GoogleFace: Google Buys Facebook For $25 Billion
April 1, 2008
In a quickly thrown together press conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that the search engine giant will be acquiring Facebook for $25 billion in cash and stock giving Google a 98.4% stake in the company. Microsoft will retain a 1.6% ownership share thanks to a $240 million investment in October 2007 giving it a valuation of $15 billion at that time.
Now Facebook will be open to OpenSocial and Facebook apps will be used on Google’s Android mobile platform. Now know as GoogleFace, Google’s Facebook will still be run by Mark Zuckerberg after the FCC and Department of Justice approve the deal.
Schmidt said that one of the key reasons Google bought Facebook was due to the many of its key employees defecting to Facebook over the past couple of months. “So now they’re back where they all belong”, said Schmidt. We wonder now if this deal had been in the works for a while now. Did all those Google employees heading to Facebook know about the deal? We think so.
April Fools! via InfoWorld
Forrester Technographic Data Now Accessible
March 23, 2008
Forrester Technographic Data is now available on their website giving marketers some high-end insight into the which social media outlets to target in order to reach their target market more effectively. All the data provided comes from Forrester surveys conducted in the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2007.
200 Page PDF Sketchbook Of TED 2008
March 21, 2008
If you head over to the TED blog, they have a link to a 200 page PDF of sketches and idea maps from all the TED 2008 presenters. Drawn by artists David Sibbet & Kevin Richards, the PDF interprets the presentations in such a way that illustrates new connections not easily seen when just listening to the speakers.
According to Autodesk, the PDF is a compilation of:
“700 spontaneous sketches of the presenters’ ideas using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro software running on Wacom Cintiq tablets and rendered on a Perceptive Pixel multi-touch display. These tools illustrate the power of interactive visualization to present the big picture to foster insight and communicate ideas visually, central principles of design innovation“.
It makes for an interesting visual exploration.
Interesting New Media Links…
March 2, 2008
For some reason, I saved this rather than published it earlier today, but here it is anyways…
Got the Sunday blahs? Here are a few interesting things for you to check out today.
- Learn how to focus on storytelling to succeed in new media
- Take a free course from MIT
- Learn how to write a business plan-from an investor’s perspective
- Play around with some 3D animation software
- Read a free book by Cory Doctorow, creator of Boing Boing
There you go, a good mix of new media to keep you busy until you go back to work tomorrow… or possibly the next day.
