Lots of ruckus about Microsoft’s $240 million investment, supposedly valuing Facebook at $15 billion.

Microsoft’s original ad deal was for 3 years (ending in 2009). That was their original relationship with Facebook.

So Microsoft spent $240 million and got 1.6% of Facebook. That means $240 million / 0.016 = Facebook valued at $15 billion right?

To rip from Techcrunch (with added emphasis):

It will invest $240 million in Facebook and expand its existing relationship to international markets, according to the WSJ. (The previous advertising relationship was only for the U.S., now Microsoft is Facebook’s exclusive advertising partner both in the U.S. and abroad until 2011)

So not only was there 1.6% of Facebook given up to Microsoft, but (which everyone seems to miss) - the ad relationship was expanded and extended to 2011.

Microsoft doesn’t value Facebook at $15 billion. It values 1.6% of Facebook and an expanded and extended ad deal at $240 million. That’s it. You can’t ignore the ad deal and magically come to a $15 billion valuation.

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My favorite whipping boy on a site that gets popular due to faddish nature and then just declines for the rest of its life … was acquired.

No terms of deal were announced - really it seems just that Platial needed this feature, and decided to buy out the website instead of developing it themselves. Plus to its credit, Frappr does have a ton of user data.

Reminds me of when Tucows bought Kiko (calendar) - they wanted the functionality, and it would be cheaper for them to just buy it then develop it in-house.

My last post was on the randomness of how a search let me to find out about other people discussing one of our companies.

I love random stories. It is truly odd how on the internet, everything is interlinked.

So - another story.

I was going through iBegin Geocoder’s stats when I noticed a forum post that kept sending us traffic. Turns out they were using us for ZIP Code latitude/longitude. Since we had recently released US Zip Code centroids for free, I registered on the forum, quoted that specific part, and said hey - since you are using iBegin already, why not just use this downloadable file. I posted in an as non-spammish way as possible.

Checked back the next day, the post was gone, and I was warned. I PMed the moderator, explaining that I was confused. He was pretty prompt, saying that a lot of first-time posters are spam, he will take a look at it.

The next day the post was restored and the moderator PMed me. As I viewed the skin design the site was using (remember, we do skins via vBSkins.com), I clicked on who had done their skin - Relivo. Imagine my surprise when I found out that not only were they using our Illacrimo WP theme (interesting considering they are a ‘design’ firm), the bastards had removed the accredition link on the bottom (something we do not allow).

So I tried to contact them, but of course, their bloody contact form was/is broken. But lo and behold, they are hosted by HostGator (the owner is a friend of mine), and their domain is registered via NameCheap (whose owner I also know).

Anyway - that is where the story stands for now. I still have to get them. And I will. But it is interesting how randomness can be so tied together.

I’ll have a post soon on how we use free themes to push our brand - in the meantime, you can preview our next freebie: GossipCity.

UPDATE: Seems like word travels fast, and Relivo has quickly updated the site. If a staff member did add it, why did no one question where it came from? Anyway - things got resolved purty quickly.

For those that don’t know, ‘edge cases’ are something that only happen in extreme cases. Rare, but also cause a bit of headaches.

So I was looking at the Stumble Upon reviews of CSS Basics (a site we own), when I laughed at the last page.

On the bottom is a ‘Next »’ even though it is the last page. Clicking on it takes you - nowhere. But what is more disappointing is that the page doesn’t even have 10 reviews (it is suppoused to be 10 reviews per page).

A small thing, not a big deal - but really that shouldn’t be happening.

I’ve posted about being hot one second, and then not for the rest of eternity, and just want to dredge up this example again:

slowly dropping until irrelevant.

Just a lesson - just because something is cool/hot for a while doesn’t mean you’ve built anything sustainable/long-lasting. Frappr was cool, and spread like fire, but once people realized that it wasn’t really useful, they dropped it.

A burst of activity is good, but you really need to take a long hard look on why your website will be popular 18 months from today.

So Digg just rolled out a new design. Good for them.

They also changed the URL structure. Good for them again.

What they didn’t do is transfer their old URLs to new URLs properly. What the hell?

I usually visit Digg to read their world business area. The URL: http://digg.com/view/world_business
If you type that URL in now, you end up at: http://digg.com/var/www/digg.com/html/news/world_business (page not found)
It should be sending me to: http://digg.com/news/world_business

I would imagine with all their employees at least one would occasionally type in a direct link / know how to properly forward a URL.

[b]UPDATE:[/b] Digg employee commented, they’ve fixed it.

Been busy moving. Since 2001 I have not lived in any single residence for 12 months. Latest place lasted 8 months. Current place is planned for 1 to 12 months - hoping to move to Vancouver next.

But everything is set, and ready to go.

So - was going through my feeds, and I read that the first TechStars ‘company’ launched. This isn’t a company. It is a feature. Think Kiko (calendar ‘company’ sold on eBay), except 100x simpler.

I’ll copy what TC says:

With the widget, you can easily let visitors share your entire blog posts via email, mobile MMS, or through any of the social bookmarking services. The widget also maintains a list of emails and phone numbers you’ve contacted in the past to make sending new links to friends really easy. AddThis (which we use) has a similar widget, but focuses on an exhaustive list of social bookmarking services.

MadKast’s widget also offers an analytics package that tracks which posts are shared most often and what other blogs your readers are visit.

Huh? Sharing blog posts via a line of javascript is a company? No - its a bloody tool. Furthermore, the ‘analytics package’ that tracks which posts are shared most is so easy it belongs in the realm of captain obvious. And what other blogs your readers visit? That is pretty damn close to invasive when it comes to privacy (but also not all that complicated). In fact - how much data are they tracking?

What passes as a ‘company’ these days amazes me.

It is good to see that the high ground is still being espoused by people in power.

Replace ‘paid links’ with ’sponsored themes’ and you have the previous argument all over again - there is no definitive line between the two. This ain’t black and white.

My fellow cohort Jacob has written a nice post on sponsored themes: this ain’t black and white. My contribution was the title - I think it fits.

And nothing says web 3.0 like a trademark.

Found this little nugget on a post about Flowchart.com. Nevermind the selective positive reviews - web 3.0?

For all of the naming garbage that is web 2.0 and web 3.0, arguably web 3.0 is about relationships and connections - semantic knowledge (meta data) from underlying information. The easiest way to visualize it? Flowcharts.

I find this as bad taste as things come - I look forward to seeing it enforced.

There are many posts about how Digg traffic sucks. I agree with those sentiments (been Dugg about 25-30 times).

The earlier argument was that it lead to a lot of links. I used to agree - before. Nowadays, it seems like getting Dugg leads to no/very little linkage. That is if your story has made it - in the last 10 days we have had four pages/sites Dugg indirectly - our own submission was buried, but a site like Lifehacker or News.com (that just linked/regurgitated what we said) made it through.

So - if the traffic is useless, and its ability to generate links is weakened - why would anyone want to buy Digg?

Something to chew on.