WordPress Playing With Ads

By Mark Evans in Blog Services, Main Page No Comments

Since WordPress burst onto the blog publishing scene, it has been a free service but this status may be poised to change. The company, which took some angel financing, earlier this year is experimenting with “contextual adsense” advertising. Here's Matt Mullenweg's explanation:

“Depending on how it goes, it could enable you guys to put your own ads on the site, or some sort of share. We don't know yet. The main is that if ads aren't going to be worth it on the site, we'd rather not have them at all for free users (Yours or ours).”

In many ways, WordPress adopting some kind of advertising platform is no surprise. With the service growing and investors now on board, WordPress needs to evolve from a cool public service to a revenue-generating business. Mullenweg has talked about his company, Automattic, selling value-added services to WordPress users but that could be a challenge given WordPress users are used to paying nothing. So, advertising seems like a natural way to generate revenue given the advertising market's growth and WordPress's popularity. If Mullenweg can convince WordPress users (like me) that the introduction of advertising will be a win-win scenario, he may not have much resistence.

It's Bubble Time, Baby

By Mark Evans in Main Page 1 Comment

Well, it's now official: we're in the midst of dot-com boom 2.0 so get ready for another wild ride. The market finally turned the corner when YouTube CEO Chad Hurley was asked about an IPO by MarketWatch's Bambi Francisco. His response: “If we have an opportunity to go public in the future, that would be very exciting for us”
   I have no doubt that if YouTube went public today, investors would be chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action. The sky's limit if you're serving up 100 million videos a day, right? While Hurley's answer to the IPO question was reasonable, the fact he was asked the question even though YouTube has little revenue and a yet to be determined business model (sponsorships, banner ads, subscriptions?) makes it clear the Web 2.0 environment is getting frothy. It's not unlike the dot-com boom 1.0 when companies with lots of eyeballs and lots of red ink did IPOs.
  What has keep the market today relative even-keeled is most of the excitement has been focused on new, cool services and the occasional deal by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Other than Vonage, IPOs have few and far between, which has kept enthusiastic retail investors from jumping into the fray and getting burnt. As for YouTube's potential IPO, it's highly unlikely the company will ever go that route. Why go through the hassle of an offering and the scrutiny that goes along with filing quarterly results when you can attract a nice, clean acquisition for $1-billion or so?

Surprise, Surprise: Canadian Telecom Market Grows

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis, Main Page No Comments

Amid the doom and gloom of the telecom landscape, the CRTC issued a report yesterday Canada's telecom market grew 3.5% to C$34.5-billion last year while operating profits rose a healthy 8% to C$12.4-billion. That's that bad considering competition, particularly, within the enterprise market, is brutal. Most of growth came from the high-speed Internet and wireless markets where prices hikes can be passed along to consumers without too much of a hassle. Rogers, for example, is apparently going to introduce a $5 a month increase for its Extreme high-speed service soon, which would generate another $60 million a year in revenue.

As the Rocketboom Turns

By Mark Evans in Main Page, Video, Web 2.0 No Comments

In the latest installment of the ongoing Rocketboom soap opera, the site is being upgraded and a new version will be unveiled July 31 with a “consistent format, timely news stories of Internet culture (editor's note: what's that?) and many new features along with additional content on a regular basis.” Sounds like a case of out with the old and in with the new.

Convedia Snapped Up for $105M

By Mark Evans in M&A, Main Page, Telecom Equipment Makers 2 Comments

Boy, the folks south of the border sure like our tech companies. This time around it's Burnaby, B.C.-based Convedia Inc., which has been acquired by RadiSys Corp. for US$105-million. It's a sweet return for Convedia's investors, which includes Ventures West, Mayfield Ventures and Terry Matthews' Wesley Clover. Convedia makes media servers for telecom carriers and enterprise customers that want to offer VoIP and IMS services. Convedia, which had has won a ton of industry awards recently, was on a revenue run-rate of $20-million based on its second-quarter results. The RadiSys press release can be found here.

VoIP Revenue Booming

By Mark Evans in Main Page, VOIP Services, Competition No Comments

Infonetics expectsVoIP revenue is poised to explode over the next three years to become a $120-billion business. In North America, it forecasts revenue to climb to $13.3-billion by 2009 from $2.6-billion in 2005, while sales in Europe and Asia will reach $12.7-billion and $12.9-billion respectively. The number of VoIP subscribers will double this year to 47 million. In North America, Vonage's market share has dropped to 27% from 34%.

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