Joe2

Andreessen: Facebook Could Do $1 Billion in Revenue

I don't get your point. OK so they gain market share and then what? Is your point that if they get beyond a certain market share, they can then switch to revenue generating mode and not lose customers, the way that myspace did? Is that what you are suggesting? Why do you suppose that would be the case for facebook? Are they THAT different from myspace?

Now Andressen's making a different point. He seems to be proud that facebook could earn $1B if they tried. The point is: it doesn't matter if they earn $1B or $10M. If they are spending more than they are earning, they WILL run out of cash.

What Andressen, Zuckerberg and others are really saying is this: we can bring this thing to a point where we can get a pop out of an IPO or Google will buy us and then we can collect our investment returns and go home. It doesn't really matter that facebook generates a profit. We just need to get it to large enough numbers (users, eyeballs - whatever) that we can sell it. Why don't they just admit this?

I am skeptical of any website and any CEO that says "there's no need for a revenue plan until 2011". What they are saying is "please, someone, buy us so we don't have to work hard to produce a site that has services that someone will pay for".

Oh please.

Silicon Graphics Sells Itself to Rackable for $25 Million

I don't get why this acquisition makes sense. Erick - if you can't build web scale services on expensive proprietary boxes (which I agree with 100%) then why does it make sense for RACK to buy these assets even if they are cheap? What's the thinking folks?

Google Keeps Scoring

SilentGoogle Guy - I agree with your comments! As Larry Ellison said "Google is a one trick pony but it's one helluva trick". That just about sums it up.

However every one trick pony needs a second trick. For Google, Sramana's recommendation appears to be for the company to focus on personalization + vertical search + ad networks. I agree that the vertical angle is interesting because I agree that a travel site (eg Expedia or equivalent), or say Monster are better that just Google for planning travel, finding jobs etc.

However, there are a few distinctions that are important to whether a particular vertical search system succeeds or not. Remember, these vertical search engines are competing with the convenience of just typing in something into Google. I don't think all vertical engines will or should succeed (eg a women's accessories search engine as an example - it fails many of the tests below).

1. Breadth vs depth. What makes each engine good is likely the focus on one niche area. But determining the niche is non trivial. For example, right now I am looking for a high speed Laser Printer. Should there be a vertical search engine for High Speed Laser Printers, High Speed Printers, Printers, computer peripherals, or plate / film / digital printing presses? But how does an average person even know of the multitude of such search engines and what their niche areas are? How would one EVER remember this?

2. "Search to Find" vs. "Search to Act". Effective vertical sites focus on offering more value than just Finding the item desired. There should be some immediate follow on activity that's not as convenient to do as a separate step of going to the vendor's website, logging in etc etc. Travel is an example. You want the cheapest air, hotel, car rental reservations for the same time period. Then you want to buy all of these things but only if ALL are available (you can't get into a situation where all of a sudden hotels aren''t available / too expensive / too far from destination, but you just booked a non refundable air fare). Even Expedia doesn't do this and it should! Next, you want ongoing tracking of your reservations etc etc. If you cancel your reservation, you want to cancel all - air, car, hotel vs doing each one, one by one. This is an example of "Search to Act" vs "Search to Find. The deeper the follow on business process, the greater the perceived value to the customer.

3. Deterministic vs Subjective assessment of value of purchased items. The more defined the product is (eg Flight from A to B on a known airline or buying a specific book vs buying a home without looking at it), the easier it is to do comparison shopping and buy online.

Just my $0.02. Would love to hear yours. Hope all is well.
Nimish

Some Troubling Data For Apple and SanDisk Shareholders

Shuffle prices were slashed by $30 recently, and capacity was upgraded to 2GB. This means increase in shuffle unit sales, and when coupled with increase in capacity on some of those units, I don't get the iSuppli announcement. It doesn't fit what we all see out there.

What are we missing?

Hewlett-Packard Looks Recession-Proof

Sramana - if you article is about Hewlett Packard then I agree with you. However if your implication is about HPQ (the stock), then my view is the stock doesn't move just based on the company's reported results. It's about a) what was built into the stock vs actuals, b) the guide for next few quarters, and c) management commentary. Take a look at CSCO's recent results. Or NTAP's.

That said, I absolutely agree that the company appears to be fiscally well managed. However I am STILL missing significant new vision and ultimately you can't keep showing great results only through fiscal discipline (however important that may be).

My -$0.02.

Nimish

Employees Determine iPhone Success in Business

Carl,

I love your dream that Apple products in general, and iPhone specifically, would be "allowed" by corporate IT departments. But I am not as optimistic just yet.

Lets take the iPhone (since your article was about that device).

Most people in a company use the blackberry for 4 purposes - email, phone, calendar and address book. Of course there's a host of other things like surfing the net, playing games and so on but I believe the four uses mentioned dominate.

Now lets take each one and check if the iPhone - TODAY AS IT STANDS - does the job adequately. EMail: corporate Outlook not supported, even if you ask Apple (I have). Phone: only Cingular in the US so if your company's phone plan (assuming your company is paying for the cell phone monthly charges obviously) is with TMobile you are out of luck. If your company doesn't pay for cell phone charges or if you can expense Cingular, then this is fine. Calendar: sync with Outlook works great but you can only sync when you are tethered to your PC / Mac and when you are not, you can't send meeting requests to colleagues from your iPhone. In a corporate setting, this is poor at best. Road warriors travel and to only see if you have meeting conflicts when you sync is not adequate. And finally address book: works great, if you are tethered to your PC or Mac but I believe the address book sync etc limitations are not a deal killer so to speak.

These flaws, when combined, are enough to prevent substantial iPhone penetration in corporate markets. To counter this, Apple has recently allowed third party apps and we see the Google App as example #1. I am sure we will see many more, including (hopefully) fixes for the limitations mentioned above. Until that happens, I believe Apple will be stymied in their desire to enable iPhone to enter Corporate America as the successor to Blackberry.

Full disclosure: I use (only) an iPhone and I love it. I run a small business and it is Mac / iPhone based. However the myriad of limitations around security and lack of connectivity to the PC world test our patience, that's for sure.

I am optimistic that's for sure for the future though.

iPhone Browsing Market Share Shows Importance of Usability

Yes, I agree on the usability argument. There's no comparison between the OS's either (and yes I use an iPhone too).

That said, we shouldn't forget that almost all of SAP users are people who work for large F500 companies (and this newly announced CRM module is a integrated to their large company ERP offering only anyway). These large company users use blackberrys not iPhones for work related stuff. iPhones don't work with Corporate exchange servers and VPN connections and so on. So it just seems like a very strange decision for SAP to FIRST support the iPhone BEFORE spporting the Blackberry... anyway time will tell it was a wise one or not.

iPhone Browsing Market Share Shows Importance of Usability

Carl - Blackberry usage in businesses is substantially higher than iPhone usage in businesses. SAP's move doesn't make sense given that most of it's CRM users are likely to be sales and marketing people - who tend to use Blackberrys are their primary work-related mobile device vs iPhone.

I don't get how you conclude your second paragraph from your first one. Can you please help connect the dots on why windows mobile and iPhone browsing behavior translates to SAP's decision to release CRM capability on iPhone AHEAD of Blackberry? Just because iPhone used more for web browsing than windows mobile devices?

Thanks,

Apple Joins Microsoft in Fear Factor; Look to Lenovo

I have Vista Home Premium (I think that's what it's called) running on Parallels on my Mac. Vista is the being piece of crap that I have seen in a while. I could write a book on flaws in this OS. The funny thing is, I worked in the product side of a large enterprise software company, and this company's products were routinely criticized as being ugly / unuseable / etc. When I used Vista, I realized that even this much maligned enterprise software company actually did quite well in terms of useability and robustness when compared with Vista! That's quite a statement...

To even somehow compare this to Apple's products and to assert that there is fear and loathing with Apple much like there is with Microsoft is absurd.

I, for one, am a thrilled Apple product user. And yes, I am completely aware of the restrictions that an Apple product set brings, but compared with the headaches that Vista brings, these restrictions are well worth it.

At Google, Shareholders Have No Clout

I am amazed at the comments of readers supporting GOOG's push into areas like Clean Energy, Space, and even spectrum. I personally think it absurd that the company pushes its own agenda, with the attitude of "don't buy my stock if you don't like it". GOOG is a public company and the stock is trading at ~$700 because there is future expectation of growth reflected in the price. It is this incredible valuation that enables GOOG to invest in all these initiatives (eg borrow money for their spectrum bid). So basically the company is using shareholder cash and optimism (as reflected in the stock) to invest in all these pet projects. This is fundamentally wrong.

Now, I am the first to admit that obviously there may well be a grand plan, which I don't get. I also admit that some of the investments (eg OHA and 700 MHz spectrum bid) are closer to the core business and you could possibly draw conclusions like OHA can generate ad revenues on mobile devices etc etc. But I can't, for the life of me, figure out how, for example, Clean Energy improves GOOG's core business in the next 2-3 years. If there is a grand plan here, and somehow these initiatives create better EBITDA margins and revenues, then I owe the company an apology. But until then, I am looking for a point when a) these initiative start to distract the management team from their day job, b) expectations of returns from these other investments start to get factored into the stock. That's the time to exit, and possibly short GOOG.

The Salesforce.com Bubble is Ready to Burst

The animosity between Marc and Larry is a non issue in my mind. I do not buy that as a reason for not purchasing. Larry is way too focused on his company's success and if CRM fits in that plan, he would buy it. The more interesting question is does he need to, and if so why? Isn't it more valuable to consider an outright purchase of NetSuite (yes I know he owns a majority of it but due to conflict of interest, he cannot directly control what the company does or does not do).

Also, Marc Benioff's share sales seem to be a pre-arranged trading arrangement. He is selling 10,000 shares at roughly the same time, every day without exceptions. That does not seem like "dumping" to me...

Hewlett Packard's Stunning Turnaround

Good article... however what I see in HPQ is a lot of cost cutting / rationalization. This is obviously good and needed. But other than Mercury acquisition, what else have they done that's of TOP LINE value? All the Compaq value is being driven to bottom line now by the cost cutting. So my thesis is that Hurd needs to show some top line growth story in the coming quarters. Any thoughts on what this would be?

Hewlett Packard's Stunning Turnaround

Good article... however what I see in HPQ is a lot of cost cutting / rationalization. This is obviously good and needed. But other than Mercury acquisition, what else have they done that's of TOP LINE value? All the Compaq value is being driven to bottom line now by the cost cutting. So my thesis is that Hurd needs to show some top line growth story in the coming quarters. Any thoughts on what this would be?