So hopefully you’ve caught wind of the $240,000,000 that Microsoft invested in Facebook today, if not you can read about it everywhere else. So aside from the mind blowing $15 Billion valuation, what does this mean to you and me? Well probably more to me than you, but I digress. Essentially this means two things for Facebook, and one thing for Microsoft.

For Facebook it means that they get a war chest of cash to acquire and expand with, something they did not have before (they were running about break even). This will let them snap up small apps, key intellectual property, and build their own internal structure a LOT. This will also let them get access to Microsoft’s huge ad sales team, and their resources. This lets Facebook focus on building traffic and features, and allow them to focus less on building their own internal team of ad sales people.

Microsoft on the other hand gets a piece of what is going to be essentially the biggest people search engine on the planet. They also get a piece of what is quickly becoming a huge percent of people’s online attention. Online attention is a huge business, think how many thousands of times you’ve heard of the term sticky. Well folks, facebook is like a tar pit.

So what does this all mean to me? Well as a facebook app developer, it means there will be much better monetization options coming, more robust infrastructure, and a lot more money flowing into the facebook eco-system. The Facebook economy has just had a major booster shot. Remember folks, if anyone knows about building software platforms, its Microsoft.

Gambling: When playing poker, and there are a short number of players at the table, make sure to ask the dealer for a reduced rake (they will oblige, and save you a few bucks an hour). Also make sure you sign up for the player rewards cards, they will potentially earn you a free night or dinner. My favorite poker rooms: Caesar's (although they no longer have my fave 1/2 NL holdem), Planet Hollywood (brand new, easy tables), MGM (lots of tourneys n the sub-$100 range), and Harrah's (old and musty, ... Continue reading

What intrigues me about Ikea isn't the low prices or design aesthetics (despite liking minimalist design), its the sheer enormity of their stores. Ikea appeals to the more predominant business side of me more than anything. The store is 300,000 freakin square feet! Any company that can manage to stock, and manage a store that size (and almost 300 of them) impresses me. They carry a bajillion products that they manufacture themselves (Q: is there a factory in the US?), and seem to have made amazing efficiencies everywhere imagina ... Continue reading

The infinimedia team is here in Sunnyvale, California attending the CommunityNext: Platform conference, and we decided to participate in the Iron Coder competition.  The premise is who can build an app in 24 hours and garner the most users. However there were some stipulations: 1. it had to be educational, 2. it had to be international.  So with those rules in mind, we decided to build Continue reading

AT&T has a new developer challenge for facebook in which it will pay $5,000 to the best integration of their own API (had no idea that existed) and Facebook's platform. The contest requires you to integrate at least one core facebook function (poking, messaging, photos, etc.) with a mo ... Continue reading

The talk around the water cooler last week was all about Microsoft trying to snag a 5% stake in Facebook for $500 Million, which would in effect put Facebook’s valuation somewhere around $10 billion. Lots of rumors began swirling around that Google would come in and offer more for that same 5% in order to lock MS out of the action, this could make strategic sense, but we’ll see about its validity. So you must be thinking, “$10 Billion????!?!?!?! HOLY S#!T OMG WTF,” because to many that seems like an astronomical num ... Continue reading