Google just launched its own “Facebook-killer” yesterday. There is absolutely no evidence yet whether Google Plus or any other competitor or substitute will bother Facebook. There is even less evidence about what’s “in the prices” – what prices? what metrics? what predictability of future cash flows? – so Social Media buyer beware. More links inside.MySpace’s demise – Guardian UK – It mentions a “heyday” valuation of $12 billion, now sold for $35 million.

Rest in peace MySpace – IBTimes – Looks at traffic data comparisons.

MySpace offers tough lessons – BBC News.

MySpace sold – FT.com’s Alphaville blog takes a swipe by showing a bullish 2006 story versus the 2011 AllThingsD story we linked to above.

MySpace sold on the cheap? – BusinessWeek – Buysiders.com is all about finding opposing sides of the arguments. However, this is an October 2006 article! It’s about some of the MySpace shareholders who sold to News Corp. supposedly mad about the deal. One M&A “expert” even calls it “the best acquisition ever”…

Google’s latest crack at social media – an FT.com short video showing Google +

Google throws full weight at Facebook – FT.com – is it really its full weight this time? Given how similar it is to Facebook, we’d judge yes. But how are managerial strategy, talent, focus and incentive systems aligned with this project? Facebook simply has no choice, Google does. Kind of.

Google + Demo and Google + “Learn More” pages.

Another try by Google – NY Times.com

Google hopes Spark ignites its social network – FT.com

Is there life after web-death? – FT.com’s LEX column on MySpace – the concept of “barriers to re-entry” is powerful.

Why Facebook beat MySpace – From a Forbes.com blog, it’s certainly not the first nor the last in the hundreds of similarly-themed analysis, but it’s worth the read.

Video interview with Richard Rosenblatt, who founded iMall.com and sold it for US$ 560 million, then sold MySpace for US$ 580 million and has founded and IPO’d Demand Media. Given his timing so far, we’d listen closely! His description of the sale of MySpace to News Corp brought tears to our inner salesmen.

Other interesting “frameworks” to have in mind when reading this article are understanding evolving business models, corporate “shake-ups”, fresh perspectives, and the idea of trying to maintain a “start-up” culture even in a internet company that, although far from established, could be considered “yesterday’s news”.

There was another point of interest for us: problem-solving and recruiting. At some point Salar Kamangar, Youtube’s new CEO, says of himself: “I enjoy problem solving,” (…) “If you have a seed of an idea, how do you operationalize that, how do you scale it, how do you bring together the best team to see it through?”

And a bit later the text describes one of Youtube’s new initiatives – “trying to replicate for video the predictive experience that Pandora creates for music” – and Youtube’s head of product says that “solving this is going to be about user experience and front-end design as much as it is about algorithm, infrastructure, and servers”.

First, the bit about the problems of enhancing user experience and recommendations made us think of the Netflix Challenge. By now there are recommendation algorithms and consultants (see a case in point here), but Youtube’s challenge seems deeper.

But add the last two paragraphs and you get an interesting idea: if a company likes problem-solvers and would like to hire more of them – or keep them “hungry” for longer periods of time – couldn’t such a company frame its job opportunities this way? Perhaps structuring and then “selling” themselves as a place with many projects/ “problems” rather than trying to fill a given position?

In fact, we can choose to view our own business (asset management) in the “problem-solving” light and say that it should attract people in search of an idea (an investment hypothesis) and how to operationalize it, scale it (research it thoroughly and then execute it in the best way, in a timely manner and respecting liquidity requirements) and bring the best team (internal and external!) to see it through. Actually, perhaps in our business the team part comes sooner. That said, no analogy is perfect and it can vary with time and circumstances.

Two related links:

Untangling the social web – Economist, October 2010: “From retailing to counterterrorism, the ability to analyse social connections is proving increasingly useful” — The applications are mind-boggling, from the very simple – social-media enriched search results – to those we can’t really envision yet.

Google to map inflation using web data – Financial Times, Oct. 12th 2010. Always interesting to see what GOOG can do with those huge amounts of automatically amassed but individually inputted (collectively served) real-time chunks of data. It’s a huge potential asset waiting to be turned on. In this specific inflation case, it would be interesting to think about the possible consequences of something like a real-time price index ‘catching’ with the masses…

The Nicholas Christakis videos:

May 2010

July 2010:

From William “Neuromancer” Gibson:

“We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined (in spite of ample evidence) that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google.

Cyberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical world. Now cyberspace has everted. Turned itself inside out. Colonized the physical. Making Google a central and evolving structural unit not only of the architecture of cyberspace, but of the world.”