Time Warner Inc.

Yesterday, I an­a­lyzed the Massachusetts IPO ecosys­tem.  To­day, I look at NY.  Unlike MA’s ro­bust pub­lic com­pa­ny ecosys­tem, where I count­ed 33 com­pa­nies with greater than $1 bil­lion in mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion, I was shocked to dis­cov­er how very few pub­lic com­pa­nies in the Innovation Economy that ex­ist in the Big Apple.  If you re­strict the geog­ra­phy to 30-45 min­utes driv­ing dis­tance and part of the “scene” (which en­cour­ages min­gling and pro­duc­tive tal­ent and idea shar­ing), you have to elim­i­nate CA, (...)

Years ago, be­fore Facebook, be­fore the term so­cial me­dia….if you were on­line, you were prob­a­bly us­ing AOL’s Instant Messenger ser­vice, AIM. AIM was the start­ing point for chat for many peo­ple, and we have seen in­stant mes­sag­ing grow in re­cent years to in­clude so­cial IMs on Facebook, Gtalk in Google’s Gmail, video chat on Skype, even to sites like Chat Roulette. In ad­di­tion to our so­cial me­dia ac­counts, many peo­ple have mul­ti­ple in­stant mes­sag­ing ac­counts as well. The three big web­mail (...)

Google this week un­veiled its Chrome Web Store, which does for the web what Apple’s App Store did for mo­bile de­vices: It pro­vides a place to ex­plore and “in­stall” web-based ap­pli­ca­tions. The launch was an­nounced alongside a new net­book run­ning Chrome OS, Google’s browser-cen­tric op­er­at­ing sys­tem. And the Web Store is part of Chrome, Google’s su­per-fast web browser. Except that many Chrome apps can run in other browsers, since they’re ac­tu­al­ly just web­sites. Oh, and don’t mis­take apps for (...)

AOL (NYSE: AOL) launched its 500th Patch site this week and says it has “ex­ceed­ed ev­ery sales goal we’ve set for our­selves.” But the com­pa­ny still won’t say whether any of the sites in its net­work are prof­itable. So we de­cid­ed to try to an­swer the ques­tion our­selves by ball-park­ing the fi­nances of one of Patch’s most suc­cess­ful sites, the Patch in New Canaan, Connecticut. It gets about 8,000 unique vis­i­tors a mon­th, ac­cord­ing to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Ad Planner. Not bad con­sid­er­ing the site cov­ers (...)

AOL (NYSE: AOL) has let go three staffers from its AIM team, as the com­pa­ny works to in­te­grate Thing Labs and its Brizzly so­cial me­dia read­er, Business Insider re­ports. As we re­port­ed when AOL ac­quired Thing Labs in September, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Blogger vet Jason Shellen, will run AIM, AOL Lifestream and Brizzly. Shellen is joined at the head of the de­vel­op­ment team with Thing Labs’ co-founder Chris Wetherell. AOL reps were not avail­able for com­ment, but we will up­date when we hear (...)

Groupon's ball­sy de­ci­sion to tell Google to keep its $6 bil­lion is great for all of us. Here's why: 1) It's clear that Internet IPOs 2.0 is go­ing to be upon us. The last big wave (not count­ing one-off suc­cess­es like Google (GOOG) and OpenTable (OPEN)) was a decade ago. Now we have Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Groupon, and count­less others that will hit the mar­kets. This will bring the Internet stock sec­tor back to life in a way that we haven't seen since the 90s and money will flood in­to (...)

AOL re-or­ga­nized its AIM team this morn­ing, fir­ing at least three, sources close to the com­pa­ny tell us. Says one source, "Change is hard but AIM has been los­ing and need­ed [it]." AIM's new de­vel­op­ment lead­ers will be Chris Wetherell and Jason Shellen, who joined AOL when it ac­quired their star­tup Thing Labs in September. At our Ignition con­fer­ence last week, AOL icon Steve Case says AIM should have be­come Skype. Wetherell and Shellen were last in the news for mak­ing our Silicon Valley (...)

You can de­bate whether we’re in a “bub­ble” or sim­ply see­ing “s­torm clouds.” Or per­haps we’re just in the mid­st of some harm­less ex­u­ber­ance, egged on by Facebook and Google’s ap­par­ent will­ing­ness to buy ev­ery­thing, at near­ly any price. All I know is that you def­i­nite­ly don’t see this sort of thing when times are tough: Investors with open check­books, piled in­to a room to show off for start-ups and hop­ing to land the next Twitter, or Foursquare, or Tumblr. Or at least the next GroupMe. That’s the (...)

The Chinese gov­ern­ment does not want its ci­t­i­zens watch­ing dis­si­dent Liu Xiaobo get his Nobel Peace Prize to­day, so they have blocked news sites such as CNN, BBC and the Norwegian state broad­cast­er NRK. Liu is serv­ing an 11-year sen­tence for "incit­ing sub­ver­sion" - crit­i­ciz­ing the gov­ern­ment, the UK Guardian re­port­ed. Click to read the rest of this post...

Ever won­der what an or­gan­ic click might re­al­ly be worth? For that mat­ter, ev­er won­der what is the num­ber of clicks you might gain by mov­ing from po­si­tion #5 to po­si­tion #1 in the search re­sults? What if I told you that there was in­for­ma­tion out there that might be able to help you pre­dict just how many or­gan­ic clicks you may stand to gain by mov­ing up in search engine rank­ings? Well, it’s your lucky day. The Click Distribution Data There are 3 data sets & stud­ies cur­rent­ly in ex­is­tence (...)

Ever won­der what an or­gan­ic click might re­al­ly be worth? For that mat­ter, ev­er won­der what is the num­ber of clicks you might gain by mov­ing from po­si­tion #5 to po­si­tion #1 in the search re­sults? What if I told you that there was in­for­ma­tion out there that might be able to help you pre­dict just how many or­gan­ic clicks you may stand to gain by mov­ing up in search engine rank­ings? Well, it’s your lucky day. The Click Distribution Data There are 3 data sets & stud­ies cur­rent­ly in ex­is­tence (...)

Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, who made a for­tune from the sale of the so­cial net­work to AOL (NYSE: AOL) two and a half years ago, is on­ce again in­vest­ing in the site. AOL sold Bebo to pri­vate equity firm Criterion Capital Partners this sum­mer; Criterion now says Birch is join­ing the com­pa­ny as a strate­gic ad­vi­sor and will be tak­ing an un­spec­i­fied stake in the com­pa­ny. Since pur­chas­ing Bebo, Criterion has made a num­ber of big-name hires who have promised to add new fea­tures to the site. (...)

Bebo founder buys back in­to the firm he sold to AOL for $850m which AOL sold for $10m this year.

Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo, is re­turn­ing to where it all be­gan, sign­ing on as an in­vestor and ad­vi­sor to the so­cial net­work he built and later sold to AOL for $850 mil­lion. It’s un­clear how much Birch has in­vest­ed in Bebo or if the in­vest­ment is re­lat­ed to the pro­posed sale that Om re­port­ed was in the work­s last week. But it nonethe­less rep­re­sents a ma­jor, per­haps des­per­ate, ef­fort to turn the com­pa­ny around by woo­ing back the man who start­ed it. Birch ob­vi­ous­ly has a lot of money (...)

The Wall Street Journal is re­port­ing that Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has signed the Giving Pledge, com­mit­ting ­to do­nate the ma­jor­i­ty of his for­tune to char­i­ta­ble or­ga­ni­za­tions. The Pledge, which asks its sign­ers to give away the lion’s share of their wealth dur­ing their life­time, was or­ga­nized by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Wall Street mogul War­ren Buf­fet. Other no­table sig­na­to­ries of the pact in­clude: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, New York may­or Michael Bloomberg, AOL co-founder (...)

See? You can go home again! And if your old home has sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­pre­ci­at­ed since you last saw it, you could even put some money back in­to it. That’s what Michael Birch is do­ing, by sign­ing on as an ad­vi­sor to Bebo, the so­cial net­work he co-found­ed in 2005, and in­vest­ing an undis­closed amount of cash back in­to the busi­ness. The irony, of course, is that the rea­son Birch has cash on hand to in­vest in Bebo is that he sold the com­pa­ny for $850 mil­lion to AOL in 2008, at the height of the (...)

Google is our mod­ern day col­lec­tion of the high­est tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments hu­man­i­ty has ev­er achieved. We are able to con­nect in­to the same in­for­ma­tion from any point on the Earth, al­most in­stan­ta­neous­ly! We live in a tru­ly mag­i­cal time. The pi­oneers shift­ing us in­to this new age are mod­ern web de­sign­ers and ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­op­ers. There are many re­sources on­line to ref­er­ence when be­gin­ning web­site de­sign. Novice and ex­pert alike can find plen­ty of new in­for­ma­tion us­ing Google’s pow­er­ful (...)

Here's one for you, folks: A few folks "in the know" told me that a com­pa­ny is think­ing about do­ing some­thing with an­oth­er com­pa­ny, but that sec­ond com­pa­ny has no idea about it, and in order for the whole thing to play out, a whole lot of things need to hap­pen first, most of which are to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on other things hap­pen­ing over which the sources have no con­trol! Great sto­ry, eh? Well, that's the en­tire con­tent of this Reuters sto­ry about AOL, one that has got­ten a lot of play (...)

This is the first post on the "ac­qui­si­tion fi­nance" series we start­ed last week in MBA Mondays. I am go­ing to try to lay out the ba­sics of merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions in this post. Then we can move on to some de­tails. As the term M&A sug­gests, there are two types of deals, merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions. Acquisitions are way more com­mon. It is when one com­pa­ny is tak­ing con­trol of the other. A merg­er is when two like sized busi­ness­es com­bine. An ex­am­ple of a merg­er is the AOL/Time Warner (...)

As the old say­ing goes, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, or in the case of Gowalla vs. Foursquare, if you can’t beat ‘em, in­te­grate your lo­ca­tion based ser­vices with them. Gowalla’s newest up­date gives users the abil­i­ty to share check-in in­for­ma­tion with Foursquare. The fea­ture joins the ap­pli­ca­tions abil­i­ty to share lo­ca­tions with Facebook and Twitter users, pro­vid­ing friends with your lo­ca­tion based in­fo on var­i­ous GPS en­abled de­vices in­clud­ing tablets, mo­bile phones and other portable (...)