Techabia

It seems many are misunderstanding the situation over at Facebook Inc and how much money they’re actually making. We’re hoping this article will cover everything you need to know to discuss the topic with your peers.

Let’s go through a little briefing. Facebook is a social networking site that was founded (in 2004) by Mark Zuckerberg during his second year at Harvard University. It’s original name was “The Facebook”, a private social network for Harvard students. The site experienced heavy growth, and opened up to other ivy league schools, Boston area schools and eventually to most universities in North America. Led by company president Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster, the file sharing service), the name was changed to “Facebook” and the company was eventually incorporated in California in 2005. From there, Facebook grew into what it is today. In 2007 $300 million was invested in Facebook (of which $240 million came from Microsoft for a 1.6% share in the company). In 2008, a further $235 million was raised in debt and equity.

Now for our analysis. Facebook has 250 million users around the world, with 35 billion page views every month. It’s main source of income comes from advertising, and it is estimated that Facebook made $265 million in revenue from advertising during 2008 (that number is estimated to reach between $300 and $350 during 2009).

Their costs? With a little help from an article published by TechCrunch, we’re able to form estimations to answer that question. Below are both yearly and monthly costs:

Yearly Costs (with current growth):

Monthly Costs:

Keep in mind how much data Facebook has to store, and their total yearly cost totals to $388 million. There’s a reality check.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that Influenza H1N1 (Swine Flu) is now in the fifth pandemic influenza phase, indicating a global pandemic is now underway. In phase five, it is recommended that countries activate their pandemic plans on a large scale.

Press Updates From The World Health Organization

MOST SEARCHED TERMS IN SAUDI ARABIA THIS WEEK

We have decided to post a story on the Red Mercury Hoax in Saudi Arabia (please read the article if you are not familiar with what happened). With the aid of SMS and the Internet the hoax became large enough to have a significant impact. Using Google’s analytical technology we’ve been able to create a list of the top 3 rising searches in Saudi Arabia over the past week. The term “breakout” refers to an increase of 5000% or more:

Note:

Google’s search engine is the number one information-search-tool used in Saudi Arabia.

Try Google Translate

iSuppli have taken apart Apple’s new Ipod Shuffle to estimate the cost to produce one unit (on a large scale). The cost of all components, headphones and packaging totals to $22, while the device sells for roughly $50. Such a high per-unit profit margin is only an estimate, as it only accounts for hardware (it does not include design, testing, and the development of software such as iTunes). The report noted that Samsung (South Korean), is the gadget’s major supplier, providing the main application chip.

Read Further Analysis From Business Week

Techabia Rating: 60 / 100

Urfilez, a Middle-East startup, is a platform that allows users to purchase music online. Navigating through the homepage, it looked as though the site was using an open-source (free) platform for its functionalities. After searching “urfilez” on google, Joomla was the number three link.

Lets go through a little introduction. Open-source software is basically free software. Copyrights are owned by the public, so anyone can use open-source software, and at the same time try to make it better for other users by improving functionalities, or even adding your own “add-ons” to the software.

We, at Techabia, are huge supporters of open-source, please keep that in mind.

Joomla is an award winning open-source CMS (Content management system – used for publishing content on the internet). It’s a great success, and pushes developers to work on open-source even more then they already do.

However, a startup that estimates to have 500,000 users by the end of the year in a market that has not yet been penetrated should be providing the best of content solutions, especially for music. Open-source is great, but is that how they want to position themselves?

Upon registration, it was obvious the site was badly designed. Once registration was complete, a nice (and incorrect) quote closed the session: “Thank you again for choosing Urfilez, your one step shop for music, Team UrFilez”. Is it not “your one STOP shop”? That’s not an issue though, that can be edited and fixed in seconds. Design problems are all over the site: categories not fully displayed, up to seven modules on the homepage, bad use of font for titles and menus, the list goes on.

It’s a great idea trying to provide a medium where artists can collaborate and share their work online, but can it please be done correctly?

If you are interested in getting involved with online music startups please fill in a contact form with the subject as “Music Master”.