Tumblr Sold to Yahoo

The recent acquisition of Tumblr by Yahoo has been on everyone discussion list in recent days.

 Despite all the hype surrounding the sale, one key point is being largely overlooked in the analysis.

It is fairly clear that Tumblr's owners sold the renowned network because the company could not generate the amount of revenue that had been predicted with the advent of native ads last year. 

After earning only a modest $13 million last year from its beloved Radar spot, this year Tumblr has continued to struggle and the rumors have been that it was in fact struggling to pay its bills.

Based on this, it is not surprising that management decided to offload Tumblr.  In a conference call this morning, Not surprisingly Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman said that there were only modest expectations for revenues growth  during the balance of 2013. 

Tumblr’s ongoing inability to capitalise on the full potential of its site, is difficult to understand because on paper Tumblr has much to offer potential advertisers including a passionate and engaged community and a fully functional and elegant a beautiful interface  Despite this it has been speculated that only a few percentage points of its available advertising space. 

Suffice to say it will be interesting to see what  strategies and tactical refinements Yahoo is planning to adopt to help ramp up these disappointing results for Tumblr in recent times.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,

Daniele.

Are Your Objectives SMART Objectives

This week as part of a training seminar I was involved with the issue of objective setting was covered off and I have to say that it really never fails to amaze me how totally unsophisticated firms are when it comes to proactively setting their own business objectives.

 

It may be cliche to say this, but you need to know where you're going to get there.

But beyond actually doing the objectives, the key is to set appropriate objectives that meet all of the SMART objective criteria.

Perhaps the best way to qualify this is with a real world example that occurred to me some years ago whilst I was still working in the pharmaceutical arena.

In this specific example the firm in its wisdom had said that it required all its selling stagg to achieve a dollar growth of 80% for the calendar year.

Now let's kook at which of the SMART criteria this objective met and which it didn't meet.

Well it was certainly specific as it tells you simply you need to grow by 80%.  Tick.
I also have to say that the objective was measurable as you knew what you earnt last year and you know what you're earning this year.  Another tick.

Was the objective relevant? Again the answer is yes as it relates directly to what our business was about, and was it timely. Again yes it is timely bas it gives a specific time range that the objective needs to be achieved in i.e. the calendar year.  Four out of four ticks.

Ok then the last criteria, was it attainable.   At the time I was the number one performing representative in Australia and had a growth rate of 40% compared to a national growth rate of 20%.
So despite being double the rest of the nation, I was only 50% to budget.   So was it attainable ?
Sadly no. 

Take out point.  Even if you have four out of five ticks, if you don't have all five your objective is of no use and will actually hurt your organisations motivation, morale and ultimately performance.
File this under a cautionary tale.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

LinkedIn Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary

I really couldn't let this week go by without saying a heart felt well done to all the people at LinkedIn and congratulate them all on the occasion of the 10th anniversary since LinkedIn was launched in May 2013.

Since it's launch the world's leading professional  (and in my opinion the best) social media network, has gone from strength to strength to today having around 250 million users globally.
As well recently LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that the LinkedIn Platform is spread across 1 million sites. He went o0n to add that,  “there’s over one million unique domain buttons on the Internet with LinkedIn share buttons.

But as we know, bigger is not always bigger and ultimately any business needs to deliver value and profit. On this front LinkedIn is also leading from the front of the pack with it's share price almost quadrippling  since the company launched the stock in 2011.

Through these 10 years it's fair to say that LinkedIn has had its ups and downs, and according to Co-founder Reid Hoffman in a recent interview on the Bloomberg Network, struggled through its early days where it had only modest membership and growth.

But like all good businesses it found its own unique point of difference, which in its case was allowing people to see who else they knew that was also on the network. And this as they say was the proverbial coup de grace which changed its trajectory forever.

Well done again LinkedIn. Something tells me your next ten years will be even better.
And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.

LinkedIn Quarter 1 2013 results up by 72%

By Ingrid Lunden on 

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/02/linkedin-stock-dips-10-on-q2-forecast-of-slowing-growth-even-as-it-beats-q1-estimates-on-sales-of-324-7m-eps-0-45/ 

LinkedIn has just reported Q1 earnings of $324.7 million, up 72% year-on-year, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.45, both soundly beating analysts’ estimates (via First Call) of $317 million and EPS of $0.31; as well as LinkedIn’s own guidance from last quarter, when it said it expected between $305 million and $310 million in revenues. Net income for Q1 was $22.6 million a big rise on the $5.0 million in earnings last year. Nevertheless, shares of the work-focused social network, however, are down nearly 11% in after-hours trading on news that next quarter won’t be quite as rosy.
First Call had estimated revenues of Q2 of $359 million, but today LinkedIn issued guidance that it expects sales of between $342 million and $347 million. That’s up between 50% and 52% on the same quarter a year ago, and is a sign of how growth is slowing.
The company says it now has 225 million users, up from 200 million last quarter. Judging by some of the product launches in the last few weeks it may have been that LinkedIn is laying the groundwork for how it will better monetize the users it has longer term as other revenue streams and customer acquisition decelerate. The new launches have included upgraded, more media-enhanced profiles; a Contacts update to add in more “personal assistant” life organizing features; new iPhone and Android apps; an expanded search engine; @mentions in status updates; Klout-style endorsements; and a Recruiter homepage redesign for the site’s most dedicated user vertical.
Here is how different divisions of the company have performed this past quarter:
Talent Solutions revenue was $184.3 million, up 80% over last year. Talent Solutions revenue was 57% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2013, versus 54% last year.
Marketing Solutions revenue was $74.8 million, up 56% compared to the first quarter of 2012. Marketing Solutions revenue declined by 2 percentage points to make up 23% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2013.
Premium Subscriptions products revenue was $65.6 million, up 73% compared to the first quarter of 2012. It remained level at 20% of total revenue for Q1.
The U.S. remains the biggest market for the company, with $201.4 million in revenue, 62% of the total. International markets sales were $123.3 million.
LinkedIn continues to have a heavy amount of its sales coming from its “field sales channel”: $184 million compared to $140.7 million online. Field sales, involving actual people, are more costly for LinkedIn and so the company will likely be trying to increase its online sales in quarters ahead to improve earnings as growth slows.
We’re just about to listen to the call and will update with details from there.



Let's continue to keep our eye on LinkedIn to see how they track for the balance of 2013.
And until ext time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.