Google's M&A Chief Says Deal Focus Has Changed
By Tom Foremski - February 16, 2012
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Google made 79 acquisitions last year, mostly small companies and mostly for their engineering talent. The largest acquisition was Motorola Mobility, a $12.5 billion deal.
This year, the search giant expects to focus on smaller numbers of deals in strategic areas such as mobile and video, said David Lawee, VP of Corporate Development.
Pearltrees Announces $6.7m Funding Says It Will Start Charging For Premium Services
By Tom Foremski - February 15, 2012
Congratulations to Pearltrees, (a former client) on raising 5 million Euros, about $6.7 million in Series B funding. The Paris-based company offers a web service that groups users' selected web pages into collections of "pearls" - visual metaphors that can be shared and collected online by others.
Here are more details from Pearltrees on the funding and its "freemium" plan, which will start charging some of its users for premium services.
The Hollow Core In Social Media Numbers - Many Are Fake Or Empty Accounts
By Tom Foremski - February 14, 2012
The numbers of users reported by Facebook, Twitter, Google, and many other sites, are closely watched. They reveal trends in adoption and they are one of the few public metrics available to analysts trying to assign value to companies preparing an initial public offering.
But how accurate are these numbers?
MediaWatch: Dan Lyons Calls Silicon Valley Journalism A 'Cesspool'
By Tom Foremski - February 13, 2012
Dan Lyons, a columnist for Newsweek, has written a scathing attack on Mike Arrington and MG Siegler, who run CrunchFund, a small VC fund.
The former editor and his reporter at TechCrunch, a leading AOL tech news site, are accused of being part of a trend among Silicon Valley journalists to raise money from investors in exchange for favorable PR services.
'Think Fair' Could Become The New 'Green' - Secretive Apple Opens Its Supply Chain To Inspectors
By Tom Foremski - February 13, 2012
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.siliconvalleywatcher.com%2FFairTradeLaptop-thumb1.jpg)
(Image by Damien Van Achter)
Nick Wingfield and Charles Duhigg reported in today's New York Times' Bits blog:
Silicon Valley's Media Industry Is Winning While The East Coast's Is Shrinking
By Tom Foremski - February 9, 2012
...and the use of cutting edge technologies isn't helping them.
GigaOM, the San Francisco based tech news publisher, announced it has acquired ContentNext, the publisher of the media industry trade publication, paidContent, from the UK's Guardian Media Group.
Om Malik, founder of GigaOm, wrote about what this means to the company:
Pearson Says FT 'Not For Sale' On Report Of Thomson Reuters Interest
By Tom Foremski - February 9, 2012
Michael Wolff, a New York City based columnist for the UK newspaper The Guardian, writes that a source at Thomson Reuters has said that the giant news and information services firm is talking to Pearson about buying the 121 year old newspaper.
Does Google Hire Of Apple Exec Show Hardware Ambitions?
By Tom Foremski - February 9, 2012
Richard Waters, West Coast Managing Editor for the Financial Times, analyzes news that Google has hired Apple executive Simon Prakash, senior director of product integrity.
Wow. Facebook Rules Prohibit Users From Promoting Their Work, Company, And Much, Much More...
By Tom Foremski - February 8, 2012
Have you seen Facebook's rules for users, developers, and partners? They give Facebook tremendous powers to disable accounts and to make money from your content. Here are a few examples, you can see more here in this SEC document filed late Wednesday:
TEDxBerkeley 2012: Inspiring Innovation
By Tom Foremski - February 8, 2012
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TEDxBerkeley 2012 was a Saturday well spent...
I know the people that organize TEDxSF pretty well but this was my first time at TEDxBerkeley, which was held in the Zellerbach auditorium on the University of California campus.
The audience was very young compared with the much older audience for TEDxSF. The two events could maybe trade some attendees, it's always great to see young students.
PRWatch: Example From A VC On Writing A (Linkless) News Release...
By Tom Foremski - February 6, 2012
Ben Horowitz, the slightly hairier one in the powerhouse VC duo of Andreessen Horowitz, wrote an interesting post about the future of networking that also serves as a very good example of what a news release could look like.
The Dirty Little Secret Of Silicon Valley's Startup Boom...
By Tom Foremski - February 3, 2012
In San Francisco cafes and bars, even on the street, I overhear people talking about their startup ideas, business plans, and goals. And there are tons of incubators, Angels, wannabe Angels, VC firms, making investments in startups.
The Art Of 'Goldilocks' SEO
By Tom Foremski - February 3, 2012
I always pay attention to Aaron Wall, who runs SEOBook, because he is always on the money. He is one of the very few Google Watchers that is consistently insightful and isn't afraid of writing hard hitting articles critical of Google -- if it's called for.
Here is one of his latest infographics, and again, he is spot on about the changing trends in how Google views the web. It's shocking how much valuable advice he gives away:
Facebook's Hidden Gold Mine - What The Others Have Missed
By Tom Foremski - February 2, 2012
Several reporters have pointed to a big risk that they discovered in Facebook's SEC filing: mobile.
A Tale Of Two Letters: Facebook's Vague Social Mission
By Tom Foremski - February 2, 2012
Facebook's IPO documents reveals a far different culture to that of neighboring rival Google...
Mark Zuckerberg's letter to prospective shareholders was incredibly vague about his company's "social mission" and there was no announcement of a charitable foundation -- as Google had done when it filed its IPO papers eight years ago.
What To Watch: Will Zuckerberg's IPO Letter Be As Awesome As Larry Page's?
By Tom Foremski - February 1, 2012
The same media frenzy of interest that we see today in the Facebook IPO we saw with Google in 2004...
I remember vividly the day Google filed its "red herring" with the SEC in preparation for its IPO. I was out at lunch when our bureau chief Richard Waters, called me, "They've filed."
Report: Facebook IPO Halved -- Its Valuation Could Skyrocket Above $100bn
By Tom Foremski - January 31, 2012
International Financing Review, a Thomson Reuters publication, reports that its Wall Street sources point to a far smaller Facebook IPO, raising about $5 billion instead of the expected $10 billion.
Will Massive $1.5 Billion Andreessen Fund Inflate The Bubble In Private Secondary Markets?
By Tom Foremski - January 31, 2012
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.siliconvalleywatcher.com%2FMarcAndreessen-thumb.jpg)
(Photo:By Joi Ito.)
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz made their reputation as savvy investors by making lots of small seed investments of up to $100,000. This then helped them raise billions of dollars, $2.7 billion so far, with the latest $1.5 billion fund announced today.
Bay Meadows Urban Office Campus Opens Up Massive Space
By Tom Foremski - January 30, 2012
San Francisco is straining to accomodate demand from large and small tech companies but not far down the road a massive new office space has just opened up.
MediaWatch Analysis: Should The Tech Industry Buy The Content Industry?
By Tom Foremski - January 30, 2012
Should Apple buy Hollywood? Should Google buy the New York Times?
Foremski's Take: People in the tech communities have long discussed the need for tech companies to buy media companies. More recently, there has been discussion about Apple using its $100 billion cash hoard to buy music and movie studios.
This won't happen, for many reasons. I discuss some of those reasons here:
