It seems on trend these days to be bullish on Yahoo under Marissa Mayer and down on Facebook after their confident, some say arrogant, IPO. Their revenues are in the same ball park (versus Google) and their current share price is actually very similar, which adds a nice simplicity to the comparison as they both strive to get to $30. Although the Facebook Market Cap is just over twice Yahoo's at $60bn.
Clearly there will be continued ups and downs for both these companies, but you do need to believe in the growth story to maintain even their current valuations.
I think the Forbes and allthingsd pieces touch on some very interesting dynamics to watch out for, particularly around the interest graph v. the social graph. In that regard, perhaps the old internet giant Yahoo is in fact better placed if it can capture the momentum of Tumblr's interest graph approach across it's own audience. The challenge for Facebook will be how far people, naked in their own real identities, really want to go into sharing all their interests across all media.
The Forbes piece quotes from a Karp interview a few years ago, in particular....
"Karp: I think what Yahoo’s a good example of is just media. What Tumblr is is media. People come here for art and media that they enjoy. Yahoo is media. And, by the way, I think that’s made it a pretty resilient network....
One of the incredible things about social networks is how quickly they can be built up... At the same time, once a few of your friends start to leave, the whole network can fall apart.
While if there’s great content over here, whether it’s a TV network or web site or a big network like Tumblr, if there’s something there that you care about, you can keep going whether or not your friends keep going there. That’s where I think media tends to be a little more resilient that social, but we’ll see…”
Clearly there will be continued ups and downs for both these companies, but you do need to believe in the growth story to maintain even their current valuations.
I think the Forbes and allthingsd pieces touch on some very interesting dynamics to watch out for, particularly around the interest graph v. the social graph. In that regard, perhaps the old internet giant Yahoo is in fact better placed if it can capture the momentum of Tumblr's interest graph approach across it's own audience. The challenge for Facebook will be how far people, naked in their own real identities, really want to go into sharing all their interests across all media.
The Forbes piece quotes from a Karp interview a few years ago, in particular....
"Karp: I think what Yahoo’s a good example of is just media. What Tumblr is is media. People come here for art and media that they enjoy. Yahoo is media. And, by the way, I think that’s made it a pretty resilient network....
One of the incredible things about social networks is how quickly they can be built up... At the same time, once a few of your friends start to leave, the whole network can fall apart.
While if there’s great content over here, whether it’s a TV network or web site or a big network like Tumblr, if there’s something there that you care about, you can keep going whether or not your friends keep going there. That’s where I think media tends to be a little more resilient that social, but we’ll see…”
FT: Facebook hit by fears over long-term prospects (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/015b983e-cec4-11e2-ae25-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2VWDae92d)
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