Website Valuation

As an analyst, I am frequently asked questions about valuation.

"Is Facebook really worth $15B?"

I recently saw a cool startup on killerstartups.com for website valuation company called ValueMyWeb.

They take a pretty novel approach to looking at site valuation by having a heavy component of the valuation based on the search engine performance of the site, along with the blog coverage, and traffic.

It's an interesting take on valuation with a more mathematical approach to looking at the asset value of a site.

Pretty interesting, check it out.

The downfall of another web 2.0 company

Zazzle, a once hot web2.0 consumer internet company has now also been hit with layoffs.

This despite the great traffic growth over the past 12 months, where zazzle nearly doubled it's unique US visitors per month from 1M to 2M (according to compete.com)

I wonder if notable competitor, CafePress will be making similar announcements soon.

The entire Steve Ballmer Memo

Here's the entire memo from Steve Ballmer. Interesting "rah-rah" to the troops.

Reality is that Microsoft's core business is still holding up quite well, but obviously they are getting crushed in search and online advertising.

The Microsoft Layoff

Microsoft missed earnings yesterday and announced that they were laying off 5,000 employees and implementing a salary freeze. At the same time, the coming reported that they are planning to hire two to three thousand employees. So was this a real layoff - or just an excuse to cut some fat?

Some Cool New Search "Gadgets"

The web is becoming a more and more competitive every day. Despite the downturn in the economy, as marketing dollars move to online, competition increases. Therefore it is becoming more and more important to understand the dynamics of competition in your landscape.

Recently, I have run into a wonderful widget called Review My Web that is a free website grader for understanding the competitive landscape.

It allows you to enter your website, a couple competitors, and you get an email with a detailed competitive report. It's great way to get started with SEO and understanding what your competitors are doing.

The best part is that you can't beat the price: it's free.

Future of Yahoo

Yahoo's New Search
Yahoo has clearly been behind Google in terms of search, and has made significant moves to close the gap. After Terry Semel stepped down from his post, the company has returned back to basics - shifting focus away from new media to core services like search.

A new search
Yahoo has just launched several new features for its search engine, including a new "Search Assist" tool that automatically suggests search terms. The AJAX based tool, also allows guides you through refine your search. It's a great upgrade, and it's exciting to finally see some new innovations from Yahoo. For a glimpse into what's in store next for Yahoo Search, you can take a look at an alpha search site from Yahoo at: Search Alpha. It provides an integrated search engine that searches the web, flickr photos, yahoo answers, videos, news, and wikis for the information you are looking for.

Panama: Yahoo's answer to AdWords
Early this year Yahoo rolled out Project Panama, a major upgrade to US advertisers. With Panama, ads are better targetted and optimized based on their bid price, target geography, and click through rates. Advertisers get more effective ads with higher click through rates - while Yahoo and it's affilate network benefit from higher revenue. Of course, all of this is old news for advertisers who use AdWords - because these features have long been available on Google's network. But so far, the reports on Panama from advertisers has been positive, and it's better late than never.

What's next?
Rumor has it that the Yahoo executive team is having a meeting to talk about the strategy and the future of the company. Part of the plan: a major upgrade to Yahoo Publisher Network as a response to Google AdSense.

It's about time!

Who is the King of IM 2.0?

Web 2.0’s Version of Instant Messaging

A whole new generation of applications and wave of innovation has arrived with "Web 2.0" And the instant messaging sector is no different. Instant messaging in the world of Web 2.0 (IM 2.0) works anywhere, because it is embedded in a browser, and there's never any software to install. It works with all the major IM services such as AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ. And you can run it on any device. IM 2.0 has seen mass user adoption over the last year, and like many other segments of Web 2.0, there’s no shortage of startups in this space.

Who are the key players in IM 2.0?

• Meebo is a Sequoia and DFJ backed ($12.5M in funding) startup that pioneered this model for IM. They have also continued to innovate: recently launching a popular iPhone version of their product, and an integrated file sharing capability.

• EBuddy is a venture backed startup ($6.9M in funding from Lowland Capital Partners) based in the Netherlands. They recently launched MySpace integration for their service, and provide support for a wide range of mobile devices (WAP or xHTML phones & PDAs and even provide support for Sony PSP & Nintendo DS).

• KoolIM, iLoveIM, and Mabber are some of the other startups targeting this sector.

Who is the king of IM 2.0 in terms of web traffic?

To answer this, we analyze these services using several traffic analyzers. According to Compete.com in October 2007:

1. Meebo 1.2M monthly visitors
2. eBuddy 200K visitors
3. iloveIM 28K visitors
4. koolIM 16K visitors
5. Mabber 3.4K visitors

The other major traffic trackers also yield similar results: Meebo is clearly the King of IM 2.0.