Making Free Money Online

Subscription Porn Site SLAPPed Down After Suing RedTube For Undermining Its Business Model

from the competing-isn't-undermining dept

We've joked in the past about how many of the complaints we see from companies about new, more innovative competitors, is that they somehow represent "felony interference of a business model." Some companies, it seems, like to believe that if they have a successful business model, any new competitor that changes the market around must be doing so illegally. Eric Goldman points us to just such a lawsuit in California, where the proprietor of a subscription based porn website sued RedTube, one of many, many porn-focused free streaming video sites, and many of RedTube's advertisers, arguing unfair competition. Basically, the argument was that by setting up a website and offering these porn videos for free, while making money on the advertising, RedTube was effectively "dumping" its product on the market below cost in order to harm the market and make money elsewhere.



RedTube, in response, filed an anti-SLAPP claim, saying that the lawsuit sought to silence RedTube exercising its First Amendment rights of speech. While a lower court mostly agreed, it did leave open one small piece of the unfair competition claim, related to the issue of the claim that someone at RedTube's parent company signed up for the plaintiff's subscription website, downloaded the videos, and posted them on RedTube. However, the California state appeals court rejects the lower court's argument, and agrees that even this claim should be tossed out, because it's only unfair competition if the plaintiff can show that he has, in fact, lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition. Since the plaintiff was unable to do so, the court ruled that this claim got tossed out too (though, if true, you do wonder if there might be a copyright issue -- which does not appear to have been raised here).



On the overall point of underpricing the market unfairly, the court points out how silly this is, noting that giving away free content in exchange for advertising is a business model that's been around for ages, and is hardly a form of unfair competition:

If Bright's business model sounds familiar it's because it's the business model
typical of broadcast radio and television stations in the United States not to mention
thousands of local newspapers and, more recently, tens of thousands of Internet websites
including Youtube, CNN and Video.Yahoo.

The court also points out, in its opening, that business models change, and companies need to keep up -- and they shouldn't expect the law to keep their old business models in place:

In the 21st century, businesses of all kinds are having to adapt to a constantly
changing commercial landscape. The business that the parties describe as the "adult
entertainment" industry is no exception. Websites that originally made their money by
offering such material on a subscription or pay-per-view basis are being replaced by
"tube" websites which offer their content for free and make their money through
advertising.

There's also an interesting discussion over whether or not RedTube qualifies for SLAPP protections, as the site's content must involve the "furtherance of their right of free speech on a public issue." The plaintiff said that his complaint had nothing to do with stopping speech, but from the "anti-competitive conduct." The court notes that even publishing videos of porn online is conduct in the furtherance of speech and, in fact, that there is a "substantial public interest in the kind of sexually explicit videos shown on tube-sites such as Redtube." That's one way to put it.



The final point that seemed worth discussing on this is just how silly some "anti-competitive" behavior laws and rulings can be. Part of the plaintiff's argument here was to bring up a bit of caselaw involving two competing San Fransisco tourist cruises, where one firm got in trouble for selling tickets below cost, even though the firm made it up elsewhere. The court rejects this, by claiming that the earlier ruling doesn't apply here because RedTube "does not sell two separate products." That seems silly to me, and if anything really just highlights the problem with the original court ruling about using the tickets as a loss leader. If you read the ruling this way, you get a nonsensical result: giving away the videos for free would be legal, but charging a penny for them could suddenly be seen as unfair competition, because now it would be "selling" two separate products. Bundling multiple products, such that some are given away free or cheaply in the interest of a larger business model should never be seen as anti-competitive on its own. While I agree with the outcome, it seemed like this was the most confused part of the court's ruling, in that it tapdanced around what was, basically, a really bad ruling. The real issue should be to get rid of any rule that says such kinds of bundles are against the law in the first place.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

The latest to try is Ongo, a two-year-old start-up that will introduce its Web site today, with an iPad app to follow.

Ongo is backed by three major media companies: The Washington Post Company, The New York Times Company and Gannett, which publishes USA Today. Each has invested $4 million.

Ongo is for readers who peruse a variety of publications every day and want to read them all in one place. It shows articles from about 20 publications, and is in talks with dozens more.

The catch: Readers pay $6.99 a month for the service, while most of the Web sites whose articles it shows are free. In exchange, readers see no ads or cluttered pages, and can search for articles, save them and share them with friends — all from one site.

“The key thing is they don’t have to go to the other sites” to read the stories, said Kevin Skaggs, Ongo’s chief content officer and a former producer for The San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site.

Many publications generally flinch at that idea, because they want readers to visit their sites and see their ads. But in this case, they are sharing their content with Ongo because Ongo will share its revenue with them. And, Ongo said, it may attract new readers when its editors highlight stories that readers may not have otherwise seen.

Other apps, like Pulse and Flipboard, offer mobile news readers for free. And people turn to Web sites like The Huffington Post, Twitter and Facebook to see stories aggregated by editors or acquaintances.

Ongo is different because it gathers stories from a large number of publications, people can access it on the Web or on mobile devices,  and professional editors choose the top stories, said Alex Kazim, Ongo’s founder and chief executive and a former eBay executive.

“I just don’t think my friends are as good as professional editors in finding stories for me to read,” he said.

For $6.99, readers get all articles from The Washington Post and USA Today and some from The New York Times, the Associated Press and The Financial Times, along with stories from one more publication of their choice. Adding other publications costs an additional fee, between 99 cents and $14 a month, which the publisher sets.

According to Ongo’s research, just 12 percent of people read enough publications online each day that they would want a service like Ongo, Mr. Kazim said. But if it is successful, he hopes to include blogs, magazines and video, making it a one-stop shop for the news.

Ongo looks like a newspaper, with headlines that a team of six editors chooses to highlight and sections like sports, business and opinion. Readers can search a topic in the news and see articles from a variety of publications.

Like other sites, Ongo lets people share articles with friends through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. But it also lets people set up groups — family members or colleagues, for instance — for sharing, and facilitates chats about articles. If someone who is not an Ongo member signs up after reading a shared story, the sender gets a free month’s membership.

First-time Ongo users can get a free one-day trial pass, and if they register within a month, the first month is free.

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Sigma announcements include 120-300mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 Macro <b>...</b>

Sigma announcements include 120-300mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 Macro pricing: CP+ 2011: In addition to its latest lens announcements, Sigma has announced the price and availability of its 120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM and Macro 150mm F2.8 EX ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Subscription Porn Site SLAPPed Down After Suing RedTube For Undermining Its Business Model

from the competing-isn't-undermining dept

We've joked in the past about how many of the complaints we see from companies about new, more innovative competitors, is that they somehow represent "felony interference of a business model." Some companies, it seems, like to believe that if they have a successful business model, any new competitor that changes the market around must be doing so illegally. Eric Goldman points us to just such a lawsuit in California, where the proprietor of a subscription based porn website sued RedTube, one of many, many porn-focused free streaming video sites, and many of RedTube's advertisers, arguing unfair competition. Basically, the argument was that by setting up a website and offering these porn videos for free, while making money on the advertising, RedTube was effectively "dumping" its product on the market below cost in order to harm the market and make money elsewhere.



RedTube, in response, filed an anti-SLAPP claim, saying that the lawsuit sought to silence RedTube exercising its First Amendment rights of speech. While a lower court mostly agreed, it did leave open one small piece of the unfair competition claim, related to the issue of the claim that someone at RedTube's parent company signed up for the plaintiff's subscription website, downloaded the videos, and posted them on RedTube. However, the California state appeals court rejects the lower court's argument, and agrees that even this claim should be tossed out, because it's only unfair competition if the plaintiff can show that he has, in fact, lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition. Since the plaintiff was unable to do so, the court ruled that this claim got tossed out too (though, if true, you do wonder if there might be a copyright issue -- which does not appear to have been raised here).



On the overall point of underpricing the market unfairly, the court points out how silly this is, noting that giving away free content in exchange for advertising is a business model that's been around for ages, and is hardly a form of unfair competition:

If Bright's business model sounds familiar it's because it's the business model
typical of broadcast radio and television stations in the United States not to mention
thousands of local newspapers and, more recently, tens of thousands of Internet websites
including Youtube, CNN and Video.Yahoo.

The court also points out, in its opening, that business models change, and companies need to keep up -- and they shouldn't expect the law to keep their old business models in place:

In the 21st century, businesses of all kinds are having to adapt to a constantly
changing commercial landscape. The business that the parties describe as the "adult
entertainment" industry is no exception. Websites that originally made their money by
offering such material on a subscription or pay-per-view basis are being replaced by
"tube" websites which offer their content for free and make their money through
advertising.

There's also an interesting discussion over whether or not RedTube qualifies for SLAPP protections, as the site's content must involve the "furtherance of their right of free speech on a public issue." The plaintiff said that his complaint had nothing to do with stopping speech, but from the "anti-competitive conduct." The court notes that even publishing videos of porn online is conduct in the furtherance of speech and, in fact, that there is a "substantial public interest in the kind of sexually explicit videos shown on tube-sites such as Redtube." That's one way to put it.



The final point that seemed worth discussing on this is just how silly some "anti-competitive" behavior laws and rulings can be. Part of the plaintiff's argument here was to bring up a bit of caselaw involving two competing San Fransisco tourist cruises, where one firm got in trouble for selling tickets below cost, even though the firm made it up elsewhere. The court rejects this, by claiming that the earlier ruling doesn't apply here because RedTube "does not sell two separate products." That seems silly to me, and if anything really just highlights the problem with the original court ruling about using the tickets as a loss leader. If you read the ruling this way, you get a nonsensical result: giving away the videos for free would be legal, but charging a penny for them could suddenly be seen as unfair competition, because now it would be "selling" two separate products. Bundling multiple products, such that some are given away free or cheaply in the interest of a larger business model should never be seen as anti-competitive on its own. While I agree with the outcome, it seemed like this was the most confused part of the court's ruling, in that it tapdanced around what was, basically, a really bad ruling. The real issue should be to get rid of any rule that says such kinds of bundles are against the law in the first place.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

The latest to try is Ongo, a two-year-old start-up that will introduce its Web site today, with an iPad app to follow.

Ongo is backed by three major media companies: The Washington Post Company, The New York Times Company and Gannett, which publishes USA Today. Each has invested $4 million.

Ongo is for readers who peruse a variety of publications every day and want to read them all in one place. It shows articles from about 20 publications, and is in talks with dozens more.

The catch: Readers pay $6.99 a month for the service, while most of the Web sites whose articles it shows are free. In exchange, readers see no ads or cluttered pages, and can search for articles, save them and share them with friends — all from one site.

“The key thing is they don’t have to go to the other sites” to read the stories, said Kevin Skaggs, Ongo’s chief content officer and a former producer for The San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site.

Many publications generally flinch at that idea, because they want readers to visit their sites and see their ads. But in this case, they are sharing their content with Ongo because Ongo will share its revenue with them. And, Ongo said, it may attract new readers when its editors highlight stories that readers may not have otherwise seen.

Other apps, like Pulse and Flipboard, offer mobile news readers for free. And people turn to Web sites like The Huffington Post, Twitter and Facebook to see stories aggregated by editors or acquaintances.

Ongo is different because it gathers stories from a large number of publications, people can access it on the Web or on mobile devices,  and professional editors choose the top stories, said Alex Kazim, Ongo’s founder and chief executive and a former eBay executive.

“I just don’t think my friends are as good as professional editors in finding stories for me to read,” he said.

For $6.99, readers get all articles from The Washington Post and USA Today and some from The New York Times, the Associated Press and The Financial Times, along with stories from one more publication of their choice. Adding other publications costs an additional fee, between 99 cents and $14 a month, which the publisher sets.

According to Ongo’s research, just 12 percent of people read enough publications online each day that they would want a service like Ongo, Mr. Kazim said. But if it is successful, he hopes to include blogs, magazines and video, making it a one-stop shop for the news.

Ongo looks like a newspaper, with headlines that a team of six editors chooses to highlight and sections like sports, business and opinion. Readers can search a topic in the news and see articles from a variety of publications.

Like other sites, Ongo lets people share articles with friends through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. But it also lets people set up groups — family members or colleagues, for instance — for sharing, and facilitates chats about articles. If someone who is not an Ongo member signs up after reading a shared story, the sender gets a free month’s membership.

First-time Ongo users can get a free one-day trial pass, and if they register within a month, the first month is free.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Subscription Porn Site SLAPPed Down After Suing RedTube For Undermining Its Business Model

from the competing-isn't-undermining dept

We've joked in the past about how many of the complaints we see from companies about new, more innovative competitors, is that they somehow represent "felony interference of a business model." Some companies, it seems, like to believe that if they have a successful business model, any new competitor that changes the market around must be doing so illegally. Eric Goldman points us to just such a lawsuit in California, where the proprietor of a subscription based porn website sued RedTube, one of many, many porn-focused free streaming video sites, and many of RedTube's advertisers, arguing unfair competition. Basically, the argument was that by setting up a website and offering these porn videos for free, while making money on the advertising, RedTube was effectively "dumping" its product on the market below cost in order to harm the market and make money elsewhere.



RedTube, in response, filed an anti-SLAPP claim, saying that the lawsuit sought to silence RedTube exercising its First Amendment rights of speech. While a lower court mostly agreed, it did leave open one small piece of the unfair competition claim, related to the issue of the claim that someone at RedTube's parent company signed up for the plaintiff's subscription website, downloaded the videos, and posted them on RedTube. However, the California state appeals court rejects the lower court's argument, and agrees that even this claim should be tossed out, because it's only unfair competition if the plaintiff can show that he has, in fact, lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition. Since the plaintiff was unable to do so, the court ruled that this claim got tossed out too (though, if true, you do wonder if there might be a copyright issue -- which does not appear to have been raised here).



On the overall point of underpricing the market unfairly, the court points out how silly this is, noting that giving away free content in exchange for advertising is a business model that's been around for ages, and is hardly a form of unfair competition:

If Bright's business model sounds familiar it's because it's the business model
typical of broadcast radio and television stations in the United States not to mention
thousands of local newspapers and, more recently, tens of thousands of Internet websites
including Youtube, CNN and Video.Yahoo.

The court also points out, in its opening, that business models change, and companies need to keep up -- and they shouldn't expect the law to keep their old business models in place:

In the 21st century, businesses of all kinds are having to adapt to a constantly
changing commercial landscape. The business that the parties describe as the "adult
entertainment" industry is no exception. Websites that originally made their money by
offering such material on a subscription or pay-per-view basis are being replaced by
"tube" websites which offer their content for free and make their money through
advertising.

There's also an interesting discussion over whether or not RedTube qualifies for SLAPP protections, as the site's content must involve the "furtherance of their right of free speech on a public issue." The plaintiff said that his complaint had nothing to do with stopping speech, but from the "anti-competitive conduct." The court notes that even publishing videos of porn online is conduct in the furtherance of speech and, in fact, that there is a "substantial public interest in the kind of sexually explicit videos shown on tube-sites such as Redtube." That's one way to put it.



The final point that seemed worth discussing on this is just how silly some "anti-competitive" behavior laws and rulings can be. Part of the plaintiff's argument here was to bring up a bit of caselaw involving two competing San Fransisco tourist cruises, where one firm got in trouble for selling tickets below cost, even though the firm made it up elsewhere. The court rejects this, by claiming that the earlier ruling doesn't apply here because RedTube "does not sell two separate products." That seems silly to me, and if anything really just highlights the problem with the original court ruling about using the tickets as a loss leader. If you read the ruling this way, you get a nonsensical result: giving away the videos for free would be legal, but charging a penny for them could suddenly be seen as unfair competition, because now it would be "selling" two separate products. Bundling multiple products, such that some are given away free or cheaply in the interest of a larger business model should never be seen as anti-competitive on its own. While I agree with the outcome, it seemed like this was the most confused part of the court's ruling, in that it tapdanced around what was, basically, a really bad ruling. The real issue should be to get rid of any rule that says such kinds of bundles are against the law in the first place.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

The latest to try is Ongo, a two-year-old start-up that will introduce its Web site today, with an iPad app to follow.

Ongo is backed by three major media companies: The Washington Post Company, The New York Times Company and Gannett, which publishes USA Today. Each has invested $4 million.

Ongo is for readers who peruse a variety of publications every day and want to read them all in one place. It shows articles from about 20 publications, and is in talks with dozens more.

The catch: Readers pay $6.99 a month for the service, while most of the Web sites whose articles it shows are free. In exchange, readers see no ads or cluttered pages, and can search for articles, save them and share them with friends — all from one site.

“The key thing is they don’t have to go to the other sites” to read the stories, said Kevin Skaggs, Ongo’s chief content officer and a former producer for The San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site.

Many publications generally flinch at that idea, because they want readers to visit their sites and see their ads. But in this case, they are sharing their content with Ongo because Ongo will share its revenue with them. And, Ongo said, it may attract new readers when its editors highlight stories that readers may not have otherwise seen.

Other apps, like Pulse and Flipboard, offer mobile news readers for free. And people turn to Web sites like The Huffington Post, Twitter and Facebook to see stories aggregated by editors or acquaintances.

Ongo is different because it gathers stories from a large number of publications, people can access it on the Web or on mobile devices,  and professional editors choose the top stories, said Alex Kazim, Ongo’s founder and chief executive and a former eBay executive.

“I just don’t think my friends are as good as professional editors in finding stories for me to read,” he said.

For $6.99, readers get all articles from The Washington Post and USA Today and some from The New York Times, the Associated Press and The Financial Times, along with stories from one more publication of their choice. Adding other publications costs an additional fee, between 99 cents and $14 a month, which the publisher sets.

According to Ongo’s research, just 12 percent of people read enough publications online each day that they would want a service like Ongo, Mr. Kazim said. But if it is successful, he hopes to include blogs, magazines and video, making it a one-stop shop for the news.

Ongo looks like a newspaper, with headlines that a team of six editors chooses to highlight and sections like sports, business and opinion. Readers can search a topic in the news and see articles from a variety of publications.

Like other sites, Ongo lets people share articles with friends through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. But it also lets people set up groups — family members or colleagues, for instance — for sharing, and facilitates chats about articles. If someone who is not an Ongo member signs up after reading a shared story, the sender gets a free month’s membership.

First-time Ongo users can get a free one-day trial pass, and if they register within a month, the first month is free.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Sigma announcements include 120-300mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 Macro <b>...</b>

Sigma announcements include 120-300mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 Macro pricing: CP+ 2011: In addition to its latest lens announcements, Sigma has announced the price and availability of its 120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM and Macro 150mm F2.8 EX ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Sigma announcements include 120-300mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 Macro <b>...</b>

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Sigma announcements include 120-300mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 Macro <b>...</b>

Sigma announcements include 120-300mm F2.8 and 150mm F2.8 Macro pricing: CP+ 2011: In addition to its latest lens announcements, Sigma has announced the price and availability of its 120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM and Macro 150mm F2.8 EX ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 2/9 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A thank you to Joel and Chris for covering for me. Technology seems to hate me lately. Today's Kansas City Chiefs news covers a lot of topics: the national anthem, racial bias, Super Bowl odds, and pork. Enjoy.

GAME selling XBLA games and DLC Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of GAME selling XBLA games and DLC.

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Have you been looking for fast, easy ways to make money online? I will give you 5 things to do, all of which I have personal experience with. Some involve eBay, some don't.

1. One of my favorite things to do to make money online, is the one that I'm doing right now! Write articles for Associated Content! There are a few people out there that make a full time living writing for Associated Content, but it takes tons of work to be able to do that. The best way is start off slow like I did. Write an article or two a day, and work from there. Start off by only writing about the things that you enjoy or know a lot about. Depending on the article, Associated content pays two ways. Depending on subject matter, Associated Content pays you for your article up front. This can be anywhere from $1-10 per article, but the average is about $3-4 per article.

Associated Content also pays you by how many views your article generates. They pay $1.50 per 1,000 page views, and the more views you get, the more money you make based on their clout system. It's not easy to make a living on Associated Content, but it is easy to make an extra $100 a month. That's a cable bill, or an energy bill!

2. When your looking for ways to make money online, you will here about eBay over and over again. This is a good way to get started with making money online. The best way to start with selling things around the house. Look around you right now. Do you see something just sitting around, never being used? Sell it! eBay is free to sign up, but they do charge small fees for listing (unless you start your auction under $0.99,) and they charge a fee when an item sells.

3. Another way to make money online is Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I use Mechanical Turk every day. Literally. Every day! Basically what it is, is companies that have you do tasks like finding businesses locations, or getting product information. It's all extremely easy, and some of them pay pretty well. You can easily make a few hundred bucks a month on mechanical turk, and if you have the dedication, you could probably make a living.

4. Here's another way to make money on eBay. Do you have a thrift store in your town? Why don't you head on down there and pick up a few things. You can make a lot more money than you think by picking up items at your local thrift store and selling them on eBay, but it can be tricky. Like writing articles, start with what you know about. For me, it was electronics. Find something you know is a good price, and you think you could make a few bucks with on eBay. Once you get the flow of things, you'll learn more about more items, and be making more money in no time.

5. This last one is another eBay one, but it's a little more time consuming. Go to the online auction site, auctionzip.com and sign up. This is not like eBay. It's real life, real time auctions that are broadcast online. You can bid on items and then pay with your credit card and have them shipped via UPS. I have made a tremendous amount of money doing this. I've bought items for $25 that have sold in the hundreds.

These 5 things are all great ways to make money online. I actively do all of these 5 things, and make a decent amount of money. However, I also keep my day job, and so should you! Hope you enjoyed this article, and hopefully you can start making some money online!

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AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

surface encounters

AOL-HuffPost: All The <b>News</b> Fit To Merge

As new media gains traction, more mergers will result.

Yahoo Prepping Personalized Mobile <b>News</b> Platform

Yahoo is reportedly preparing to launch a new publishing platform next week which will deliver personalized news content to mobile devices. The content will come from users' social ...

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Weigh on <b>News</b> Corp&#39;s Cable Programming <b>...</b>

Comcast-NBC Deal Could Mar News Corp's Cable Programming Margin.

why internet marketing

With Google worth more than $200 billion based on nearly $29 billion in revenue last year, and Facebook worth $50 to $70 billion based on less then $2 billion in revenue last, it’s easy to call Facebook’s current valuation hype. Why then would so many investors be willing to purchase a stake in Facebook for so much? We take a look.

The Global Advertising Business

While it’s hard to find hard numbers on the total global advertising market, one report we found from 2009 pegged global ad spending at more than $440 billion. What does this have to do with Facebook and Google? Well, the primary revenue source for both businesses is advertising. One of the best ways to value a business is by analyzing the broad market that is involved in. While Facebook’s Credits business is growing rapidly thanks to the explosion in social games, it still accounts for a small portion of Facebook’s revenue (although it could definitely grow significantly).

While Facebook and Google will most likely never have the majority of all global advertising, this $440 billion figure is a great place to start.

Internet Advertising Growth

The next step is to take a look at internet advertising as a percentage of the total global advertising market. According to the IAB, the total Internet advertising market for the first half of 2010 was approximately $12 billion. If we were to project for the total year, we’d guess that the total Internet advertising market will be around $28 billion as revenue tends to pick up toward the fourth quarter.

That means Internet advertising still only accounts for less than 7 percent of the total global advertising market. Overall, we can make a reasonable prediction that this market will at a minimum double in size as consumers’ attention turns to Internet-powered devices. That would be extremely conservative. If we expect that Internet advertising is going to balloon, as most people in the industry believe, we could make a much more aggressive prediction that Internet advertising could potentially grow to 25 percent of the total advertising market, especially if consumer attention continues to shift in that direction.

That means there’s an additional $80 billion in annual advertising up for grabs on the high end, and an additional $28 billion on the low end.

The Lion’s Share

So who’s playing for that $28 billion? Right now Facebook and Google are the primary competitors in the space, with many other companies, like Twitter, looking to capture large portions of that market. If we were to look into the future and predict that at some point in the next five years, Facebook and Google combined will have 60 percent of that market (not unreasonable considering Google’s revenue is already greater than the entire internet advertising market), and it’s split 50/50, Facebook will be generating $7 billion a year in revenue.

However, if the market is going to grow to the size that we believe, Facebook could bring in $24 billion a year in advertising revenue, a figure which Google basically already has right now.

Marketing Budgets

While the IAB has its own measurement of online advertising, there is a portion of company budgets which falls into “marketing” and both Google and Facebook are also going after those budgets as well. This means there’s easily billions of dollars to be spent on alternative advertising solutions. Take Groupon and LivingSocial, for example. These companies, combined, could easily generate more than $5 billion in revenue this year alone.

As such, we’ll see both Google and Facebook try to get in on the action as the deals market explodes. Facebook has already launched its own deals product, based on Places, and Google has already attempted to acquire Groupon for more than $5 billion. If Facebook can get a piece of these budgets, you could easily see the company adding billions in additional revenue through such sources if successful. For the time being it’s not clear whether or not Facebook Deals will eventually become a new revenue channel on its own; however, we can just about guarantee Facebook will try to get a piece of this explosive market.

With this in mind, I’d say it’s somewhat reasonable to expect at least a few billion in annual revenue through new marketing products for small businesses within the next 5 years. This would bring Facebook up to $27 or $28 billion a year in revenue.

Sizing Things Up

With all this (theoretical) revenue, Facebook actually would have to be worth $200 billion, right? Well, if the market stays the same as it is today (which it of course won’t), Facebook would have a market cap of a little more than $200 billion if valued at a revenue multiple similar to Google’s (similar businesses, similar valuations). That’s awesome! So from the perspective that investors can purchase shares at a $50 billion to $70 billion valuation, and Facebook will have been a great buy!

Can you predict the global market?

Well, if all of the projections which I just laid out are accurate, it actually isn’t that unreasonable. However, there are a lot of things that need to take place in order for these projections to come true. One of those things is that the economy needs to continue to grow for the next five years or more. While things are on the up and up, there’s no guarantee that things will grow quickly. It could take 10 years for the Internet advertising market to grow to the size we projected (instead of five). If that happens, your annual return on a Facebook investment will suddenly be slashed. As such, global market trends will impact your investment.

Is Facebook just hype?

Another perspective is trying to predict where Facebook will be in 10 years. Given that the company has only been around for seven years or so, it’s hard to predict where a company like this will be in a decade. Ultimately, it’s very unlikely that Facebook will just disappear, however it’s definitely something that should be considered. If Facebook fails to perform as expected, and misses projections at any point during the next five to 10 years, Facebook’s valuation would be damaged.

More importantly, if Facebook doesn’t continue to expand or at least maintain its grip on the attention economy (where consumers are spending their time), Facebook’s value to advertisers would drop dramatically and suddenly a large portion of the aggressive market share predicted earlier, will be wiped out.

All things considered

With all of these things taken into consideration, the only remaining component of making the investment is determining what other opportunities you will have to do with that money over the next five years or more. If you think the Internet advertising market is going to definitely grow and that Facebook will simply dominate that market, expecting the company to be worth $100 billion to $200 billion is not completely illogical.

However, if you are conservative, think the market will take five years to double in size and that Facebook will have a smaller fraction of it than expected, other investments would look much more attractive. If you’re a gambler who’s extremely bullish on the Internet advertising business, a Facebook investment really isn’t a horrible bet. Best of all Facebook Credits, or an alternative revenue stream that we don’t know of yet, could prove explosive as the company marches toward 1 billion users.

This means Facebook jaw-dropping valuation of $50 billion (and upwards of $70 billion based on other private transactions), is not that ridiculous as long as Facebook continues to play its cards right, successfully capturing a growing fraction of internet advertising revenue. Keep in mind: All the cards must be played right.

In the world of entrepreneurship one of the most important forms of currency is information. If you aren’t on Quora, you probably don’t have that currency.

Listening To Customers

One of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley nowadays is the “Lean Startup Model”, a model in which quick iterations are superior to theoretically long, drawn out releases which have a significant potential of failure. The position of Lean Startup Model evangelists is a legitimate one: if you don’t listen to your customers then you are pretty much destined to fail because customers tell you what they want. To many of those individuals I would suggest that their single landing page site which is used to test an idea is often times completely misleading. One case and point comes from a story told on Quora by Michael Flaxman in response to the question “What is the best way to test an internet startup idea?”:

Unfortunately, the most reliable way to find out is to build the minimum viable product and see how people respond to it.

The idea that you can scientifically determine whether or not a startup will work is a nice thought, but I think it’s unrealistic. If there were reliable tests you could take before launching a startup, wouldn’t startups fail at an exceptionally low rate?

I have a developer friend who wanted to build a cheaper email marketing software, but he didn’t want to make the investment in building a product only to find that it couldn’t make money. So, he found some of his competitors’ clients and asked them if they’d switch. When that seemed promising he setup a landing page that looked like it was for real email marketing software, only the software wasn’t yet built. He then bought traffic and carefully measured how expensive it was to get a “signup” on his landing page. Looking good so far. 6 months of building a clone product and he was ready to get it to some of those trial users.

Unfortunately, his users had lots of reasons why they now wouldn’t actually leave their current SaaS product and switch to his cheaper one. 6 more months of fixing bugs and adding features — including one that let you 1-click copy your account from one of his major competitors into his software — and the project had flopped. It turns out getting people to say yes to “are you interested in a better/cheaper product?” is much easier than getting them to actually make the change (and pay money for it).

Ouch! Take that lean startup people! Listening to the customer is definitely important to some extent, however I would suggest that customers don’t know what they want. That doesn’t mean that all hope should be lost though. That’s because there’s a much better indicator of what to build: the market.

Listening To The Market

While the customer doesn’t necessarily know what they want, the market is a very effective gauge of it. Successful companies are those who build products that resonate with their customers. Those customers in turn tell others about the product and eventually the product reaches a significant number of customers. So how on earth do you monitor the market? Read the news, extensively research the market, and most importantly (if you are in the Internet industry): read Quora! I have a quick story to illustrate the point of this.

I have an entrepreneur friend who is constantly asking me for advice and asking for help on raising funding. My single greatest complaint isn’t about his business (e.g. that it’s a bad idea … which it isn’t), but instead that he has no idea who the other players are in the market. How can you truly become a seriously player in a market that you are completely oblivious to? The answer: you can’t. There are tons of companies who are out there doing the research for you to find out what the market wants.

Unless you are a first mover, which is most often not the case, there is no excuse for not knowing who’s in your market, what they’re doing, and what works for them and what isn’t working. The bottom line: if entrepreneurship were a chess game, no chess player makes their moves without taking into consideration the other player’s moves. So pay attention to the market!

Quora As A Place To Gain Insight

While Quora is by no means the beat of the marketplace, there is plenty of insight to be gleaned from people who post on the site. There are great responses posted about many of the toughest challenges facing entrepreneurs. Clearly, if you spend too much time on the site you are doing yourself a disservice. Additionally, not all players in the marketplace are exactly transparent about their intentions, so the deepest insight comes from those who are sharing the moves they made weeks, months, or most often, years ago.

These anecdotes can prove to be extremely valuable. Business anecdotes are one of the reasons that incubators like YCombinator have become so successful. Aside from providing money, they provide unfiltered insight from business leaders in the community. While much of the information on Quora is clearly filtered (often times so much that it’s clear the person responding has intentionally left out chunks of a story), there are plenty of great insights to be gleaned from reading the site. Do you agree that Quora has become a critical resource for any serious internet entrepreneur? Do you use the site regularly?

benchcraft company scam

Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

bench craft company reviews

With Google worth more than $200 billion based on nearly $29 billion in revenue last year, and Facebook worth $50 to $70 billion based on less then $2 billion in revenue last, it’s easy to call Facebook’s current valuation hype. Why then would so many investors be willing to purchase a stake in Facebook for so much? We take a look.

The Global Advertising Business

While it’s hard to find hard numbers on the total global advertising market, one report we found from 2009 pegged global ad spending at more than $440 billion. What does this have to do with Facebook and Google? Well, the primary revenue source for both businesses is advertising. One of the best ways to value a business is by analyzing the broad market that is involved in. While Facebook’s Credits business is growing rapidly thanks to the explosion in social games, it still accounts for a small portion of Facebook’s revenue (although it could definitely grow significantly).

While Facebook and Google will most likely never have the majority of all global advertising, this $440 billion figure is a great place to start.

Internet Advertising Growth

The next step is to take a look at internet advertising as a percentage of the total global advertising market. According to the IAB, the total Internet advertising market for the first half of 2010 was approximately $12 billion. If we were to project for the total year, we’d guess that the total Internet advertising market will be around $28 billion as revenue tends to pick up toward the fourth quarter.

That means Internet advertising still only accounts for less than 7 percent of the total global advertising market. Overall, we can make a reasonable prediction that this market will at a minimum double in size as consumers’ attention turns to Internet-powered devices. That would be extremely conservative. If we expect that Internet advertising is going to balloon, as most people in the industry believe, we could make a much more aggressive prediction that Internet advertising could potentially grow to 25 percent of the total advertising market, especially if consumer attention continues to shift in that direction.

That means there’s an additional $80 billion in annual advertising up for grabs on the high end, and an additional $28 billion on the low end.

The Lion’s Share

So who’s playing for that $28 billion? Right now Facebook and Google are the primary competitors in the space, with many other companies, like Twitter, looking to capture large portions of that market. If we were to look into the future and predict that at some point in the next five years, Facebook and Google combined will have 60 percent of that market (not unreasonable considering Google’s revenue is already greater than the entire internet advertising market), and it’s split 50/50, Facebook will be generating $7 billion a year in revenue.

However, if the market is going to grow to the size that we believe, Facebook could bring in $24 billion a year in advertising revenue, a figure which Google basically already has right now.

Marketing Budgets

While the IAB has its own measurement of online advertising, there is a portion of company budgets which falls into “marketing” and both Google and Facebook are also going after those budgets as well. This means there’s easily billions of dollars to be spent on alternative advertising solutions. Take Groupon and LivingSocial, for example. These companies, combined, could easily generate more than $5 billion in revenue this year alone.

As such, we’ll see both Google and Facebook try to get in on the action as the deals market explodes. Facebook has already launched its own deals product, based on Places, and Google has already attempted to acquire Groupon for more than $5 billion. If Facebook can get a piece of these budgets, you could easily see the company adding billions in additional revenue through such sources if successful. For the time being it’s not clear whether or not Facebook Deals will eventually become a new revenue channel on its own; however, we can just about guarantee Facebook will try to get a piece of this explosive market.

With this in mind, I’d say it’s somewhat reasonable to expect at least a few billion in annual revenue through new marketing products for small businesses within the next 5 years. This would bring Facebook up to $27 or $28 billion a year in revenue.

Sizing Things Up

With all this (theoretical) revenue, Facebook actually would have to be worth $200 billion, right? Well, if the market stays the same as it is today (which it of course won’t), Facebook would have a market cap of a little more than $200 billion if valued at a revenue multiple similar to Google’s (similar businesses, similar valuations). That’s awesome! So from the perspective that investors can purchase shares at a $50 billion to $70 billion valuation, and Facebook will have been a great buy!

Can you predict the global market?

Well, if all of the projections which I just laid out are accurate, it actually isn’t that unreasonable. However, there are a lot of things that need to take place in order for these projections to come true. One of those things is that the economy needs to continue to grow for the next five years or more. While things are on the up and up, there’s no guarantee that things will grow quickly. It could take 10 years for the Internet advertising market to grow to the size we projected (instead of five). If that happens, your annual return on a Facebook investment will suddenly be slashed. As such, global market trends will impact your investment.

Is Facebook just hype?

Another perspective is trying to predict where Facebook will be in 10 years. Given that the company has only been around for seven years or so, it’s hard to predict where a company like this will be in a decade. Ultimately, it’s very unlikely that Facebook will just disappear, however it’s definitely something that should be considered. If Facebook fails to perform as expected, and misses projections at any point during the next five to 10 years, Facebook’s valuation would be damaged.

More importantly, if Facebook doesn’t continue to expand or at least maintain its grip on the attention economy (where consumers are spending their time), Facebook’s value to advertisers would drop dramatically and suddenly a large portion of the aggressive market share predicted earlier, will be wiped out.

All things considered

With all of these things taken into consideration, the only remaining component of making the investment is determining what other opportunities you will have to do with that money over the next five years or more. If you think the Internet advertising market is going to definitely grow and that Facebook will simply dominate that market, expecting the company to be worth $100 billion to $200 billion is not completely illogical.

However, if you are conservative, think the market will take five years to double in size and that Facebook will have a smaller fraction of it than expected, other investments would look much more attractive. If you’re a gambler who’s extremely bullish on the Internet advertising business, a Facebook investment really isn’t a horrible bet. Best of all Facebook Credits, or an alternative revenue stream that we don’t know of yet, could prove explosive as the company marches toward 1 billion users.

This means Facebook jaw-dropping valuation of $50 billion (and upwards of $70 billion based on other private transactions), is not that ridiculous as long as Facebook continues to play its cards right, successfully capturing a growing fraction of internet advertising revenue. Keep in mind: All the cards must be played right.

In the world of entrepreneurship one of the most important forms of currency is information. If you aren’t on Quora, you probably don’t have that currency.

Listening To Customers

One of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley nowadays is the “Lean Startup Model”, a model in which quick iterations are superior to theoretically long, drawn out releases which have a significant potential of failure. The position of Lean Startup Model evangelists is a legitimate one: if you don’t listen to your customers then you are pretty much destined to fail because customers tell you what they want. To many of those individuals I would suggest that their single landing page site which is used to test an idea is often times completely misleading. One case and point comes from a story told on Quora by Michael Flaxman in response to the question “What is the best way to test an internet startup idea?”:

Unfortunately, the most reliable way to find out is to build the minimum viable product and see how people respond to it.

The idea that you can scientifically determine whether or not a startup will work is a nice thought, but I think it’s unrealistic. If there were reliable tests you could take before launching a startup, wouldn’t startups fail at an exceptionally low rate?

I have a developer friend who wanted to build a cheaper email marketing software, but he didn’t want to make the investment in building a product only to find that it couldn’t make money. So, he found some of his competitors’ clients and asked them if they’d switch. When that seemed promising he setup a landing page that looked like it was for real email marketing software, only the software wasn’t yet built. He then bought traffic and carefully measured how expensive it was to get a “signup” on his landing page. Looking good so far. 6 months of building a clone product and he was ready to get it to some of those trial users.

Unfortunately, his users had lots of reasons why they now wouldn’t actually leave their current SaaS product and switch to his cheaper one. 6 more months of fixing bugs and adding features — including one that let you 1-click copy your account from one of his major competitors into his software — and the project had flopped. It turns out getting people to say yes to “are you interested in a better/cheaper product?” is much easier than getting them to actually make the change (and pay money for it).

Ouch! Take that lean startup people! Listening to the customer is definitely important to some extent, however I would suggest that customers don’t know what they want. That doesn’t mean that all hope should be lost though. That’s because there’s a much better indicator of what to build: the market.

Listening To The Market

While the customer doesn’t necessarily know what they want, the market is a very effective gauge of it. Successful companies are those who build products that resonate with their customers. Those customers in turn tell others about the product and eventually the product reaches a significant number of customers. So how on earth do you monitor the market? Read the news, extensively research the market, and most importantly (if you are in the Internet industry): read Quora! I have a quick story to illustrate the point of this.

I have an entrepreneur friend who is constantly asking me for advice and asking for help on raising funding. My single greatest complaint isn’t about his business (e.g. that it’s a bad idea … which it isn’t), but instead that he has no idea who the other players are in the market. How can you truly become a seriously player in a market that you are completely oblivious to? The answer: you can’t. There are tons of companies who are out there doing the research for you to find out what the market wants.

Unless you are a first mover, which is most often not the case, there is no excuse for not knowing who’s in your market, what they’re doing, and what works for them and what isn’t working. The bottom line: if entrepreneurship were a chess game, no chess player makes their moves without taking into consideration the other player’s moves. So pay attention to the market!

Quora As A Place To Gain Insight

While Quora is by no means the beat of the marketplace, there is plenty of insight to be gleaned from people who post on the site. There are great responses posted about many of the toughest challenges facing entrepreneurs. Clearly, if you spend too much time on the site you are doing yourself a disservice. Additionally, not all players in the marketplace are exactly transparent about their intentions, so the deepest insight comes from those who are sharing the moves they made weeks, months, or most often, years ago.

These anecdotes can prove to be extremely valuable. Business anecdotes are one of the reasons that incubators like YCombinator have become so successful. Aside from providing money, they provide unfiltered insight from business leaders in the community. While much of the information on Quora is clearly filtered (often times so much that it’s clear the person responding has intentionally left out chunks of a story), there are plenty of great insights to be gleaned from reading the site. Do you agree that Quora has become a critical resource for any serious internet entrepreneur? Do you use the site regularly?

bench craft company reviews

Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

benchcraft company scam
[reefeed]
benchcraft company scam

bench craft company reviews

Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

bench craft company reviews

With Google worth more than $200 billion based on nearly $29 billion in revenue last year, and Facebook worth $50 to $70 billion based on less then $2 billion in revenue last, it’s easy to call Facebook’s current valuation hype. Why then would so many investors be willing to purchase a stake in Facebook for so much? We take a look.

The Global Advertising Business

While it’s hard to find hard numbers on the total global advertising market, one report we found from 2009 pegged global ad spending at more than $440 billion. What does this have to do with Facebook and Google? Well, the primary revenue source for both businesses is advertising. One of the best ways to value a business is by analyzing the broad market that is involved in. While Facebook’s Credits business is growing rapidly thanks to the explosion in social games, it still accounts for a small portion of Facebook’s revenue (although it could definitely grow significantly).

While Facebook and Google will most likely never have the majority of all global advertising, this $440 billion figure is a great place to start.

Internet Advertising Growth

The next step is to take a look at internet advertising as a percentage of the total global advertising market. According to the IAB, the total Internet advertising market for the first half of 2010 was approximately $12 billion. If we were to project for the total year, we’d guess that the total Internet advertising market will be around $28 billion as revenue tends to pick up toward the fourth quarter.

That means Internet advertising still only accounts for less than 7 percent of the total global advertising market. Overall, we can make a reasonable prediction that this market will at a minimum double in size as consumers’ attention turns to Internet-powered devices. That would be extremely conservative. If we expect that Internet advertising is going to balloon, as most people in the industry believe, we could make a much more aggressive prediction that Internet advertising could potentially grow to 25 percent of the total advertising market, especially if consumer attention continues to shift in that direction.

That means there’s an additional $80 billion in annual advertising up for grabs on the high end, and an additional $28 billion on the low end.

The Lion’s Share

So who’s playing for that $28 billion? Right now Facebook and Google are the primary competitors in the space, with many other companies, like Twitter, looking to capture large portions of that market. If we were to look into the future and predict that at some point in the next five years, Facebook and Google combined will have 60 percent of that market (not unreasonable considering Google’s revenue is already greater than the entire internet advertising market), and it’s split 50/50, Facebook will be generating $7 billion a year in revenue.

However, if the market is going to grow to the size that we believe, Facebook could bring in $24 billion a year in advertising revenue, a figure which Google basically already has right now.

Marketing Budgets

While the IAB has its own measurement of online advertising, there is a portion of company budgets which falls into “marketing” and both Google and Facebook are also going after those budgets as well. This means there’s easily billions of dollars to be spent on alternative advertising solutions. Take Groupon and LivingSocial, for example. These companies, combined, could easily generate more than $5 billion in revenue this year alone.

As such, we’ll see both Google and Facebook try to get in on the action as the deals market explodes. Facebook has already launched its own deals product, based on Places, and Google has already attempted to acquire Groupon for more than $5 billion. If Facebook can get a piece of these budgets, you could easily see the company adding billions in additional revenue through such sources if successful. For the time being it’s not clear whether or not Facebook Deals will eventually become a new revenue channel on its own; however, we can just about guarantee Facebook will try to get a piece of this explosive market.

With this in mind, I’d say it’s somewhat reasonable to expect at least a few billion in annual revenue through new marketing products for small businesses within the next 5 years. This would bring Facebook up to $27 or $28 billion a year in revenue.

Sizing Things Up

With all this (theoretical) revenue, Facebook actually would have to be worth $200 billion, right? Well, if the market stays the same as it is today (which it of course won’t), Facebook would have a market cap of a little more than $200 billion if valued at a revenue multiple similar to Google’s (similar businesses, similar valuations). That’s awesome! So from the perspective that investors can purchase shares at a $50 billion to $70 billion valuation, and Facebook will have been a great buy!

Can you predict the global market?

Well, if all of the projections which I just laid out are accurate, it actually isn’t that unreasonable. However, there are a lot of things that need to take place in order for these projections to come true. One of those things is that the economy needs to continue to grow for the next five years or more. While things are on the up and up, there’s no guarantee that things will grow quickly. It could take 10 years for the Internet advertising market to grow to the size we projected (instead of five). If that happens, your annual return on a Facebook investment will suddenly be slashed. As such, global market trends will impact your investment.

Is Facebook just hype?

Another perspective is trying to predict where Facebook will be in 10 years. Given that the company has only been around for seven years or so, it’s hard to predict where a company like this will be in a decade. Ultimately, it’s very unlikely that Facebook will just disappear, however it’s definitely something that should be considered. If Facebook fails to perform as expected, and misses projections at any point during the next five to 10 years, Facebook’s valuation would be damaged.

More importantly, if Facebook doesn’t continue to expand or at least maintain its grip on the attention economy (where consumers are spending their time), Facebook’s value to advertisers would drop dramatically and suddenly a large portion of the aggressive market share predicted earlier, will be wiped out.

All things considered

With all of these things taken into consideration, the only remaining component of making the investment is determining what other opportunities you will have to do with that money over the next five years or more. If you think the Internet advertising market is going to definitely grow and that Facebook will simply dominate that market, expecting the company to be worth $100 billion to $200 billion is not completely illogical.

However, if you are conservative, think the market will take five years to double in size and that Facebook will have a smaller fraction of it than expected, other investments would look much more attractive. If you’re a gambler who’s extremely bullish on the Internet advertising business, a Facebook investment really isn’t a horrible bet. Best of all Facebook Credits, or an alternative revenue stream that we don’t know of yet, could prove explosive as the company marches toward 1 billion users.

This means Facebook jaw-dropping valuation of $50 billion (and upwards of $70 billion based on other private transactions), is not that ridiculous as long as Facebook continues to play its cards right, successfully capturing a growing fraction of internet advertising revenue. Keep in mind: All the cards must be played right.

In the world of entrepreneurship one of the most important forms of currency is information. If you aren’t on Quora, you probably don’t have that currency.

Listening To Customers

One of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley nowadays is the “Lean Startup Model”, a model in which quick iterations are superior to theoretically long, drawn out releases which have a significant potential of failure. The position of Lean Startup Model evangelists is a legitimate one: if you don’t listen to your customers then you are pretty much destined to fail because customers tell you what they want. To many of those individuals I would suggest that their single landing page site which is used to test an idea is often times completely misleading. One case and point comes from a story told on Quora by Michael Flaxman in response to the question “What is the best way to test an internet startup idea?”:

Unfortunately, the most reliable way to find out is to build the minimum viable product and see how people respond to it.

The idea that you can scientifically determine whether or not a startup will work is a nice thought, but I think it’s unrealistic. If there were reliable tests you could take before launching a startup, wouldn’t startups fail at an exceptionally low rate?

I have a developer friend who wanted to build a cheaper email marketing software, but he didn’t want to make the investment in building a product only to find that it couldn’t make money. So, he found some of his competitors’ clients and asked them if they’d switch. When that seemed promising he setup a landing page that looked like it was for real email marketing software, only the software wasn’t yet built. He then bought traffic and carefully measured how expensive it was to get a “signup” on his landing page. Looking good so far. 6 months of building a clone product and he was ready to get it to some of those trial users.

Unfortunately, his users had lots of reasons why they now wouldn’t actually leave their current SaaS product and switch to his cheaper one. 6 more months of fixing bugs and adding features — including one that let you 1-click copy your account from one of his major competitors into his software — and the project had flopped. It turns out getting people to say yes to “are you interested in a better/cheaper product?” is much easier than getting them to actually make the change (and pay money for it).

Ouch! Take that lean startup people! Listening to the customer is definitely important to some extent, however I would suggest that customers don’t know what they want. That doesn’t mean that all hope should be lost though. That’s because there’s a much better indicator of what to build: the market.

Listening To The Market

While the customer doesn’t necessarily know what they want, the market is a very effective gauge of it. Successful companies are those who build products that resonate with their customers. Those customers in turn tell others about the product and eventually the product reaches a significant number of customers. So how on earth do you monitor the market? Read the news, extensively research the market, and most importantly (if you are in the Internet industry): read Quora! I have a quick story to illustrate the point of this.

I have an entrepreneur friend who is constantly asking me for advice and asking for help on raising funding. My single greatest complaint isn’t about his business (e.g. that it’s a bad idea … which it isn’t), but instead that he has no idea who the other players are in the market. How can you truly become a seriously player in a market that you are completely oblivious to? The answer: you can’t. There are tons of companies who are out there doing the research for you to find out what the market wants.

Unless you are a first mover, which is most often not the case, there is no excuse for not knowing who’s in your market, what they’re doing, and what works for them and what isn’t working. The bottom line: if entrepreneurship were a chess game, no chess player makes their moves without taking into consideration the other player’s moves. So pay attention to the market!

Quora As A Place To Gain Insight

While Quora is by no means the beat of the marketplace, there is plenty of insight to be gleaned from people who post on the site. There are great responses posted about many of the toughest challenges facing entrepreneurs. Clearly, if you spend too much time on the site you are doing yourself a disservice. Additionally, not all players in the marketplace are exactly transparent about their intentions, so the deepest insight comes from those who are sharing the moves they made weeks, months, or most often, years ago.

These anecdotes can prove to be extremely valuable. Business anecdotes are one of the reasons that incubators like YCombinator have become so successful. Aside from providing money, they provide unfiltered insight from business leaders in the community. While much of the information on Quora is clearly filtered (often times so much that it’s clear the person responding has intentionally left out chunks of a story), there are plenty of great insights to be gleaned from reading the site. Do you agree that Quora has become a critical resource for any serious internet entrepreneur? Do you use the site regularly?

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Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

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Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

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Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

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Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

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Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

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Internet Marketing - Ye or Nay ... is it right for your business? This is a hard question to answer since there are so many variables that must be taken into consideration. The individual techniques you use in your web based marketing campaigns as well as how well you implement the techniques can determine whether or not Internet marketing will work in your business. Also you must estimate your target clients use of the Internet and the probability of a response from your marketing. We will try and outline the steps necessary to insure success for your campaign.

Before deciding on an Internet marketing campaign carefully evaluate your target audience. Although the Internet is daily becoming more pervasive in everyday life around the world, not everyone uses the internet for product searches or product purchases, this may also include your product. Why is this important? You will be investing a great deal of money, effort and time into your Internet marketing campaign. This will all be wasted if your target audience does not respond to your efforts.

Your first step in setting up your Internet marketing campaign is to conduct market research on your product. This step will help immensely in determining whether you should or should not invest in an Internet marketing campaign for your business. This step critical because it will give you the necessary insight to even begin marketing your product or business on the Internet. If additional funds are available, hiring a marketing consultant specializing in market research for your area of business is recommended since they can conduct this research both quickly and efficiently. Based on their recommendations, determine if your business can benefit from an Internet marketing campaign. Then and only then is it time to start preparing your plan on how to advertise your business online.

Purchasing the help of professional marketing consultants can be an extremely worthwhile investment. If this is your first attempt at marketing your business using Internet marketing, hiring firms with a extensive background and industry expertise can be very helpful. The marketing consultants can help you by recommending which marketing strategies will be most effective, helping you design targeted ads for your campaign, and overall helping you to manage the Internet marketing campaign and helping you evaluate the results of your marketing efforts to determine which strategies are most effective.

The sky is the limit for a well thought and implemented Internet marketing campaign. Success is only tempered by your ability to promote your products, services and execute effective marketing strategies. The internet marketing strategies you may want to employ include optimizing your website for relevant search terms (SEO), linking to your website from other websites, writing articles, publishing e-newsletters and utilizing web 2.0 traffic building techniques.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is and continues to be one of the most important aspects of any Internet marketing campaign. SEO is important since it helps determine the rank of your website by popular search engines. Internet users place higher value on the higher ranking sites consequently lower valued sites are not as likely to be visited. High ranking websites enjoy increased website traffic as a result of these higher rankings.

Inbound links (other websites linking to your website)are becoming an increasing important in Internet marketing. Inbound links are links on other websites which direct users to your website. These inbound links are extremely important in your Internet marketing campaign. Why is this important? Many search engines include inbound links into their ranking algorithms which translates into higher search engines rankings. Additionally these incoming links can be used directly by website users to access your website. This consequently means more direct traffic directly from these links to your website.

The final step in a successful Internet marketing campaign is to implement an affiliate marketing campaign. Affiliates are essentially website owners who are willing to promote your business or product by placing advertising on their website to direct traffic to your website. Affiliate marketing can be extremely effective in addition to being cost effective since you only pay when the affiliates produce sales.

So these are the steps necessary, if you take them. Internet Marketing - Ye or Nay?


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Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

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Jeddah: City with a survival instinct - Arab <b>News</b>

At no time will Arab News attempt to alter the core meaning of a comment. 3. Reject the message, edit the message when the moderators judge it to be a personal attack, defamatory (or potentially defamatory), abusive, incite hatred or ...

Be A Part of the Oscars Movie <b>News</b> &amp; Movie Reviews | Geo Blog

Do you like reading movie news and movie reviews? All of us without exception love the movies. They allow us to escape into a fantasy world and get away from our everyday realities if only for a while. Sitting in front of the screen at ...

Mall Cop Hoax! ABC <b>News</b> Sends Actor Posing as Security Guard to <b>...</b>

Furthermore, in the wake of the hysterics from left-wing media watchdog groups over the ACORN and Planned Parenthood undercover stings, it's pretty incredible to see ABC News employ the same tactics without any criticism. ...

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Stock Making Money

"It was like avoiding an atom bomb, or in this case, a financial bomb," quipped one Morgan Stanley trader.

That was his reaction to Monday's surprisingly strong stock market performance following Friday's wicked 166-point decline in the Dow in the wake of the Egyptian riots.

The consensus of some market watchers over the weekend was that all hell might break loose on Monday, but it never happened. The market opened higher, never looked backed and wound up the day higher, with the Dow rising more than 68 points.

Even the Wall Street Journal guessed wrong, telling its readers over the weekend that U.S. stocks were likely to extend their Friday tumble when the market opened Monday. Actually, when you think about it, the Journal should have been right, given the obvious risks related to the riots, notably:

-- They might encourage terrorists to spread the riots to destabilize other Mideast regimes, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

-- Lead to a possible disruption in the transportation of 2 percent of the world's oil through the Egyptian-controlled Suez Canal, which would cause the price of crude to skyrocket.

-- More than likely heighten tensions between Israel and its neighbors should Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak (who announced he will not seek re-election) leave and radical elements take control of the country, the leading Arab peacemaker in the region.

Apparently, investors pooh-poohed the significance of these risks. Though investors escaped the ravages of the riots on Monday, the question is raised as to whether Wall Street is making a mistake by downplaying the crisis. Some market watchers suggest yes.

One is well-regarded Wall Street veteran, Fred Dickson, chief investment strategist of D.A. Davidson & Co. in Great Falls, Montana, who argues the worst may not be over yet as far as the Egyptian conflict goes. It will prey on investors' minds until stability is restored, he says. "It's like a flash fire; either it goes out right away or it smolders. This one will smolder."

Dickson figures the Egyptian situation will lead to above average market volatility for the next month or so. One obvious danger, he notes, is the possibility that extremist elements may gain control of the country. If that happens, he observes, "look for a nasty market decline."

In any event, Davidson sees stock prices vulnerable to a 3 percent to 5 percent pullback some time soon. "This market has come awfully far awfully fast and looks overextended," he says.

Another market watcher also questions the wisdom of downplaying the crisis. He's Costa Rican money manager Felix Heligmann, who manages about $93 million of family and friends' assets.

About a week ago with the Dow hovering around 12,000, up about 20 percent since late August, he told me "The U.S. market is acting so strong that you really have to be a player and I'm going to increase my position."

But that was a week ago. Now, in light of the riots in Egypt, he's had a change of heart. "I've changed my mind about doing more buying," Heligmann says. "The market is acting like the events in Egypt were a non-event. That's reckless, scary and it's also not right because too many things there could go wrong. Does anyone," he asks, "really think the U.S. haters in the Mideast are not plotting ways to worsen this crisis?"

Whether he's right or wrong is anybody's guess. But for sure, he's dead on about the market, which, based on its ongoing strength, looks like a combination of Samson, Hercules and Conan the Barbarian all wrapped up into one.

Citigroup views the political unrest in Egypt as little more than "a short-term challenge." In addition, a Rasmussen poll shows that 75 percent of the participants don't think the Egyptian problems will spread.

I only wish I could be so cocksure. Reminds me of this boat captain who assured an alarmed passenger: "Don't worry; the Titanic could never sink."

What do you think? E-mail me at CDandordan@aol.com.

Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we’ve embedded the release below).

As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts. Goldman Sachs participated in the first round (via an offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund), which totaled $1 billion. In December, DST and Goldman separately invested another $500 million into the social network. Both rounds gave Facebook a $50 billion valuation, says the company. This brings Facebook’s total funding to a staggering $2.336 billion.

It’s interesting to note that Facebook didn’t take the full $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs in the first part of the investment. As stated in the release:

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

One has to wonder if the fact that Goldman excluded U.S. investors from the round had to do with Facebook not raising the full $1.5 billion (which would push the total investment to a whopping $2 billion).

Another interesting tidbit from the release is this: Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

Clearly, it looks like Facebook plans to IPO no later than April 2012.

So what will Facebook do with this massive amount of cash? The company says it has no set plans but vaguely stated that it will be “investing to build and expand its operations.”

The Goldman investment was first reported by New York Times’ Dealbook.

So much for that slow Friday news day.

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion

Facebook Receives $1 Billion from Goldman Sachs Overseas Offering; Digital Sky Technologies and Goldman Sachs Also Recently Made $500 Million Direct Investment

Investment Values Facebook at $50 Billion

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook today announced it has raised U.S.$1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The transaction consisted of two parts. Today, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock. In December, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” said David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer. “With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead.”

The investment generated a significant number of questions from interested parties and Facebook has addressed the most common ones below.

Why did Facebook raise this money?

DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders.

Why did Facebook choose to raise $1 billion in the overseas offering?

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

What are Facebook’s plans for the proceeds of this transaction?

There are no immediate plans for these funds. Facebook will continue investing to build and expand its operations.

Does this investment mean that Facebook will have more than 500 shareholders?

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

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Bad <b>news</b>: Chuck Schumer snubbed by Snooki « Hot Air

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