Trulia files for IPO

On Friday, Trulia filed an IPO of up to $75 million, to help it compete with it’s bigger rival, Zillow.  While Trulia has already received $32 million in private funding, they still have a way to go to catch up to Zillow, even with the IPO.

Trulia currently has over 22 million unique visitors each month, just over 21,000 paid subscribers. Those paid scubscribers, in addition to advertisers, make up the bulk of the $29 million in revenues. Even so, they are still showing a net loss of about $7.6 million, growing from last year. Clearly they are hoping the infusion of cash from the IPO will help turn things around.

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Evernote Resets All of Its Users’ Passwords

 

I found this interesting article in REALTOR Mag about Evernote and wanted to share this as I have many friends that use this service.

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | TUESDAY, MARCH 05, 2013

A popular online note-taking service that many real estate professionals use recently faced a security breach that forced it to reset all 50 million of its users’ passwords.

The company says they reset the passwords as a precautionary measure, and that there is no indication that any of the content users have stored in their Evernote accounts was accessed or lost.

The company said that in investigating malicious activity in the program they found that scammers were able to obtain access to Evernote user information, which included usernames, e-mail addresses, and encrypted passwords.

Source: “Evernote resets all user account passwords following security breach,” TechSpot (March 4, 2013)

 

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Hacker takes down GoDaddy

A malicious flood of network traffic has knocked Internet registrar GoDaddy’s servers offline. With it came tumbling down its website, email, and thousands of websites registered through one of the Internet’s most popular services.

A Twitter user quickly claimed credit for the incident going by the Twitter name AnonymousOwn3r.

“I’m taking godaddy down bacause well i’d like to test how the cyber security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now,” he twitted in response to questions from a technology reporter at tech blog Mashable.

The attack which was a  a DDoS attack involves an overwhelming flood of communication that a server can’t keep up with, but it can be done with as few as 50 computers.

The reality is anyone can be hacked no matter how big the company is.

GoDaddy quickly acknowledged the problem online, writing on Twitter that it was “working feverishly” to resolve the matter in a timely fashion.

“We’re aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We’re working on it,” GoDaddy explained in a simple Tweet Monday afternoon.

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Can Bing Increase Market Share and Should the Real Estate Agent Care?

At E3, Microsoft announced, among other things, that Internet Explorer is coming to the Xbox 360 this fall. What that means is a ton of new potential users will now be searching using Bing.  Remember Xbox is not just for kids.  Millions of adults use Xbox so this could mean a substantial increase in searches via Bing.

Of course you need to have an Xbox Live Gold account to use Internet Explorer but still that will not dis-wade most of the user base of adults. In any event now Microsoft can push their browser along with Bing to a new and huge user base.

Do you think people will be using a gaming console to search?  Well more than you might think.  Internet Explorer on Xbox will support Kinect and SmartGlass, so users don’t have to use a game controller to operate it.

So what does this mean to the Real Estate Agent.  As always I preach you need to stay in touch with what is going on and to recognize how and where to market to.  In the next coming months maybe you should begin to give Bing more SEO in your marketing plan.

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Google Pushes a Penquin Update

In my previous post “Google’s Penquin Update” I reviewed what Google did in an attempt to curtail webspam.  Bad news is that a lot of honest websites got caught in the shuffle.  So after the Memorial Day weekend Googles Matt Cutts, tweeted this; “Minor weather report: We pushed the 1st Penguin algo data refresh an hour ago. Affects <0.1% of English searches.”

Back in 2006 Matt explain what the difference between an update and a data refresh was.  He explained the following:

Algorithm update: Typically yields changes in the search results on the larger end of the spectrum. Algorithms can change at any time, but noticeable changes tend to be less frequent.

Data refresh: When data is refreshed within an existing algorithm. Changes are typically toward the less-impactful end of the spectrum, and are often so small that people don’t even notice.

So while this change probably impacts you minimally, you will see Google release more refreshes and updates as it tries to take the best possible path in curtailing Webspam.

The good news if you think you have been hit by Penguin you can recover. Matt Cutts pointed out 2 must see video’s that address these issues.

Does Google Take Manual Action on Webspam?

When Are Penalties Lifted?

Just after the Penguin update was released in April, Danny Goodwin of Search Engine Watch discussed 5 types of links affecting websites in this update:

1. Paid links with exact match anchor text
2. Comment spam
3. Guest posts on questionable sites
4. Article marketing sites
5. Links from dangerous sites

So if you are engaging any of these types of link strategies, you probably need to look at your sites rankings.

As more on Penquin progresses I will be sure to keep you informed.  In the meantime, keep your SEO white hat and remember QUALITY CONTENT counts!

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Facebook IPO – Diamond or Coal?

See we were all so excited when the Facebook IPO was announced. After all, it’s THE premiere social network. How could we NOT make money? This could be just like Google, right?

Well, maybe not.

Speculations aside, there were some very interesting things that happened before, during and after the IPO.

Before

Prior to the official IPO, Facebook raised billions of dollars through private investors using “D-Rounds”. This gives company insiders an opportunity to “cash-out” before the IPO. This potentially sucked a lot of the value out of the company before public investors had the opportunity to make much money

During

Morgan Stanley’s analyst reduced his revenue forecast for the company. It is not clear whether or not this information was shared with all investment firms, or just a select few. This was done right in the middle of the “IPO Roadshow”, an unprecidented event in IPO-land.

After

As the news about pre-IPO devaluation, earnings forecasts reductions in the middle of the IPO, and now possible SEC investigations into the whole mess has emerged, the stock has fallen from its IPO price of $38 a share, down to closing at $31 a share on Tuesday.

The question remains – what does this mean for Facebook, it’s stock value, and the millions of people who gambled money on the IPO in hopes of a big return? And that’s exactly the point – the stock market is ALWAYS a gamble. I suppose the difference is, you count on a legal game. But when those “in the know” potentially took an opportunity to make money and didn’t inform the public about potential earning issues that could effect the upcoming IPO,  I think someone needs to look closely at what happened.

We are, after all, the reason why Facebook exists. The public. WE post our status updates. WE post our pictures. WE share our lives, our feeling and our thoughts, on a web site for most to see. And Facebook uses OUR participation as a means to generate advertising revenue. Without US, Facebook would be what MySpace is now. Should we expect fair and accurate information to be released from the company WE built when we have the opportunity to invest in it? Or, should we just DO-AC ?

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