A Fuller View

Well, its another week or so since my last post and April was pretty low month for both the number of posts and the quality from A Fuller View. Lets see if the Arpil drought can bring some May sprouts…

Scanning around the blog-o-sphere here are some posts that I think are worth a read:

• On Screenwrek - Spot Runner just raised more money and this round included money from UK based Dail Mai Group (which is intersting).
• Buzz Machine - his Guardian column from last week. All about an interesting wine guy’s brand and what this means in the world of social media: “Your personal brand is now completely exposed to the world, 24/7. Everyone is media now.”
• AdViking - our sister site posts about the $300M deal for Adify. Wow that’s a lot offly paper.
• On Razorshine some intersting thoughts on Firefox 3 and much needed delicious plugin.
• RWW alot of traffic on myspace US. I wonder how much of that is search driven?

What else is on my mind? Well I need to finally blog about Venice - I have some notes stuck on my mobile Windows device that I can’t seem to easily get off (I am not a fan on Windows Mobile and my Palm Treo at the moment). I am aslo thinkming about the transient nature of instant messenger platform use and churn and what this might mean for socail media. But mainly, I am thinking about how nice it is that summer has arrived in London - at least for the moment.

Microsoft closed its acquisition of enterprise search company FAST last Friday. This deal was originally announced back in January.

This deal - Local Matters + Mobile People - will be of interest to people in the local search and IYP space. The deal had been rumoured for months now and so no surprise to see it finally announced. The combined company should be able to provide a more comprehensive solution to new and existing customers. There are no details on the value of the deal. If anyone has any info on the deal size or wants to speculate please comment… Note: Local Matters are a fairly significant partner with FAST in terms of using the FAST search platform for as a core element of LMI’s solution. It will be interesting to see how this relationship evolves once FAST is part of MSFT.

Here’s the full release from the LMI site:

March 28, 2008

For Immediate Release

Local Matters and mobilePeople Merger Provides Unique Offering to Directory Publishers

Copenhagen/London, NN March, 2008 – Local Matters, Inc., a Denver, Colorado based Media Technology Solutions provider, and mobilePeople a/s, a Copenhagen, Denmark based local mobile search and advertising provider, have entered into a Share Purchase Agreement on March 21, 2008. Under the terms of the transaction, Local Matters will acquire all of the outstanding capital stock of Mobile People in exchange for a combination of cash and Local Matters stock. The combined company would provide directory publishers, media publishers and directory assistance providers with media technology solutions that connect consumers and advertisers across digital channels including the internet, wireless and voice.

There are now more than three billion global mobile users, and local search ranks among the top content categories that consumers utilize on their mobile phones. Publishers are increasingly extending into Internet and mobile to capture users and local advertisers.

Local Matters’ CEO Perry Evans said: “We chose mobilePeople because we believe they have the best technology to create a mobile distribution presence for publishers. Its expertise, its track record and its innovation cycles set them apart from the many other companies in this space. Our aim now is to be the preferred one-stop shop for directory publishers and directory assistance providers for outsourced media technology solutions online, on wireless and on voice.”

The two companies formed a business partnership in 2006 and have several joint initiatives in progress. The closing of the transaction is subject to additional closing conditions and is currently expected to close in the second quarter of 2008.

After almost a year Google has finally closed the DoubleClick deal. SAI has some interesting posts on the deal here (job cuts?) and here (a bold move in display?). I doubt Google will put banners on google.com, but I can see them building out a serious display network to rival Yahoo, MSFT and AOL - they have all the pieces. I’ll be back tomorrow with some more comments… In the meantime here is a DCLK email to exisiting clients:

Dear Valued Client,

As you may have heard, Google closed the acquisition of DoubleClick today..

I wanted to personally share with you our initial plans now that our businesses can join together.

We’re very excited to be able to combine DoubleClick’s industry expertise and market leadership with Google’s technology and resources for serving our publisher clients. The combined company will offer more tools for publishers to enhance productivity and create additional revenue opportunities.

We wanted to immediately address some of the specific implications of the acquisition, so we have a few FAQs below to give you more insight into our partnership with Google and plans for the future. For now, the offerings and services will not change and you will still work with the same great DoubleClick team. As decisions about business integration and products are made we will not only keep you informed on the progress, but also solicit your feedback. Our top priority is to continue to provide you with the highest level of service.

We hope to speak with you soon regarding any questions or concerns you may have and we look forward to working with you during this exciting time!

Regards,

David Rosenblatt

1. Will you continue to support my DoubleClick products and services?

DoubleClick has built its business by providing best-in-class service to customers. We are committed to maintaining those service levels as the two companies combine. And we are committed to better addressing your needs as we combine resources and develop enhanced solutions in the future.

2. Does anything change in my ownership of my data?

Data confidentiality remains a DoubleClick and Google priority. We will fully honor our client contracts that govern the use of the data, and have no plans to change the limited use provisions set forth in those contracts.

3. What are your plans going forward?

Ad serving encompasses a set of critical technologies that will get more support and resources after close. The combined company’s goal is to build on DoubleClick’s products and services so that they scale for the future. We are committed to building a true end-to-end solution that gives publishers more efficiency, scalability and profitability. The DoubleClick and Google product teams will work closely over the next few months to build a plan for delivering next generation ad serving.

For AdSense publishers, DART tags will be introduced into the Google content network. After close, Google will begin testing DoubleClick’s ad serving products to pave the way for the acceptance of DFA tags in our content network. The testing will begin on a small scale and expand over the course of the next year. We look forward to sharing more and to working with our publisher partners to maximize the potential of the network.

Together, we will create the next generation enterprise-class ad serving and management solution for publishers.

We will work with you to generate higher yields by combining DoubleClick’s and Google’s strengths in inventory management, ad serving, and optimization

Of course there is tons and tons of comment and analysis on the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo deal. I am not going to be able to add anything of value to this debate, instead I will point to a few of the pieces on the subject that I’ve found most enlightening.

• Internal MSFT email on WSJ - nothing surprising but sounds pretty confident on a deal
• Avenue A SVP: Microsoft + Yahoo = Irrelevant - worth a read if you have time
• Microhoo vs. Google: The Battle for Audience and Keystrokes - least we don’t forget about display ads (~30% of on-line ad spend and 2nd to search)
• First Evening at Microsoft’s SAS: Aha! - should MSFT be more like GE, maybe it makes sense

This is a great resource - from mydigimedia.com - that outlines who own who and gives a nice tiddy summary of M&A by the big Internet players - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, IAC and News Corp. There is also a handy PDF version you can down load.

Ok, I was planning to chuck my comments into the Yahoo! debate based on their recent revenue numbers and the unfair (in my opinion) general bashing they have been getting in the press and blogosphere. Well, it looks like MSFT gets to eat YHOO in the end. This is a great deal for both companies and for the Internet industry. We need a strong rival to Google for sure…

MSFT is bidding $45 billion for Yahoo - more details here[CNN] and here [TC] and here (this one on SEL has the full letter from Ballmer to YHOO). I’ll be back with some more thoughts this later today.

TC have come up with a new logo - copied below … I kinda like it :-).

Well, its only the middle of the work week and there has been a lot of interesting stories and posts already. More stuff than I can keep up with. Here are some of the tidbits I think are interesting…

No, Google Won’t Buy the NYT. But Google.Org Could - I like this mini-post form John Battle’s search blog. I completely agree, lets put and keep the best news organizations in a trust. Living in the UK you sort of take it for granted, but I gotta say the BBC rocks and papers like The Irish Times and The Guardian also very cool and not run to make a profit for share holders.

Search Stocks & The Stock Crash: GOOG, YHOO & MSFT - this post is over on SEL. My opinion is all 3 of the majors are solid. I’ve got to think ad dollar$ continue to go into search during a down turn year, but that probably display gets hurt… This means Google could fair a bit better overall but they still have to finish the DoubleClick deal and they are still way over valued. I would sell GOOG short, hold YHOO or buy if it dips under $17 and buy MSFT all the way its cheap :-). Disclaimer: do NOT trust my stock tips. This is just fun.

The parent company of WordPress - Automattic - secures B round funding - this report from the NYT. Great news. I love WordPress! Related to this is a post by Greg Sterling - Harnessing Blogs for Local - this one has got me thinking about new micro-publishing mash-up business ideas… More on that after a few more beers.

Enteprise search provider Endeca closed funding from SAP and Intel - this over on TC. This interesting in light of the MSFT FAST deal and the Sun MySQL deal. Doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but lets see what happens with Endeca. I keep wondering when will someone do a “redhat” version of open source Lucene?

Internet Trumps Print Directories in Britain - this post again fro Mr Sterling based on a neat report from UK based welovelocal. I Love it, lets recycle all those print directories! Save the trees.

Publishers’ vertical search can rival Google, says AOP forum - not sure I agree, but I have to say job well done to my buddy Simon Baptist who gave one of the presentations. My sources tell me he did a great job. Nice one!

This post on the FFWD Blog gives a nice view of the future of Fast Search & Transfer under Microsoft ownership. What I found most interesting is from the FFWD blog post was the continued support of Linux based Fast customers (this is good news for customers with significant investment in both Fast & Linux):

The primary focus of the acquisition is toward bolstering SharePoint’s search capability. While the FAST team will be aligned to SharePoint development, the company will exist as a wholly-owned subsidiary. FAST will continue to service its existing markets, including sales to LINIX shops.

Also, apparently MSFT bought 10.1% of the shares in Fast on the open market:

Two of Fast’s largest owners, Orkla ASA and Hermes Focus Asset Management Europe Ltd., which make up 37% of the outstanding shares, have accepted Microsoft’s bid. Microsoft bought shares of Fast yesterday [=8 Jan 2008] and now holds a 10.1% share of the company. The deal is subject to regulatory approval. Executives at the two companies said they couldn’t discuss details of their plans until that time. The deal, which requires a 90% acceptance rate from shareholders, is expected be completed in the second quarter.

You can see my initial comments on the MSFT FAST deal HERE.

btw - Fast’s big industry conference - which is really a great love fest for Fast customers - is definitely worth attending if it makes sense for your business. Details here on the FFWD site. I am sure there will be a lot of MSFT activity at this event.

No surprise here, that Microsoft is making a bid to buy Fast Search & Transfer (FAST). For the standard overview check out SEL or Marketwatch for more info.

An unnamed source unofficially said:

Organizationally, the plan is that we [FAST] become part of the SharePoint organization within the Microsoft Business Division (Microsoft’s largest division). This means that we will drive Microsoft’s enterprise search initiatives globally, with FAST technology becoming a key part of the Microsoft enterprise search offerings.

FAST is a B2B company and generally seen as the leading enterprise search player, competing with the likes of Autonomy, Endeca and the open source Lucene. I think it is also interesting to note:

• That much of FAST’s customer base are actually B2C players (=audience reach and traffic)
• FAST has made forays into the media space in the past, for example with the launch of FASTMedia last spring - see this piece on ZDNet

I would advise the integration team at MSFT to consider the following:

1. FAST has a large installed base of media and telecoms/mobile customers (many are top tier players, especially in Europe) using FAST’s search technology to power site search, local/IYP search, ecommerce and other search applications (like video, intranet/behind the firewall and various subscription services). TAKE AWAY: integration points for other MSFT products, potential ad network synergy.
2. FAST has a performance/pay-per-click/search advertising (sort of an “ad words in a box”) platform named AdMomentum. TAKE AWAY: another ad product and valuable publisher partnerships to embrace.
3. There is significant general web search expertise in the company (Note: FAST sold All The Web, which was a great search engine, to Overture [now part of Yahoo] back in 2003). TAKE AWAY: R&D talent pool for web search.

I would imagine that some of the FAST media and advertising assets might end up in other parts of the MSFT empire in their on-going battle with GOOG.

Here’s the full official PR blurb from the FAST website:

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) today announced that it will make an offer to acquire Fast Search & Transfer ASA (OSE: “FAST”), a leading provider of enterprise search solutions, through a cash tender offer for 19.00 Norwegian kroner (NOK) per share.

This offer represents a 42 percent premium to the closing share price on Jan. 4, 2008 (the last trading day prior to this announcement), and values the fully diluted equity of FAST at 6.6 billion NOK (or approximately $1.2 billion U.S.). FAST’s board of directors has unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept the offer. In addition, shareholders representing in aggregate 37 percent of the outstanding shares, including FAST’s two largest institutional shareholders, Orkla ASA and Hermes Focus Asset Management Europe, have irrevocably undertaken to accept the offer.The offer will be subject to customary terms and conditions, including receipt of acceptances representing more than 90 percent of FAST shares and voting power on a fully diluted basis, and receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals on terms acceptable to Microsoft. The complete details of the offer, including all terms and conditions, will be contained in the offer document, which is expected to be sent to FAST shareholders during the week of Jan. 14, 2008. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of calendar year 2008.

Goldman Sachs International acts as financial advisor to Microsoft; Merrill Lynch International acts as financial advisor to Fast Search & Transfer.