The 50,000 million USD in which the social networking site, Facebook has been valuated after the entry of an investment vehicle from Goldman Sachs financial have returned some “internet bubble” déjà vu feelings to the market: Companies only measured on their number of users, their growth or their ability to serve as a gateway to the Internet and the irrational interest from investors to participate in their capital structure.
GlaxoSmithKline, The pharmaceutical giant, has decided to open to public the design of 13,500 chemical compounds that could inhibit malaria, In order to foster collaboration among scientists and researchers interested on developing a drug that can control this disease. The malaria is a condition caused by parasites which are transmitted to the human blood through a mosquito bite. It is one of the world’s biggest health problems with more than 210 million cases annually. Most of these cases affect poor countries where people live with less than 1USD per day.
Internet is evolving rapidly and in different directions. Anticipating what could happen in the web future is a constant effort for those who play a role in it.
As Marshall McLuhan famously said “We shape our tools. And then our tools shape us.”. Internet has changed many things: who we work, communicates, relate, learn, investigate, study, play, to entertain becoming an essential part of our everyday life for millions of people.
Like any technology, internet is evolving rapidly and every new step allows more people to access it, while users become are demanding more services that they would like to find on the net. Hence, companies that live in this network are always re-thinking their business and creating outstanding innovation to create more options and services.
Although the vast majority of Google is search engine market, the reality is that after 10 years the Mountain View giant has become the largest advertising agency in the world.
Over the past year, Google reported total gross revenues of $ 24 billion USD. If we discount the 6 billion paid to its partners (with whom they share the advertising revenue), net revenues are in the range of $ 18 billion.
The success of Facebook, Twitter and others big social networks is showing sign of fatigue as the fad dissipates and digital natives started moving away from these crowded communities to more niche based sites.
If we could turn back the time ten years and browse trough the World Wide Web, probably we would be shocked by the organizational chaos, primitive design and the lack of functionalities from most of the sites. Internet was not always an organized place, linked, personalized and rich in Multimedia content. We have traveled a winding road to be where we are today : The Web 2.0
Is clear that the decade 2000-2010 made profound changes in all levels of our lifes. From the way we communicate, interact, socialize, entertain to new paradigms settled in many industries, I think is a good time to stop and think about the biggest losers during the last ten years.
During 2009, Social media exponential growth generated high interest from brands and organizations. Many companies decided to launch social channels as part of their go-to-market strategy. Even do there are some superb examples about brands that innovated and increased customer engagement by integrating social media into their marketing strategy, many other failed miserably when they tried to use it.
During 2009, traditional media industry has been battling hard against P2P services. Legal woes against P2P services like Pirate Bay, Mininova and isohunt gave the impression to some analysts that P2P was more or less over. Besides, a massive communicational campaign to “educate” users about downloading legal content, the rise of streaming content as the main internet source of traffic and legal actions against individuals put a question mark about the sustainability of this technology in the future.
The consulting and Digital Marketing Company Multiplica just released a new study comparing source of revenues and business models from Top 100 web 2.0 sites today. Multiplica analyzed companies like Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, and Wikipedia Among others.
The study gives a pretty good picture about today’s web 2.0 business models and some ideas on way forward that I would like to share. continue reading »
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