Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

Michael Arrington is bitter regarding Yahoo's recent announcement of "Inbox 2.0", their attempt to wrap social features around the Yahoo email platform.

Arrington writes: "It makes me sad because it is absurd for Yahoo to keep launching new social networking products, almost monthly, without what appears to be any sort of high level strategic vision.

A few months ago it was Mash, followed by a quiet closure of Yahoo 360. Earlier this month they let loose a new college/alumni network experiment called Kickstart.

And now Inbox 2.0, but without any statement about integration with Mash or any other Yahoo properties. And, how does their recent acquisition of Zimbra fit into Inbox 2.0?"

To me it's pretty obvious: The social-networking phenomenon is, to some extent, about luck. Sure, functionality plays a role. And the tone matters. But ultimately, some social-networks get big quickly because they hit the right early users, the ones with large enough personal networks to push the service out quickly. Then the magic of viral marketing takes over and growth accelerates.

The cost of building new social networks is low. Ning and other basically let you do it for free. If you want to own your platform, you can build one for less than $100k.

If you're Yahoo, and you keep seeing social platforms launch and grow large quickly (at your expense), you have to start to wonder if you ought to just get a bunch of small teams working on launching home-grown networks. Sure, many will fail, but if even one succeeds, you're guaranteed to make all of the money you invest back.

Labels: social-networking, Techcrunch, Yahoo

We've got a classic internet skirmish developing between Michael Arrington of Techcrunch and Henry Blodget of Alleyinsider regarding this post, in which Blodget discusses how Google might get to $2,000 per share. Arrington responded with this holier-than-thou diatribe.

Arrington's argument is that Blodget, a disgraced former securities analyst, is once again pumping up a stock in an inappropriate way. Arrington clearly doesn't read Blodget that often or that carefully. That he doesn't read Blodget often is demonstrated in this post, this post, and this post, among others. Blodget has repeatedly called Google's stock expensive, most recently on June 22nd of this year, when Google was trading at $525.

That Arrington hasn't read Blodget's $2,000 post carefully is blatantly obvious, since Blodget wrote:

"Is this guaranteed? Of course not. It's a thought exercise. Google could peak today and head for zero tomorrow and leave everyone who ever considered buying it at $600 wondering what on earth they were smoking. (And if it does go to zero, don't come whining to us)."

It's true that Blodget has a less-than-stellar record in this area, but Arrington's clearly over-playing his hand.

Labels: Arrington, Blodget, Techcrunch