Yahoo Under Attack

Image via CrunchBase

Wall Street Journal: AOL, Private-Equity Firms Explore Bid for Yahoo: devising a bold plan to marry two big Internet brands facing steep challenges...... The discussions are preliminary and don't include Yahoo. ...... Shares of Yahoo jumped 13% ..... one of the best-performing tech stocks of the day...... A big chunk of Yahoo's current market value comes from its Alibaba stake. ..... Yahoo and AOL discussed a merger in 2008, as Yahoo weighed a $45 billion takeover offer from Microsoft Corp. Microsoft eventually pulled its bid ..... Bartz has improved Yahoo's profitability by cutting costs, but revenue hasn't grown much and the company faces other problems..... more than 600 million people use its home page, email service or other sites every month

This is Tim Armstrong trying to do the Larry Ellison thing. Larry Ellison went after PeopleSoft. I have no dog in this fight. I am just on the sidelines watching the drama. But AOL is not Oracle size. And Yahoo is not PeopleSoft size. Actually AOL and Yahoo are two similar size companies with similar problems/challenges. They both used to be number one, and now perhaps they never are going to get back the throne. Jimmy Carter also retired.

Wait, they are not similar size companies. AOL is a two billion dollar company, Yahoo is a 20 billion dollar company. Tim Armstrong has started to believe his own PR, or maybe he is reading too many of Mike Arrington's blog posts. Arrington has been quite hostile to Carol Bartz over an extended period of time.

Image via WikipediaShould not the talk be of merger? But AOL did try that once. That marriage was a spectacular disaster. Buying or merging is the easy part, integrating is the hard part. Larry Ellison seems to be good at both. But then he starts with the advantage of Oracle's size and muscle. Oracle will still perhaps do the next big thing in its space. AOL and Yahoo are not even trying to do the next big thing. For now they are still figuring out what their space is.

Perhaps Tim Armstrong got too much of a boost from buying TechCrunch. The buzz got to him or something. TechCrunch might be the top tech blog, but in terms of a business it is pretty small. It is actually very small. TechCrunch is an asteroid to Yahoo's Mars.

Nothing Yahoo could have done on its own would have boosted its share price by 13%. That's a big jump. Congrats Carol. Make some more Alibaba moves. Google just went into wind farms.

Bloomberg: Yahoo Said to Hire Goldman to Handle Takeover Approaches: The private-equity funds have weighed raising $10 billion to $12 billion ..... Yahoo also owns 35 percent of Yahoo Japan Corp., operator of the nation’s most visited Web portal. ..... a reverse merger with AOL gaining managerial control .... . Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said in December 2008 that talks about possible deals for AOL were under way with Yahoo, Microsoft and Google Inc. When those talks didn’t lead anywhere, Time Warner opted for a spinoff.

AllThingsD: Yahoo’s Stock Acts Like It’s in Play–Because It Kind of Is, as Predators Circle: assessing the situation aggressively ..... the key players in the growing soap opera are the execs who run Yahoo-affiliated companies in Japan and China. That would be Masayoshi Son of Yahoo Japan and Jack Ma of the Alibaba Group ..... any approach would have to be nonhostile ..... Armstrong, said sources, has not shied away from the idea of Yahoo acquiring AOL and installing him as CEO with Bartz as chairman. ...... Although AOL has also been trying to turn itself around and is in a much less powerful position than Yahoo, Wall Street likes Armstrong’s story for AOL as a modern-day media and media distribution company. ..... “At least he has a narrative that is believable,” said one big investor in both companies. “Bartz has no vision.”

Related articles

• Don't Mean To Be Rude, But What Exactly Has Tim Armstrong Done? (AOL, YHOO) (businessinsider.com)
• AOL-Yahoo: Will the Guppy Swallow the Whale? (blogs.forbes.com)
• AOL + Yahoo = Really? (wired.com)
• Yahoo Hires Goldman to Fend Off Takeovers (businessweek.com)
• When All Else Fails, Put Up The AOL-Yahoo Trial Balloon (techcrunch.com)
• Report: AOL Preparing Possible Yahoo Takeover Bid (dailyfinance.com)
• AOL Might Buy Yahoo [Deals] (gawker.com)
• Report: AOL, buyout firms mulling bid for Yahoo (usatoday.com)
• Rumor reversal: AOL working with private equity firms to take over Yahoo? [TNW United States] (thenextweb.com)
• AOL's Yahoo Bid: AOL, Firms Explore An Offer (huffingtonpost.com)

Microfinance: The Next Big Thing?

Image via CrunchBase

TechCrunch: Kiva President On The Next 5 Years And Why Zynga Is Their Biggest Rival (TCTV): a never-ending fight for eyeballs and discretionary income. .... If building a real farm on Kiva can be as compelling as building a virtual farm on Facebook ..... the integration of game mechanics, social tools, mobile and new philanthropic verticals like green and water loans ...... Kiva will raise $1 billion in microloans by 2015..... loans to US citizens ..... Kiva is currently raising $1 million every six days. .... Shah and co-founder Matthew Flannery ..... making sure that the feedback loop between the person that they’re trying to help is really strong and broad

What was after search? Social. What was after social? Social gaming. What's after social gaming? I'd love that next big thing to be microfinance. You should not have to wait for white guys like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton to retire before the next big problem in the Global South can be tackled. The problems in the Global South have to tackled with Kiva ferocity, with GroupOn ferocity. Crowd sourcing is where it is at.

Racism caused the Great Recession. There was all this surplus capital. And instead of pumping all that into global microfinance and global infrastructure projects for certain 10% annual returns, the wise guys on Wall Street pumped it into existing houses in America through nefarious schemes, and the whole
Image via CrunchBaseeconomy collapsed. It was only a matter of time. They did not create wealth. They built a huge, big house of cards.

The beauty of crowd sourcing is there is no one person, or one committee responsible. Everyone is in. There is no center. Once the basic message is clear, there is a riot.

Microfinance needs to be packaged better. It has to be parceled out in to small chunks at both ends. It is not just about the small businessperson at the other end. It also has to be about the small investor at this end. People should be able to invest $100, or $1000 at a time, preferably $100. You walk in to a store like you might walk in to buy a lottery ticket, or you might step in for a Western Union money transfer. For $100 you also get to receive emails about the person at the other end who received the loan. You get emails from Kiva.

Kiva, I think, is in a trillion dollar industry. The biggest thing Kiva could do is morph from being a non profit organization to being a for profit company with IPO ambitions. That is the only way it could beat Zynga. Could it beat Zynga? I think it could. Sure thing. Make micro lending fun. I never spent a dime on Farmville. But I would love to put $100 into some farm in Uganda if the experience had Farmville like fun.
Image via WikipediaOnly a for profit company could deliver that. You hire top talent by becoming a for profit company with IPO ambitions.

There is room for 100 Zynga size companies in this space.

Micro lending is not just for the Global South. It is also what needs to be pumped into the inner cities in America. The challenge for Kiva is to enrich the feedback loop.



Image via CrunchBase

Related articles

• Kiva CEO On The Next 5 Years And Why Zynga Is Their Biggest Rival (TCTV) (techcrunch.com)
• Micro-loan portal Kiva celebrates 5 years (sfgate.com)
• A New Model for Microfinance (humanrights.change.org)
• For-Profit Microfinance Matures, India and Africa Lead the Way (fastcompany.com)
• Microfinance, the Grameen Bank, and Lisa Simpson (cnewmark.com)
• Habitat for Humanity Announces New MicroBuild Microfinance Fund (fastcompany.com)
• Kiva and Microfinance Charities: Do Good in The World and Still Get Your Money Back (socyberty.com)
• Microfinance: For Community or for Gain? (bigthink.com)
• Kiva Banks $5 Million in New Funding from Omidyar (socialentrepreneurship.change.org)
• Leading IT Legal Contract Software Provider To Donate 10% of Sales Through Year-End (prweb.com)

Physically Aware Internet

Pete Hartwell: Mashable: How a Physically Aware Internet Will Change the World: the first “Internet” looked nothing like it does today. .... we still haven’t even scratched the surface. .... connecting computers to sensors so that valuable new information can be created automatically without human data entry ..... sensors tackling our world’s largest issues: safety, security and sustainability. ..... A network of biochemical sensors can understand where and how food is being produced and stored by “smelling” it. ...... our computers are blind, deaf and numb to the world around us. We need to give them senses. ..... With billions, perhaps even trillions of sensors, we can begin to understand not just how the world is behaving, but how we are affecting it..... sensor networks are one of the principal ways we can use technology to address some of our most pressing global challenges like disease, pollution and climate change. ...... CeNSE, which stands for “Central Nervous System of the Earth” .... this is all coming sooner than you may think

To Natural User Interface

This is about moving from the internet of computers and the internet of human beings to the internet of things. This includes capturing real time data from not only objects but plants and other animals as well.

This is the tool that the climate change challenge has been waiting for. We need to know what's going on. And that we is not a royal we, it is a collective we. Anybody with internet access should be able to get a detailed view of the harm being done to the earth's ecosystem. That will elevate the consciousness level of humanity, and multitudes of people will demand the right things be done, and the democratic system will deliver.

The idea of having to sit in front of a computer to access the internet has been given a slap by the smartphone, but even the smartphone makes for a weird Homo Sapien, the one that is ogling at the small screen at all uncomfortable hours.

The internet is going to liberate itself from the screen and go everywhere.

Related articles

• How a Physically Aware Internet will Change the World (mashable.com)
• 3 Sensor Data Platforms to Watch (readwriteweb.com)
• Soil Quality Sensor Sticks - The Garden Sensor from Docomo Makes Gardening a Cinch (trendhunter.com)
• EI 2010 Year-End Fund-Raiser: Raising the Roof on Global Ecological Sustainability (ecoearth.info)
• How Context-Aware Computing Will Make Gadgets Smarter (wired.com)
• Stop Cyberbullying and Internet Predators with PC Pandora Monitoring Software During the 7th Annual Cyber Security Awareness Month (prweb.com)
• A Sensor In Every Chicken: Cisco Bets on the Internet of Things (readwriteweb.com)
• How the Internet of Things May be Used Against You (readwriteweb.com)
• Sensing Planet Launches Innovative Sensor Cloud Platform (prweb.com)
• Sensor networks and the future of forecasting (radar.oreilly.com)