I'm on facebook and as everyday goes by, it sells out more and more. Originally it was a really good site that most people really enjoyed. They keep adding STUPID new features, and I dislike it more and more. If anyone buys it, I won't be sticking around.
disruptive technologies and services do not orginate in fortunate 500 companies. fortunate 500 companies are stuck in the traditonal ways of doing things. you cannot expect true innovation to come from them. taken a look at a book call the Inovator's dilemma by clayton christenson which explains this particular issue.
You people seem to think sites like these get acquired because of their technology or some other mysterious reason, the fact is you can pretty much license most of the technoloy needed to build your own Youtube, from companies like Adobe. These companies are being acquired for their user community.
Many of which will leave once a big corporate takes over and ruins it like big corporates ruin everything good. Watch the censorship unfold on youtube.com and videos put up by users get taken down. Then the advertising will take over and youtube will become just another spam page with spyware, pop ups, ad space, etc. Cash? It's gonna be almost all stock, just like with youtube. Same old scam, it's all OPM.
pretty soon google will go the way of Yahoo and HP. sales & marketing will rule the company and the technology people will be considered backoffice IT. the founders won't care that much anymore because they are already so rich from the IPO. their ownership % has also been diluted so they are really powerless to veto anything.
Yea, the new "in-word" these days is "eye balls". They're not buying revenues, they're not buying profits. Youtube is making losses since day 1. No, they're buying "eye balls" - the user community of a FREE SERVICE! Wait a minute, reminds me of 1999. Back then, they'd purchase companies with the highest "cash burn rate".
Geez, how about MySpace? Probably they didn't leave because the site is bought only by a puny Newscorp... I heard that Google is working things out with major labels and IP holders in form of advertising revenue sharing.