In our blog “What’s A Unit of Trust Worth These Days’ we said a new generation of technology and services, for instance electronic medical records, will find it difficult to gain consumer traction until there is some mechanism that accounts for individual authentication , what we called the “trust thing”. How do we know that people (or companies) on the internet are who or what they purport to be? How do you know that the doctor giving you online medical advice is really a qualified doctor? How do you know that the eBay vendor will really send you the widget you purchased? This is equally the problem in the offline world, particularly the finance industry where, by definition, the fractional reserve banking system is based on trust. But at least you can get some comfort by walking into a brick-n-mortar bank, and yelling at the manager, or filing a lawsuit on a tangible entity. Not so with online activity.
Why Would Investment Bankers Embrace Social Media During a Downturn?
I was thrilled to be asked by Bob London, a friend of 2i, to offer my perspective on the effect of the recession on my investment banking practice. You can read the article in Bob’s Executive Perspectives Blog or below.
Blackboard’s acquisition of ANGEL Learning further solidifies its commanding position as the leading Learning Management System (LMS) provider in the market. For the roughly $95M cash and stock that Blackboard (NASDAQ: BBBB – $29.16) paid for ANGEL, they acquired a rapidly growing, well-regarded competitor. But the market does not seem to like the deal – shares are off nearly 12% since the announcement. What is the motivation for this acquisition?
Filed Under Deal of the Week, Intangible Assets, Merger & Acquisitions
You don’t have to be a techie to understand that Social Media is all the rage today. Social Media is not exactly brand new, but it is still grappling with issues of value creation, business models, communication platforms, etc. And while companies and “experts” are trying to sort these issues out, it is pretty clear that a handful of companies like Facebook, MySpace, Linked-In, Twitter and a few others have established a dominant and almost ubiquitous position in the arenas they serve.
But what about niche segments like healthcare? Are there still opportunities for companies out there? You bet. This week Intangible Insights brings to you a podcast of Joel Selzer, Co-Founder and CEO of Ozmosis, a social network that enables verified, U.S. licensed physicians to exchange medical knowledge. Joel shares his thoughts on some of our standard topics at 2i, including business models, monetization, valuation, and intangible attributes, such as the trust factor. Even during the idea stage of Ozmosis, Joel and his team were well aware how important “building trust” would be to their community and brand. Ozmosis’s tagline is “The Physician’s Trusted Network”. (See our related blog “A Unit of Trust is Worth How Much These Days?”).
You can listen to the podcast in its entirety or in four parts that track the summary below. The podcast is on the next tab over and you can also download and listen to the podcast here.
Following are a few highlights:
One theme dominated last night’s panel discussion at the DC Social Media Club event ‘Engaging the Health World Through Social Media.’ Trust . . . with a capital T. Trust that your health data won’t be shared without your permission. Trust that online health information is true and accurate. Trust that any online counsel you receive comes from a real doctor or at least someone qualified to give the advice. Trust that the online health community you join is really populated by people who are who they claim to be. On it went.
It’s all completely valid. How can you trust online health information when Google pushes data to you based on a search engine optimization algorithm rather than medical information?
Filed Under Intangible Asset Valuation, Intangible Assets
We continue to follow the discussion regarding the threat to intangible property caused by the recession. While the information assurance industry is large and has always been vital to the information economy, company executives are increasingly aware of a relatively new security threat to intangible assets, particularly intellectual property: laid-off employees, disgruntled or just desperate to pay the bills. McAfee commissioned an excellent report titled Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information from information assurance professors at Purdue University and the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS). A few highlights that relate to 2i topics follow:
Filed Under Intangible Assets, Intellectual Property, Recession
Following our blog last week tracking two articles discussing IP in the recession, I happened across Michael Moberly’s and JongPil Cheon’s article Use Intangible Assets to Weather the Financial Crisis (you may need to sign up for the trial subscription to download the PDF). The article provides a good theoretical overview on the importance of, and how to identify, intangible assets. Mr. Moberly is a long-time educater, practitioner and advocate of the strategic importance of intangible assets. I’m a regular reader of Mr. Moberly’s Business IP and Intangible Asset Report and Blog, where he discusses other important aspects of intangible assets from a strategic perspective.
Filed Under Intangible Assets, Intellectual Property, Recession
You know times are tough when there is more than just the occasional article discussing intellectual property issues. We think IP is cool, exciting stuff but it’s not a big seller of newspapers and magazines. (Ironically, these are the folks that should consider selling IP to supplement their obsolete business model.) Bloomberg and Bank Systems Technology each published interesting articles on the subject today.
Why We Blog
We find it odd but opportunistic that some of the best investment bankers in the internet and media industries don’t take full advantage of the internet to promote their services and views. We’re sure that they know how to blog and podcast and use social media to get their brand out there, but to our best knowledge no one is doing . . . yet.
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