The Register say it's a bubble (and it's not Andrew Orlowski, so it's not just automatic gainsaying of whatever the world is saying).
BusinessWeek starts off saying don't call it a bubble, but by the end of the article says the market is "frothy" and a "correction is inevitable", which is the same as saying "the bubble isn't as big as it was last time". To which I say: yet.
Private equity investors have paid a little over $1 billion for (two-thirds of) NexTag, another warmed-over relic from the last boom, founded in 1999 and then reinvented after its original model failed spectacularly.
According to that GigaOm article above, NexTag have "revenues of $200m" (per month? per quarter? per year?). Nielsen//NetRatings, who publish monthly reports on advertisers, say they are spending $60m a month on advertising. They themselves claim to have been profitable every month since October, 2001 -- a pretty unlikely month to have a turnaround, given that the rest of the market was melted at that point, and in 2003 they were boasting about 450% growth that year.
So say Om's figure is quarterly (and I have no idea if it is, but that's the period for which these figures make the most sense). Then they're spending maybe $180m every quarter to make profits of, again very roughly, $20m. So at an unusably poor level of certainty, that's $80m in profits a year, which given their $1.5 billion pricetag gives them a valuation of something like 19x earnings -- compared to 14x earnings for aQuantive about two months ago and 10x earnings for DoubleClick a little over a month before that.
That's some bubble we've got going there. If there's an acquisition for something like 24x earnings in early September I am going to proclaim myself a guru and start GigaSeldo.
P.S. It's developer day tomorrow! Woo!
So, he's basically the world's biggest puppy:
Clueless, dumb, totally pretty. It's like Smallville without the stupid kryptonite-based plots (but still plenty of homoeroticism). I recommend it as a great way of turning off your brain for 40 minutes. Having burned through the entire 6.5 hours of season 1 in the last 4 days, I'm all prepped for season 2, which starts tomorrow.
Oh, great... another A-grade browser to support.
I suppose I sort of have to say something about today's WWDC releases. The release of Leopard is mainly a great big yawn. The interesting things were:
So... nothing really earth-shaking. But quite cool.
So I signed up for Facebook Mobile. This allows you to get mail from other members and alerts sent as text messages to your phone and is generally well-executed. In addition to the other stuff, I also get text messages whenever people poke me on Facebook -- which is weird, because my phone is always on vibrate in my pocket, so when people in the UK poke me, I actually feel it. It's pretty weird, but also really cool. I can't wait for someone to invent some kind of peripheral that can transmit hugs as well.
In other news, I had a pretty good weekend. I was zonked on Friday, but Saturday I caught a sneak preview of Ratatouille (don't watch that trailer, it ruins all the funny bits) with GB, Nick, and a trio of geeks he'd picked up at WWDC. Today we rented some bikes and went... well... all over the place, apparently more than 11 miles, starting at Golden Gate park, hanging out at the beach for a bit and then getting more than slightly lost in the little woods at the point, but managing to take in an unintentionally hilarious war memorial. Much fun though, and I felt like I really earned the giant lunch I then rewarded myself with.
Next weekend is Pride! Oh dear...
(I am way below quota on blog entries this month folks; sorry!)
This weekend was my first Gay Pride weekend in San Francisco, and as is customary around this time, one stops to think about the whole concept of being "proud" of one's sexuality. What's it about, really?
For one thing, having a big parade where everybody goes overboard with stereotypes -- dykes on bikes, muscle marys, leather daddies, drag queens and twinks (sexy though they may be) -- doesn't exactly send the right message about what gay people are really like. Of course, a parade that accurately represented homosexuals would be 90% completely ordinary people, and that would make for a pretty dull parade ("...and here come the gay accountants!").
For another, having a big parade where people go over the top to show how WONDERFUL it is to be gay smacks a little -- no, a lot -- of over-compensation. There is no reason life as a homosexual cannot be absolutely as fun, fulfilling and happy as life as a heterosexual can be. Going on endlessly about how faaaaaabulous it is, disparaging comments about how straight sex must be boring and how unlucky the breeders are, and how we are so much better at throwing a party than the straights are may not be helping get across that message. Pretending being gay is somehow better detracts from the sincerity of the truth that it is merely the same.
Gay Pride also has the unfortunate side-effect of reinforcing the notion that homosexuals are defined by their sexuality above all other things. For me, the fact that I'm gay is important in that's it's shaped my life and my choices and says a lot about my background. I won't deny that I talk about it a lot. But it's roughly on a par with my nationality (which I also mention a lot). Before I am either gay or Trinidadian I'm a geek and a economic libertarian and a social liberal and an intellectual snob and an arrogant bastard with a serious weakness for exaggeration, and all of those things have a lot more bearing on my day-to-day interactions with people. If you talk to me online* you're much more likely to find out those other things first**.
But while it's true that it's just as possible to have a happy, fulfilling life whether you're gay or straight or any other combination of gender and orientation you find yourself saddled with, the truth is that it's harder if you're gay. Sometimes it's little things, like wondering if the guy you're about to hire is going to become impossible to work with once he finds out. Sometimes it's big things, like hearing that the majority of the public would rather you weren't able to marry the person you love. If you're not lucky enough to live in a liberal society, sometimes it's really big things, like worrying that the police will catch you and your boyfriend and have you executed. Straight people generally don't need to consider the legality of their sex lives when planning a holiday.
Most of the reasons it's harder lie in unequal treatment in law and social stigmatization***, and -- as the last 40 years have so dramatically shown -- those things can be changed, sometimes very rapidly. And that's why Pride is still important as a movement. Even if all you want to do is live within ordinary boundaries, you have to push them a little further than you intend to go so that you're not hemmed in. You need radical feminists, so that ordinary feminists can get on with their lives without anybody calling them "baby" (unless they feel like it).
So my support for Pride, while nuanced, remains firm. Even if I only get around to it once a year, I still have a duty to push back the boundaries a little further so there's room for everyone.
I will even tolerate the silly rainbows.
* i.e. via a medium in which my fashion choices and voice would not be able to tip you off. I dispute the voice thing though.
** although you may have to spend some quality time with Wikipedia and a chat log before you work out the last one, as I'm pretty good at bullshitting to support a point. That's why I have a blog.
*** the remainder are to do with the hassle of working out if someone's gay (instead of being able to assume they're straight). But even most of that can be chalked down to social stigma making it tricky to just ask "hey, do you like boys?".
One minor thing about the iPhone that a lot of people have asked: why is the camera no good? A 2 megapixel camera makes it better than the Blackberry, the Treo and the other major smartphone devices, but not lots better. It's not like a 4 MP camera takes up much extra space, so why cripple the camera?
The answer: the iCamera. If Apple is no longer Apple Computer, then you have to consider them branching into any big consumer niche. And they've already got iPod, iPhone and iTunes, all of which have a bunch of mysteriously prominent photo-management tools.
An iCamera is the next logical step. A big screen, on-board photo management tools using the point-and-drag interface that we're seeing on the iPhone, easy syncing to your computer using your existing iPod connector... and you're done. A category-changing step forward in usability is exactly what cameras today are crying out for.
So that's what's next for Apple.
Facebook applications are buying each other? No, seriously? For $60,000 a pop?
When one business-model-free, revenue-free, loss-making company buys another business-model-free, revenue-free, loss-making company, you know the bubble is well and truly on.
Relatedly, in Alert #3 I predicted that on current trends, a Bubble 2.0 company is due to be bought for 24x revenue sometime in September. Business.com is currently tipped to sell for exactly that multiplier; let's see if I get the date right as well.
So, I promised myself that the earliest I would be prepared to line up for the damn phone was 5pm, given that they start selling them at 6pm. But now there are already lines at the Apple stores in SF it seems I might have to start a little earlier. Grrr. Stupid more-fanboy-than-me fanboys.
Gotta have one. Oh, so gotta.
Update: currently blogging from 76th place in line at Burlingame Apple store, where the line is significantly shorter than on Market Street in SF. Is there free wifi in the line? Of course there is...
Update: GOT ONE! Wooooo! An update containing impressions etc. will be forthcoming.
I am so fucking pleased with this device. It was worth every penny. It would be worth twice what I paid. It's awesome. It's god in the machine.
More to come, I'm sure...
Update: Oh yeah, photos!
All content is copyright © 2000-2008 Seldo.Com and licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-sharealike license. Remix away!
edan
05 June 2007marc
05 June 2007