February 7th, 2012 Posted in Economy, Facebook, Social Network
Facebook will finally debut on the st
ock market this spring after filing an initial public offering (IPO) in a move that will value the social network at anywhere between $75bn and $100bn. It’s one of the biggest US stock market debuts in history.
Potential buyers learned that the company made an incredible $1bn in profit last year from $3.7bn in revenues, 85% of which comes from advertising, while the rest is largely from social gaming. Another interesting fact to emerge from the filing is that there are now 845 million Facebook users, an increase of 39% from this time last year.
Zuckerburg was reportedly reluctant to make the change, fearing that it will damage the company’s culture. He changed his mind when it became clear that the company would have more than 500 shareholders by the end of 2011, meaning that it would have to start publicly reporting financials.
The next step is managing the social network’s change into a mature global business that will balance demands of privacy, while keeping advertisers and subscribers happy.
Source: Wall Street Journal
March 29th, 2010 Posted in Case Study, Economy, Online
Looking through our RSS feed this morning we stumbled across this infographic from VisualEconomics about the amount of money that was wasted in America on website ventures during the dot com era. It shows 14 of the biggest dot com business fails. It is crazy to see the money pored into dot com businesses and how quickly it was blown! (it kind of makes you realise just why the world economy is in such a state).
One of the the biggest fails was GO.com with $790 million in funding burned in 3 years. Funnily enough, it was actually a Disney owned webportal and even worked to pioneer online chat rooms to no avail. Another was WebVan.com which managed to burn $800 million in 1 and a half years on a business that was set to revolutionise grocery shopping, customers were reported to be very happy with the service, but they just couldn’t find enough of them!
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March 10th, 2010 Posted in Economy, Great Ideas, Mediacontact.ie News
I’m sure you’ve all heard the joke by now: “Question – What is the difference between Iceland and Ireland? Answer – About six months and one letter.
But there is a major difference in how both countries are dealing with the economic meltdown. Unlike in Ireland, there is an acute sense of shame amongst the political class in Iceland over their role in the crisis.
On February 17th 2010 a new direction in Icelandic politics was announced that could affect all of our lives online. It was introduced with the following words:
“Iceland is at a unique crossroads. Because of an economic meltdown in the banking sector (sounds familiar!!), a deep sense is among the nation that a fundamental change is needed in order to prevent such events from taking place again. At such times it is important to seek a collective future vision and take a course that will bring the nation and the parliament closer together.”
On that day a parliamentary resolution was filed in Iceland, which hopes to produce the most advanced legislation ever for the protection of free speech. The aim is to strengthen freedom of expression around the world and in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers.
The ultimate purpose is to assemble a law to make Iceland a leader of freedoms of expression and information, and to establish the first Icelandic international prize: The Icelandic Freedom of Expression Award. The hope is that it will create a magnet-like effect for journalists, bloggers and digital evangelists.
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