2012 27
I bought Facebook shares, here’s why
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
My history with Facebook goes back to 2006 when I joined the service, then 2007 when I first visited their HQ in Palo Alto and wrote that I was so impressed with the company that I thought it would be worth over $10bn. That number that sounded so crazy then is but a fraction of its vaue today. And then a year later I helped Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook in Spanish. Here’s a video of the two of us. Needless to say that Mark Zuckerberg is an absolute genius when it gets to build THE social network.
Still I did not buy Facebook shares in the IPO. I should clarify that I am a long term investor, not a trader but $38 seemed to high a valuation for me. I was waiting for the shares to come down.
Before the earnings announcement I had bought some Facebook shares at $28 and a few hours ago I bought more shares at $23. And I have another order to buy more if they get to $20.
Here’s my rational.
Image via CrunchBase
Facebook is an amazing company, it has a good chunk of the richest segment of humanity glued to its service. The share of global income of people with Facebook accounts must be, in my view, at least half of all global income. Not only do they have a billion users but they have the billion with the most money. The top billion.
That Facebook is so great at engagement but so bad at monetization sounds to me as a more solvable problem than the exact opposite and that’s why I am buying the shares.
Right now Facebook seems to get $2 per user per quarter. I can’t believe they are not going to be able to get double that in the near future. If Google owned FB, how much would they get out of its user base? Google gets over $40bn in revenues from its user base now but its users and time on site are comparable to FB. So a good guess could be that FB could get 10X more revenues from their user base when they grow up.
Risks? that they never get good at monetization and/or that somebody else “myspaces” them. That’s why I only recommend owning at most 3% of your net worth in Facebook shares. My main holdings are Apple, Google and Amazon and my portfolio exposure to Facebook is very small. But now I am a shareholder.
2012 7
Menorca TechTalk 2012 invitation
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
Next June 22nd the fifth Menorca TechTalk starts. An event that my wife Nina and I organize every year in which we invite friends and entrepreneurs from around the world to our farm in Menorca. In previous editions we had founders of companies from Silicon Valley, New York, Spain, Germany, etc.
This year we will also have the privilege to listen to some of the most renowned tech entrepreneurs. As in previous editions, we invite anyone willing to join us to the TechTalk itself. A series of short improvised debates on technology and innovation that will take place on Saturday 23th from 4pm to 8pm. There is a 80 seat limit, so if you want to join us email us at menorcatechtalk@gmail.com
This is the video for the 2010 edition
10 years ago all of us on the Internet were licking our wounds. We had been taken for a crazy ride in which we went from a point in whatever we touch was champagne to whatever we did was shit.
As an entrepreneur that lived through 1998 to 2002 I emerged reasonably well, I sold my shares in Viatel when it was worth $1.2bn, I sold Ya.com for $700 million but did not sell Jazztel when it was worth $5bn because I was its CEO and saw it go down to $700M (now it`s worth $1.4bn). Then I lost $50M in Einsteinet one of the best cloud computing start ups in Europe that was killed by the post bubble era in which financing completely dried out. So as you read this post you will see no bitterness.
But looking back at 2001/2002 I see this time, not as a period in which Internet companies destroyed the financial markets, but as a time in which the financial markets almost destroyed the Internet. It was financiers/analysts who drove those insane valuations up and then down. What should have been a smooth ride on the internet, an era of taking more and more global citizens in its midst, became a crazy ride in which the internet itself gained enormous prestige and was later, for a while, seen as a useless gimmick. Only around 2007 people again realized that the Internet was simply transforming the world economy and was here to stay.
And then came 2008, when the financial industry practically destroyed the world economy. That was when the same financial firms did to the world what they had done to the Internet, inflate it and let it fall like dead weight.
Having been a happy customer of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others I don’t want people to read this post as a rant against financial firms. We need financial firms. But what we don’t need is financial firms to do what they did first to the Internet and then to the overall economy, namely to hype them out of value and sink them hard for no reason. In simple terms what I am advocating has been done before and that is to separate trading from advising. The Chinese Walls in these firms never worked and never will.
2012 17
Google shares, buy or sell?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
The two biggest challenges that Google is facing are that ads are tough to show on smartphones (because they are narrow) and more and more searches come from smartphones, and that Facebook is competing harder and harder in an ad based world that Google cannot enter.
The biggest opportunity I see for Google is to turn Motorola around and have an integrated/open ecosystem that catches up with the closed Apple ecosystem. I am not argue that Google makes Android a closed system like iOS and only sells its smartphones through what is now Motorola. What I am saying instead is that Google could be in the position that HTC or Samsung are today. It could make the best Androids and use a hardware OS combination to make money a la Apple.
Android is bigger than iOS and yet Apple is worth over twice as much as Google in market cap. iOS is 90% of the value of Apple. Android is considered to be less than 10% of the value of Google. This is where Google’s biggest upside resides in my view. In an successful implementation of the Motorola acquisition.
In any case I think that there are 3 companies that are a must have in anyone’s portfolio now and they are Google, Apple and Amazon, in proportions to their market caps. Facebook would also be a must have but not at 100 times earnings. I should also clarify that I have Google, Amazon and Apple in my portfolio and have for a while.
2012 26
On how I use Social Media
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
Twitter I use a lot, borth for reading and producing content. Twitter is like the newswire for me, like those news summaries that appear down below on CNN (or used to because I haven’t watch TV in so long). Twitter is great for breaking news. Also for short interactions and some fun moments. Twitter is trying to kill DM and that is bad, they should take out the 140 character limitation in DM so you can have deeper one to one discussions. So you can combine the public with the private. Twitter should also not count the characters of links to give you a few more characters for the occasional moments you need them. The URL shortener war is absurd.
Facebook is only about friends for me, I used to have 4000 “friends” now I have around 600. Sorry if I erased you. But now I know almost all of them, if not in person at least virtually pretty well. Facebook is about more private things and I use “friends only” a lot. I know Facebook is dying to make money out of me showing whatever I post to anyone to get more activity and impressions. And the same is true for a lot of Facebook users. So I battle Facebook on that and many times I lose and I am annoyed when a friend of a friend who I don’t know appears, even though they are mostly nice I should say. In terms of politeness Facebook wins the prize. The only non private part of Facebook that I use is groups, and those work well to liaise along themes or narrow lines. What Facebook needs to come up with is a paid version like LinkedIn and show ads for those who don’t pay. Also Facebook attempts in advertising have been clumsy so far. Facebook thrives at connecting people but is very poor at trying to have them buy something. I would gladly pay $7 per month to give no incentive to Facebook to spy on me to sell me ads.
Google+
I use Google+ for drafts, I have an idea and I put a first draft on Google +, I then get criticisms, comments, and I improve or modify my original idea into something deeper, I do more research on my own and then I go to my blog, generally my English blog. Google+ has great ideas and a wonderful design on mobile. I just wish more people used it as it also has no ads.
Tumblr
Tumblr (I am an investor) I use for shorter articles, I am also aware that what comes out in my Tumblr goes on Twitter as I have them linked. Tumblr is great to discover longer form and visual content. Their discovery platform is still poor but I know it will get better. And what you find is just beautiful. Tumblr also lacks comments but that can be both a good and a bad thing. In the one hand you stay away from trolls and keep it friendly. On the other hand, the debate always ends up in Twitter and you can miss some interesting comments. And Tumblr gets some original content creators who are mostly there or just there. In Tumblr I follow photography, science, medicine. I used to use Tumblr as a form of self expression, I still do but now I love to discover what others have to say. There is a certain level of aesthetics and professionalism in Tumblr that is missing elsewhere.
Pinterest I don’t get. I see it as closer to Tumblr but kind of messy. I don’t see a lot of original content producers there. It is more kind of “look at what I found Dad”. I am a father of 5 btw and I am used to this show and tell moments. What I don’t like about Pinterest is that it is not about creating your own content. I think it might have an utility as an archive for your personal findings on the Internet, which can be kept private. The Android apps for Pinterest don’t let you post, just look.
Path
Path I just started using it. It is very, very visual and I use it taking advantage of the camera programs in my iPhone and my Samsung Galaxy. I use it for great shots taken with phones. Shots that are the essence of the moment I am in, like a great tweet, but visual. I know you can do much more at Path, but I don’t. The people who answer me in Path I tend to know. They are friends. Path is actually very, very well designed.
Flickr and Picasa
Flickr I love but I have the feeling that it’s dying. Pity because there is tons of quality photography there and I am an amateur photographer. I use Flickr for the photography I do with the Leica M9 or the Canon 5D Mark II. Lately, I’ve been trying 500px and I think it’s the modern version of what Flickr should be. Their iPad app is great. Google+ photos formerly known as Picasa I use. I like the fact that many pictures go there from my Android. They also go to iPhoto from my iPhone the same way. Both systems are good for not losing pictures even though you have to erase many. I wish they would ask you if you want to update them.
Photo Apps
I love Snapseed on the iPhone and iPad. It is simple, very well designed and you can take great pictures to post in social networks. Instagram I use but sometimes with pictures I took with Snapseed cause otherwise all Instagrams look alike. They do have a great community at Instagram also made of mostly nice people.
Social Video
YouTube is another beast. In the video world I prefer Vimeo. But Youtube has huge audiences that have given millions of views to my videos so I go on placing them there in spite of the horrendous, idiotic level of commentary. I have rarely seen a smart person commenting on a video on Youtube. Dante’s inferno said “lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate” and that is today very applicable to the level of Youtube commentary. I many times just don’t let people comment on my videos in order to avoid racism and plain idiocy. Now Vimeo is another world. Vimeo is like Tumblr in video. There is amazing quality beautiful videos there.
Foursquare and Google Maps
Foursquare is so focused on the stupid game of being a mayor of your bathroom that you sometimes forget that it’s also like a Spotify for geographical locations. It is interesting to find good curated lists of say restaurants in South Beach Miami. The lists have been enhanced in their latest updates. I use Google Maps a lot. In any case since I invested in Dopplr and Plazes I have always believed in the social value of city exploration and I know we will accomplish more in this area. Google and Foursquare are half way there with different solutions for similar needs.
Until LinkedIn invited me to write for the site I was using it little. Fon was using it to recruit but not me personally. Now that my posts get so much engagement there I find that with LinkedIn I can interact with the most educated audience of any site. At least when focused on professional endeavors.
Messenger platforms
Is messenger social media? I think it is. Skype is social by nature, and I use it either in very intimate situations or non intimate at all, like job interviews. BBM I have with two of my children who are still on Blackberry and a few other people who have not given up. Whatsapp keeps me in touch with some others who are across platforms, it is uncanny how they got away with the fact that if you have somebody’s phone number you can Whatsapp without acceptance. It makes you want to get a new phone number so ghosts from the past don’t haunt you. SMS is rare for me. Google Talk and the Google + messengers I use but rarely, with an occasional friend who loves it. MSN or Yahoo I have not used for ages. Email I do use and a lot. I like the asynchronicity of it. I like Gmail, it’s brilliant.
Blogs
Blogs other than mine are also a way to be socially active, reading, leaving comments, and I do read a bunch of blogs, the best way to see what I read is still my Netvibes public page. All the RSS feeds that were kind of killed by Twitter but not totally for me. I love the way Netvibes presents all blogs in one screen for me in my MacBook or any PC. I read many professional blogs such as the Hipertextual blogs, or GigaOm.
My Spanish and English Blogs on WordPress
I try to keep a certain quality level in those blogs. They are me so I better look good :). I have apps for iPhone, Blackberry, to blog from other devices but I mostly blog from my MacBook and after testing the grounds on Google + or Tumblr.
Social News
In Spanish I love Meneame, in English Reddit. Social news work for me as the wisdom of the crowds is actually a good editor and I frequently comment.
Social Music and language learning
Those and other formerly non social activities are also getting social, certainly music with Spotify which I use a lot and even language learning with Busuu.
Languages on Social Media
In my case there’s the languages issue. I write more in English because the best content on the web is in English. Spanish even though it is spoken by a great deal of people there is little new science or radical ideas coming out in Spanish. There are some, but few. I also understand French, Italian, Portuguese and Catalan. Catalan is to languages what Path is to social networks 🙂 French is probably the other language were some original content is found. Less so in Italian and Portuguese. I am learning German, if I really spoke German I have a sense that there would be some more original content. But Germans and Northern Europeans in general have an elite who writes in English and that is great.
Gadgets and Social Media
There is another angle to all of this and that is that many social networks are gadget specific. Path is not on the web, the iPhone is great for photography. With the iPhone for example you can be in Instagram as well and I also post on Instagram. You can then post from there to Tumblr and other networks. Not to Google + which is trying to make it all with Google products (a mistake). I use the iPhone 4S, the Samsung Galaxy SII which is amazing, the new Blackberry Bold 9900 which is still the fastest small gadget in which to write and message but poor for almost everything else, the iPad which is perfect for looking at content, not so great for producing it. And then my MacBook Pro which is perfect for typing fast, for editing video, for editing photography.
I just spent a week in NYC. What the city did vis a vis crime reduction between the 80s and 90s it did vis a vis start ups between the 00s and the 10s. It’s a whole new tech scene here. And it’s very new.
I remember when I invested in the first round of Tumblr with John Borthwick the tech scene in NYC was minimal. And that was as recently as 2007. On this trip I visited General Assembly and it was buzzing, and they are not the only nurturing grounds for entrepreneurship, there are many as well as many start ups who are making it big. Also what has happened in the last decade is that now Brooklyn is not a lesser cousin but an integral part of NYC as well and there are a lot of start ups and tech people who live there. It is interesting to see how Brooklyn has made it and NJ has not considering that they are both a river crossing away, but Brooklyn has a history and beauty that is tough to compete with.
Here’s a short and random list of reasons why I believe NYC is making it:
-when you leave work you have a lot to do.
-NYC is more environmental than the life in your car Silicon Valley. The ecofootprint of a New Yorker in his high rise apartment is lower than that one of a SV techie in his house in Palo Alto.
-NYC is way more than tech.
-NYC is half way between SV and Europe and SV is in theory closer to Asia but flying times are the same.
-Bloomberg, who had his own financial internet before the internet really gets it and is promoting NYC as a tech town every week, indeed this week he was at Tumblr promoting his tech friendly policies.
NYC is now a true rival to Silicon Valley and that is great news. Chicago is also happening I hear, thanks to GroupOn, not my favorite start up but still a force. And then there is London with Spotify, Badoo and many others. Overall I think that what happened to USA in the last few decades is happening to Silicon Valley now. SV is still number one but in relative terms shrinking in relevance. NYC, London, Berlin, TelAviv, Tokyo, Shanghai/Beijing/Taipei, Bangalore, all valid alternative places for tech start ups.
I lived in NYC for 18 years, between 1977 and 1995. Now when I visit I realize that I owe a lot to that city, my education, my first successful ventures. Would I move Fon to NYC? Well we decided to open our US office there and not in SV. But for us, the engineering talent we find in Spain would be hard to replicate in NYC. Spain as troubled as it is, is a great place in which to have your start up. With 47% youth unemployment and many talented young people if you have a great project you can get the engineers you need for it. It is true that Spanish work ethics are not as good as the American work ethic, but people are realizing that either they truly work or the country will sink. And the attitude is better now than a few years ago. So while I won’t move back to NYC for now I will go more frequently. There are too many admirable people there!
Correction, after writing this post Daniel Ek contacted me to say that NY has become so attractive for Spotify that now they have more employees in NYC than London. I also forgot to mention that large companies like Google and now Facebook have very sizable offices in NYC.
2012 26
Fifi cherche WiFi – Best Fon ad ever
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Belgacom (powered by Fon) has created an awesome campaign to advertise its fonspots. A dog called Fifi whose innate talent is to smell wifi hotspots. In the middle of 2011, we announced the agreement between Fon and Belgacom and two months ago we reached 100.000 hotspots. Nowadays, we have 300.000,.
Here you can see the video. The story would be as follows: Jean has a dog called Fifi that barks when she finds a wifi hotspot, because of Fon and its agreement with Belgacom, this virtue has turned out to be his worst nightmare as she never stops barking.
We are 12 family members at our vacation home in Jose Ignacio, Uruguay, many teenagers. We have WiFi, computers, tablets, smartphone, Kindles, books but no TV. And nobody gives a f….
During this vacation, nobody mentioned that we should buy a TV or that they missed watching TV. And since I don’t watch TV either I did not get one. But a couple of days ago, a broker said we should have a TV for a tenant who comes in February. “A tenant could not rent a house without a TV” he said. So I ordered one online and connected it to DirectTV thinking that somebody in my family may want to watch it. Still nobody gives a f…. about watching TV. The TV is there, turned off, everyone is online in some form or other, or reading, or just interacting with each other, but no TV. People go to the beach, cycling, walking, dancing at night, all sorts of things other than watching TV.
Now I don’t know if there is a global trend towards watching less TV. There are also no newspapers in this house and news are read online, so maybe traditional TV is really going the way of newspapers. But data show that in some families TVs are on 4 hours a day. So here’s a theory of what may be going on in my family.
Communal TV is in a way like telephone calls, which are also disappearing in our family. Telephones have this thing to them that is rude, that they ring and annoy everyone, that one person speaks and everyone has to listen to half of what they say, and they are then disconnected from others while they speak but they are still there. Telephone solved a lot of needs when that is all there was to communicate. But now telephones are smart, different and people rarely talk on them. All types of messengers are taking over, Facebook, email, chats of various kinds. They are more private, you answer when you want to.
TV also has this aspect to it that it’s hard to get everyone to agree to watch the same thing at the same time. It’s great for those who enjoy it, annoying for the rest. We can watch TV content of course, and we do, especially series such as In Treatment, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Boardwalk Empire, Big Love, Dowton Abbey, The Pacific and many others. But we don’t use a traditional TV for that anymore. We have tablets, Netflix, etc. So no Big TV always on for the Varsavskys, just tablets, PCs, smartphones, kindles and still a few paper books lying around.
2011 3
Playing with eBook readers
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
This afternoon I was trying different file formats with different ebook readers. This is what I conclude and please help me if I am wrong.
For Kindle you need to get book files in .mobi format, for iPad and Kobo in .epub
In iPad:
first download books in .epub format
then import them to the iTunes library in your PC
then sync the iPad and books will be in the app called iBooks, they work like music
B&W KINDLE:
download books in .mobi format
connect kindle to PC
copy books in the folder called documents, if its not in documents it does not show in the kindle library
in the kindle you may also add some music by putting mp3 files in the folder called music (so you can read and listen to music at the same time)
Kindle takes a while to show the books that you put in the documents folder as processor is slow but eventually they show up
in KOBO:
download books in .epub format I could not get .mobi format to work well worked poorly PDF is bad for size and pages
connect Kobo to PC
transfer files to anywhere in the Kobo directory.
and yes thank you Calibre is fantastic I am using it now!
then you will also have to wait a while until the books show up and from what I see you have to go more slowly and add book files in small groups or the processing content wheel turns forever and nothing happens.
If you have epub files and want to have the same book in a mobi file go here.