| SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc shares slipped onMonday after some of the five lead underwriters of its initial public offering said the social media firm may not achieve Facebook-like scale and its stock may not rise much higher.In their first research reports since the November IPO, only Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs recommended buying the stock. Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan issued the equivalent of "hold" ratings. One analyst, Justin Post of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, initiated coverage with a sell rating and valued shares at $36 (£22.01), according to theflyonthewall.com. Twitter shares dipped 1.3 percent to $41 on Monday. After an explosive debut on November 7, when shares closed more than 70 percent above the $26 IPO price, Twitter has churned for weeks in the low $40s. At $41, the San Francisco-based company still trades at roughly 20 times estimated 2014 revenues, a multiple that dwarfs that of social media peers like Facebook Inc and LinkedIn Corp at roughly 11 and 17.6 times, respectively. Firms that played a role in the IPO were not allowed to issue recommendations on the stock during a three-week span following the IPO known as the "quie t period." Their projections, published Monday, added little clarity to the debate over a fast-growing but still unprofitable company that has divided opinion on Wall Street. Twitter's IPO was easily the most highly anticipated technology offering since Facebook's in 2012. Some on Wall Street have questioned whether Twitter will ever gain the same kind of vast user base Google Inc and Facebook have relied on to grow their businesses. "The biggest unknown is that TWTR may be a niche product and won't break through to the mainstream, and may never see MAUs up near the 1B+ levels of mega-platforms like GOOG and FB," Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler wrote in reference to the more than one billion users of both Facebook and Google. Sandler, the most bullish of the five analysts who kicked off coverage on Monday, put a $50 price target on the stock. Although Twitter has rapidly revved up its revenue engine in the past year, investors are counting on it to continue delivering significant top-line gains. The company said last month that revenue in the third quarter more than doubled from a year ago to $168.6 million. Goldman Sachs analysts led by Heath Terry saw "substantial opportunity" for growth acceleration even above Twitter's current pace as it expands internationally, thus justifying Goldman's $46 price target. Goldman was the lead underwriter on Twitter's IPO. "While competition for users' time is fierce and Twitter's growth trajectory is unlikely to be linear, we believe these revisions will, over time, justify considerable upside beyond the share current price and valuation," Terry wrote. Eight out of 22 analysts so far issued a hold rating on Twitter, while nine recommended "buy" and 5 "sell," according to Thomson Reuters data. J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth, who valued shares at $40, warned that the stock was priced at a "significant premium" to Facebook and LinkedIn.
He said, however, that the fundamentals of Twitter's business appeared promising. Twitter, which has so far pinned its business model on real-time, brand advertising campaigns that accompany television programs, has yet to tap into smaller businesses that want to buy ads themselves or monetize its popular video-sharing app Vine.
"We look for new initiatives like Twitter Cards and Twitter Amplify to be strong growth drivers," Anmuth said. "We believe there is also strong monetization potential in Twitter's self-serve platform, retargeting, the MoPub mobile ad exchange, and Vine." |
Friday, December 6, 2013
Andy Bohuslavizki- Twitter IPO Still Has Huge Questions Looming
Andy Bohuslavizki- Dec. 6. 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Andy Bohuslavizki- Bitcoin
Andy Bohuslavizki-Bitcoin (sign: 
; code: BTC) is a cryptocurrency where the creation and transfer of bitcoins is based on an open-source cryptographic protocol that is independent of any central authority. Bitcoins can be transferred through a computer or smartphone without an intermediate financial institution.[7] The concept was introduced in a 2008 paper by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, who called it a peer-to-peer, electronic cash system.[1][8][9]
The processing of Bitcoin transactions is secured by servers called bitcoin miners. These servers communicate over an internet-based network and confirm transactions by adding them to a ledger which is updated and archived periodically using peer-to-peer filesharing technology.[2] In addition to archiving transactions, each new ledger update creates some newly minted bitcoins. The number of new bitcoins created in each update is halved every 4 years until the year 2140 when this number will round down to zero. At that time no more bitcoins will be added into circulation and the total number of bitcoins will have reached a maximum of 21 million bitcoins.[1][10] To accommodate this limit, each bitcoin is subdivided down to eight decimal places; forming 100 million smaller units called satoshis per bitcoin.[4]
Bitcoin is accepted in trade by merchants and individuals in many parts of the world. Like other currencies, illicit drug and gambling transactions constitute some of its commercial usage.[11][12][13][14] Although the bitcoin is promoted as a digital currency, many commentators have criticized the bitcoin's volatile exchange rate, relatively inflexible supply, and minimal use in trade
; code: BTC) is a cryptocurrency where the creation and transfer of bitcoins is based on an open-source cryptographic protocol that is independent of any central authority. Bitcoins can be transferred through a computer or smartphone without an intermediate financial institution.[7] The concept was introduced in a 2008 paper by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, who called it a peer-to-peer, electronic cash system.[1][8][9]The processing of Bitcoin transactions is secured by servers called bitcoin miners. These servers communicate over an internet-based network and confirm transactions by adding them to a ledger which is updated and archived periodically using peer-to-peer filesharing technology.[2] In addition to archiving transactions, each new ledger update creates some newly minted bitcoins. The number of new bitcoins created in each update is halved every 4 years until the year 2140 when this number will round down to zero. At that time no more bitcoins will be added into circulation and the total number of bitcoins will have reached a maximum of 21 million bitcoins.[1][10] To accommodate this limit, each bitcoin is subdivided down to eight decimal places; forming 100 million smaller units called satoshis per bitcoin.[4]
Bitcoin is accepted in trade by merchants and individuals in many parts of the world. Like other currencies, illicit drug and gambling transactions constitute some of its commercial usage.[11][12][13][14] Although the bitcoin is promoted as a digital currency, many commentators have criticized the bitcoin's volatile exchange rate, relatively inflexible supply, and minimal use in trade
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Andy Bohuslavizki on Yelp.com
Andy Bohuslavizki-
Yelp was started out of MRL Ventures, an incubator Max Levchin and several former PayPal executives founded to develop Levchin's investment projects.[8] In late 2004, Levchin brought up the topic of Yellow Pages, which had been worked on since the incubator was started, with Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. The two brainstormed over lunch about Jeremy's difficulty using the internet to find a local doctor, then pitched Levchin shortly after on building a site where users could ask friends for recommendations for local services by email.[8][9][10] That day Levchin agreed to invest $1 million in the project.[8] MRL co-founder, David Galbraith, who had instigated the research into a Yellow Pages product, came up with the name "Yelp."[11]
The initial site was hard to use, and attracted few readers or reviewers.[10][12] In an "a-ha moment", Stoppelman and Simmons noticed that an increasing number of users were using a feature that allowed them to write reviews without being prompted.[9][10] They relaunched the site in February 2005 based on unsolicited review writing.[13]
Yelp's early review community was grown in part through Yelp parties, which were held at local businesses looking to attract patrons.[14] The Yelp Elite, a category of super-users chosen by Yelp, was created in 2005 to reward the best reviewers.[15] The Yelp Elite were invited to parties and other special events.[12][16] The Yelp site had 12,000 reviewers in 2005, which grew to 100,000 in 2006.[12] In early 2007, Yelp introduced "People Love us on Yelp" stickers to raise awareness for Yelp.[17] By 2008, the website had fifteen million monthly visitors.[18][19] Three years after Yelp was founded, it was active in 24 cities. Website traffic almost double over a six month period starting in late 2007 and the number of reviews passed two million.[20]
Yelp, Inc. raised $5 million in venture funding from Bessemer Venture Partners in October 2005, which was used to expand to New York City, Chicago and Boston.[12] Another $10 million was raised in October 2006 with Benchmark Capital,[21] followed by $15 million with DAG Ventures in February 2008.[22][23] In January 2010, Yelp raised $100 million in venture capital from Elevation Partners to fund an increase in sales staff.[24
Yelp was started out of MRL Ventures, an incubator Max Levchin and several former PayPal executives founded to develop Levchin's investment projects.[8] In late 2004, Levchin brought up the topic of Yellow Pages, which had been worked on since the incubator was started, with Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. The two brainstormed over lunch about Jeremy's difficulty using the internet to find a local doctor, then pitched Levchin shortly after on building a site where users could ask friends for recommendations for local services by email.[8][9][10] That day Levchin agreed to invest $1 million in the project.[8] MRL co-founder, David Galbraith, who had instigated the research into a Yellow Pages product, came up with the name "Yelp."[11]
The initial site was hard to use, and attracted few readers or reviewers.[10][12] In an "a-ha moment", Stoppelman and Simmons noticed that an increasing number of users were using a feature that allowed them to write reviews without being prompted.[9][10] They relaunched the site in February 2005 based on unsolicited review writing.[13]
Yelp's early review community was grown in part through Yelp parties, which were held at local businesses looking to attract patrons.[14] The Yelp Elite, a category of super-users chosen by Yelp, was created in 2005 to reward the best reviewers.[15] The Yelp Elite were invited to parties and other special events.[12][16] The Yelp site had 12,000 reviewers in 2005, which grew to 100,000 in 2006.[12] In early 2007, Yelp introduced "People Love us on Yelp" stickers to raise awareness for Yelp.[17] By 2008, the website had fifteen million monthly visitors.[18][19] Three years after Yelp was founded, it was active in 24 cities. Website traffic almost double over a six month period starting in late 2007 and the number of reviews passed two million.[20]
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