» Internet Tools
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I Was on CNN (Here's a Video)
While this video is a few weeks old, It would be silly for me not to post this awesome video of me on CNN (via phone) on September 26th. The segment actually aired twice that day. I was up at 4:00 AM on a Saturday morning to do it with CNN’s Josh Levs.
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Is Scoble Right About a $5 Billion Twitter Valuation? I'd Bet Money on It
I can’t help myself. I need to say something about a post by well-known early adopter Robert Scoble on Twitter being worth $5 Billion.First, let me summarize Scoble’s post. Really simply, it boils down to this: businesses. Twitter has seduced thousands of businesses to use it as their promotional tool, even over Facebook, and Twitter isn’t losing those companies anytime soon. With thousands of potential paying businesses, Twitter could generate significant revenue to justify a $5 billion valuation.
No go pro argument comes without a con, though, and my favorite counter argument comes from my friend Alex Wilhelm on TechGeist:
I fully agree with Robert that Twitter will not have trouble monetizing. I also agree that Twitter is kicking Facebook’s ass in the business domain. To think otherwise is foolish. Twitter is getting bigger, and it is not going away. Robert is right, correct, and dead on until we reach his financial numbers.
Essentially Alex plays the P/E game, where he estimates the potential revenue of Twitter, assumes a very high P/E (Price/Earnings ratio) of 100, and concludes that “at $125 per business per month, you need 38,666 paying businesses” to justify $5 billion.
Usually I take a middle ground, but in this case, I’m going to side with Robert Scoble, with one exception, which I will address at the end. Scoble doesn’t give out any numbers for his $5 Billion valuation, while Alex does. However, Alex ignores all of Twitter’s other potential revenue sources. A few:
- Twitter.com Advertising
- Mobile Advertising
- Twitter Search Advertising
- A Twitter version of AdSense
- Media DealsIt’s late, so I’m clearly blanking out on a half dozen other business models. Twitter Search advertising and a Twitter version of AdSense interest me the most, and you’ll probably see Mashable articles on both subjects at some point.
On top of this, I think Alex ignores the potential of individuals purchasing premium accounts. What, you don’t think Robert Scoble or Ashton Kutcher wouldn’t pay for some detailed analytics? Dream on.
So one last time, let’s do the numbers. Let’s assume a P/E of 100, like Alex does. Let’s assume 10,000 businesses and 10,000 individuals pay for Twitter premium accounts, and that it averages out to $100 a month:
100 x $100 x (10,000 x 2 x 12) = $2.4 Billion
Advertising gets trickier, but if you get 4 million clicks on a Twitter ad network worth $0.50 each, you’d already make up most of the difference.
Let me be clear: Twitter is not worth $5 Billion yet. But Twitter could get to that valuation with an advertising/subscription account combination. At the very least, I’d roll the dice on it.
Oh, and if your curious about my one exception, it is this: Facebook can still win over businesses that have chosen Twitter as their promotional tool. More on that in the future.
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NEW: Ben Parr's Posterous Experiment
If you’ve been following my Twitter account, you might have noticed some new Post.ly links, pictures of cute animals, and even a photostream of the Congressional Roundtable I attended yesterday.
That’s because I have set up a new, complementary blog to BenParr.com, powered by Posterous, a YCombinator-funded company. The purpose of the Posterous blog is primarily to share photos and the little gems that I find on the web.
It’s a more lighthearted blog – thus why I am going to consistently post pictures of cute animals to lighten your day. But when I am on the go, I will use it over TwitPic or YFrog to share what I am doing or who I am meeting with. I hope it better organizes what I’m doing and gives me a new avenue to share the best things I find on the web.
BenParr.com will still be my primary blog. I will continue to post my insights, my interviews, and my projects on this blog. I will post commentary that I don’t place on Mashable here. In fact, you will soon see an increase in blog posts on BenParr.com due to a new project/experiment I’m hoping to announce this week.
If you’re interested in keeping up my Posterous posts/photos, you can subscribe here. I also suggest subscribing to BenParr.com because there’s a lot of new and useful content coming soon.
- Ben
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Internet Entrepreneurship in 2009: Where's the Opportunity? [Presentation]
Back in February 2008 (Feb 3rd and Feb 12th), I have two talks at Northwestern University entitled “Internet Entrepreneurship in 2009: Where’s the Opportunity?”. One was at the Kellogg School of Business (I even wrote a blog post on making engaging slides based off the Kellogg slides).
The other, the one you see in the video above, was for Northwestern’s Business Institutions Program (BIP), which is actually my minor. I discuss a brief history of web innovation, the effects of the market crash on web entrepreneurship, and most of all, the upcoming trends in web business and how you can capitalize on them.
While the speech was back in February, the points in it are still relevant. Bootstrapping is still a pragmatic way to get a business off the ground. Mobile is still a hot platform. And most of all, you still can’t run a business by ignoring
. I’m sorry it took this long to get the presentation up, but I hope you thoroughly enjoy it. I’ve also embedded the slideset from this presentation below (it’s actually the Kellogg slideset, but they’re essentially the same).
P.S. – This is my style of presentation. No notes, minimalist slides, lots of interactivity. Oh, and I love presenting. So if you like it, and you think I should come speak your event or conference, you should definitely email me (ben [at] benparr [dot] com).
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Discussing Google Chrome OS and Microsoft Bing on CNN Live
I was on CNN Live once again last week (it was a huge bonus to be on with the talented and insanely engergetic Chris Pirillo. Seriously, I thought I was off-the-wall!). The topic of discussion: Google vs. Microsoft, specifically the announcement of Google Chrome OS and the war brewing between Google and Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.
Also on with us: Nick Thompson of Wired. I shall let the video tell the rest:
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Iran Protests and the Media: My Appearance on CNN Live
On Tuesday, I was invited onto CNN Live to discuss how Iranians have been utilizing social media tools like Twitter and YouTube to communicate about the Iran election protests. I have been covering the subject extensively over at Mashable.
The below is the recorded video of my appearance. I was on the “Blogger Bunch” with Fausta Wertz (FaustasBlog.com) and Brad Friedman (BradBlog.com). Although I thought it would focus on social tools and Iran, I had to pull out a bit of my Poli Sci education and discuss Iran’s stability and the Grand Ayatollah.
I will once again appear on CNN Live Friday at 12:00 PM ET/9:00 AM PT, this time to discuss the iPhone 3G S and iPhone applications. Now, how did I do? Please let me know so I do better tomorrow!
Recommended Reading:
- HOW TO: Track Iran Election with Twitter and Social Media
- U.S. Government Asks Twitter to Stay Up for #IranElection Crisis
- Mindblowing #IranElection Stats: 221,744 Tweets Per Hour at Peak
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Stop Talking At Your Audience; Start Talking With Them
I’m currently working on a talk I’m giving at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business. The topic is Internet Entrepreurship in 2009: Where’s the Opportunity? And if you’re in Evanston on Tuesday, Feb 3rd at 12:15, Room 101, I’d love to see you there, at the talk or at some point that day.
I’m not going to give away what I will talk about. What I am going to talk about is one simple way to avoid one of my pet peeves: bad presentations
I talked about this in a previous (and popular) blog post, but the point of today’s article isn’t how to give a presentation, but rather this mindset:
Stop talking at your audience, and start talking with them.
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What Should You Put Online To Get a Job?
There were a few interesting conversations yesterday and today on the role of “Internet presence” in the job hunt. Will a blog help you get a job? What about an online resume? Should you beef up your LinkedIn account in case employers look at it?The omniscient blogger Robert Scoble started with a list of ways to socially network if you are laid off. Then he stated that “if you don’t have a blog, you don’t have a resume,” which led to this argument over his words.
Sorry I had to go through the history of a conversation, but I needed to frame the picture. A post on Mashable by Dan Schawbet discussing how to use social media to build an online resume also piqued my interest.
All of this conversation needs to be filtered. We need to ask the big question:
What should you put online to get a job?
To answer that question, I need to say this: what you put online isn’t going to get you a job. It’s what you have accomplished and what the interviewers believe you could accomplish that will get you the job. Having a blog on marketing isn’t going to get you a marketing position at Apple if your competition has successfully executed major marketing campaigns for Fortune 500 companies. What a blog will do is accentuate your experience, your strengths, and leave a lasting impression.
So what do I suggest? Be passionate and be professional. Employers will indeed Google search you, so make sure those inappropriate pictures never, ever get taken and put online. After that, just do what excites you. Creating a blog when you hate to write is a waste of your time and the time of a potential employer. It’s clear as day whether or not you put time into your website. Pointing out your accomplishments in a video or an about page can help, but it only helps if you’ve actually accomplished something.
So instead of worrying about what Scoble is saying about online presence, focus on making solid, meaningful accomplishments and conveying that experience when you finally sit down with that interviewer.
Image credit to stayrudee at Flickr
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Is There Any Value in Twitter-Based Applications?By every definition (except revenue), Twitter was a major success in 2008. It grew from under 500,000 unique visits to nearly 2.5 million in November. Despite major stability problems and the infamous fail whale, Twitter has prospered and spurred its own mini-economy: Twitter applications.
Twitter applications are the websites and programs that use the Twiter API to do anything from collect data to creating a desktop interface for tweeting. Most are small and simple applications, and nearly all of them are free to use. Now there are literally thousands of applications for Twitter, and if you’re a frequent twitter user, you’re probably using at least several.
But what’s the value of these apps to their creators? Users have gained from being able to share twipics or making venn diagrams, but are Twitter applications a reasonable way to achieve a financial payday?
To answer that question isn’t sufficient. In order to get the full picture, we need to answer three related questions:
- 1) Can you make money off of Twitter applications?
- 2) Do you have a reasonable chance of making a payday off of Twitter applications?
- 3) Can Twitter applications be built into successful business models with a positive cashflow?
Q: Can you actually make money off of Twitter applications?
Answer: Absolutely.Summize (now Twitter Search) has been the largest success story of the twitter applications – its simple and effective Twitter search (and its very capable leader Jack Dorsey) made it a prime target for acquisition by Twitter itself. Silicon Alley Insider reported that Twitter paid $15 million to acquire summize. Not bad a for a small team and less than a year’s worth of work, no?
But beyond Summize and Twhirl being acquired, there have not been many major paydays for Twitter apps. The bad economy only restricts cash that could be used to acquire these apps as well.
But yes, there is the possibility of making money developing an application for Twitter.
Q: Does a developer(s) have a reasonable chance of making money off of Twitter applications?Answer: No, not currently.
Here’s how I start: Do you have a reasonable chance of making moeny off of a Facebook application? The answer is murky, even despite for Facebook’s 120+ million users. The heyday of Facebook applications has passed, and users have adopted application-blind behaviors that hurts the Facebook platform as a financial landing pad. Free apps generally make money through advertising, which had abysmal CPM rates (I know; I made Facebook apps for a short time). Paid apps simply don’t exist on Facebook – there is no micropayment platform and most people on Facebook don’t have the mindset or habit of paying for applications.
Now to Twitter. Twitter has 2.5 million users. That’s 50 times smaller than Facebook’s reach and userbase. Advertising is just not going to generate the money you need to sustain an application and pay for development (I doubt SMS advertising could even bridge the gap, and nobody will use an app that requires SMS ads).
As for acquisition? As I stated before, acquisitions are hard to find in this market, and even when the market was good, the highest acquisition was for $15 million, and was done by Twitter itself. Simply put, your odds aren’t good. When you compare it to the revenue you could generate with an iPhone app, you’re wasting your time. Unless you’re developing Twitter apps for fun of course, but I’m not concerned with that.
Q: Can Twitter applications be built into successful business models with a positive cashflow?
Answer: Eventually, but no guarantees.Twitter has a growth model, but no revenue. They’re still trying to build their business model. Twitter has vowed to build a sustainable business model this year. But there are no guarantees.
Let me be clear: I do not doubt that Twitter can find a business model. It will. But Twitter’s difficulty with business model reflects on the challenge facing smaller apps. Advertising could be an answer, but you need a lot of eyeballs and an innovative advertising strategy to succeed. And paid applications? Someone needs to prove that people will pay for a Twitter app first.
So is there any real value in Twitter-based applications? The current verdict is: only personally, not financially. You are simply going to make more money writing an application for the iPhone than for Twitter. But if you incorporate a Twitter app as part of your overall strategy, then you’re getting smart. Standalone companies building Twitter apps will probably need Twitter to grow more before they can be self-sustaining. But Twitter’s API is a fun and relatively simple thing to build upon, and because of that, personal projects are always easy to do. They can help build attention for you, or you can test out new development or marketing theories. And that’s a large part of their value. -
When You Need a Break, Always Turn to Shiba Inu Puppies.
Every once in a while, you need to pause from work, pick up a good book, and lay down on your couch. I know a lot of us have the impulse to work all the time, through weekends and through our lives, but even if work is the most enjoyable thing around, you need to take a break from it. Take a vacation, take up a new hobby, play with the kids (if you have them), learn a new language or skill (I try to always do this), or sleep some more.
And when you get really overworked, don’t forget to watch the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam. They won’t be on much longer, but damn they are so cute.
My last note: Organize your life better so you use less of your time on rote tasks and more of it on what really matters. Hire an intern or a virtual assistant if you have to. You’ll be surprised how much it pays off.
- Ben
I am a tech entrepreneur, Co-Editor of Mashable, sci-fi author, and aspiring world changer. I'm quirky and love building things. These are the things I'm passionate about. Plus puppies.
