The latest from TechCrunch
- The Age Of Facebook
- New EU Rules Could Kill Off VC, Screw Startups – Let's Stop Them
- Email Of The Week: Fixing Linda's Farm, So That It Will Load
| The Age Of Facebook | Top |
| Two years ago I was on the Charlie Rose show and we talked about, among other startups and trends, Facebook . It wasn’t clear then that Facebook had what it took to become one of the great technology companies. They had conquered the college market and were destroying the hopes and dreams of MySpace. But they were also reeling from the Beacon debacle and hadn’t proven that they could turn those massive reach and page views into sustainable revenue streams. You can watch the whole discussion about Facebook, which begins at about the 22:00 mark. But the key question I asked then was, “Will Facebook Have their Google moment?” I was referring to Google’s ability to pair awesome search in the late nineties with, later, an amazing business model – a bidding system for text ads. In 2008 it was clear that Facebook had taken the first step and changed our culture, possibly permanently. But it wasn’t at all clear that they would create the massive revenue streams to allow them to effectively dominate tech culture. Fast forward to today. Those questions have been answered. Facebook is profitable and probably is running at a billion dollar plus revenue run rate today. They have 400 million users and 500 million people visit the site each month. Only Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have more monthly visitors than Facebook. And only Google has more page views. And they aren’t done growing yet. In a year they will likely be second on the list of unique visitors. In two years, they’ll probably be first. In a talk a few days ago investor Ron Conway spoke about the explosive growth of Facebook. “They are the universe,” he said. I asked him if we are in the Age of Facebook. His answer was yes. Ron has been investing in startups for thirty years and he has seen the rise and fall of many companies. This wasn’t just idle chatter. Microsoft dominated the technology world in the 90s on the back of their Windows and Office products. Google was the champion for the last decade after perfecting the business model around search. Both are still huge companies. But all the momentum is behind Facebook and how they are changing the Web, and our culture. Last week Facebook unveiled a variety of new developer tools, and new consumer applications are set to be launched in the near future. What’s most interesting about these changes aren’t the debates about whether what Facebook is doing is good for the Internet or not, or how open or not open their solutions are. Those debates are important but they don’t affect the Facebook revolution any more than debates about Adsense a decade ago affected the decade of glory that Google just experienced. The fact is that Facebook is permeating the Web. Publishers, us included, are clamoring to organize our websites in ways that please Facebook. Their vision of an open graph of people and things (with Facebook at the center) is becoming reality, and debates by technologists won’t changes that. Facebook is taking over our identity and we are going along with that happily. It will take a new technology paradigm to disrupt what Facebook is doing. Microsoft’s Windows platform wasn’t threatened by user complaints, lawsuits or even government actions to weaken it. It took the evolution of the browser as an operating system, and new applications like Google Docs, to give users the comfort to move beyond Windows. And while the Windows franchise is still going strong, the writing is on the wall. Eventually, it will fall. Someday, maybe a decade from now, some new technology will rise and allow other companies to threaten Facebook. But until then there is little to stop them. Their march to dominance has just begun. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| New EU Rules Could Kill Off VC, Screw Startups – Let's Stop Them | Top |
| The European Union's proposed Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive sounds relatively innocuous. But its impact could have far reaching consequences for Europe's emerging startup tech scene, imposing higher costs, red tape and put off most institutional investors from investing in VC funds. The Directive could - to be blunt - completely shaft VC, and thus venture backed startups in Europe. Here's how, and here's what you can do about it. | |
| Email Of The Week: Fixing Linda's Farm, So That It Will Load | Top |
| We occasionally post a sample of the awesome emails that we receive to our tips@techcrunch email account. In the past we’ve been asked for help in getting Facebook accounts restored, we’ve been asked by Car and Driver to participate in a link farm with them, we’ve battled a journalism student over the spelling of the word “website” and we have assisted ABC news with their struggles with new technology. Today it’s a much simpler request. And the request is so short and enigmatic that it’s almost poetic. In some ways this is the cry of a lost generation, desperately clicking away on crops as life passes them by. Linda has asked us to fix her farm, so that it will load. We can only guess that she is referring to Farmville. But we’re at a loss as to what the exact problem might be that is causing load problems. We wish her well in her quest to load that farm and carry on with her life. ———- Forwarded message ———- From: linda [removed] Date: Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 6:53 PM Subject: help To: tips@techcrunch.com Please fix my farm so it will load. | |
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