Can content owners be disruptive? Or is content only intended to be disrupted by technology? I know disruption and disruptive are buzz words we can do without, but you get the idea: is content doomed or does it have a future? I sometimes joke that I wish the Ash of 2011 could go back in time and sit down the Ash of 2006 and tell him: “sure, content is king, but no one wants to pay for it and fewer even will want to fund it”. That being said, I don’t think that you can paint everyone in the content business with the same brush. CT and I chat about this in segment 1, which is based on an article I wrote for TechCrunch last week. continue reading...
In this week’s show, we run down the list of candidates that I included in my last TechCrunch article on who the Next Talisman of Tech might be. continue reading...
With the AOL/TechCrunch soap opera finally coming to an end, we thought we would see the forest through the trees and focus on Mergers and Acquisitions, or M&A, in general. continue reading...
In segment 1, we shift our focus away from the debacle at AOL and look at Yahoo!’s own soap opera by expanding on a couple of articles I published on TechCrunch, namely why and how Yahoo! could make a run to Hulu and Yahoo!’s options. We cover a lot, and in there I go over a lot of numbers explaining the financial engineering, so I included the numbers below. Watch the video below (and scroll down to get the financial engineering math) continue reading...
Before venturing into the HipMojo show, I hesitated to do a weekly (or even daily) show because I still believe that pumping out articles (or nowadays, tweets) is much more logical for the breakneck, fast-paced world of news. But, a lot of people said “hey, you write all of these business articles and run a video site, why not do a weekly show on business?” continue reading...
According to Alan Patrick, co-founder of technology consultancy Broadsight, via PaidContent: continue reading...
Image Source: NMA News YouTube
Check out an animated version of the AOL-Huffington post acquisition as done by NMA News: continue reading...
The latest revenue and EBITDA multiples, according to Peachtree Media Advisors:
Revenue valuations for Consumer, Advertising and Search companies fell from 3.2x to 2.9x. E-commerce companies saw some of the biggest drops, with revenue multiples falling from 3.5x to 2.0x and EBITDA multiples down 36 percent from 29.9x to 19.1x. continue reading...
Demand Media has filed for its big IPO.
The company - founded by former MySpace CEO Richard Rosenblatt and private equity banker Shawn Colo - has raised a whopping $355M and, while it continues to lose money, is on pace to clock a massive $200M in annual revenues for 2010. At those levels sooner or later it shall eke a profit. Romenesko quotes a $1B raise target - that seems massive, and implies a long list of acquisition targets, which is possible given the company’s over-reliance on search traffic today. continue reading...
After raising $50M on a $500M valuation, Slide “cashes in” at $182M. Google is the greater fool, I presume. I haven’t been too kind to Slide back in the day. See some of the posts here.
Also, after shelling out $102M for XFire, Viacom unloads it, for far less. continue reading...
