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Reuters blog archive
from Breakingviews:
Marissa Mayer puts exclamation point back in Yahoo
By Jeffrey Goldfarb
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Marissa Mayer has made her mark on Yahoo in less than a year. The website chief’s $1.1 billion deal to buy blogging site Tumblr on Monday goes a long way to restoring the faded and vainglorious exclamation point to the company’s name.
When Yahoo poached Google employee number 20 last July, the $30 billion Sunnyvale, California, company was little more than a purple road kill stain on the information superhighway. In the five years leading up to her appointment, a succession of five chief executives failed to develop a coherent business model and ultimately destroyed value. Yahoo shares had tumbled 38 percent compared to the 6 percent gain in the Nasdaq.
The spiral into irrelevance is a hard one from which to recover in the world of technology. If nothing else, and despite little tangible sense of her “mobile first” strategy until the Tumblr announcement, Mayer has stopped the descent. Her chromosomal makeup alone generated fresh buzz for Yahoo when she was named CEO – and disclosed simultaneously that she was pregnant.
from Breakingviews:
Alibaba’s next superlative: China’s top fee payer
By John Foley
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
Alibaba’s initial public offering is going to be less about the forty thieves, and more about the fight for fees. The unlisted Chinese e-commerce giant is already an important source of advisory and financing revenue in a weak market. If a highly anticipated stock market listing comes to pass, it could become China’s biggest payer of fees to global investment banks in a decade.
from Breakingviews:
Alibaba spots pricey treasure in Weibo’s network
By Peter Thal Larsen
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
Alibaba has spotted hidden treasure in Sina Weibo’s social network. The e-commerce giant is paying a punchy price for roughly 18 percent of China’s microblogging phenomenon, a business that has not yet celebrated its fourth birthday and is still working out how to generate revenue.
from Breakingviews:
Will Netflix star in “The Easter Island Effect”?
By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Will Netflix have a starring role in “The Easter Island Effect”? The Internet video service seems to be using up resources faster than it can produce them. New series like “House of Cards” lure customers, at a cost. Netflix cash flow remains negative and obligations are rising. It’s starting to evoke the centuries-old Polynesian society that eventually exhausted its means of sustenance.
from Breakingviews:
Mafia and Cyprus may release IPO animal spirits
By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
The mafia and Cyprus could trigger a full release of animal spirits. High debt didn’t deter buyers from this month’s Intelsat and SeaWorld initial public offerings. Now comes Qiwi, a Cyprus-domiciled, Russian payment system warning about the potential effects of organized crime, the island’s bailout, money laundering and a dual-class share structure. It puts investor appetite to the ultimate test.
from Paul Smalera:
Video Transcript: Fred Wilson on Tech Tonic Interface
Below is an unedited transcript of the video interview I conducted with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures:
PAUL SMALERA, Technology Editor Reuters.com: Today I had a great chat with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. Check it out.
from Paul Smalera:
Fred Wilson on Bitcoin, Airbnb and immigration
This week Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures sat down with me for a video interview (part of Reuters' Tech Tonic: Interface series) to talk about a wide variety of topics: Bitcoin, wireless spectrum auctions, Airbnb, immigration, the New York City mayor's race, even his wife Joanne (the Gotham Gal), and a few others. Why so many topics? Fred’s simply one of the most thoughtful technology investors working today, and peppering him with as many different questions as possible can help us learn how he thinks.
Fred often cites “pattern recognition” as the main job of a venture capitalist, and I think I got a pretty good sense of Fred’s pattern: he understands the mechanism behind a company or technology, and figures out whether his firm can help that company grow. In this interview, he's an insightful and persuasive defender of the interests of the tech industry, because he very sincerely believes in its ability to do good for people.
from The Great Debate:
The ‘next generation’ of American talk
It’s hard to imagine communicating without Skype, Facetime, X-Box, Twitter or a text on your smartphone. Mobile devices and other Internet Protocol (IP)-based services powered by high-speed broadband have revolutionized the way we connect with one another at just about every moment of our lives.
Millions of Americans are now abandoning traditional, copper-wire phone service. In just the past three years, U.S. smartphone adoption has increased from 16.9 percent to 54.9 percent, according to Nielsen. One out of three homes in the United States now relies on wireless-only technologies, according to the National Health Interview Survey.
from Breakingviews:
China retailers stumble in pursuit of growth
By John Foley
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
China’s growth can be disruptive as well as lucrative. GOME and Li Ning, two of the country’s biggest retail brands, have both reported slumping sales and losses in a market that seems to be expanding. Shifting consumer habits have made competition fierce and profitability elusive.
from Breakingviews:
Weak CEO the least of Groupon’s woes
By Robert Cyran
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)
Groupon’s woes won’t end by firing Chief Executive Andrew Mason. The troubled Internet daily deal firm’s stock rallied around 5 percent after the board sent its witty boss packing. But with overseas operations a mess, coupons in decline and a controversial chairman calling the shots, the company has bigger problems.
