Vonage: More IPO Pain

By Mark Evans in VOIP Services, Competition/Vonage 1 Comment

The after-math of Vonage's IPO has taken a new and strange twist amid a report in the New York Times that Vonage is willing to reimburse underwriters who take a financial hit if Vonage customers refuse to pay for shares allocated to them. While a deal is supposed to be a deal, some of the 10,000 Vonage customers who enthusiastically bought into the IPO can't be happy that Vonage shares have tumbled more than 25% from their issue price of $17 a share. I guess it's a nice, low-cost goodwill gesture by Vonage to cover the costs of the brokerage firms that could be left holding the bag if investors balk at coughing up for their shares but it demonstrates just how badly the IPO came off – as well as putting the spotlight on who actually invested in the IPO and why. Can anyone explain to me why Vonage was able to raise more than $500-million despite the fact its balance sheet is awash in red ink and it competes in a competitive market with low barriers to entry? For more insight, check out Michael Urlocker, Silicon Valley This Morning and IP Democracy.

Update:  Vonage now claims it does not plan to buy back shares allocated to customers who want to renege on their stock purchases following the stock's tumble over the past week. In a statement, Vonage said its 10,000 customers who bought shares are "obligated to purchase their share allocation from the underwriters".

Blogosphere Navel-Gazing

By Mark Evans in Main Page, Web 2.0 1 Comment

There's enough comment about Tim O'Reilly's decision to trademark "Web 2.0" (his response to the controversial issue is here) but the hailstorm of criticism it generated demonstrates how the blogosphere loves to chatter about itself among itself – something one could describe as cyber-navelgazing. The amount of time and energy devoted to whether O'Reilly has the right – or was right – in making a claim onWeb 2.0 (which he didn't invent) has been astounding but perhaps no one should be surprised by it. The blogosphere (and I'm a flag-waving member) loves nothing better to talk about what about people within the blogosphere are talking about to the point where it becomes a vicious circle. Is this a bad thing? No, because it demonstrates how enthusiastic and engaged people are about what's happening. But the O'Reilly firestorm does put the spotlight on one of the blogosphere's annoying habits that many of us who sit very close to the "fire" (or as my friend, Stuart MacDonald says, those us so close to trees we have bark marks), are often blissfully unaware about.

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Online Ads: Up, Up and Away

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Main Page 2 Comments

It looks like the advertising community has not only embraced the Internet but giving it a great, big bear-hug as online advertising in the first-quarter jumped 38% to $3.9-billion from a year-earlier, and 6% from the fourth-quarter, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PWC. In a classic case of understatement, PWC's Peter Petrusky said “The Internet continues to shape the media landscape as more advertising dollars are going online. It is abundantly clear that marketers are seeing a compelling opportunity to leverage the Internet as a powerful medium that drives both branding and sales results.” While paid-search continues to account for most online ad spending (and lines the coffers of Google), video is gathering a growing momentum as advertisers look to combine the branding power of television and the measure-ability of the Web. Before anyone gets too excited about online advertising, it should be noted it only accounts for about 5% of total spending. Still, the market is growing and it's having a huge impact on the business models of newspapers, television broadcasters and radio stations. My industry – newspapers – need to jump hard on the online advertising bandwagon by providing clients with opportunity to place advertisers around relevant content. And the sooner newspapers forget about trying to sell online subscriptions, the better because Google News killed that business model a long time ago. The Guardian has a story about how online advertising in the U.K. will surpass newspaper advertising by the end of 2006. Wow!

The "Q" is Cool

By Mark Evans in Main Page, Uncategorized, Wireless/Research in Motion 2 Comments

Kevin Restivo, my editor, Ian Karleff, and I just got a sneak-peek at the Motorola "Q", which will be available in the U.S. this week through Verizon, and, hopefully, for sale in Canada within the next few weeks. In a word, it's extremely cool. Okay, that's two words but the "Q" is the closest thing to the all-in-one device that I've seen. The quality of the screen for video is impressive, the MP3 player sounds great, the Web browser is real a Web browser (as opposed to the Blackberry's continued so-so efforts), and it's super-thin. One of the few downsides is the "Q" has pull e-mail, which means you have to fetch e-mail rather than having it automatically delivered but that's not a deal breaker. All in all, the "Q" has few negatives so I expect it will resonate with many consumers who have found the Blackberry too expensive, too geeky or unnecessary. Whether the "Q" can meet Motorola's aggressive sales targets (750,000 units in the first 90 days, 1.5 million in the next 90 days and three million in the three months after that) depends on how it is priced by carriers,  the cost of data plans and whether any bugs emerge such as inferior telephone service/quality. So will the "Q" be the next Blackberry-killer? I doubt it because there will be power users that want the reliability of the Blackberry's mobile e-mail and have no need for the frills of the "Q". But I do think the "Q" will do very well because it appears to be very user-friendly – kind of like a Blackberry for the rest of us. For an extensive review on the "Q", check out Geek.com. My column in the National Post about the "Q" can be found here. Update: Here's the Verizon ad for the "Q".

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Our Weekly Podcast: Vonage, HUM, eBay-Microsoft

By Mark Evans in Main Page, Podcasting 1 Comment

We're a bit late with this week's podcast after experiencing some technical issues. We tried to do it using Skype and Pamela but the sound quality was terrible, which might have had to do with the fact I was on a wireless network. This week, Kevin and I took a look at Vonage, whose IPO bombed when it started trading; the strange takeover of Hummingbird Ltd; and the speculated mega-deal between Microsoft and eBay.
Update: I was recently interviewed by Stephen Hayward about all kinds of things tech. His podcast can be found here.

Mac Woes

By Mark Evans in Uncategorized 9 Comments

I'm trying out a beautiful, new MacBook (black) – thin, lightweight, nice screen. It's frustrating, however, that I can't use many of my favourites applications such as FeedDemon, Google Talk and Roboform.

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