Do You Twitter?

An interesting tool that is getting alot of buzz the past few months is a "hyper-connected" communication tool called Twitter. Twitter work slike IM but happens faster, briefer and more frequently. The idea is to continuously post two line posts that answer "What are you doing right now?" . . .all day long.

A friend of mine in Atlanta developed a great tool for bloggers. . . and for marketers to use - to reach bloggers and their audiences. It is called dNeero. I am posting a dNeero survey i just took about Twitter here, and all proceeds from the survey are going to Habitat for Humanity so check it out.

Christian Bayley

www.olivestudio.com

Online Ad Network Raises $100 Million in VC Backing

Taken off the AP i thought this was appropriate given the discussion i started about Facebook's valuation and the ripples it would have. . .

-christian bayley

www.olivestudio.com

By The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Internet ad network Specific Media Inc. has raised $100 million to help finance its expansion plans amid a flurry of dealmaking in the advertising industry.

The investment announced Thursday is being made by Francisco Partners, a Menlo Park-based private equity firm. With so much money at stake, Francisco Partners co-founder Neil Garfinkel will join Specific's board of directors.

The two sides declined to disclose privately held Specific Media's market value, including Francisco's stake. Last year, two venture capital firms paid $10 million for an undisclosed piece of Specific Media.

The Irvine-based startup has come a long way in the eight years since its chief executive, Tim Vanderhook, decided to go into business with his two older brothers, Chris and Russell. At the time, Tim Vanderhook was just 19 years old.

Since then, Specific Media has built one of the Internet's largest ad-targeting systems. The network reaches a combined U.S. audience of about 130 million, spanning hundreds of Web sites, including those of ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, ESPN and Major League Baseball.

Specific Media hopes to become even bigger by using the Francisco Partners cash to make acquisitions as it battles Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Time Warner Inc. (TWX)'s AOL.

Collectively, those four companies have spent more than $10 billion this year to buy other ad networks and services in an effort to make money as marketing campaigns continue to shift to the Internet from other media.

You Decide - Is FaceBook Worth $15 Billion?

So yesterday Microsoft inked a deal with Facebook which i will briefly summarize here. FaceBook is the #2 social media site on the web behind MySpace. Facebook generated 30.6 million unique visitors in September compared to MySpace which had 68.4 million. The 2007 annual revenue for Facebook is estimated at around $150 million (primarily in advertising). Facebook had previously made news last year by turning down a $1 Billion buyout offer from Yahoo, this was a year after MySpace was sold for $580 million (at the time thought to be too high of a premium) to Rupert Murdoch's company (News Corp). Microsoft yesterday however agreed to purchase 1.6% of Facebook for $240 million. . .which gives the company a rough valuation of $15 Billion. As part of the deal Microsoft handles the site's advertising including for its planned global expansion.

For Facebook this gives the company enough resources to continue its growth prior to an initial public offering (23 year old founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to wait two years). For Microsoft the expanded ad role is crucial for its search division. Organic growth in audience for search has slowed and the large inventories and user bases of communities are seen as a key area to increasing search market share.

The ripples of this deal are far reaching. Valuing Facebook at 100x revenue raises the bar significantly. Already stories are starting to pop up in national media about the VC money that is filling Silicon Valley start-ups again. A change in political climate with the upcoming elections could fuel this growth trend like a throwback to the dotcom days, or it could pop the bubble before it gets going. So I ask this community to chime in. . .do you think this deal was Fair? Foul?. . .or a Steal given where things are headed?

You decide and add your comments below!

You Decide - Is FaceBook Worth $15 Billion?

So yesterday Microsoft inked a deal with Facebook which i will briefly summarize here. FaceBook is the #2 social media site on the web behind MySpace. Facebook generated 30.6 million unique visitors in September compared to MySpace which had 68.4 million. The 2007 annual revenue for Facebook is estimated at around $150 million (primarily in advertising). Facebook had previously made news last year by turning down a $1 Billion buyout offer from Yahoo, this was a year after MySpace was sold for $580 million (at the time thought to be too high of a premium) to Rupert Murdoch's company (News Corp). Microsoft yesterday however agreed to purchase 1.6% of Facebook for $240 million. . .which gives the company a rough valuation of $15 Billion. As part of the deal Microsoft handles the site's advertising including for its planned global expansion.

For Facebook this gives the company enough resources to continue its growth prior to an initial public offering (23 year old founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to wait two years). For Microsoft the expanded ad role is crucial for its search division. Organic growth in audience for search has slowed and the large inventories and user bases of communities are seen as a key area to increasing search market share.

The ripples of this deal are far reaching. Valuing Facebook at 100x revenue raises the bar significantly. Already stories are starting to pop up in national media about the VC money that is filling Silicon Valley start-ups again. A change in political climate with the upcoming elections could fuel this growth trend like a throwback to the dotcom days, or it could pop the bubble before it gets going. So I ask this community to chime in. . .do you think this deal was Fair? Foul?. . .or a Steal given where things are headed?

You decide and add your comments below!

Welcome to our newest members!

I wanted to personally welcome our newest memebers who joined this week:

John DeRolph

Julie Booth

Mike Wittenstein

Alissa Melka Teichroew

Victory Darwin

Several of you have already stareted to participate so thank you those of you who have posted somewhere in the group. . . special thanks to Alissa for her interview. If you havent posted yet please take a minute to introduce yourself to the group with a short post! Welcome! We at the Center for Branding + Design hope you enjoy your time with us!

Christian Bayley

Group Leader - Center for Branding + Design

Updated Digg tag

This tag creates a graphic rather than text link and draws more attention to it in the post. Chnage the CID= # to the number of your current post and the title to your story title. . .dont for get to add the a > tags to the start and end. . .and add an < to the beginning of the img tag below. . .if there are problems email me and it is easier to email the complete code because posting it here turns it to html. . .

href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=www.corespeed.com/community/content.php?cid=804&title=An Interview with Alissia Melka-Teichroew">img alt="Digg this article!" src="http://www.digg.com/img/badges/180x35-digg-button.gif" /> alt="Digg this article!"

-christian bayley

www.olivestudio.com

Countdown to Beijing - 302 days

This is the first post to cover that most majestic of sporting events: dah dahhhhh dah dahhhh dah dah dah The Olympics. We are officially just about 300 days away from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The Olympics are a prime topic for CBD discussion as it is a global showcase that combines the art of business and the science of design in truly spectacular fashion. These coming Olympics are especially pivotal from a business standpoint. The past decade has seen a slow emergence of India and China becoming economic superpowers. American businesses have slowly tried to respond to the swelling middle classes in these countries by creating business divisions in these markets. Politically with China this has been difficult, but with every year China has been more and more accepting of different arrangements, and as they continue to prosper this should continue to be the case. This Olympics do a degree is the culmination business-wise of the work of the last ten years. The Olympics will be a global stage not only of athletic achievements, but every significant company with deep ties to China now will use it as a stage to trumpet their work in securing these partnerships as well. Over the next 300 days the huge PR and creative engines of these companies will be working overtime to herald this to the media and the public providing what we hope is a great discussion here at the CBD.

Please I encourage all of you. . .show us your best examples of Olympic partnerships, creative, announcements. . .anything that ties business and design together around these games. On our end one of our senior designers has served on two Olympic design committees and teaches a course on Olympic Branding . . .and we will be ourselves consulting with 2010 Olympic sponsers for the Vancouver Winter Olympics (near our Portland offices). We hope to add our perspectives to this conversation but please everyone contribute as we count this down together.

Christian Bayley

Managing Partner - Olive Studio

www.olivestudio.com

Submit this post to DiggIt!

Submit this post to Del.icio.us

Getting picked up by technorati

Matt,

i am having a hard time getting our group picked up by technorati through the claim process/ping process there. Could you try it out on your end and troubleshoot it? Their spider cant access the group id page. . .

-christian

Center for Branding + Design - Now on Technorati

For everyone in the blogsphere, the Center for Branding + Design is now on Technorati. We are proud to be indexed on one of the worlds most popular Blog portals, and continue to build this community to make it a powerful force for discussing the intersection of business and design.

Technorati Profile

Christian Bayley

Managing Partner - Olive Studio

www.olivestudio.com

How to get your posts Dugg!

I have been including this as standard practice for my group and it has brought more outsiders in to the community. If you want to be able to add these links here is the code to cut and paste to the end of a story: (you need to add the " tags" to the start and the end of the code to make it actual html code rather than text as i have it here)

DIGG: "href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=3&url=www.corespeed.com/community/content.php?cid=629;&title=Dividends from Design: Creating Real Business Value;">Submit this post to DiggIt!"

Del.icio.us: "href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=www.corespeed.com/community/content.php?cid=629;&title=Dividends from Design: Creating Real Business Value;">Submit this post to Del.icio.us"

. . . Just change the title to what ever your article title is and change the cid=629 to the actual page number of your post. . .for each of the above

Let me know how it works for you !

Christian Bayley

Managing Partner - Olive Studio

www.olivestudio.com