enter Iqbal Quadir. Not long ago in Bangladesh, only one in 500 people had access to a telephone. Quadir points out that “Vasts amounts of wasted time results. The only way people can depend on each other is to connect to each other, which leads to productivity.”

Watch the video to find out how he overcame the significant hurdles involved in what turned out to be a massive connectivity project and business. How could poor people afford to use mobile phones? Who would invest in such a project in such a poor country? This video is a must see.

via Entrepreneur

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21 points tracking the rise and rise of the Facebook business empire.

Published on August 25, 2010 in Facebook, business and social media. Comments

After coming across a recent infographic regarding the business behind Facebook, I decided to look just a little deeper into the company’s history. Following are some points you perhaps don’t already know, and a few you probably do. Look for the big questions at the end too.

  1. Facebook was launched by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates in February 2004, more than six and half years ago. As you may know, there’s now a (fictional) feature feature film called ‘The Social Network’ based on events surrounding the founding of Facebook.
  2. Within a month of launching, over half of Harvard undergraduate students were using ‘The Facebook’, as it was initially called. Within 4 months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.
  3. As of July 2010, over 500 million people are using Facebook.
  4. Later in 2004, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel injectd $500,000 into Facebook, becoming its first investor.
  5. Also in 2004, Friendster attempted to acquire Facebook for $10 million. Zuckerberg turned down the offer.
  6. In 2005, Facebook took another $12.7 million from venture capital group Accel Partners, at about a $100 million valuation.
  7. In 2006, Facebook took another $25 million  in funding from VC firms Greylock Parters and Meritech Capital, as well as more from Thiel and Accel Partners. The pre-money valuation at this stage was around $525 million.
  8. In September 2006, Facebook opened up to anyone with an email address.
  9. In 2006, both Viacom and Yahoo attempted to buy Facebook, Yahoo reportedly first offered $1 billion dollars.
  10. In 2007, Microsoft invested over $240 million and become Facebook’s sole provider of banner ads. Facebook has now started dropping Microsoft’s ads in favour of more socially interactive ads, where advertisers are encouraged to use the “Like” button to increase the ad’s influence. Facebook ads can be targeted by location, age and interests.
  11. In total, Facebook has taken a staggering $836 million in funding. Among Facebook’s other investors are, a German internet company called European Founders Fund ($15 million), a Hong Hong billionaire called Li Ka-hing ($60 million), TriplePoint Capital ($100 million), a Russian investment firm called Digital Sky Technologies ($200 million) and a private equity firm called Elevation Partners ($120 million).
  12. In March 2010, for the first time Facebook became the most visited website in the US, surpassing Google.
  13. Facebook’s increasing revenue stems from ads, Facebook applications and Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits are an online currency unique to Facebook. Members purchase ten credits per dollar to buy online goods and play games. Facebook gets a 30% cut of the credit transactions.
  14. Facebook games are popular to say the least. Zynga is the company behind two of the most popular games, Farmville and Mafia Wars. Farmville claimed over 83 million active users in February 2010. Marfia wars has claimed over 25 million users.
  15. In July 2010, Facebook teamed up with Amazon to use Facebook profile data to make product recommendations on Amazon’s US and Canadian site.
  16. Although still a private comapny, industry sources claim Facebook reveunes were up to $700 million in 2009.
  17. It is projected that Facebook will generate revenues between $1 billion and $1.1 billion in 2010.
  18. Current valuations of Facebook are upwards of $20 billion.
  19. Speculation over an IPO has been mounting. Mark Zuckerberg has been reported as saying the initial public offering will happen “when it makes sense”.
  20. 2012: Facebook goes public?
  21. Facebook follows in Google’s footsteps and becomes the next $100 billion web company?

Okay, sure, those last two points haven’t happened, yet. What are your thoughts on these two possible future developments? The IPO is sure to happen. What about the last point? Will Facebook be as big and profitable as Google is now?

Sources: CrunchBase, StartupMeme

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Facebook Places, much anticipated “Foursquare Killer”, about to launch?

Published on August 10, 2010 in Facebook, Foursquare, business, mobile, social media and technology. Comments

The long anticipated geolocation feature from Facebook will be launching very soon. Apparently, “multiple sources” have told CNET this is the case. We have heard this before, from as far back as May, but surely it must be on its way now.

Word from said sources is that it will take the form of an Application Programming Interface (API) for other location-based services to be able to plug-into.

Facebook Places Foursquare Killer

Mathew Ingram at Gigaom has pointed out that it’s likely to be more than just a check-in API, as Facebook has said previously that it thinks of places as more than just a way to add location information to a status update, or to ‘like’ a café or bar you visit.

Indeed, I too wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook Places launches with the ability to associate photos, videos and comment-style reviews. I’ve said before that the ability to upload images and associate them with venues in Foursquare would be a welcome additional feature. I’m sure they’ll add it sooner or later. Yes, I know Gowalla fans, Gowalla already has this feature, but Foursquare has the momentum.

Facebook has partnered with Localeze to provide a business directory infrastructure  for the new location feature. This is the same company that powers Twitter’s Places directory. In addition, Facebook recently acquired Hot Potato, which is a service that focuses on user check-ins to events rather than locations. It remains to be seen how Facebook Places will be integrated with Facebook Events, but I’d have to say there must be a big opportunity there for that to happen. It could work out quite well.

Will Facebook Places be a Foursquare killer? What are your thoughts on that? Personally, I doubt it but it’s bound to attract a lot of users. Even if the percentage of Facebook users who take it up is reasonably low, with 500+ million users, it’s still bound to be a huge number!

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Report: 5 year Aussie digital media outlook not looking too shabby, mate.

Published on August 3, 2010 in Australia, business, mobile, politics and technology. Comments

A comprehensive new report released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the Australian entertainment and media industry will grow by 28 percent over the next five years, at a predicted compound annual growth rate of 5.1 percent. This means that the industry is forecast to increase its revenue to $36.2 billion by 2014.

Newspapers and the changing media landscape

Unsurprisingly, magazines, newspapers and radio aren’t expected to lead the way in terms of growth. In fact, in 2009 the Australian newspaper market shrank by 11.4 percent. However, the PwC report expects that a compound annual growth rate of 1.8 percent will be sustained through to 2014. This includes revenues from newspaper websites of course.

However you look at it, the future for traditional newspapers doesn’t look particularly great. Clearly, major changes are taking place in the media landscape and media organisations running newspapers are (somewhat desperately) attempting to figure out how to continue to remain viable into the future. Everywhere you look people are taking about what’s going to happen. Just yesterday I was reading an interesting blog post by Malcolm Turnbull on the subject:  Twitter, Newspapers, New Media – Some Observations.

Increasing national broadband speeds and access?

David Wiadrowski, head of technology, information, communications and entertainment at PwC, states that, “With machines in homes becoming smarter, people sharing information through social networks and data being stored in clouds the appetite for content and speed strengthens. High-speed broadband connectivity is an opportunity to satisfy consumers’ growing appetites”.

I have no argument with this, however, given that the federal Opposition’s policy going into the imminent federal election is to call a halt to the building of the new National Broadband Network if elected, it remains to be seen whether broadband speeds in Australian will actually get the boost that is required. We’ll have to wait and see on that one. Personally, I’d like to see the new network built as soon as possible.

In any case, the report expects the local internet industry to grow from $7 billion in 2009 to $10.6 billion in 2014. Wireless broadband is the fastest growing kind of internet access.

Online social networking is also making a large contribution to growth in Australia. As I pointed out recently, Australians spend the most time social networking in the world. When I mentioned this on Twitter, a couple of people (only half jokingly) pointed out that “it’s because our TV is so crap”.

High growth in interactive gaming

The report observes that interactive gaming was the strongest performer of the industry sectors during 2009, and bucked the global financial crisis to grow by 7.7 percent. The prediction here is that gaming will continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 9.4 percent, to reach $2.5 billion in 2014. Growth from both online and mobile games is expected to account for the highest growth. Annual compound growth rates for online games and mobile games are expected to rise by 20.4 percent and 15.7 percent respectively.

Digital downloading expected to go ballistic

While filmed entertainment in general bucked the local economic slowdown to grow by 7.1 percent during 2009, in-home digital downloading is forecast to grow by a huge 117.8 percent per year to reach $126 million in 2014. Obviously, this only counts paid-for downloads. $126 million is surely only the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential future revenue from digital downloads.

Demand for DVDs is still expected to be strong for a few years until we see significant improvements in internet speeds and data download limits. Again, we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the roll out of the National Broadband Network. There will be a lot of people in the industry hoping this goes ahead as soon as possible, and that when it does, prices are not steep.

Are these predictions in line with your expectations of the next few years on the Australian media and entertainment scene? Let me know your thoughts.

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