Yahooouch!

UPDATE Friday, Feb 1st: Microsoft has made an hostile offer to buy Yahoo! for 44.6B

Tough time for Yahoo! Earning call today, after the bell, disappointed with a profit lower than expect but also with forecast in the low range of analyst expectations for next year.
Rumor had it as Jerry would announce layoffs as a last chance to make up for Wall Street but the 1,000 layoffs (9% of its workforce) were not enough to avoid the stock to free fall after market by more than 10%. Valued at about $18.50 at the time I'm writing this post.

Jerry Yang miraculous effect, the classic founder comeback, the hope of another Steve Jobs magic move didn't happen. On June 18th 2007, Jerry took back the driver seat at Yahoo!. Stock was $28.12 that day. about 7 months later, the stock has lost $10 a share or 35% of its value. That's about $8B in valuation. Gone.

Jerry asked for 100 days to come up with the re-newing strategy. BlueLithium and Zimbra were acquired, as planned before Jerry joined and Terry was aked to leave. 100 days later, Yahoo! issued an earning guidance below analysts estimates. Time for good news?
Not really. Then came the apologies for the jailed Chinese dissident. End 2007.
CES, in January in Las Vegas, Yahoo! finally announced its mobile focus and the whole company motto of the "best start on the Internet".
And then my friend, Vince Broady left Yahoo! Vince, to me, is a star to me. He co-founded GameSpot, revived mp3.com, created tv.com and more... Over the past 6 months, almost everybody I knew at Yahoo!, here and in Europe, has left Yahoo!

Yahoo! is not alone. CNET and others are in a similar situation. After paper content companies, internet content companies are struggling. Producing content and sticking ads ain't enough for growth anymore. Still a good business to be in, but like every other businesses, maturity brings the need to trim production cost and in a fast aging industry, companies needs to reinvent themselves faster than it takes big ones to re-organize themselves.

Why is Yahoo! not playing in the Social networking arena?
Why is Yahoo! not grabbing a seat at the Video sharing game?
Why is Yahoo! not inventing the new TV that Hulu, Joost and others are shaping up?

Yahoo!, while I never worked for them, is a company I like. Naive and unexplainable, but still, I wish something happen there. It's about time. A Microsoft take over, which at current valuation, is near bargain price, can't be the only way forward, can it?

Losing less. But still, about 1 a year.

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this week end showing some weird math: the number of unaccounted soldiers for at conflict's end vs recognized deaths per conflicts over the (recent) past.
I then took the liberty to feed Excel with those figures in the table below.

	1945	1953	1975	1991	1991	?
	WW II	Korea	Vietnam	Cold war	Gulf	Iraq
accounted	405000	37000	58000	28	382	3931
unaccounted	78000	8192	2646	138	1	4
ratio	19.26%	22.14%	4.56%	492.86%	0.26%	0.10%
duration	4	3	11	45	1	5
unacc./y	19500	2730.7	240.5	3.1	1.0	0.8

Years on first line are the conflict's ending year. The two last lines are duration per conflict and unaccounted per year of conflict. Clearly, the US Army is making progress in localization and identification.

$500,000 per hour

That how much Obama fund raising is getting after his victory in South Carolina [source]

Touching reality

This is a scan from yesterday's The Examiner, a local newspaper. Selling foreclosed homes like a bunch of used car in a cheap lot.
The other point to consider here is the "attractive at today's low rates". After latest Fed's 3/4 of a point drop and the financial stimulus allowing for conventional loans to be up to $735, 000 (from regular $417,000), there is, really, some attraction in buying those houses, especially in a area where rentals are rare.
I wander if those foreclosed owner have a chance to bid for their own house and get the financial benefit now available? that'd be fair, wouldn't it?
Am I not childish native to even consider being in a fair environment...

Time to Ginger

Update: Ginger is in the press. If you want to get an invitation to upgrade to netvibes Ginger, send me an email: [my first name] at netvibes.com ;-)

Gadget by LabPixies.com

Time left before Ginger's press embargo got released...

We won the Best International Startup Crunchy!

We won the Crunchy award for the Best International Startup last nite!
Fantastic recognition from the industry and our users since more than 100,000 people voted (not all for us, of course ;-))

Very proud of the team working very hard everywhere, Paris, San Francisco et al.

Here is the whole ceremony. If you don't have the time to watch it all, don't miss this hilarious moment of (fake) Steve Jobs accepting his award, remotely from his bedroom in New York. Exceptional...



Again, thanks everyone. And as said, stay tuned for a new version of Netvibes, code named Ginger, arriving in press coverage Tuesday... more late ;-)

A difficult or a great environment?

Steve Jobs did his show this morning. Announced a new ultra thin laptop, 4M iPhone sold, a new iTV, numerous deals with the movie industrie and... the stock lost 5.45%!
After market, Intel released its numbers which are 51% above in sales, Y2Y, and stock is falling more than 12% after hours!

Hard to believe this is because Wall Street is disappointed with the earning per share, 38 cents vs 40 cents expected?

So it is a bubble busting or the whole bath tube? Is it a difficult environment or the best environment ever to buy AAPL? After all, Apple just introduced a new cool product, in a segment enjoying very few competition and a new playground for growth of his quite-ubiquituous iTune Store: the movie rental industry. The price target remain well above $200... what if this was the easiest 30% capital gain lately? ;-)

Democrats use a Mac

Very interesting. I knew Apple market shares doubled within the last year, but I didn't know of such a difference between states. As this chart shows [source Net Applications], this Apple market share map mimes the split between Republicans and Democrats making the point: Democrats uses Apple.
In California and New York, Apple has more than 12% market share, twice the national average and up to 15% in vacation spots, Hawaii and Vermont.
so, will MacWorld next week be a boost for Obama and Hillary? And which of the two is the biggest Mac user? ;-)

iTV

Untouched yet, Google is just making an announcement of a partnership with Matsushita's Panasonic to deliver YouTube, Picassa and other members of the Google family to your TV set!
Hopefully, this news will give some enthusiasm to Google's stock who has lost more than $50 a share since the beginning of this year, or 3 sessions and more than 7% down.
After hours trading seem to indicate a better day tomorrow...

Wrapping up 2007

compete.com just released their december data, completing a full 2007 year, the first of netvibes, inc. bye, bye 2007. We did good. Let's do better in 2008!

Happy new year 2008!

Here we are. Jan 2nd 2008. The new year has started, parties are over and we're back to work.
Here comes the time for the good resolutions.

My good resolutions for 2008 are simple: On the personal side: being happy. On the professional side: being happy. And one way I know to be happy, is to have people around me happy. It's auto-generated, communicative and viral. I won't elaborate on the personal side as it must remain private but on the professional side, one gauge is to keep our partners and users happy...
like being on Michael's list next year for the 4th time in a row.

No show off here. Just makes me happy... I told you it was a 2008 resolution ;-)