The Facebook Decade
Facebook was the top-visited site in 2010; http://eicker.at/1y Goldman invests $500M, values them at $50B; http://eicker.at/1z
Microsoft: We are the leading OS, cloud, webmail, office, server, CRM supplier, making most money; http://j.mp/9PtWLh
Yahoo eMail accounts of rights activists, academics, journalists who cover China hacked; http://j.mp/bQ0MKF
400M Facebookers might soon change eMail: Facebook Mail follows MySpace Mail and challenges Gmail; http://j.mp/bl9Y2k
TC: “Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Internally it’s known as Project Titan. Or, unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.”
Neowin: “Project Titan, while being a webmail service featured on Facebook, will have a few additions to make it much more accessible to those who use messaging regularly. First of all, you’ll get your own email address; it’ll be your vanity name (the one you chose for your Facebook.com/username address) at Facebook.com. Project Titan will also provide POP and IMAP support for the addresses, meaning that you’ll be able to add the account to various third party services, and even mobile devices, should you desire to. In short, it’ll be exactly like a regular email address, except it’ll go through Facebook.”
Pocket-lint: “This could be one of the ‘cool’ things that Zuckerberg has promised to deliver monthly over the near future. It could also elevate the social network even further above its competitors and provide an alternative for those who’ve been stung by the latest Hotmail hacks.”
Yahoo is finally adding basic status updates to Yahoo Mail and Messenger called Status-casting; http://bit.ly/Wb4Ie
comScore: Gmail is now the third largest Web mail service in the U.S., outnumbering AOL; http://bit.ly/16wQu0
Gmail is small compared to Hotmail or Yahoo Mail: the new importer (TrueSwitch) might change this; http://bit.ly/mLBrd
Google: “This new feature is available in all newly-created Gmail accounts, and it is slowly being rolled out to all existing accounts. It’ll take longer than the few hours or days that most Gmail features take to get out to everyone. You’ll know it’s on for your account when you see the Accounts and Import tab (formerly just called Accounts) under Settings.”
TC: “Now, there have been ways to import your mail archive into Gmail through other routes, but for the average computer user these were both too confusing and time consuming to be considered viable options. Now things are as easy as entering your other mail service’s password and letting Gmail go to work over the next 24-48 hours, importing all of your Email and contacts. It’s making a once frustrating process nearly painless, and it’s going to attract new users in droves.”
Mashable: “The only downside to today’s news is that Google Apps users – businesses and educational institutions – won’t get the new import options. Still, this is a welcome addition to the Gmail service that we know many of you have been wanting for years.”
Gmail growth strongly, but Yahoo Mail still outpaces it totally: in absolute numbers and growth; http://cli.gs/5abG97
Gerrit Eicker 17:26 on 4. January 2011 Permalink |
Hitwise: “Facebook was the top-visited Website for the first time and accounted for 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010. Google.com ranked second with 7.19 percent of visits, followed by Yahoo! Mail (3.52 percent), Yahoo! (3.30 percent) and YouTube (2.65 percent). … The combination of Google properties accounted for 9.85 percent of all U.S. visits. Facebook properties accounted for 8.93 percent, and Yahoo! properties accounted for 8.12 percent. The top 10 Websites accounted for 33 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, an increase of 12 percent versus 2009.”
TC: “Comscore also shows Facebook.com passing Google.com in visits in November but all Google sites as still having more.”
VB: “Beyond being good news from Facebook, the data seems like another sign that people are using search as their default way to navigate the Web, even when it might seem easier to just type in a URL. I would imagine that many of the people who do a search for ‘facebook.com’ probably know what Facebook’s URL is, but they typed it into a search engine (or into the search box at the top of their browser) instead.”
NYT: “Facebook, the popular social networking site, has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in a deal that values the company at $50 billion, according to people involved in the transaction. … Goldman Sachs has reached out to its wealthy private clients, offering them a chance to invest in Facebook, the hot social networking giant that is considering a possible public offering in 2012, according to people familiar with the matter.”
RWW: “What’s most important isn’t the amount of literal control over the company that the banks bought, rather it’s the valuation this gives the company and the relationship the investment fosters between Goldman and Facebook. … Goldman’s investment in Facebook is going to be great for all the industries the company’s young leaders are likely to spend their money in, including tech startups. … Thank goodness for Google and Twitter. Without them, Facebook’s control over peoples’ identities online would be virtually unchallenged. The challenge those two companies pose isn’t very strong, either. Facebook is pushing fast to make itself the default login and identity system on sites all around the web. … More Facebook may mean better feature development for users in the short term, and it may mean more ubiquity for Facebook in the medium term, but in the long term it could mean trouble for the web in general.”
GigaOM: “It’s been over a decade since Time Warner and America Online merged in a $180-billion deal, marking the peak of the Internet bubble and the beginning of a long drought for technology stocks – a drought that has arguably been broken only by Apple and Google. Now Facebook seems to be taking the lead in the next wave of tech-stock enthusiasm… While the action for Facebook and others is focused in private and secondary markets right now, however, Goldman’s involvement virtually guarantees that this will soon spill out into the public markets – if not this year, then in 2012, when Facebook is expected to do an IPO.“