Silicon Alley Insider

Watch The Country Get Fired: Unemployment By County 2007-2009

Henry Blodget — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:48:00 -0500

An amazing time-lapse graphic by Latoya Egwuekwe showing the 2007-2009 plunge to 10% unemployment.

Nothing much happens in the early months. But then late 2008 comes around and everything really gets going...

Click through and press "play" >

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Exclusive: Zynga Says Offers Are Just 10% Of Revenues

Nicholas Carlson — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:41:00 -0500

In a new disclosure, Zynga tells us it now makes 90% of its revenues from gamers putting their own money into the system to buy virtual goods.

Zynga says 10% of its revenues come from "offers" marketing, where sponsors agree to buy virtual goods for gamers, so long as those gamers agree to try a product.

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Panicked Manhattan Parents Hiring Test-Prep Companies To Give Their 3-Year Olds An Edge

Henry Blodget — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:17:00 -0500

In NYC, there are way more 3 year olds than there are prestigious kindergarten slots, so parents are doing everything they can to give their toddlers an edge.

This now includes hiring test-prep companies and tutors to prepare kids for the dreaded ERB, OLSAT, and BRSA exams.

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Sulzberger And Murdoch Fighting To The Death For Local Readers

Henry Blodget — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:01:49 -0500

Who's going to bring you your local news? Rupert and/or Arthur:

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are pursuing readers from regional U.S. newspapers in their fight to survive the worst advertising declines in the industry’s history.

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How To Fake Your Way To Billions

Henry Blodget — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:25:00 -0500

Remember Danny Pang?

He was the head of a huge private-equity firm who hadn't done many of the things his bio said he had done, who had denied having his first wife shot to death in front of her son, who was indicted on fraud charges, and who was recently found dead.

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Bloomberg Seeks Agency For Global Branding

Nat Ives and Rupal Parekh — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0500

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As it gets ready to officially take ownership of BusinessWeek magazine, Bloomberg is looking for help with global branding and advertising across its portfolio of media properties.

In a request for information sent out to agencies, Bloomberg said it's looking to establish an agency-of-record agreement with either a single full-service shop or a group of specialty ones. The agency or agencies will be responsible for a range of marketing duties, including "corporate identity and design, advertising, media, digital, events and demand generation" across its various media properties.

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This Week's Most Popular Posts

Nicholas Carlson — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0500

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Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever. And Hasn’t Tried Google Wave.

TechCrunch — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:30:00 -0500

“Email is not going to disappear. Possibly ever. Until the robots kill us all.” – Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, co-founder of FriendFeed, currently doing vague infrastructure things at Facebook. Today, at our RealTime CrunchUp event in San Francisco, Buchheit and Threadsy foun...

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Glenn Beck To Unveil Mystery "Plan" Tomorrow

Erin Carlson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:14:55 -0500

Glenn Beck has a plan, and he's deadly serious about it.

The mega-popular Fox news host/evangelist will unveil an initiative called "The Plan" in Florida tomorrow while on tour to promote his book, "Arguing With Idiots."

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Droid Price Drops To $120

Alaska Miller — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:00:00 -0500

Verizon's iPhone-rival Motorola Droid has been out for only a few weeks and it's already seeing price cuts from some retailers.

Verizon is still selling the phone for $200, but Amazon.com has a new Droid with contract for $150. Dell is taking the aggressive stance and offering the Droid for $120.

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ESPN Suspends Superstar Writer Bill Simmons From Using Twitter*

Jay Yarow — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:55:00 -0500

UPDATE: This is the weakest suspension ever. He's still allowed to tweet promotions for his new book, but nothing else.

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CHART OF THE DAY: YouTube's Top Money Makers Are Record Labels

Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:34:00 -0500

Music videos from Sony and Universal on YouTube have more advertising sold against them than any other group, according to analysis from TubeMogul.

Below is an approximation of the daily share of YouTube's monetized views based on the number of videos that carry ads in YouTube's daily top 100 most-viewed.

This is why Sony, Universal, and YouTube are teaming up to launch Vevo, the big web music video site, December 8th. According to TubeMogul, 3.94% of YouTube's daily views come from the two labels.

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The Next Twitter: Pay Attention To Hot Potato, A New 'Real-Time' Startup

Dan Frommer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:20:00 -0500

The hot story in tech right now is "real-time," thanks to Twitter and Facebook, so you're going to hear a lot of noise over the next few years about "real-time" tech startups. Most of them will be useless and will flame out.

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Salesforce Shows Off Chatter: Twitter For Corporations

Alaska Miller — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:40:00 -0500

Salesforce is getting into the "real-time" niche, too.

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Low Level? Hah! Google's Ari Paparo Rules

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:38:00 -0500

Earlier this week, we wrote a post called "Who's Who in Google New York." It was a quick look at some of the top execs in the office, and what people are saying about them.

One of the powerful executives we mentioned is a rising star named Ari Paparo, who came to Google (GOOG) through its DoubleClick acquisition.

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Tesla Prepping Its IPO

Jay Yarow — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:20:00 -0500

Tesla is working on its IPO, says Reuters citing two sources. Those sources say we can expect a filing any day.

It should be interesting. It has one car, the $100,000+ Roadster. It's working on a more affordable sedan, but it is still years away. It also has a deal with Daimler for electric smart cars.

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Flickr Co-founder Resurrects Old Flickr Idea

Alaska Miller — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:02:00 -0500

Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield left Yahoo disillusioned and disgruntled. Now based in Vancouver, Canada, Stewart started Tiny Speck, Inc., to try again at social gaming.

He's revisiting the old idea of a mobile, multiplayer role-playing game called Game Neverending.

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Why Yahoo Can't Let Search Share Keep Slipping

Jay Yarow — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:59:00 -0500

Yahoo must keep its share of search above 11% for the next three years, otherwise the Microsoft deal won't add additional profits, says Doug Anmuth of Barcalys.

His key points from the a report he released this week:

The Microsoft partnership would still generate incremental EBITDA for Yahoo! (vs. not having the deal) down to a market share of approximately 11% - 12% in 2012.
Every 100 bps of market share is equal to roughly $60 - $80 million of annual gross revenue and $35 - $50 million of annual EBITDA for Yahoo!.
Our Baseline scenario represents our current estimates and assumes share declines to 16.8% in 2012.
Our Moderate share loss scenario assumes share falls to 14% in 2012 resulting in revenue and EBITDA that is $77 million and $69 million lower than our current projections.
Our Accelerated loss—or worst case—scenario assumes Yahoo!’s share falls from ~18% today to 10% share in 2012, impacting Yahoo!’s total revenue by 6.5% ($427 million) and EBITDA by 13.8% ($317 million) relative to our current estimates, more than offsetting the benefits of the MSFT Partnership. [Which are ~$275 M]

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Jason Calacanis: "I Plan On Buying $250,000 Worth Of AOL Stock"

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:49:00 -0500

As the founder of Weblogs Inc., Jason Calacanis is, in many ways, the cofounder of the new AOL, which will be built around the company's network of 80 blogs and content sites.

So when we asked the Mahalo CEO for his take on AOL's future, we thought he'd toss a helpful quote our way. We got much more.

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Kindle Fantasies Are Running Wild -- But, For Now, Amazon Is Losing Its Shirt

Rory Maher, CFA and Henry Blodget — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:38:00 -0500

This is a report from our premium subscription research service The Internet Analyst. The Internet Analyst is currently in beta, with a formal launch coming towards the end of 2009. To sign up for a free beta trial, please submit your name and email address here.

Wall Street can't help itself.

With all the buzz around e-readers, analysts expect big numbers out of hardware sales and e-book consumption. While hardware sales may experience huge growth in the coming years, we believe many underestimate the losses companies like Amazon will need to weather before selling e-books becomes a meaningfully profitable business.

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