Watch Out When Valuations Aren't Based on Earnings

There isn't a social media bubble, a PwC consultant says. But watch out when experts start using metrics other than those based on earnings. That's what happened during the 1999 technology bubble as well. People started inventing metrics not based on earnings, because there were no earnings.

Obviously, some firms do have actual earnings. But many do not. So beware when people start saying "price to earnings" ratios aren't the best way to value firms. That's the same slippery slope that lead to disaster last time. PwC partner Ian Coleman says "value per user" is a reasonable way to value firms. Watch out. That's bubble talk.

PwC: This Is Not A Bubble, Valuations May Be Justified

How Small Businesses Look for Customers

Fully 86 percent of small and mid-sized businesses (500 employees or fewer) rely on their websites to look for new customers, a survey of 300 business managers and owners suggests.

But small business owners and managers use a wide range of channels to look for new customers, a study by Bredin Business Information suggests.

But 74 percent use email and search marketing. Some 57 percent use blogs and LinkedIn.  As you might guess, executives are not as satisfied with the channels as they want to be.

But given typical marketing industry rules of thumb, virtually all of the channels are effective. For example, you might think the fact that 29 percent of respondents think blogs and other forms of social media are effective, a huge drop from the 2010 surveys, as an indication that the channels "don't work."

But compared to a direct response "success" rate of perhaps one percent, 29 percent effectiveness is quite high. Still, the 2011 survey results indicate that an initial burst of enthusiasm in 2010 for various forms of social media now has settled down.

That's normal for any emerging channel: there is too much optimism at first. Then reality sets in and marketers learn to use each tool in the right way, with reasonable expectations.

http://www.bbionline.com/press_05032011.htm

Shopping has Become More Social

A study by Yahoo finds that consumers are less impulsive in their shopping behavior because of the Internet, but also has become much more social, with 49 percent of users sharing their views and opinions about products.

Consumers routinely are checking consumer and expert reviews before committing to purchases, for example, and social networks are a particular enabler of such sharing.

"We found that 49 percent of consumers give advice to others, motivated by a feeling of solidarity with other shoppers," the Yahoo study says.

Long and Winding Road: The Gamesmanship of Shopping

25 ways IT will morph in the next 25 years

With the caveat that futurists often are quite wrong (we were supposed to be flying instead of driving cars by this time), the next 25 years might include dramatic changes in the computing fabric, including smart phones with the processing power of supercomputing and personal fixed terabit and gigabit mobile connections, some predict.

25 ways IT will morph in the next 25 years

But 25 years is a long time in technology. By 2020, the Internet might have evolved in ways that are more linear extrapolations of today's trends. See http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/010410-outlook-vision-predictions.html?page=2.

Will Google Make the "Tablet" a Peripheral?

Motorola's Atrix is a smartphone that docks to a "notebook" peripheral. Will Google try something similar, and make an Android the central processor for a "tablet" that is a display? It is at least possible, given some new intellectual property Google has purchased.

Patents Google seems to have purchased would allow a smartphone to Though the drive any number of "peripherals," ranging from tablets to notebooks to typical PC peripherals or machine to machine devices. Though the notion will be unsettling to many within the consumer electronics and computing ecosystems, such a move would make sense for several reasons, among them more options to deal with the issues of screen size, battery life and input-output choices from the one device everybody carries with them, all the time.

Google buys Modu's patent portfolio for $4.7 million

Such an approach would "solve" a problem many users might have, namely the requirement to carry multiple devices, in a variety of form factors, when traveling or out of the office. As a practical matter, many simply solve the problem by carrying only a smart phone most of the time, then swapping a tablet for a notebook when away from the desk for longer periods, making the smart phone and the tablet the two essential devices.

Traveling then raises the issue of which other devices one chooses to carry, in addition to those two. The ability to dock a powerful smart phone with peripherals could make some of the choices easier, and should, in principle, also reduce the cost of the overall set of solutions.

http://www.intomobile.com/2011/05/22/handson-htc-flyer-tablet-7inch-screen-15-ghz-and-stylus/

What Does 100 Mbps Cost?

Here's an example of what Internet access costs in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Policy advocates will tend to point to such examples to argue that municipalities should be allowed to compete directly with private Internet service providers. Commercial providers will tend to say government should not compete with private firms when a market for services clearly exists.

Whatever you think of the policy issues, there is something else equally important. It is one thing to argue that, as a matter of policy, everyone should be able to buy access, at affordable rates, it is quite another to get agreement on what "access" or "affordable" means.

"Reasonable cost" is at least in part a simple matter of price transparency. In a triple play, the actual "cost" of a component is an accounting exercise. Still, what is "reasonable" changes over time. At any given point in time, however, there typically is a gap between the pricing of consumer services and business services, at least in part because the business services are offered with quality of service assurances and a higher level of service overall.

But it wouldn't be unusual for price differences between a business class service and a consumer class service to amount to an order of magnitude. Even a municipal provider might have to maintain those sorts of price relationships.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21696

AT&T and Verizon: Where is the Growth?

Every now and then it is useful to reflect on actual revenue trends for the two U.S. telecom firms that represent the clear majority of all telecom revenue on an annual basis.

So put yourself into the position of running one of those two companies, take a look at where your revenue is, where the growth is, and then ask yourself how much money you'd be willing to invest in your various lines of business.

At Verizon, over the past two years, fixed line voice revenues have declined from 21 percent of total revenue to 19 percent. At AT&T voice revenues have dropped from 24 percent in 2010 to 21 percent in 2011.

At Verizon, wireless revenue has grown from 58 percent of total revenue in 2009 to 63 percent in early 2011. At AT&T, wireless revenue has grown from 46 percent to 49 percent in a year.

Equally important, mass markets revenue, which includes consumer and small business revenue, has remained flat at Verizon over the past year. So has "small business" revenue. Enterprise revenue likewise was flat, year over year.

At AT&T, though, business services revenue (IP data)  was up 19 percent. U-verse revenue was up , the most significant element being IP revenues, up 26 percent year over year.

A rational manager might well conclude that incremental resources should be plowed into wireless and enterprise services, resources should be decreased in voice and maintained in broadband access, since that is where the revenue growth is. Even within the "IP" services segments, though, video might be the single most significant product, in terms of growth.

Other service providers, with different customer profiles and assets, will have to consider different choices.