Ivan Multescu

These are 2 new ideas in search engine market. Rollyo lets you create customized personal search engines. They’re using the Yahoo Search technology. So I think it works like del.icio.us; you select your favourite web sites for a topic. Then you can make inside them using the Yahoo’s power via Rollyo.. Is it a good idea? Well not exactly.. Because it’s basically no different than del.icio.us; you could do the same with an advanced search functionality in del.icio.us (you would specify keywords to search in pages with specific tags…..) However I still see a chance of being widely adopted and even being acquired in Rollyo.

Snap.. just a marketing wonder.. Nothing new.. They just put screenshots.. the other features do already exist in major search engines under beta/alpha programs.. And seems like there’s too much money in it.. I don’t think they can survive for long.

What’s the definition of startups? I’d define it like “a (generally high-tech) company founded by 1-3 talented people with scarce resources but high motivation of work and creativity”. However the companies I mentioned earlier and all the so-called startups do no more fit into this definition. They immediately get large fundings and they become no different than a division of existing large companies. Examples are Technorati, Snap, Riya and YouTube.. They don’t exist alone, the founders do 1% of the total product but the investors do 99%.. Then the founders become the public face of the company. As a result their shares in the company remain very low in the company but they still make quite good wealth and reputation.

LinkedIn, just like eBay, and unlike Friendster, Myspace, is dedicated to bring a group of selected, real, trusted people. And the good thing is that they succeed in this. That’s why I think LinkedIn should already be highly valuated; maybe even more than Facebook. And this similarity can make it the target of eBay for a quite high price.

In your comments, some of you asked me why I’m trying to sell all these companies. I’m not trying to sell something, and I don’t say acquisitions are the best way to go. But acquisitions are really very important facts that should be deeply analyzed. What I do here is just making some predictions about the future of Silicon Valley. And I think that acquisitions are really the funniest part of Silicon Valley; they ensure the continuity of innovations.. That’s why I think acquisitions are a social responsibility of big companies as well.

Here’s a quick update for the sites I forgot to mention:

SimplyHired & Indeed

Very good idea.. These are both job listing mashups; and they are far more efficient than conventional ones. They may end up by being bought by established giants in this industry (like monster.com).. Google’s preference may be Indeed; because Indeed has a cleaner and more Google-stylish user interface. And I think Google should really enter this domain. However, I can’t compare their technologies because I couldn’t examine in great detail their core technologies. I know that Indeed is backed by del.icio.us investors, Union Square Ventures

EdgeIO

Similarly to above mashups, EdgeIO aggregates listings in one place in a web 2.0ish style. This is a Michael Arrington (of Techcrunch) venture; so it had very good marketing.. I believe eBay may want to buy this innovation for a low price.. (mashups can never go for high prices i think; the same was valid for indeed, simplyhired and groups; the reason is that you’re not independent (i mentioned it somewhere in this blog))

Zopa

Again a very clever and money involved. Thus it may be the target of eBay… But this depends on people’s behaviors.. This is still a very early, untested idea.. We’ll see; but I believe people will use it and get used to it; as they did for Paypal in the past. However they are not alone in this race. There were similar sites also; I just forgot their name.

Yub

Social shopping.. Yahoo, eBay or Amazon..

Here is another long in-depth article by me. I jumped in the web 2.0 bandwagon not very long ago. But I think I learned quite a lot of things.. I should thank Om Malik (GigaOM), Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) and Digg for this. Here are my findings; the winners and losers of web 2.0..

But before starting let me state the acquisition behaviors of big fish:

Google and Yahoo buy small, innovative startups. In some sense, they reward the creativity. The acquisitions are generally low priced.
MSN acquires small search startups; the prices vary
eBay makes big and very profitable (IMHO) acquisitions; examples are Paypal and Skype.
AOL is very hungry for social web applications.
I’d like to see Amazon and Apple also in this list, but I didn’t hear anything about their acquisitions.

YouTube

Great idea and great implementation; already had a very large user base. This is mostly thanks to Sequoia Capital support and all the marketing activities they did. But there is so much VC money in that it is nearly impossible for an acquisition, I believe. They don’t seem to have a good business model for now, but I’m sure they’ll have in time. They’re racing in a very competitive market; there’s no significant added values but the market will clearly replace the conventional TV attitudes and bring a lot of money. They should add online movie editing features as soon as possible; because their competitors started to do. Or they’d better buy a startup quickly for this (MotionBox, Click.tv, JumpCut). They should end up by going public.

Sphere – Technorati

Blog Search is quickly becoming one of the “next big things” in the internet industry. Technorati was absolutely my favourite in this domain. But I don’t why.. I can see nothing special in their technology; and their interface is too cluttered. It should have been much more cleaner; because a you don’t search web pages here, you search blog entries; and people enter thousands of blog entries in a second (for now…) So you have to show as much as possible in one single page. But contrarily, Technorati shows just a few of them in a very small space.
Sphere, on the other hand, is much more clean. Plus, it just started to cooperate with Times. That’s a big plus. Google and Yahoo may trust in their core technology but I think they won’t be able to stop startup innovations; and their blog search technologies can never be as acceptable as these ones. However Yahoo’s way of using blog search inside news pages is very clever.
Another point is that Technorati looks like it’s so big, so VC money involved that it can’t be subject to an acquisition..

Riya

Very good idea but their operation costs are too high. I don’t see anything different in their OFR, OCR algorithms. Just like an online version of conventional OFR, OCR softwares already available. Again there’s too much VC money in it. Google is one of the investors as far as I know. So I don’t think they’ll approach to buy them. Yahoo may buy and use them in parallel with Flickr. Or they may end up by going public. But both Riya and YouTube should be careful about their operating costs.

TagWorld

Do any of you wants to see a new social networking web site again?? Personally I don’t but TagWorld goes well and may become subject to an acquisition by big TV companies. Because TV companies are hunting social apps these days for the next generation TV.

Digg

Very good service. I’m a big fan of it. Shows the power of masses. Beaten Slashdot. Should be bought by Yahoo, can be a very good service along with the new Yahoo Tech. Their innovation really deserves a big reward. I think, their blueprints like Wikio and Newsvine will lose, but Digg won’t.

Opera

Yes we heard many rumors about this acquisitions but it was always nothing more than being a rumor. But now I believe this can really happen. I know that Opera may be too expensive for Google (when compared to their previous acquisitions I mean); but the inevitable expansion of IE7 may push Google to do this. They may buy Opera to fully control them, then release a free, thin, live Linux distro with Opera preinstalled. I also support Google’s Writely acquisition and believe that they should continue with the web-office project (as opposed to what Schmidt said) in parallel with such a mini operating system.

Facebook

Facebook was the biggest surprise of this year. Their rejection of $600M shocked many but I believe if they really have so much users, if they really control the college market, they were right to ask for more money. Facebook can become the next big thing. I don’t think anybody will afford to buy them, but they may make a lot of money by going public.

Meebo

It’s already a big success. They dominated the IM market; and the word is being spread out so quickly! They are backed by Sequoia. They control a critical market; all our communications is in their hands! Some people argue that they will end up in eBay’s hands. But I don’t think so; because eBay doesn’t need meebo’s userbase; so it would be a too expensive buyout for technology only.. For technology, they can buy meebo’s weaker alternatives. meebo can end up with a MySpace like acquisition or going public. They can use the empty space on their screen for advertising.

Federated Media

Google may buy them. Because Google always buys profitable web advertising startups. So, as FM is very succesful, they can buy them too. However FM doesn’t have any powerful algorithm or sth; so I’m doubtful..

Pandora

I got addict to it. This is a high quality radio service. They learn from our listening experiences. Yahoo may buy them. However Apple could fit more to such an acquisition. Their algorithms do really work and I like them. Their technology and user base are their largest assets.

StumbleUpon

They hit 850.000 users and they’re going towards 1M. They may end up with a del.icio.us style acquisition. They seem like a very bright acquisition target. Fits to Yahoo. It may be yet another social boomarking fork but it is really different and deserves to be bought. Bookmarking sites allow search engine providers to empower their search algorithms too..

PageFlakes

This market is clearly too overcrowded again. Netvibes may seem like the most succesful one. However this Paris based company is not as innovative as German PageFlakes. PageFlakes was the first to start tabs and mass editing r/w features. However NetVibes currently has more visitors and is backed by Pierre Chappaz.

LinkedIn

A useful application of social networking. Going very successful. I don’t know how they will end up, but they’re very succesful!

Zoho

As I said, web office can really be a profitable market. Google stepped in with Writely but they deny it. Maybe they don’t want to seem too distracted to their investors. Yahoo should also do it; and if they’d do it, Zoho can be a very good buyout for them. It is a very good office suite for now. Not as good as Writely, because they’re not that focused but the team shows that they have the potential. So Zoho can be bought by Yahoo in the near future I think.

Grou.ps

May help Google to steal userbase from Yahoo Groups. They may be the target of Google to empower Google’s weak chain, Google Groups. Can be used for data mining purposes also

Fundable

No need to talk.. Very good idea and it works! And this is a highly money involved idea. Can be a subject to small acquisition by eBay.

30Boxes

Calendar market was hot, but with Google Calendar it lost its popularity. 30Boxes was the clear winner and still is. But I don’t think they can survive against Google. They may be the target of Yahoo for an Oddpost like acquisition. But Yahoo already got the talented OddPost team and may expect them to construct new Yahoo Calendar; so in this case they won’t need 30Boxes.
Kiko, with its MySpace move tries to be the target of AOL… This is quite possible I think.
Another racer, SpongeCell has a good idea: “natural language recognition” for SMS’ing calendar entries. But I don’t think their technology fully works for now. Otherwise they could be subject to a small acquisition by calendar giants like Yahoo and Google.

Flagr

Good idea, could be used by giants for data mining purposes. But they may not have any chance as long as their data is untrustable (you enter your address by hand, not automatically)

Spotback

This is a similar to approach Digg. Instead of trusting power of masses, they trust in personalized content. Their interface is clean. If their technology can really do it, they’ll win and be subject to an acquisition. Otherwise, they may end up with the original owner of this idea, reddit. Reddit’s idea was good, but I couldn’t see anything special in their technology. And reddit’s interface does really suck!

ether

Responds to sth we always felt the need but never thought it can be realized. I think this is a very very succesful idea; but can’t see any potential acquisition scenario for now.

Amiglia

Social networking for families.. Very good implementation. May feed AOL’s hunger for social applications.

MusicHawk

The best music discovery I’ve found so far. May be subject to an acquisition by Yahoo (for Yahoo Music) but this seems like a highly crowded market; so they (or any other) should differentiate itself very well.

WordPress

Blogging is a very precius arena. WordPress is obviously a leading player in this arena just after Blogger and Typepad. I believe it will be bought by a giant in the near future. Open source friends will love the company that willl buy WordPress. Plus, WordPress has a business plan in its open source offerring too.. If you use WordPress (even if it is self-hosted) you should use Kismet which still requires a WordPress account! This makes it even more valuable.

This list may be way too limited. These are the ones I took down in the recent months but there are more of them. And I may write about them in the following days.

UPDATE.. READ ON http://multescu.wordpress.com/2006/05/24/google-yahoo-ebay-next-acquisitions-2/