eBay selling 65% of Skype

The big news this week for me was the sale of 65% of the Skype shares by eBay. Good news for Skype I think - it will take some pressure off that comes with being part of a listed company. And the investors that have bought the 65% seem to be a really great group of people with a lot of experience, knowledge and vision to support Skype's growth.

It's a mixed end for eBay; I think they were under so much pressure from the general analyst and media mood on the skype acquisition which only a sale could solve. On the other hand they say goodbye to one of their growth engines. I feel it's smart that they have kept the 35% and will make a very nice gain on that when they sell that in a couple of years.

There was a lot of blogging coverage - I felt the following two were interesting enough to mention; Michael Arrington's post after the sale was confirmed and the New York times analysis by Joe Nocera which I found interesting.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/01/hey-ebay-actually-did-ok-with-skype/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/technology/companies/05nocera.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Takeover Season

I know - this is what I get if I don't blog for a long time....

SO MANY TAKEOVERS TO REPORT!!!

I've been positively surprised by the number of takeovers/acquisitions over the last months and will try to give a overview of some of them and their potential consequences:

Display advertising - Market upheaval

Wow - this must be the most explosive one. Google buys Doubleclick for 3.1 billion dollars , Yahoo buys Rightmedia, WPP buys 24/7 Real media and the in a move that I can only explain as "drive by fear of losing out" MSN buys Aquantive for a whopping 6 billion dollars!!!
That's a total of 10.4 billion dollars spend on display ad firms. It seems there is quite a consensus that display ads will pay off big time in the (near) future. Maybe seeing the success of systems like adwords and Yahoo's panama the display ad market will now move into "intelligent" bannering and get systems that are both smart in their targeting (micro-niche targeting, behavioral targeting etc) as well as that they will have smart payment systems (auction/bid system, perhaps even combined with pay for performance modules).

The only player left standing alone is Valueclick, the ad company that also owns affiliate system Commission Junction, tracking software provider (my favorite) Mediaplex and some other platforms. Who is out there to buy this one - eBay? AOL? IAC? Another "offline player"?


Web 2.0 - acquisitions continue

The most active sphere of little acuisitions is the web 2.0 sphere. Here we've also seen some interesting acquisitions

eBay has bought Stumbleupon. The acquisition rumors came already early and I'm surprised my former company wasn't able to keep the information inside - something they are usually good at. eBay also bought a turkish auction site.

Google has bought feedburner. Good acquisition I think. I also found this site with an overview of Google's "acquisition scorecard". Google has been also active in the geo-space -e.g. with the acquisition of Panoramio

And one I also wanted to mention; CBS has bought Last.fm