Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com (OSTK), was one of the lone voices sounding caution while the market was steadily marching upward to record levels. In good times when everyone in the market is making money, few will listen to the radical iconoclast in the corner warning of an impending end to the party. Contrarians are often seen as party poopers. The financial press regularly ridiculed Byrne for his passionate crusade against naked short selling. Many perceived his actions as a desperate attempt to save his own company from short sellers. …

Facebook insiders have been selling their stock. Top level insiders such as directors from venture funds invested in Facebook, key executives and even Mark Zuckerberg himself have been quietly trying to unload some shares in private sales. These private transactions are not uncommon as startup entrepreneurs and their backers are often in search of some liquidity. What makes these particular transactions interesting are the implied values being negotiated.
When Microsoft (MSFT) bought a small stake in the wildly popular social network, the price paid implied an overall value of $15 billion. …

With so much at stake, the future of video promises to be a most entertaining saga. Many players are trying to figure out how to navigate the shifting technological landscape. How video entertainment is created, delivered, and sold is changing with breathtaking speed. New competitors are entering the market and current leaders are scrambling to defend their turf.
Blockbuster (BBI), playing the part of copycat, will soon announce a set-top box similar to what Netflix (NFLX) unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. The two companies have seen their …

Tight US immigration forces outsourcing: Bill Gates – Microsoft (MSFT) chairman, and no longer the wealthiest guy in the world, makes some interesting points about our immigration policy regarding skilled workers. At SocialOptimize, we’ve been outsourcing some of our work to Guatemala and the Philippines.
Google could be superseded, says web inventor – Tim Berners-Lee shares some wisdom about the semantic web. He talks about how a new company in the future could exceed everything Google (GOOG) has done up to this point. Wouldn’t Google just buy that company?
Japanese government investigates …

Since my current work is in new media and social networking, I am keenly interested in the turbulence facing the newspaper industry. Clients, ranging from Fortune 2000 companies to small innovative startups, come to my team at SocialOptimize to gain an understanding of the new media landscape and to develop an actionable strategy for building a meaningful presence in social networks. They ask about their traditional marketing budgets and I tell them that we will see the disappearance of many old model newspaper, radio, and television companies as they struggle …

Advertising Age is reporting that U.S. media employment fell to a 15-year low in December 2007. The major driver behind this slump is the struggling newspaper industry. This is not surprising because nearly everyone is spending more time getting their news on the Internet and less with broadsheets. Exacerbating the losses is the disappearing classifieds business as online alternatives like craigslist, partially owned by eBay (EBAY) offer cheaper and more immediate classifieds solutions. The New York Times (NYT), also known as the Gray Lady to the cognoscenti, recently announced another …