D-on-Net

Facebook gets $550M valuation

Marketwatch's Bambi Francisco has reported Facebook received a $550M post-money valuation after raising $25M in its latest round of financing from Greylock ventures.  My intial reaction was WOW!  However, the market sets the price and considering Facebook has been a highly courted company, who am I to dispute the valuation.  After all, Bambi is right, when digging through the numbers it looks like NewsCorp paied bottom dollar for MySpace. 

Facebook reportedly has 7M registered users, which to put the $550M valuation in perspective equates to approximately $78 per registered users.  MySpace was acquired for $580M and had 18.5M registered users equating to approximately $31 per registered user.  Facebook reportedly turned down a $750M offer from Viacom, which we will assume Facebook had 7M registered users during the time of the offer equating to $107 per registered user or approximately 3x the price paid per registered user for what NewsCorp paid to acquire MySpace. 

A fond farewell to Arrested Development

Tim Goodman, from the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that Fox's hit t.v. show, Arrested Development, is officially finished.  I decided to write about this, not only because I can honestly say Arrested Development was one of the best t.v. shows I have ever witnessed, but because I thought it was possible this show could have become the first t.v. show (with any kind of fan following) to be aired solely over the web.  I knew this wasn't going to happen after hearing rumors Showtime wanted to snatch it up.  However, it appears that deal is officially dead.  With the show's creator officially throwing in the towel it doesn't appear their will be an opportunity for the show to be the next pioneer of the web.  The cancellation of Arrested Development isn't as much sad as it is tragic.  No more Carl Weathers cameo appearances and no more Tobias "the never nude."  No more G.O.B. doing magic (with more passion in his pinky than David Blaine's entire body) to the song "Final Countdown."  I hope t.v. execs everywhere realize this should be THE case study for how to ruin a hit t.v. series by confusing the hell out of its audience, and I am not talking about the storylines.  I swear after season one they never informed the audience when season two was starting and then they kept changing the time and day the show would be aired.  It got to the point to where I gave up and just waited for the season two DVDs to come out and will do the same with season three.  This was a golden opportunity for Yahoo! (we know they haven't made the best bet with original content) or AOL (talk about a way to launch In2TV) to take a chance to put it on the web, and support it with ads while making it easily accessible.  Honestly, Fox had the golden-ticket, but instead decided to pull an M.C. Hammer and BLOW ALL OF IT.  How do you have an Emmy award winning show canceled after only three simultaneously shortened seasons?  Unbelieveable!