A little business reality for you to think about and remember
 

As online entrepreneurs we live in a time with the greatest money making potential ever. Projects grow faster than ever to sizes previously unattainable. Here is an example

In 2007 Twitter had 5000 Tweets a day
In 2008 Twitter had 300,000 Tweets a day
In 2009 Twitter had 2,500,000 Tweets a day
In 2010 Twitter is now doing 50,000,000 Tweets a day

Another example. There was a time where ClassMates.com owned the social media market. They were the kings of re-uniting you with your past. Then MySpace came along and blew them out of the water. Then Facebook came along and blew MySpace out of the water.

As an internet entrepreneur you have the potential to create the next big thing in business. On the flip side no matter how big you are today you could be out of business in an instant. Your market share, your revenues gone without you even screwing up.

It's something to think about. You can't sit back and be comfy with what you have. Someone is always gunning for you and looking to take you out (either directly or indirectly).

Ok enough procrastinating LOL. I need to crawl back into my cave and get back to work :winkwink:

1 year in Internet years is like 3 brick and mortar years.

IMHO

This makes sense, no wonder it has so few replies. =]

keep posting...... loving you back here

And the Facebook guy is a fucking tool for not taking $15B for Facebook... You sure can tell a first time company owner from 4,000 miles away can't you? :P

Glad you're back maybe you can put a stop to your employees posting pictures of girls with dirty assholes looking for new affiliates

Thanks for the tips Shapalicious.

Shake Yer Bon Bon Baby.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

anal bleaching comes to mind here ..


Nice post Shap and so very true

15 Billion? FFS

it's more like <$2b they wanted, the actual offer was $750m. not chump change at all but far from $15b

I've always been here just not posting.

Btw serious? Where? I'll check that out.

We need some more Shapalicious business minded tips and posts around this place.

Ciao Bella!

that's along the lines of what i was saying- $750m in cash + whatever in stock, i was recalling the #s from memory and such

far from $15b

Apparently Balmer himself offered him $15B for Facebook... he turned it down...

I just read this yesterday it's an except from the new book that's coming out...

Edit: Found it: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/06/fac...d-kirkpatrick/

"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had flown to Palo Alto to visit his young counterpart twice. As Zuckerberg is wont to do, he took Ballmer on a long walk. Zuckerberg told Ballmer that Facebook was raising money at a $15 billion valuation. But Ballmer had come with something more sweeping in mind. “Why don’t we just buy you for $15 billion?” he replied, according to a very knowledgeable source. Zuckerberg was unmoved even by this offer. “I don’t want to sell the company unless I can keep control,” said Zuckerberg, as he always did in such situations."

"What Ballmer finally agreed to instead was an advertising deal that included a provision for Microsoft to pay a huge amount, $240 million, for a sliver of Facebook, 1.6%. Microsoft’s investment gave Facebook an implied value of $15 billion."

Still a ton of cash.. .

you know something to interject here.

for the past month i have been hearing different people i know dumping facbook all together. just like shap says, its a cycle. here today gone tomorrow.

i personally got tired of the advertising and annoyances that they kept rolling out to whore out your personal info and bailed 6 months ago. lots of people i know are dropping it, just like they did myspace, friendster, and the ones before that.

everything has a shelf life and everyone has a tolerance and an attention span.

build it. sell it. find the next great hype.

wat jer sajing..?
wanna taste a little of this one?

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/img/a/a.../DF-10199c.jpg

I could not possibly agree more and that's exactly why I'm saying this guy is a tool ;) He's a noob entrepreneur who is obviously very attached to his company. Now's the time son! $15B flag waving in your face and you turn it down? Every market is fickle, I turned to Facebook early because of the lack of "junk"... now they're junking it up. Too many apps, too much crap (for me anyway). I'm sure it'll be a tough ship to bring down but that doesn't mean it won't happen! This is the pinnacle of Facebook and NOW is the time to sell. :2 cents:

Exactly. There is less loyalty today than at anytime in the last 100 years. You are easily replaced and you have to remember that. TGPs learned that. Expensive hosts have learned that. Paysites are learning that.

HERE TODAY GONE TOMORROW well said :)

Yeah that guy is a fool.

wow. good stuff. thx for that link. i wonder how much of it is actually true.

That's what kidnapping and torture are for.

guy's must be crazy for turning 15B down for a web service if that's true.

You are so right ... EVOLUTION and REVOLUTION with your ideas and site development are crucial to longevity and success.

I have been online since 1992 prior to HTTP even becoming mainstream. I have seen A LOT of change since them and it happens very rapidly!

Good post.

another scenario i also like to associate and assimilate to owning an internet property to is owning a nightclub in an entertainment district. it's pretty much the same thing, except virtually.

you're really in the virtual real estate business. the real estate market has a predictable pattern of rises and falls since the great depression. nothing EVER stays at the top. with the internet being an accelerated market as compared to real time (i personally scale it 1 internet calendar year = 3 real life calendar years), the market for your establishment is greatly shortened.

you build your nightclub or restaurant, you offer your attraction, whatever it may be, and you try to jam as many people into it as possible, and then try to figure out how to get the money out of their pockets for as long as you can, week after week. after a while, new clubs and restaurants open up and they eat into your profit. it's very hard to stay on the top in the nightclub game. how long you stay relevant is directly attributable to how well you conduct your business and how well you market your wares to an audience.

let's not get into, so and so is down the street at another restaurant giving away my dishes for free. that's really not what this statement is about.

since you're in the online real estate market, i would imagine you would build low and sell high. seems logical. not sure why this kid didn't take that money and run. fuck he could have built so many more things with that money and invested 15B into 150B choosing the right investment opportunities.

hope that makes some sense as an analogy.

I wish I was 13 years old... living in 2002 and 13 years old would have been pretty fucking sweet. Would have fired up the link spammers, referrer spammers, email blasts and everything else that didn't have a law or a TOS specifically banning it...

Would have made a cool $20,000,000 in my first year as an affiliate.. recruited friends and paid them in porn... haha..

Kids have no idea how fucking easy it is to make money online these days..

Zuckerberg posted a 3 billion dollar profit last year, did you make that? :) Kinda hard to call the guy a tool when your making that much money.

How about Groupon? Started in Nov 2008, half a year later valued at $1.3 billion.

facebook was better when it was colleges only

Social networks success and death both rely on the same thing. Their market base is transient and will always move off to the next newer bigger or better thing.

This goes way beyond social networks. This is the new reality entrepreneurs now face.

Yea and it goes way beyond the internet as well. It's really the reality of our current ability to have instant access to new things all the time. The information age is great for getting the news out about your products. Doesn't matter if it's a webpage or some new sports car.

Are you serious?

Its posts like this that make me happy to be at the office at midnight on a Friday night!
WG

make sure the floor is spotless:upsidedow

We all know the Internet is fickle and trends change and loyalties are short lived. So why are we still offering customers basically the same product and marketing it in a similar way we were doing 10 years ago?

Changes in paysites = HD scenes instead of standard scenes. Otherwise little change.
Changes in marketing = Blogs, Tubes and still throwing out as much free content as we can.

Some sites, like Twistys, have got bigger and better. But that's not a change.

Shap looks like Ricky Martin if Ricky Martin loved twinkies.

I believe the thing with all this web2.0 madness is that someone still doesn't have an idea what do they actually offer.

Facebook is a communication gadget and a self promotion tool, nothing more.

One doesn't need to be a genius to observe that anyone using it is essentially focusing on self presentation and the reactions of others on himself.

It's another means of communication between people, and you don't want anyone to mess with your private communication or even with your very own narcistic webspace.

You don't get adverts while talking to anyone on the phone, you don't get anyone selling you shit when talking to a friend, you don't get billboard up your ass while talking to the chick you like, but that's exactly what's happening on "FriendFace".

No one is interested in ads, no one is interested in information they're trying to sell you, people using it are interested in their personal connections, add that the average number of connections makes keeping an eye on all the input impossible.

It's self promotion, communication and having fun, nothing more.

It's here to stay in some form, it will remain a part of the "marketing" mix especially for anyone catering to certain specific preferences, but that's all.

And the more they'll gonna push the sales pitch the more people they'll loose, cause they're interfering with someone's privacy.

And that usually makes even less sense businesswise :winkwink:

http://i40.tinypic.com/20p3eyc.jpg

Facebook will crash as Myspace, wait and see, something new will come, and bored fb users will switch platforms

no one here is going to create the next twitter or facebooks. if its one thing adult is good at doing, its copying. new ideas are rare..

why do you have to be 13 to do that? your join date says 2003..it was still easy to spam then. you wouldn't of made 20 mil or anywhere near a million though. those who were spamming and making that much were professionals who sunk a lot of money into their setups.

you're so right... hare today, goon tomorrow ;)

on the other hand,

harley-davidson
coca-cola
hilton hotels
gold medal flour
corning
guiness

etc. et al

Those are long established brands. My relationship with Coca Cola is now 30+ years. That's a long relationship. My relationship with Facebook 4 years old. Loyalty takes time to build. Very few online brands have very strong loyalty from their customers because of this.

they built that loyalty over the long term, it didn't just happen when they created the product or after a couple years. and they all continue to do what it is that gives them the loyal customer base, all the while beating competitors consistently with their original product/philosophy.

Those are offline businesses, built on brand awareness and owning a major market share, you can control your market in the regular offline world by simply not allowing your contestants to compete with you, not allowing them to distribute where you distribute etc. .

For example, guess what happened when Richard Branson tried to introduce the Virgin Cola, I guess he got quite good results in the test markets then Coca Cola came and threatened to terminate contracts with all the bottlers that also work with Virgin Cola, none of the bottling companies would survive if they would loose Coca Cola.

Today, there's not many places you could get Virgin Cola apart from Virgin Airlines.

The biggest companies are the nastiest and they're not even afraid to break the law, they have enough money to settle once they put you out of business.

this does not negate the fact that a business can be built up over the long term. to differentiate b/w *real world* businesses and *virtual* ones misses the point. was there brand awareness for harley-davidson in 1907? no.