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AT&T Pushes into Deals

May 27th, 2011 | Posted by admin in Analysis | Business strategy | News | Strategy - (0 Comments)

With the success of Groupon.com and LivingSocial.com plus a flurry of start ups like TryItLocal.com, it was only a matter of time. ATT, the former Bell South and Southwestern Bell entities, are emulating the pre Judge Green Ma Bell.

What’s this mean? AT&T wants a chunk of every hot market opportunity, and that includes online deals, advertising, and related businesses.

AT&T is now breaking in to the online coupon market according to Bloomberg’s article ” AT&T takes on Groupon with $10 Promotion for daily deal site.” They are unveiling their plans to open a “Grouponesque” type of website for consumers through it’s subsidiary yellowpages.com.

Daily deals are the latest consumer shopping trend and have taken off in the wake of the slowing economy. Why pay full price when you can pay one half or one third of the full price?

ATT will have to compete with veterans like Groupon, Facebook, and the New York Times.as well as many local newspapers with online advertising services. AT&T believes it can be competitive by using larger discounts and making their site truly mobile by letting consumers utilize it via mobile devices like their cell phones.

Consulting firms anticipate that sales at restaurants, clothing stores and hair and nail salons will reach $6.1 billion by 2015 making the internet discount business potentially, extremely lucrative.

“Market leader Groupon, based in Chicago, is planning an initial public offering later this year that would value the company at between $15 billion and $25 billion, two people familiar with the plans said last month.”

I’m not entirely sure what my colleagues believe but if ATT can truly capitalize on their “no search” couponing they will have one up on their competitors and could potentially have a winner. It doesn’t hurt that they have more than 90 million users to recruit from.

We checked with our financial investment observer Michael Onghai. He told us,

“Deal sites are hot. Maybe too hot. Is it time to look at more traditional marketing start ups or small successful traditional advertising service firms. Not every business is going to go digital.”

Edward Stephens, May 27, 2011

Divining The Future of Open Source Software

May 26th, 2011 | Posted by admin in Expert | Internet economy | Investment strategy | Technology - (0 Comments)

While we remain skeptical of surveys and polls, they can often provide an investor with a firm understanding of where an industry’s mindset is. The consumer’s mind is more difficult to discern, depending on their level of understanding of the product or service, among other variables. No where is that more evident than in the recent trends revolving around the coupling of open source software and cloud computing.

An article appearing on the Network Computing site examines in some detail the shifts in the habits and attitudes of both customer and vendors toward OSS . “Half of Enterprise Software Will Be Open Source Within Five Years” cites a recent survey concerning the direction open source use is taking to foster discussion.
Open source as you know refers to software whose code is available at no cost to the user. Analysis of census results have given way to speculation on the advancement of OSS and the level of public acceptance. In the years since its debut, OSS has been met with some apprehension from consumers. Highlighted in the article are some of the concerns associated with the technology, namely proprietary dependency. Considering some of the rhetoric floating about regarding the current administration’s relationship with the business community, we found this paragraph particularly interesting:

“Open source is now being embraced in both the public and private sectors and a tipping point for open source acceptance in the public sector came in 2009 when The White House said it would begin using open source, Skok said. The Web site www.whitehouse.gov is built on Drupal, the open source project for content management systems. Acquia, a commercial Drupal-based software company, is funded by North Bridge.”

Consider too the widening view that cloud services are an obvious choice when employing OSS. In the posting “Why The Cloud Can’t Be Separated From Open Source” at InfoWorld, the author builds a case for this pairing. At its conclusion he drives the point home:

“Open source vendors have endured trials and tribulations over the past few years, with many companies that thought they could sustain a business selling support and giving away software fading away or getting acquired. For some, the cloud has provided a new way to monetize and survive through subscription revenue. More importantly, the cloud takes the open source tradition of collaboration to the next level, as open source contributors meet the new technical and business challenges presented by the cloud.”

Of course the cloud has its problems from time to time, like most developing technologies, as Amazon’s recent issues illustrate. Yet from an investment standpoint, these ripples and their effects should be expected. With research into the respective areas one intends to invest and the consultation of seasoned advisors, weathering these storms should prove easy. Investment Managers like Michael Onghai specialize in technology oriented opportunities.

Micheal Cory   May 26, 2011

Japanese investment: premature or highly intuitive?

May 26th, 2011 | Posted by admin in Analysis | Business strategy | Investment strategy | Strategy - (0 Comments)

According to Eric Watkins of the Oil and Gas Journal, Japan is investing several billion yen in shuttle tankers and the shipping of oil. In his article “Watching the world: Japan invests in tankers” Watkins asserts that Nippon Yusen one of the leading shipping companies in Japan is going to invest more than 50billion yen (for those of us who can’t convert that in our heads…that’s more than $600 million US dollars)  in the oil tankers that are used off of Brazil in the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea.

Nippon Yussen is hoping that an initial investment will give a boost to pretax profits over the next three to five years.

“Contract fees for LNG carriers have been rising because of the growing emergency demand following Japan’s nuclear crisis, along with Qatar’s raising of its LNG supply capacity. The rate for LNG carriers is now more than $80,000/day, up from $50,000/day earlier this year.”

According to investment expert Michael Onghai, good investments respond to the current market conditions. Singapore seems to think so too, they too have been leaning towards more investment in shipping since the CEO of Neptune Orient Lines will be stepping down at the end of the year.

With Japan’s recent nuclear problems following a catostrophic natural disaster, investments in oil tankers may not be such a bad idea. I’m no expert but I think he is probably right. There is a demand that doesn’t seem to be slowing, it’s only smart to invest where there is a demand, especially in the natural resources.

Leslie Radcliff   May 26, 2011

Surviving The Next Tech Rush

May 25th, 2011 | Posted by admin in Internet economy | Investment strategy | Investor | News | Technology - (0 Comments)

There is no shortage of opinion concerning the new technological boom being felt around the globe. An article appearing  on The International Business Times web site caught our attention. “Another Internet Gold Rush” is itself a commentary on a deeper probe into the potential causes and effects of the subject found in the print edition of the Economist.

It is no secret that investors are queuing up in response to both the recent IPO’s from LinkedIn and Renren, and the promise of actions from giants like Facebook and Twitter. One insider described the current climate as ” … a period of irrational exuberance.” Well said.

Yet does this mean there is no money to be made, especially in the midst of such exciting innovation and the clamour to capitalize on it? The short answer is no. There are of course opportunities, though they may manifest themselves in unlikely forms. Research shows that capital heavy investors favored software manufacturers and customer-centric start-ups in the recent past. The IBTimes post frames it this way:

“… both sides agree that the internet world is being transformed by a number of powerful forces, three of which stand out. First, technological progress has made it much simpler and cheaper to try out myriad bright ideas for online businesses. Second, a new breed of rich investors has been keen to back those ideas. And, third, this boom is much more global than the last one; Chinese internet firms are causing as much excitement as American ones.”

With the focus on gains, long and short term and the potential climate of the immediate future, look for what professionals refer to as “adjacent opportunities”. Michael Onghai is an Investment Manager with experience in the technological markets. Seeking the guidance of knowledgeable individuals should be part of any investment strategy.

Micheal Cory   May 25, 2011

Web marketing for the future

May 25th, 2011 | Posted by admin in Business strategy | Internet economy | News | Social media | Technology - (0 Comments)

The Atlanta based marketing company Web Marketing Atlanta, is looking to help business owners physically see the progress they are making via the internet. For free. No strings attached and not catch 22.

In the PRWeb article “Atlanta online marketing company offers new unique diagnostic tool for businesses who want to market on the internet” (gulp) Web Marketing Atlanta proves that analytics are not enough and they lay out their system for ranking business marketing models from zero to 100.

“We see many business owners start out at a 22, which is considered fair, and increase up to 80 over time. This is a huge business booster. Local lead generation is vital to the success of a business,” says Cason.

Among the sever services offered WMA helps business market on social networking sites. Though how much more they can offer is unclear because it seems rather silly for you to pay someone to show you how well your social networking campaign is going when you can see that for yourself via Facbook and Twitter’s data analysis graphs.

Another service that WMA offers is competition evaluation, by evaluationg the competition WMA is able to point out flaws in a businesses marketing plan and help them to create a more customized approach.

Charity Cason, co-owner of WMA, points out that many owners focus too much on Google and other search engine rankings when they really should narrow their focus to a more regional approach first. I agree wholeheartedly with this opinion from Cason, you can’t learn to run before you learn to crawl. While global domination sounds wonderful for any company, it’s not a very reasonable goal especially for small businesses, you have to gain a reputation locally then regionally before you can gain prominance nationally.

While Web Marketing Atlanta sounds like a dream (and it is for those business owners who are not technically savvy) I tend to agree with my coworkers that Thinkweb3.0 is a much more insightful way to learn to manage your marketing.

Leslie Radcliff  May 25, 2011

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