TWiST News #262

Software giant Oracle has bought social marketing platform Vitrue for $300 million. The acquisition will give it a strong Facebook marketing platform to offer its enterprise clients.

Additionally, according to reports, Salesforce.com will be buying Buddy Media in an even larger social media marketing acquisition. AllThingsD reported yesterday that the deal is for around $800 million, but other sources have put it more in the neighborhood of $1 billion. TechCrunch explains the value differential based on the technology platform that Buddy has built up. Both companies help connect corporations with Facebook advertising, but Virtue functions more like an online ad agency.

As of last year, Buddy was projecting a run rate of $100 million for 2012; thus an $800 million deal would represent 8 times its current revenue.

QUESTION: Thoughts on why these companies being bought at such high valuations when FB stock is performing poorly? A sure sign that Facebook's value will rebound?

SOURCE: TechCrunch and TechCrunch

At the D10 conference on Tuesday night, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave his first major interview since ascending to the top Cupertino job the previous year. His chat touched on both his personal goals for Apple and his relationship with Steve Jobs.

Cook refused to give details on Apple's TV plans, vowing to never reveal a new product ahead of its proper, formal launch presentation.

Cook also hinted strongly that some kind of Apple/Facebook collaboration is in the offing, asking the audience to "stay tuned" and generally talking up Apple's great respect for Facebook. (It has since been revealed that Facebook integration will indeed be baked into the latest version of iOS, and possibly into the forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion.)

Cook also stressed the company's need to be "social" (giving Twitter integration into iOS as an example) without necessarily needing to own a social network. (Basically a concession that Apple failed to connect with its "PIng" social layer on top of iTunes.

QUESTION: How did Cook do under the spotlight? How do you think he stacks up against Jobs as a leader for Apple? Are there any things he might be better at than Jobs?

SOURCE: ReadWriteWeb

Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker gave her annual presentation at the D10 conference. This year's address - comprising 112 slides - touched on the global economy, the mobile opportunity, and Facebook’s unprecedented IPO.

[Click here for the full slide show]

Selected highlights:

- The fastest-growing nations in terms of Internet usage: China, India, Indonesia, The Philippines and Nigeria

- There are a billion people using 3G mobile wireless connections or 18% of all mobile users.

- Mobile growth has been strong, but it remains a challenge to make money: eCPMs are five times lower on mobile than desktop.

- Kleiner didn’t invest a penny in private companies during the last quarter: they felt the prices were too high. As private valuations rise, while public valuations of companies like Facebook and Zynga fall, there’s obviously potential for private investors to lose money.

- The volume of Facebook shares traded on its first day exceeded the average daily volume of the entire NYSE. Meeker declined to criticize those involved, but said that if Facebook had conducted an auction instead of a more traditional IPO, its IPO price would have likely been a lot higher due to that demand.

SOURCE: GigaOm

Back in March, Kevin Rose and the team from his mobile incubator Milk moved over to Google, ostensibly to work on the burgeoning Google+ social network. (Rose was initially named a senior product manager on Google+.) But now, it has been announced that Rose has joined the team at Google Ventures. Rose is now a partner at the firm focused on making new investments.

Rose, of course, built his initial following as a host online and on TV, before founding the massively popular news aggregator Digg. While Digg petered out in recent years, and Milk didn’t ever launch a successful app, Rose had developed a side career as a savvy angel investor. His list of personal investments includes Fab, Foursquare, Ngmoco, OMGPOP, Path, Square, Twitter and Zynga.

Google Ventures is a three-year-old firm built within Google; the company had also been a backer of Milk.

QUESTION: Was Rose ever really needed on Google+ or was that just a temporary stopover until he
could figure out what he really wanted to focus on? How do you think he'll fare in the venture world?

SOURCE: AllThingsD

Google and Facebook are both said to be considering investments in music service Vevo, best known as the main source of official music videos on YouTube.

Sources told the New York Post that both are competing for an equity stake and an ad deal with Vevo.

Facebook previously showed interest in partnering with Vevo. The deal was held up based on Facebook's desire to have Vevo break its deal with YouTube and move all of its content to a Facebook-exclusive player. Currently, YouTube hosts Vevo’s videos in exchange for about one-third of the ad revenue. But Vevo’s deal with YouTube reportedly expires at the end of this year.

Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff said the company doesn’t want to “put all its eggs in the same basket,” suggesting that he would not be quick to give up the company's multi-platform strategy.

QUESTION: Think Caraeff would seriously break off ties with YouTube and move his content over to Facebook? Or is this just part of the renegotiation with Google? Will he eventually be forced to pick a side?

SOURCE: TheNextWeb