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Yahoo Keyword: Arbitrage - A Yahoo BiD Coming From Investment Group ? It’s About Damn TimeToday

Mike Arrington has a report that a group of investors are circling Microsoft for money to take over Yahoo. Finally, someone is making a run at Yahoo. The wounded beast is begging for a takeover and what a bargain that would be. I would love to have the cash to take over Yahoo. Yahoo has amazing assets.

This is the easiest arbitrage and the best investment if the group can get the company at the right price. Also a huge win for Microsoft. I am happy to see some life in the technology financial markets. This would be a fun deal to work. Can’t wait to see the debate - obviously I have an opinion with a ‘capital O”.

A group of well known Silicon Valley executives and top investment bankers are putting together a Yahoo takeover deal that would be financed largely from debt supplied by Microsoft, we’ve learned from sources with knowledge of the proposed transaction.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, the investment group would make a takeover bid for Yahoo at a relatively low premium of around 20% to its current price of around $13 per share, valuing the company at just over $20 billion.

Simultaneous to the transaction Yahoo’s search and search marketing business would be sold to Microsoft. Following the transaction the new executive team would take over the top ranks of Yahoo. A key goal of the new team wo

New Venture Capital Model Is Coming? Limited Partner Investors Seeking New AvenuesToday

Is this financial market mess going to put the nail in the venture community? Today’s Venture capital has been struggling for sometime with ony a few small hits and very handful of big returns. The problem is that entrepreneurship is stuck because of venture capital. We need to modernize the venture capital business so entrepreneurs can get busy. I am seeing more early stage creative development then in years past. The entrepreneurial process will never die but it will evolve. These are the pains that we are seeing now with startups. The capital markets are a mess and with no liquidity market today’s venture capital firms are spinning their wheels. The good news is that capital markets are efficient and will work around the bottleneck we are seeing. This NYTimes story is an early indicator that big money will find new homes.

NYTimes has a very interesting story…

Investors in venture capital and private equity funds who want out are discovering that their stakes are worth less than they paid for them.

As returns on venture capital investments sour and investors’ wealth deteriorates, some of these investors — the universities, foundations and pension funds known as limited partners — have been unloading their stakes in the funds. When they decide they can no longer supply the money they had previously committed, they sell

Discovery, Navigation, and Collaboration - Hello Holy Grail - Facebook Is Soaring - They Will Be Huge - Trust MeToday

I am a big believer that Facebook’s massive growth is bigger than most people think. They are pushing a utility that delivers big time value. Over the past year I have been studying the utility of Facebook and can tell you that it’s not about just sharing and throwing sheep - It’s about people in a new paradigm. Facebook has the opportunity to take a very strong value proposition and evolve how users discover and navigate (the core principles of search) BUT more importantly they are in the exchange position of real value - actionable value transfer. Simply put: they broker transactions from finding lost friends, staying in touch with existing friends, making new friends, to finding and buying products and services. They can be a hub of collaboration of all sorts. All of those elements make them poised to make it big time. If they continue to keep their eye on the user experience (utility) ball then they can get there. Their numbers are just too big to be dethroned. The only way Facebook will miss the opportunity is if they screw it up on their own. Facebook as they say is ‘gold plated’.

Here is a post from Facebook’s CEO Founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica.

Clay Shirky Media Business Market - His Forecast for 2009 - Look For The Deeper Meaning Within His WordsToday

I’m a big fan of Clay Shirky and his research. His latest book “Here Comes Everyone” is awesome. He makes some great points that it’s worth posting his forecast here as well from the Guardian. Many of my opinions and analysis of media and social media align with Clay’s. I suggest if you’re interested in Social Media or “media 2.0″ that you follow Clay’s work.

Clay Shirky predicts further gloom for traditional media: “2009 is going to be a bloodbath.” Yet he foresees that a recession may produce greater industry clarity by forcing radical action, which he explains as a boss saying to staff: “‘Bonfire, this is Hail Mary time!’, instead of: ‘This year we made as much money as last year but we’re still restructuring dramatically.’”

Much of the success of Shirky’s recent book, Here Comes Everybody, about internet technologies and the effects of mass democratisation of the web, came from its simplicity and the absence of jargon. “As with the printing press, the loss of professional control will be bad for many of society’s core institutions,” he writes. In conversation he is just as plain-speaking, saying, for example, that “Management has a hard time destroying parts of its business unless the alternative, obvious to everyone, is that there is no choice.” Based in the unlikely environs of NYU’s Inter

Is Intel Crashing and Burning? Q4 Expectations Fell 20%; Well Below Previous GuidanceToday

I love Intel as a company and have been using their products for all of my digital life, but I have to say that I noticed a big change in the company over the past few years - it’s got this sinking feeling. Now Erik Savitz is reporting that Q4 Earnings are not great and below guidance (translation Intel missed their numbers). 2008 has been a bad year for business all around and Intel is no exception.

Intel has been slowly laying off employees and cutting back on almost all expenses especially marketing. We’ll see how much impact Intel has at CES. It would be a shame if Intel continues to sputter because it certainly will leave a crack in the door for AMD and others to get back into the leadership position.

I miss the old Intel. Maybe Andy Grove can come back and give a pep talk to management.