Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts

2017-08-19

Tech Review: Apple $AAPL Invests $1 Billion for Digital Video Content

Tech Review (TR 2017-08-19)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech news:
Features • 1) Apple $AAPL Invests $1 Billion for Digital Video Content, 2) Amazon Instant Pickup, 3) Apple iPhone, 4) Amazon UK Expands, 5) Google's Intolerance, 6) Free Speech & Internet Freedom, 7) ICYMI Tech News.

1) Apple $AAPL Invests $1 Billion for Original Digital Video Content 

Apple $AAPL will invest $1 billion for original digital video programming. How does the tech giant’s budget stack up to its competitors like Netflix $NFLX, HBO, Hulu, and Amazon $AMZN? Video above published Aug 16, 2017, by FoxBusiness.com.

Other Tech News:

2)  Amazon Instant Pickup (domain: amazon.com/InstantPickup)--"Amazon today introduced Instant Pickup, a free service offering Prime and Prime Student members a curated selection of daily essentials available for pickup in two minutes or less at five of Amazon’s fully staffed pickup locations in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Berkeley, Calif., Columbus, Ohio, and College Park, Md. Items available with Instant Pickup include snacks, drinks and electronics, as well as some of Amazon’s most popular devices."--Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) Press Release 15 Aug, 2017.

3)  Apple iPhone: Nobody wants to buy a $1,000 iPhone, Barclays says | cnbc.com: "Only 11 percent of Barclays survey respondents are interested in an iPhone that costs more than $1,000 ..."

4)  Amazon continues UK expansion with new distribution centre in Bristol | Reuters.com. Amazon's investments in the UK tripled last year to over 400 million pounds ($513.96 million). Amazon has said it intends to directly hire an additional 1,000 permanent workers at its new Bristol centre.

5) Google's Intolerance for Ideologically Non-conforming Free Speech: Comments on The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore | The Economist.com: Comment by u39b: ".... The intolerance motion does not feature anywhere in this Economist rebuttal. It is however confirmed by Google's action in immediately firing him." See also: Peaceful March on Google Postponed Due to Alt Left Terrorist Threat | marchongoogle.com.

 6) Free Speech & Internet Freedom: When internet intermediaries, e.g., GoDaddy, Google, and CloudFlare, bar neo-Nazis, dangerous precedent for silencing legitimate voices is set — Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression | Electronic Frontier Foundation | eff.org.

 7) ICYMI Tech News:

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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2016-08-30

China & Its Internet Are Different, Why U.S. Companies Can't Compete

How China Is Changing Your Internet | The New York Times:

The power of WeChat: China's "SuperApp" owned by China's largest tech company, Tencent, dominates the internet landscape in China. In China, a sheltered internet has given rise to this new breed of app, and American companies are taking notice. What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse at the future. Video above published August 9, 2016. Read the full story here (excerpt below)--Chinese tech firms forced to choose their market--China or the World:

"... not easy to tell Musical.ly is Chinese--and that’s deliberate. To find success in America, its parent company has ignored China, its home market and a country with 700 million internet users. The reason is simple, says Alex Zhu, co-founder of Shanghai-based Musical.ly: China’s internet is fundamentally different from the one used in much of the rest of the world. “It’s still very difficult to get into China,” said Mr. Zhu ...“It’s a closed environment, and you have to be quite different to compete in that market.” Two decades after Beijing began walling off its homegrown internet from the rest of the planet, the digital world has split between China and everybody else. That has prevented American technology companies like Facebook and Uber, which recently agreed to sell its China operations, from independently being able to tap the Chinese market. For China’s web companies, the divide may have even more significant implications ... Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent have grown to be some of the world’s largest internet companies, but they rely almost entirely on domestic businesses. Their ventures abroad have been mostly desultory, and prognostications that they will challenge American giants internationally have not materialized."--NYTimes.com.

Principal domains of companies noted:
  • Alibaba: alibaba.com; alibabagroup.com
  • Baidu: baidu.com
  • Tencent: tencent.com
  • WeChat: WeChat.com
Because social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are inaccessible in China, there exists a whole Chinese ecosystem of social networking and messaging platforms that are immensely popular there, but hardly known anywhere else in the world. Platforms such as QQ, WeChat and Qzone have hundreds of millions of users and, just like Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp, they’re all owned by the same company. Their parent company Tencent recently became China’s largest tech company, after surpassing its rival Alibaba in terms of market capitalization. The chart below compares Tencent and Facebook in terms of financial and operating metrics. From an investor's point of view, both companies have been doing great over the past 12 months: Tencent's stock price soared 45 percent since August 2015, Facebook's is up by 30 percent.

Infographic: How China's Biggest Tech Company Compares to Facebook | Statista
source: Statista

Uber Joins Other U.S. Firms Stymied by China:

Uber Technologies is the latest U.S. internet-based company to fail to achieve its ambition to dominate China, the world's largest ride-hailing market. Published by WSJ.com on August 2, 2016.

Here's Why American Tech Companies Keep Failing in China:

Uber found out what many other U.S. tech companies realized long ago: China is an alluring trap. Most American web companies including Google, Facebook and Amazon are either banned from China or have flopped there. And their odds of success are only getting slimmer. Bloomberg Gadfly's Shira Ovide explains why it might be time for U.S. web companies to permanently give up on China. Published by Bloomberg.com on August 10, 2016.

See also:
  • The Humbling of American Tech Giants in China | Bloomberg.com: "All the kowtowing and meeting the leadership maybe won’t matter so much if Facebook won’t agree to allow some level of censorship, or allow the Chinese government access to data on the site, in exchange for market access," Kapron said. LinkedIn Corp. operates in China, but only by agreeing to abide by content restrictions. "Otherwise, he’s just hitting his head against the wall."
  • China ‘whisperers’ who get the big deals done in Silicon Valley | WashingtonPost.com: "Negotiating a joint venture is one of trickiest aspects of working with Chinese investors. In the last three years, Chinese regulations and practices have made it more complicated for U.S. companies to do business there, Chang says. For that reason, startups usually enter the market in the form of a partnership. Today, these partnerships are often based in the Cayman Islands because China doesn’t allow foreign ownership of companies. In negotiations, for example, Chinese partners often insist that the data of Chinese citizens cannot be stored on U.S. servers and that legal disputes must be settled in Chinese or Hong Kong courts. Previously, arbitration in Santa Clara County was a sticking point for U.S. companies; now that battle has largely been lost, she says."
  • Xi’s China: Smothering dissent - FT.com

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2016-02-08

What Happened to LinkedIn? $LNKD Stock Down 58% Since Nov 10

LinkedIn 1-year stock chart (NYSE:LNKD) (source: google.com)
What happened to LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD)? The stock is now down 58% since Nov 10--the shares started tanking in after-hours trading last Thursday after reporting financial results which beat expectations for revenue and profit in the fourth quarter and showed solid growth, but the company's forecast for the current quarter and year disappointed investors--2016 first quarter earnings guidance of 55 cents per share (analysts' were expecting earnings of 74 cents per share), and LinkedIn forecast revenue of $820 million (analysts were projecting revenue of $866.86 million)--

"We will now end the call with our outlook for the first quarter and full year. For the first quarter, we expect: revenue of approximately $820 million, representing 29% percent growth. Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $190 million, a 23% margin. And Non-GAAP EPS of approximately $0.55 per share. For the full year, we expect: Revenue between $3.6 billion and $3.65 billion, a range of 20% to 22% year-over-year growth. This includes a 2% FX headwind. It also incorporates removing $50 million of potential Bizo revenue contribution in 2016. Adjusted EBITDA of between $950 million and $975 million, a 27% margin at the midpoint. And non-GAAP EPS of approximately $3.05 to $3.20 per share." --LinkedIn (LNKD) Jeffrey Weiner on Q4 2015 Results - Earnings Call Transcript | Seeking Alpha

So what's wrong? LinkedIn: Why So Surprised At The Drop? | Seeking Alpha: "... the investment community is starting to realize that the 30%+ growth rates are gone and that the lower growth does not support the current stock price. Hence the correction. LinkedIn is not Facebook (FB) ... Growth is slower and margins are lower."

 Stocks in the whole tech sector have seen losses this year, as investors continue to closely examine "Internet valuations." See: Tech-stock wreck destroys $529B this year and Bye-bye Internet bubble 2.0 (USA Today). There are, of course, other views of what happened to LinkedIn, one of which you can read here and here.

Domain: LinkedIn.com



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2015-12-01

Reid Hoffman on the Valuation of Snapchat (video)



Reid Hoffman on the value of Snapchat - Published on Nov 19, 2015: Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkedIn, discusses tech company valuations, social networks and his biggest investing concerns. He speaks exclusively to Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg West."

Snapchat principal domain name: snapchat.com





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2015-11-25

LinkedIn Co-Founder: Less Than Half of Unicorns Will Be Successful (video)



LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com) Co-Founder: Less Than Half of Unicorns Will Be Successful - LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman describes what he's calling a "quasi-bubble," as company valuations fluctuate between the private and public market. He speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang. (Source: Bloomberg) Published on Nov 18, 2015

Unicorn: a term in the venture capital industry to denote a start-up company with a valuation (based on fundraising rounds) of at least $1 billion dollars.

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