It's Only When the Tide Goes Out that You Learn Who's Been Swimming Naked

Yahoo! has fired Carol Bartz and now is for sale. After her dismissal the stock went up 5%, even without knowing the name of the new CEO, even without having a new buyer for the company. Strange situation chez Yahoo!, a company that suprises me every quarter with their impressive results in number of visitors, page views and online advertising inventory. Yahoo! is an online media company like no other: they generated great internet content mixed with fantastic online services. What really happened chez Yahoo! to let all the assets they have built over two decades crumble? Is there none in the world able to be the CEO of Yahoo! and instill a new mission and new core values?

Facebook has published their first quarter 2011 results: USD 1.6 billion in revenues and USD 500 million in net income. I have to say that I am impressed with their profit margin around 50%, but when I think hard about Facebook and what they have achieved in terms of internet audience, I have to conclude that something doesn't work with their advertising technology. With a trillion pages a month you should be able to generate USD 10 billion a year in advertising at USD 10.00 eCPM. Finding the right balance between user experience and advertising placement is a delicate equation that all internet media publishers have to battle with. But I suspect that the name of the game chez Facebook and why they didn't get more revenues is because their advertisers are not able to produce good campaign results in terms of ROI. Facebook advertising platform is still expensive in terms of ROI. Google is making USD 24 billion a year with their advertising platform.

Steve Jobs went home. Apple has to face how to continue to impress their audience by delivering amazing products and unforgettable user experience. But Apple is not Disney. And when The Captain leaves the ship in a technology company, they are relying on the magic of their products in the new management team and not on their products by themselves. Technology markets evolve fast and it is really hard to be always on top. Apple has an incredible amount of cash to continue to compete at their very best level, even if their lose their magic. I would like to see how they continue to integrate their mobile advertising platform into their devices and how they will market it. Quattro / iAd was a very important bet for Apple and until now their results are not clear.

Groupon finally admitted that they are suffering huge loses. The bubble burst and the IPO prospects are over. The key issue right now is to understand if off-line merchants are happy with Groupon services. Is this new advertising platform profitable for every single off-line merchant they have? Or in the end, are they only profitable to a small percentage? That is the big question to answer in order to understand what Groupon results will be in the following years and thus, what their valuation would be. The funniest thing is that with another economic and financial climate, no one would even ask if their IPO price where in line with their real valuation. It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked, or like we say in spanish: "a perro flaco, todo son pulgas".

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