Along with all of this the rumor mill firing up again about what will happen to Skype. BusinessWeek reports that there was more focus than usual at the annual meeting yesterday on Skype’s place in the eBay fold. Considering the fact that just about everything else is up in the air other than the original core business model this is no surprise. It is not the first time that there has been talk about the possible sale of Skype either.

Turns out the Net phone calling software pioneer enjoyed 20% net income last year, on $550 million in sales in 2008. And unit chief Josh Silverman says the plan is to double sales in the next three years, while maintaining those profits.

Aggressive talk that serves to make one wonder if the Skype division is preening to attract suitors. Talk about more corporate sales and more of a concentration on mobile usage surfaced as well. Most interesting is the talk about putting more effort into Skype’s paid services. I honestly have never considered moving beyond the free services myself.

Back in 2005 ebay bought Skype for $2.5 billion (with a b) and they simply have not seen the return and synergies that were anticipated. CEO John Donohue even went so far to say that “We were wrong” on the projected impact and value.

The bottom line is that the language was carefully constructed to make the point that there is nothing stopping a sale of Skype. You have to suspect that offers would be entertained. Who would be the best fit for this opportunity? Is it even an opportunity or would another buyer run into the same trouble that eBay did? Put your opinion up for bid and we’ll see if anyone is buying.

Comments

You see it’s like this. We live in a world where everyone LOVES to talk and write about social media. They talk about how cool it is. They talk about the fun people they meet and have “relationships” with. They then tell you that it is the coolest thing in the world to have so many friends and to be so popular. Isn’t that great?!

Sure I guess but I rarely hear about any of the chumminess turning into business. I’m sure it happens but to what degree I don’t know. Check this story out though because it results in …….. a sale! Please excuse the vague references to the client. I swear this really happened. You can trust me. Remember, I’m Frank .

It goes like this. A start-up company is trying to figure out how to get momentum on the sales side. They have created a great product that solves real world problems for organizations. If you want the details please let me know and I would be glad to tell you. Anyway, they decide to old school the sales efforts. Phone calls from lists and trade shows are given a shot. They start their SEO efforts but they want business now to help them look more attractive to the investment community.

At that point they decide to use Twitter. Using tools like Twollo and Power Twitter they find people who have similar interests and needs that their product can meet. They come across an industry blogger who does a review of their great product which leads to inquiries that ends in a ……drum roll please …… SALE!

What didn’t happen were cheap automated pitches or direct “Hi, how are you? I sell this. How many do you want?” Nope. They just found people of like mind, discovered their needs and helped them solve their problem. Now there is a renewed excitement about their sales efforts. There is also the realization that there are people out there looking for their solution that aren’t on a list and actually want to talk with people. It works. Try it.

FT Takeaway – Twitter and other social media should be considered revenue generating tools. Relationships are nice but can they pay your bills? You must be in it in a genuine way and you must look to solve people’s problems. That’s when it works. If you are a phony you will be found out so save us all the hassle and go make a cold call.

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But apparently this possibly-soon-to-be-recession-(though-technically-still-not,-people!) has really hurt the “social utility.” Rumors are circulating on Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch that Facebook’s current value is less than $5B—and as low as $3 or $4 billion.

SAI cites rumors appearing in their comments for weeks that Facebook’s value is plummeting—and, more importantly, a source who was offered a 0.25% stake for $12.5M just two months ago. Once again turning to our trusty, rusty algebra, that gives a more recent total value of $5B.

Even more damning, Mike Arrington says that Bill Dagley, the managing director of a fund of high value investors (you know, VCs), is rumored to be shopping around some discount Facebook shares as well:

We’ve been forwarded one email conversation from a source, where Dagley asks if they’d be interested in “buying shares of Facebook from current holder?” Another person who was approached said the asking price was $3-$4 billion. A third source says the total amount of stock being sold is around $30 million.

The seller was never disclosed, but it’s likely a current or ex-Facebook exec who wasn’t required to sign special agreements with investors during the venture rounds. That likely means they can theoretically sell their stock once it’s vested and paid for.

This news comes just days after a court ruled in the ConnectU settlement that the Microsoft deal valuation was “different than the valuation disclosed in the press release”—ie Facebook was never worth $15B.

While a valuation of $3-5B is a much more reasonable figure than $15B for a network that’s still struggling with monetization, it’s also still a pretty mind-boggling figure. What do you think? Is $5 billion asking too much for Facebook?

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After spending some time paging through parts of MSN Money while chatting with Jolley, we can see his point. The site does have some nice data integration from the sources that someone researching financial info would turn to individually.

The consumer focus of MSN Money probably made it easier for investors to keep heading to the site that dominates the online world of financial information. Yahoo Finance has been planted atop that list for quite some time.

MSN Money has its appeals, and Jolley wanted to bring them to our attention (and to yours by proxy, of course.) He started off by citing unique content, written by folks like Jim Jubak.

A couple of gems reside in the MSN Money list of Investment Tools. The Stock Research Wizard pulls information from Zacks Investment Research, comScore, and Reuters to build a profile of a company and its stock.

Stock history, price targets, and catalysts preceded an interesting comparison feature. Visitors can quickly bring up a comparison of a stock and two others. Stacked against each other, people see how the stocks compare in estimates to gain, shares priced cheapest relative to earnings, and other factors.

Exchange-traded funds have been around for a few years, and have gained a section on MSN Money. On the research page about them, visitors can easily see the winners and losers, and how various asset classes have been performing.

Jolley told us multimedia, as in videos, will be one of the ways Microsoft has in mind to bolster the site and gain against Yahoo Finance. These likely have space selected for them on the MSN Money homepage as well as other pages throughout the site.

MSN Money doesn’t go for the muted colors like the Wall Street Journal or even Yahoo Finance use. That could be part of the public perception, but MSN Money enjoys significant traffic now. They need to get more to overcome Yahoo and stave off the challenge of AOL Finance and other sites.

Here is analysis from Hitwise for US visits to Business & Finance sites for the week ending 12/15/2007:

SES Chicago returns, and WebProNews is on hand to bring you reports and videos from the Windy City. Enjoy our coverage this week.

Investment. It’s the key to taking a small business to a larger scope, or even beyond.

For all of its wealth today, Google required some seed investing to build its scale. The same idea applies to the search marketing world.

Patricia Hall of Hallmark Capital talked about what SEMs need if they want to be the object of desire of possible investors.

The SEM’s clients rate at the top of her five areas for evaluating a company.

Investors also want to know about the nature of the company’s revenues; their technology strategy; scalability; and the leadership abilities of the firm’s management/ownership.

"There is really not a right answer, but it’s important how all 5 areas interact with one another," said Hall.

The SEM business that has sustainable revenue, visionary leadership, and a competitive positioning in the market will be attractive to investors.

Above all, investment-seeking SEMs need to keep their focus on the needs of their clientele. "Make sure to take care of your clients because your future and your future value depends on it," said Hall.

WebProNews Internet reporter/anchor Abby Prince contributed to this report.

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They’d already heard from Steve Ballmer, who, with his infamy for saying and doing odd things, is somewhat hard to take seriously.  Liddell might have provided some solid data, or at least a comment referring to statistics, in support of Microsoft’s decision.  But he didn’t.

“Obviously, I feel comfortable with the transaction we’ve done, and I was involved in it,” Liddell told Todd Bishop.  “I think you have to look at the investment not only in the context of the dollar investment but the commercial transaction.  I think there’s a great example of finance taking a role in that and thinking about the holistic aspect of what we’re trying to do in the online services, how Facebook fits into it, and how a dual investment-commercial transaction is a very powerful way of creating a partnership.”

Liddell did allude to stock prices, later adding, “[T]he share market reaction I think was positive.”  And indeed, for about eight days following the Facebook deal, Microsoft’s stock rose somewhat sharply.  It’s now lost more than half that gain, though, so the Redmond-based corporation doesn’t seem to have received much in the way of long-term benefits.

Microsoft’s decision to invest so much money in return for so little of Facebook remains questionable.  Yet at least the company’s leaders are willing to share whatever credit or blame they’ve earned.

And aspects of Wikinvest seem quite sensible.  Want understandable, English-language explanations instead of decimal points and ratios?  Or how about a site that understands company’s names, and not just esoteric ticker symbols?  Wikinvest has got you covered.

I was particularly impressed by the site’s stock charts.  “Typical stock charts plot a line that moves up and down – but most people want to know why the stock price is moving,” notes an “About Us” section.  “So we built WikiCharts that allow people to annotate and explain what’s happening.  Investors have already created over a thousand annotations explaining the stock price movements of hundreds of companies . . .”

These features tend to favor inexperienced investors, however, and in a wiki, that may not be ideal.  If more knowledgeable people have no reason to visit, Wikinvest could have trouble gaining information and creating a following.  And then there’s the whole slew of issues that any wiki must face (imagine the financial equivalent of Wikipedia’s elephant issues).

Still, with a fresh $2.5 million, Wikinvest has probably gained quite a lot of time to sort these things out.  Hat tip to TechCrunch’s Nick Gonzalez.

Keywords turn into links with the Kontera product, ContentLink.

The in-text model makes content the delivery vehicle for ads by scanning for relevant keywords, and making them the active ad links.

Kontera recently announced the receipt of a second round of funding from Carmel Ventures, backed by participation from Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers. Rina Shainski, General Partner of Carmel Ventures, will join Kontera’s board.

This follows the $7 million Kontera closed in July 2006 from Sequoia Capital and Lehman Brothers, for a total of more that $17 million.

A Kontera spokesperson told WebProNews the latest round of financing will be used to expand their sales, marketing, and research & development efforts.

Publishers using Kontera’s In-Text can choose to display, text, image, or rich media ads when a visitor does a mouseover of an In-Text ad.

By having their ad units appear within the flow of text, rather than alongside it, Kontera advertisers enjoy a better chance of overcoming the ‘ad blindness’ people may have with conventional ad blocks that they have come to ignore.

Over a typical business connection, we could easily view the demo ads Kontera listed on their site.

Flash and video ads appearing on mouseover began playback immediately.

The smaller size ad block Kontera uses makes it possible to create richer content that loads quickly. That behavior makes it more likely a visitor will view more of the rich media advertising.

Being in the flow of text has drawn some criticism of the format as intrusive. TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington complained of this in his comments to Centernetworks’ Allen Stern:

I have a serious issue with ads being placed within the content of a post. They are (sort of) clearly labeled (if you know what you are looking for), but they are super annoying.