Facebook - Google: +1

The Google new service +1 let users vote on search results, then will use the votes as a factor in ranking results.
Users will need a Google Profile to use +1. Once they've created that profile, contacts are built from sources like the user's Gmail contact list and people they follow on Google Reader.
Users can see which friends and contacts they're sharing recommendations with by using the "Social Circle And Content" tab in their Google Dashboard.
The service has been rumored for several months now, and is apparently only one of many efforts underway at the company to add a social layer to its services to help compete against Facebook. Some of those efforts were apparently slowed by political infighting toward the end of 2012, but product chief Vic Gundotra took charge of this particular initiative.

Guess who else would like to do the same thing with ads across the web given the social data that they have? Yep — Facebook.
At the same time, Google has had many failures in the social space. And they realized that with +1, they couldn’t afford to have some big hyped-up launch once again. So they’re purposely taking it slow. There will be no +1 buttons for publishers at launch that will be blanketed across the web (but you better believe they’re coming). There will be no toolbar that spreads across other Google properties (that may be coming). There will be no mobile app or aspect (that is likely coming as well). The feature itself will roll out slowly and will at first be an opt-in one found in Google’s search experiments area.
But make no mistake, this is a massive Google project. And eventually it will hit all users — and not just those logged into their Google accounts. Down the line, Google can envision this +1 data influencing search results across the board, Cutts says. That’s what we call “downplaying” — assuming people use it, the social data is very likely to be the key ingredient to the future of Google Search.

Read more:

http://znacomstva.blogspot.com/2011/03/google-vs-facebook.html

Startups opportunities

The current imbalance in the supply and demand for venture capital is creating opportunities for V.C. funds.

New limited partner commitments to venture capital funds have dwindled in recent years. This scarcity of capital has created its own Darwinian effect, with a new breed of start-ups flourishing as a result of innovation rather than capital-induced growth. As these companies mature, however, many of them are looking to venture capitalists for the money and expertise to realize their potential.
Last year, limited partner commitments to venture capital slowed to about $12 billion, the lowest level since 2003. In addition to concerns about venture capital returns, many limited partners are still constrained because of liquidity issues from the recent global financial crisis. As a result, many venture capital firms have shut down and others have raised smaller funds.

As a result, today is a great environment for venture capitalists to invest in businesses that have matured beyond the seed stage — companies that have typically grown to at least $1 million to $5 million in revenue and are expanding rapidly. And because of the shortage of available venture capital, their valuations are often compelling.

http://znacomstva.blogspot.com/2011/03/tips-for-rasing-capital.html

How social is changing internet

"It used to be that backlinked sites had some kind of authority. It was some kind of a signal that there was value in what you were doing," said Saad Khan, partner at CMEA Capital, in a recent phone chat. "The world is changing in such a way that authority on the web is being expressed in a new way: people are the new authority."

Khan explained what he calls "like-rank": the idea that authority comes from people through expressions like retweets, likes, and other social signals

"I actually think the whole way we navigate the Web and see authority on the Web is going to be fundamentally altered," he added.

This, Khan believes, is why pretty soon, the concept of an algorithmically determined "page rank" will be meaningless. Relevance will not be determined by one organization, but by the legions of voices on the Web.

That is why social network raise HUGE investment like LivingSocial
-500 mln. dollars
http://znacomstva.blogspot.com/2011/03/huge-investment-in-social.html

Edward Mushinsky predicts new mega-bubble

New bubble in Emergent Markets - due to new economic order
http://znacomstva.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-economic-order.html

Social commerce will be #1

InsideView, a company that bills itself as a "social sales and sales intelligence leader," on Thursday announced the close of a $12 million Series C round led by Foundation Capital, which has also invested in such noteworthy companies as Chegg, Netflix, SimplyHired, and more. Existing investors Emergence Capital Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners, and Greenhouse Capital Partners also chipped in, bringing the company's total raised to $25.4 million.

Created in 2005 by founder and CEO Umberto Milletti, InsideView combines traditional editorial sources with social media to aggregate information about companies, including people, events, SEC filings, blogs, and more from sources like Reuters, Capital IQ, Cortera, SimplyHired, LinkedIn, and--of course--Facebook. The net result is a rich tapestry of social connections and curated information for B2B sales professionals to establish connections and more effectively drive sales. InsideView currently serves more than 75,000 sales professionals across 1,000 companies, representing a user base growth of more than 3x from the company's previous 20,000 users.

Additionally, in the past year, the company saw record-breaking revenue growth of 135% and won numerous awards, including four Sales & Marketing 2.0 2011 Awards, one of which was Best Use of Social Media for Sales.

New Bubble arise.

New economic bubble predicted by John Connor http://znacomstva.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-bubble-happens-when-we-come-to-end.html

It will make new bubble in venture investment.

Statistic of venture by numbers shows:

$20 billion
Estimated total amount of venture capital investment by corporations in 2000
20 percent
Share that number represents of the overall amount committed to VC that year
$1.9 billion
Estimated total amount of venture investment by corporations in 2010
9 percent
Share that number represents of all venture investment

Source: Robert Ackerman,
Allegis Capital
 

Chinese Google - BAIDU will outstrip the original Google

Baidu has announced plans for a mobile operating system that focuses mostly on search, according to the FT. That makes it different from Android which is much more full-featured.

But in China as in everywhere else mobile is the future of computing, and it makes as much sense for Baidu to take a stronghold there to encourage people to search on their mobiles as it does for Google in the West. The reason this operating system will be lighter is presumably because featurephones, as opposed to smartphones, will remain prevalent in China, which has lower per capita income, for longer than in the West.

Limitless investment

The new Robert De Niro movie LIMITLESS released almost simultaneously with the attack on Libya (!) promotes the idea
"Who controls the Libyan oil - controls oil market. "

http://vsocial.livejournal.com/128926.html

And LIMITLESS makes the following recipes "How to make a million":

take the pill improves brain activity,
collect all available information on a particular sector of the market players (including information about what people think about this the other investors)
to play the anti-trend (when the mass-investors sell based on rumors - you buy based on the facts).

How to visualize business model

10 blоcks to visualize your business model

All our business mоdel examples are visualized with this set of 16 building blocks. To give more insight in how this works, we give a brief overview of the different building blocks. Using a common, visual language enables you to easily cоmmunicate business models to different audiences, to learn from successful models in other industries, and to quickly generate new variations and business models of the future.

Once you grasp the building blоcks below, check out our business model templates to design your own business model in seconds. Share the results in your оrganization and let us know what you think about this method.

1. The cоmpany

The second most important block is the company. In most models this will be the actor that offers a product or service.

2. The cоnsumer

The one that receives the product and gives something in return, is the consumer. In B2B models, the client is a company and will therefore be illustrated with the previous company icon. The general company-client relation is the same in bоth business systems.

3. Supplier

Although we prefer not to include much of the secondary stakeholders, sometimes it is relevant to show how the supplier side of a business system works. This icon can also be used for service suppliers like web or marketing agencies.

4. Non-profit

Unions or charity organizations are not focused on making money but often they do haven an impact on your organization. If relevant you can add this player to the system.

5. Government

Many companies do not like the involvement of a government on their business model, except when they have some money to offer

6. Product

The first, most straightforward offer to clients is an actual product, ranging from basic commodities up to finished goods. A BMW car is one example, but today also digital products can be included.

7. Service

A first way to upgrade your business model is to offer a service next to the product. BMW in this case will not only sell you a car, but will include maintenance and other services around the product. Of course, a lot of companies offer only services without product.

8. Experience

The two concepts of product and service are commonly applied throughout our economy. In the last years, several companies have moved a step further by offering an experience to customers. BMW does not sell a car with a service in this case, but a driving experience.

9. Reputation

Today, the next upgrade to reputation can only be found in a few sectors. In these cases, ‘reputation’ selling can be described as the most essential brand experience. If you take the example of BMW, then you could say that some people don’t see their BMW as a driving experience but as the core values and reputation of the brand as such. Hereby, customers are able to shape their own identity with that of the company. Typically reputation will be placed in the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which makes this type of transaction extremely valuable to companies.

10. Money

The typical currency that clients pay with, is money – which is critical to company’s revenue models

Marketplace for private Internet companies

SecondMarket ovеrsaw $400 million in tradеs in 40 private compаnies.

In its updated platfоrm, the cоmpany is aiming to brоaden its base and make its community more social. For the users, qualified investors can now choose to follow companies and friends on the exchange and receive updates on their investments and auctiоns.

Unlike more traditiоnal sоcial netwоrks, like Twitter, the platform does not support direct messaging and there are high privacy walls. Bоth users have to agree on a connection and only qualified investors can follow a company’s feed.

SecоndMarket is shоring up its inventory, just as the market for private shares is heating up. Although the market for initial public offеrings has started to show signs of life, during the downturn many Internet start-ups opted to stay privаte because of tighter rеgulations and the weakenеd economy. With several large Web companies, like Zynga and Groupon, on the sidelines, many investors and employees sought alternative markets to cash out, giving rise to exchanges like SecondMarkеt.

Beyond SecondMarket’s competitors, like Nyppex and SharesPost, Wall Street firms have also created investment vehicles to buy shares in these companies.

At the center of the action is Facebook, the sprаwling social network that made up 40 percent of SecondMarkеt’s trades last year. A block of Facebook shares recently sold for $30 a share on SecondMarket at a vаluation near $75 billion (a 50 percent markup over Goldman Sach’s January investment in Facebook).

The flurry of activity can be a headache for the start-ups, which have to track these trades and make sure that their total shareholder count does not hit 500, which would require them to file financial results or go public.
The exuberance has also drawn the scrutiny of regulators, who started looking into the trades of social networking companies like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn late last year, as was first reported by DealBook.

SecondMarket has acknowledged that it has received information requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission on pooled investment vehicles and is cooperating with regulators.

The biggest investment 2011

Groupon just closed the second half of its $950 million financing round, TechCrunch reports.


Who's in the round, besides DST, Fidelity, and Morgan Stanley?

According to TechCrunch, which has already viewed Groupon's press release, new backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners


Greylock Leads in Internet Deals With Groupon Stake


The firm also announced the formation of Greylock Growth, a fund focused on late-stage companies in both the consumer and enterprise Internet spaces. Businesses funded by Greylock Growth will typically receive investments sized between $25 and $200 million, intended to keep them in the “winner’s circle,” according to partner David Sze.

On the complete opposite side of the investment timeline, Greylock also manages the Discovery Fund, which has completed 20 seed stage investments since launching in September 2010. The Discovery Fund, which is managed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, competes with angels to fund companies at the earliest stage. In tandem with Greylock XIII and Greylock Growth, the Discovery Fund rounds out the firm's commitment to investment opportunities at all stages of a business' development.

Here are some of the most recent additions to Greylock’s portfolio:
1000memories is a free website for family and friends to commemorate the life of a loved one with stories, pictures, videos and audio. Two weeks ago, the company raised $2.5 million in a Series A round led by Greylock, along with several notable angels, including Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Mike Maples, Paul Buchheit, Chris Sacca, Ben Ling, Aydin Senkut, and others. Greylock partner David Thacker joined the startup's board.

One Kings Lane is a private shopping site for premium home décor and designers perhaps best known for being founded by Susan Feldman and Alison Pincus, wife of Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. A little over two weeks ago, the startup raised $23 million in Series B financing, co-led by existing investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Greylock as a new investor. Greylock partner James Slavet joined the board of directors as an observer.

The biggest and most recent contribution from Greylock, however, must be its participation in the $950 million round for daily deals site Groupon. The venture capital round was recorded as one of the largest for a startup in history, and Greylock was sure not to miss the opportunity.
Other noteworthy Greylock investments (and the year the firm invested): Airbnb (2010), Digg (2005), Facebook (2006), Gowalla (2009), LinkedIn (2004), Pandora (2009) and Zipcar (2006).

Where is the limit of growth online - shops?

Gilt Groupe is raising $80 – $100 million from private market investors. The deal will value Gilt at around $1 billion. If it goes through, the deal will show that the social shopping market is still red hot and could represent a big challenge to traditional online retailers such as Amazon.
The investment talks come on the heels of last week’s big shopping exit, where Nordstrom bought HauteLook for $270 million.
To date, the New York-based Gilt Groupe has already raised more than $80 million in several rounds from Matrix, General Atlantic and others. Revenue is expected to be near $500 million in the current fiscal year, with valuation for the new financing hitting about two times revenue. That’s pretty similar to the price paid for HauteLook.
http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/21/deal-of-the-day-gilt-groupe-raising-80m-to-100m/

Unlike online - shopping in developed countries, developing countries, the growth process is just beginning, so that the limit for startups in this area does not exist, says a leading expert in innovative marketing for Edward Mushinsky
http://vsocial.livejournal.com/124764.html