en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/25/6075a06abab5b029af7e29de5b2261f8.html
The thing to me is that Facebook has no real value to the individual except maybe a slightly better interface. The AJAX capabilities outshines Friendster and Myspace. Overall though that should not persuade someone like myself to put such a high emphasis on this company. More than that, it's extremely tiring when one has to continuously migrate their data and friend's data from one site to another since these sites continue to perform poorly in terms of unique services.

With regards to Micro$oft's renewed attempt to get into the SNS space, I think it's a dumb move. Micro$oft doesn't know jackshit about people, which is why they've failed at getting into the web. As long as people like Baller is in charge, I believe that M$ will continue to fail in becoming involved in the web. They don't understand it, they never will. M$ really needs to stay away from the web and allow other companies to move forward. M$ is the main perpetrator of problems on the web like viruses, data theft, usability issues, etc. since their software is built for them to have a monopoly, yet lacking essential things to make people's lives better.

If M$ wants to continue voyaging in this space, they need to invest in unique sites that add value to the web, not put tons of money into worthless sites. BTW, M$ if you want a site some day, forward me $2 mil. I've got a couple of nice ideas for you.]]> Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:08:34 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/25/6075a06abab5b029af7e29de5b2261f8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/2a85ded9a6471b256aef75886510d7f8.html You can't talk about Google without talking about Yahoo in some way. I think MSN should be made irrelevant as it is truly a 3rd rate copy of copies. But the big question should be how these two behemoths focus their energies for this year?

While Google looks mobile bound, Yahoo might be moving towards social. I really hate looking at these two companies in these terms because I think these terms are passe. I think there is another picture to look at, something bigger than just mobile and social (while these two are big, to me, it's just marketing's current buzz).

I think Google needs to become something like the engine of the internet. I guess you could call it the Web OS. It will form the basis of all internet related aspects. APIs, links to websites, data relation, etc. In other words, Google will become more of the foundation for how the internet runs. You have all of their open APIs like Base, Maps, Ads, Android, even OpenSocial to a degree.

Yahoo should focus on becoming The content provider/creator. If I were to refocus Yahoo, it would be to first get rid of all the useless things that it bought or things that doesn't do it any real good. For instance, I'd kill Yahoo's search. Just let Google power it. I don't see any difference anyway (which is a huge problem in my book).

Next I'd kill Yahoo's notion of it being a portal. A portal for what? What a stupid term that got a lot of companies in trouble for forcing people to try to do everything, but doing everything in a sloppy, disorganized, unfocused, and low quality manner. Yahoo shouldn't even have a "front" page anymore. They should get people to move towards "My Yahoo" or something more useful. Help people build their own page. I'm not talking about another shitty "let's share my stupid page with my friends" type of deal. I'm talking about going through their troves of content and letting users filter out all of their crap which makes their front page so confusing.

Yahoo should then focus on purely content APIs. News, weather, movies, music, TV, etc. Content, content, content, content. Let Yahoo be this middle man of content, a content distributor and even creator. Google will then find ways of mining it. It's a nice symbiotic relationship that they could build.

Also, Yahoo should be a front end service. If Yahoo is to be a content provider/creator, it must also figure out how to make such services presentable. In other words, make them look nice, make it easy for people to create more services, make it easy to access and figure out what's available for them. If you go to Yahoo's homepage, you'll see a bunch of junk floating around. You got some news items, a ton of confusing ads, this horrible sidebar in which my eye hardly glances, and a TINY search bar. Oh not to mention that stupid appearing menu for my email that enlarges and shrinks the page in annoying ways. What the hell is this? Yahoo is trying to push a ton of garbage onto me without figuring out what I want at first. It's almost like going to a generic buffet in Vegas. Going along the analogy of buffets, Google is more like the Wynn buffet, where you have smaller quantities of food, but the stuff is done well. On the other hand, Yahoo would be the Main Street of buffets, where you get tons of choices, but the preparation is done in a mediocre manner.

If I were re-designing Yahoo's pages, I would start with a blank page and just ask questions about what a user wants and slowly build up a page with all the content available for them. I suggest anyone with some authority at Yahoo to read my rant about Linux on the desktop. Yahoo needs a similar strategy. While Yahoo has the marketshare due to their long reign, I can easily imagine them losing it or at least pieces of it slowly to competitors who simply have more focused capabilities and better marketing.

Along those lines I'd also make Yahoo a single point of sign on for the internet. There should be some trusted crossover between Google and Yahoo to allow people to reutilize their email addresses as the same login between platforms. If that happens, then they should also get rid of the stupid page that forces people to re-login everytime and put everything into some framed version so that people don't have to go between various pages and have all their main applications and links centralized from a logical point.

Finally, Yahoo needs to return partly to their roots on what made them successful: a directory. While Yahoo as a pure directory is impossible because of the sheer number of services out there, Yahoo needs to re-invent itself in terms of marketing its applications in the form of a directory structure. Or something that bears resemblance to a directory to make sense of the hundreds of things within Yahoo. Having that sad little strip on the left side just doesn't cut it and I'm certain more services could potentially see the light of day if people weren't obstinate and realized how horrible of a front page that they have.

Google and mobile/wireless are combos people are going to start murmuring about since, well, it's Google trying to get in. While it'll be interesting to see their plans if they can get the bid, I'm more afraid of them failing in getting it. Probably if they make the bid, they'll open it up for everyone. I don't think that would be a great business decision. The infrastructure cost in that would be insane. But let's say that they don't get the duke. My alternative plan is for them to buyout AOL, kill dialup, improve LAN connectivity through installing fiber in major cities and lowering rates and selling that. Personally, I'd love to see that happen more than Google getting the wireless bid. I mean, it just makes more sense from a business perspective. The customers are already known, all you're doing is just upgrading lines, you destroy that evil faction of sales that AOL has, you get rid of the old dialups, move everyone to IPv6 so everyone will have a static IP and you can give the cable monopoly a real run for their money (i'm not sure if Time Warner still has a part in AOL, probably do so that'll make this deal even sweeter). Not to mention you'll make M$ shit in their pants because you end up controlling the other side of infrastructure.n The other major thing is that Google will finally have a new form of business to earn continuous revenue from. It will be a natural fit and a good way for the internet to finally evolve.

Yahoo should NOT make a purchase or investment in Facebook. I just think the whole SNS is passe. Yahoo should focus on improving what they have rather than continuously broaden themselves out. Let some other company like M$ make the mistake of investing in a piece of junk like Facebook. Have you seen Myspace recently? It still sucks even with the interface change! People just migrated over to Facebook! So is Murdoch's $650 million still worth it?

Both of these companies need to realize what they have and make better utilization of their resources. I think Google has a lot of momentum and brilliance while Yahoo has the legacy. But both simply lack focus to improve on what they have.

Anyway, if anyone wants to hire me as a strategist for either company, go to my profile page here and contact me through my linkedin account or facebook account.]]> Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:22:15 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/2a85ded9a6471b256aef75886510d7f8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/6/1a1d65403b0f49c4df6050b66a9b9810.html Facebook's finances as indicated by TechCrunch. I'm certain many readers found the note to be of shock. They key point for me was that Facebook operates at a negative value. Not just a negative but roughly $150 million in losses.
How can you go from being valued at $15.7 billion to -$150 million?????????

Some people talk about projections when it comes to these types of numbers. Currently, Facebook sees growth at over 100% (I forget the exact number). That's great because it seems that people are simply migrating from places like Myspace to Facebook (all my friends are doing this). Right now, they have a user base of over 63,000,000 registered users according to Wikipedia. According to the TechCrunch article, they are generating $300 million in revenue for 2007. These numbers are fairly impressive for such a young company run by a 23 year old college drop out.

Still, I have to ask how do you achieve the value of $15.7 billion?

I'm not a big fan of projected growth. We've seen the dot com ludicrous valuations from people like Henry Blodget. Heck, I've coined my own term the other day calling these numbers "Blodget Values." Remember the whole Amazon at $400/share? Was that simply the wrong company and Blodget talking about Google in 2006-2007? (Now, he's calling Google at $2000/share). Again, where do these numbers come from?

Is it market cap? If market cap were to determine a company's intrinsic value, then we'd all be paper millionaires. I mean, isn't Facebook just another form of the portal site? That's what Myspace became, except that News Corp/Murdoch focused on media content with a target demographic of 13-35. But going by that philosophy doesn't Facebook belong in the same market cap as Yahoo? I mean, I must be missing something when it comes to these numbers.

For myself, I'm someone who looks at the fundamentals of a company. Reading a book like the Intelligent Investor helps you realize where to look for some of these numbers. In my case, I look at things that go beyond simple market caps. I look at things like overall revenue, operations cost, debt, and market behavior. When I see things like negative operations cost, it tells me that a company is desperate for money and needs to go to other sources like VC (i.e. Microsoft). I've been through this before and it's made me incredibly cynical, causing me to look at theoretical valuations as inside political hype or certain people with agendas.

I like looking at the bottom line. For instance, Google is a very smart company. While their stock price is outrageous, one key fact is that they have tons of money in their piggy bank. This is important because when it rains, they can grab some of that money and deploy it strategically.

According to this report, Facebook has no money. The VC money that companies like Microsoft, etc. are giving them are the only factors driving the company's ability to grow. Perhaps, one day Facebook can be worth $15.7 billion, but many agitated investors have to go beyond projections and find out when they're going to get their money. That's the bottom line that I look at.

The thing is that I don't believe a lot in SNS business models. It's a massive fad. I do understand why it's important in the world of online advertisement. But I completely disagree that these companies can make significant money purely off these models, especially with so many duplicate/me-too companies around.]]> Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:11:46 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/6/1a1d65403b0f49c4df6050b66a9b9810.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/2/9c191723597fbda812d0f9744359df88.html CNET and couldn't agree more. There was a study done on Facebook and how most applications are pretty silly and pointless. It's true. There hasn't been a lot of useful applications that I've seen while there. Most are these little stupid games that have little to no depth. Worse yet, I've been getting spammed by a few of my friends with them and really want no part in utilizing any of these pieces of trash. Quite a few of these applications are nothing more than, "Share this stupid ugly little pet and spam him on your friend's profile!" Hopefully for the sake of the economy and society, none of these applications make any money.

That said, this does demonstrate some good news. One is that there's tons of potential for doing some serious application programming in using these platforms. Second, maybe it'll force these platforms to expand their feature set even more. Right now, if I have two complaints about things like OpenSocial and Facebook's API are that they're fairly limited and you cannot really build anything serious around them without a lot of tweaking.

I've got an application (the My List part) that I want to port to both platforms. However, in looking at the APIs, I kinda fear the amount of retrofitting that I'll need to do in order to make it work with those platforms. Naturally, using both platforms for the registered user base is a great scheme for avoiding to force users from registering yet another account. Still, I'm wondering how possible it is for this to occur.]]> Fri, 02 May 2008 13:39:31 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/2/9c191723597fbda812d0f9744359df88.html