zkinion

I kind of regret even going to college though. I learned much more in the real world and having a business, for sure.

Is Randy still alive? I hope he's doing well.

People who go all in are not always just confident, and bold, but also might know what they're doing as well.

http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/google-bigtable...

http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=US&ts_mode=cou...

As you can see, Windows Live is number 6 on there. It is terrible compared to google, but that is still alot of traffic they get from synergy between their companies. Would Microsoft make more money if they instead sold their search traffic/IE users to google? Not at all.

The ironic thing is he speaks a lot about reflexivity, where market's participants views on an outcome actually end up affecting that outcome itself.

This isn't about spotting temporary market inefficiencies, its about spotting long term ones that lurk beneath the surface.

However, I'm trying to make this "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" argument. But, with Berkshire, almost all of its investments thrive well on their own. Buffett invests in each and every one because of fundamental reasons within each individual company.

My argument is that some companies are making a lot more money off of each traffic batch than the traffic batch is actually worth. By figuring out such companies, the value of the traffic to facebook would then be higher. Would this work with every company that advertises on FB? No. Could it might possibly maybe work with at least one or two companies? Yes.

Saying any company with a non-functioning business model should just do something else is really stretching it. I believe FB does have a functioning business model that could use a great deal of improvement. This, to me, could be such an improvement. What other alternatives are there? You have already said yourself that things like "social graphs" are just BS meant to inflate valuations to $15 billion.

It doesn't always work that way in the real world. Some random company buying the ads at 10 cents CPM is not always getting traffic that is worth that much 100% of the time. By actually getting the entire revenue stream, the "child" company, and thus its parent would capture the true value of the traffic over a long period of time.

The site is indeed relatively worthless, and I doubt anybody at all is paying them a high cpm in anything. Thats the whole point, to turn low cpm into somewhat higher cpm, in the long term by capturing more of the revenue stream.

Is it fool proof? No way. Facebook or whatever, could risk losing their investment in whatever company they bring up, and also lose the opportunity cost on whatever ads they could be selling instead of sending to their own child company instead... But does it stand a better chance at making more money in the long run compared to magical BS like social graphs and social ads? Yes, I definately think so.

-That return on investment would be higher, in the long run. Yes, thats an if, but its a much better if than "social graphs completely turning around CPM for something like FB".

Those are also, by their opposite, reasons why companies consolidate and acquire...

I should have made more clear that this is a longer term strategy, and yes, indeed more expertise is needed in these industries. However, what these industries do is not rocket science, and can be reproduced over time.

My point is that SN sites could eventually do the conversion of that sort of traffic themselves, and gain higher CPM In the Long Run. This process would take years, but is rewarding in the end.

I don't think social graphs or other "hocus pocus" BS will get them much more CPM than they are currently getting. I believe the only solution is to take more of the revenue stream from advertising by starting some companies in fields where it is possible, and ones that already advertise on FB. This is the most direct approach, and takes the longest and most work, but the most rewarding in the long run due to many reasons.

Hint: don't approach a "huddle", or even wait for a "huddle" to form. Its a trap. Find other ways/times. Get there early. Go to other events and gatherings before/after startup school.

Look at myspace -> started as a full blown illegal spam operation. facebook -> supposedly started sending spam to get initial users and a stolen database. + privacy issues. slide -> "spammy as hell" apps, plus was recently caught posting fake reviews. youtube -> massive trademark infringement. microsoft -> don't even get me started.

The list goes on and on. I don't even consider posting up "baseball" games to be unethical at all. Look at Sean Parker. Would he of gotten in with the facebook crew early on if he had not founded Napster, which was just basically a user friendly warez app? He's doing quite well these days I'd imagine.

The majority of startups out there do some shifty stuff, especially in the early game, before new funding cycles, and end game. From purchasing Chinese traffic before a funding round to prop up growth, to spamming for initial users, to pirate content, there is a lot going on out there that you might not know about.

I'm not promoting unethical practices in anyway, just pointing out that pirated content is not especially gruesome as you make it out to be, and also point out how wide-spread such activities are.

About 99% of the people here would do the same thing in the same situation.

If they're close to getting acquired, this could be a very good strategy, and could even be a catalyst for an acquisition altogether. This is a VERY nice end game move.

Those "big" lawsuits don't happen till normally later in the game. Those "big" lawsuits also take a very long time, and in the mean time traffic would continue to skyrocket (it already has past ustream.tv by far). I think this is definately a winning strategy, and predict the lawsuit will either A) never happen, or B) will happen far too late to put them out of business.

If jtv had started pimping out pirate traffic a year ago when they first started, things would be different. They're going to make bank off of this. Just watch.

My company is still in Alpha and doesn't fully work yet, but oh wells, I don't care. Didn't PG say to release a bare working version asap and "starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly." I have a very early version of the app up on myspace.com/socialholdem -> check the app details for what I'm adding soon to make it competitive to the others. Right now its me and a friend is doing graphics. Or link to my blog if you want, because my app doesn't save the chips permanently to the database: outrunpoker.com/blog. Apps don't make crap for money, but its a way for me to get something going to be able to offer the service that I want, which is paid subscription based internet gambling, which is legal. From that approach, I can improve and grow from there. I know there is alot of room in the internet gambling field, especially with all the new changes in the web 2.0 world and cheaper bandwidth, etc. Someone can create a company that can compete with the big guys by changing the way it is advertised. Every new person I meet in the future, I will have a better story to tell than the one I am telling here. And so on...

Good luck to you.

Yes, asterisk is great. Its probably even better now than it was a few years ago. Their mailing lists were AWESOME, and just like Linux, if I was resourceful enough, I could figure out what I needed to and if I couldn't, help was just an email away. That doesn't mean that most businesses won't just call Avaya and pull out their check book. Enterprise level software has a way of being completely bogus. Go into any medium to large (and all too often, sadly, even small) companies, and look at the garbage they use, then look how much they pay for that garbage. Then look at how they actually believe in that garbage as being the right choice.

Asterisk could certainly improve its lot in the future by changing its ease of use, and making more of an effort at being in the distribution channel.