Archive for April, 2008

Meet Sheryl Sandberg.   As Facebook’s chief operating officer, she is in charge of helping the popular Internet startup grow up.  The company is betting that Sandberg will figure out how to build a profitable business from social networking.

Sandberg appears to have the right experience.  As the former vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, she built the operations to support Google’s international strategy, and she ran its lucrative AdWords program. She managed the division that handled sales for nearly all of Google’s online advertisers.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Things have taken an interesting turn in this on-going saga.

Yahoo and AOL in deal talks

Yahoo turns to Google for help

Stay tuned as things are really getting interesting.

Here’s the latest update:

Yahoo hopes for a higher price

Yahoo says ‘No’ to Microsoft, again

Microsoft threatens Yahoo with proxy fight

Proxy fight?  Yahoo can hope for a higher price but doesn’t appear to have negotiating leverage.

In a CNNMoney.com article, MySpace has just formed a joint venture with three of the largest record labels–Universal, Warner, and Sony.  Under the agreement, the companies will split revenue from sales of music downloaded, advertising, concert tickets, merchandise sales, and other activities.

This latest development will no doubt be a formidable competitor to Apple and its dominant position in digital music.  However, it also appears to be an attempt to further bolster its position as a leading social networking destination compared to Facebook and other fast-growing social networking start ups.

MySpace Music will be launched in the coming months; it will be available first in the United States and then other countries later.  Interestingly, the service will also offer music without digital rights management (DRM).