February 7th, 2008
Bebo buyout rumor; Flock friends MySpace; Wikinvest and Dealipedia
The social web weekly: a quick-fire roundup of some of the news, announcements and conversations that have occurred throughout the week…
- Rumor: Google or MySpace to buy Bebo? The iPhone is real, Gphone turned into Android, and Microsoft is trying to takeover Yahoo — so it must be time for the next major rumor: Is Google About to Buy Bebo For $1 Billion To $1.5 Billion? Or Will it Be MySpace? asks TechCrunch. Kara Swisher shoots down the rumor, suggesting that bloggers need to do their fact checking first. Bebo is seeking investors for a next round of funding, and that has involved talks with both Google and News Corp. Additionally, “there has been some interest expressed by some potential investors–namely, Yahoo and Microsoft–about possibly buying the whole social networking company.” However, with both companies a little preoccupied with their own buyout agenda, a Bebo acquisition is very much off the cards for now. My take: somebody should and will snap up Bebo before the year’s out.
- Flock to add MySpace support. Thanks to the newly announced MySpace Developer Platform, social web browser Flock is finally able to support MySpace. From the press release: “Building on the MySpace Developer Platform, Flock will allow users to surf the Web with their MySpace friends constantly available from within the Flock browser.” Unsurprisingly, MySpace-support has been Flock’s most requested feature, and should work much like the current Facebook and Twitter functionality.
- Wikinvest and Dealipedia. Two new commercial Wikis were brought to my attention this week, both of which provide information for investors. First up is Wikinvest, a site that is attempting to crowdsource market information for potential investors. Although, as Mathew Ingram points out, an open Wiki approach to investment tips and info kind of defeats the point: “If investing consists of finding little-known metrics or tools or insights that you can use to spot trends or problem areas, how does it help you to have — or contribute to — a kind of encyclopedia that keeps track of all that kind of info? In other words, wouldn’t it make more sense to keep that kind of thing to yourself, rather than sharing it? If so, then you have to wonder who is going to be doing all the work of submitting stuff to Wikinvest.” Dealipedia, founded by Michael Robertson (of MP3.com fame) “aims to become a hub of information about mergers, investments, acquisitions, and other business deals by encouraging the people in on the deals to upload information to its public wiki”, reports Wired. Robertson hopes Dealipedia will be able to challenge the likes of Dow Jones by opening up this information and making it free (with the help of users of the site) a la Wikipedia.
Steve O'Hear is a London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, focussing on the Internet and all aspects of digital technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
