Author Archives: Mike Mothner

6 Facebook Post-IPO Predictions. Mark My Words. It’s Not Good.

Mike Mothner | May 17, 2012

Facebook Will Not Be Toppled

In January 2011, I wrote what was at the time an outlandish prediction: that Facebook Will Be The Next $100 Billion Company. While I was right about the outcome, I was wrong about was how it got there: it got there out of pure growth of users and riding investor enthusiasm and pent-up Wall Street demand. And that is not a good recipe for Facebook out of the gates of their IPO; it is going to be rough waters ahead. Here are my 6 Post-IPO Facebook predictions. 1. Facebook Will Not Be Toppled I want to make clear that as bearish as my predictions may be around valuation and expectation, I am equally confident that Facebook is not going anywhere. The network effect – where the more people that use it increase the utility for everyone – is past the point of no return, so expect it to be ingrained … Continue reading →

Wpromote.com Through The Years

Mike Mothner | December 15, 2011

As 2011 draws to a close, we thought it would be fun to take a little trip down memory lane. In this case, we are going to have a little fun looking at the evolution of Wpromote as seen through our Wpromote website over (believe it or not) the past decade, using an addicting (and mind boggling) tool called the Wayback Machine. The site literally takes snapshots of websites and stores them indefinitely. If you are looking to waste a little time checking out how your favorite websites looked way back when, look no further. Our fun begins a decade ago in 2001, when I built the very first Wpromote website, which was born as a service that automated submitting websites to the morphing list of search engines (189 of them in the very beginning, as you can see). Of note, the original Wpromote logo which I created myself (and … Continue reading →

Why Facebook will be the next $100 Billion company. And how it gets there.

Mike Mothner | January 21, 2011

Why Facebook will be the next $100 Billion company. And how it gets there.

 People balked when Facebook turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo. They said the $15 billion valuation when Microsoft invested was insanity. And with Goldman Sachs’ recent investment at a valuation of a whopping $50 billion, the naysayers are crying foul once again. Well folks, mark my words: Facebook will be worth $100 billion in under 5 years, and I think it could be half that time. Here’s how I think it is going to happen. Before I get to that however, let’s recap the naysayer’s argument. At a valuation of $50 billion, that is a whopping 25 times their estimated revenue of $2 billion last year. By comparison, stalwart Microsoft is valued at about 4x revenue, Apple about 5x revenue, and Google about 8x their revenue. So 25x is obscene. The other arguments that … Continue reading →

4 Worthwhile Ways to Successfully Leverage Social Media

Mike Mothner | July 16, 2010

According to a recent study on social media and dating behavior, more than one in six marriages over the past three years were the result of relationships begun online. In 2010, the rising popularity of social networks like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter simply cannot be ignored. When people are turning to the Internet to find their soul mates, you can rest assured they are looking online for everything else – from their next pair of Oakley’s to their new optometrist – and if you are a business seeking customers, you are well-advised to look online, too. All in all, social media is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. But don’t just take my word for it. Nielsen recently published a study stating that 79% of Fortune 100 companies are leveraging social media to engage their audience, and they are doing it in innovative ways to build buzz, establish relationships, … Continue reading →

5 Secrets to Selecting Highly Effective SEO and PPC Keywords

Mike Mothner | June 2, 2010

If there is a single concept that is the driver of much of the internet’s growth over the past decade – not to mention nearly all of Google’s $25 Billion of annual revenue – it is the concept of keywords. Keywords are what we type in when we are searching for products, services and answers on the search engines, an act that Americans performed 15.5 Billion times in April 2010 (according to ComScore). For businesses, the implications are huge; keyword selection is fundamental to success in paid search (PPC), organic website rankings (SEO), as well as the holy grail of marketing: how to most effectively market your products and services to your target audience. Do our customers love our product because it is fast acting or because it is long lasting?  Do they care more about the great price or the abundant features? The answers very well may lie in … Continue reading →

GrowCo & SES NY Recap

Mike Mothner | March 30, 2010

Greetings! Well, the last two weeks have been a whirlwind of hotel rooms, conference centers and networking events. In the end, however, it was well worth it, as we met a ton of prospective and current clients and partners, gave several amazing talks and spent some great time with the thought leaders of our exciting industry! We kicked things off two weeks ago in Orlando as a sponsor of Inc. Magazine’s GrowCo conference, enjoying it’s second terrific year. Though it was designed as an educational conference for companies more in the bootstrap phase that with the right guidance make it to the flagship Inc 500/5000 conference, we were thrilled by the caliber of companies and people at the conference (not to mention the growing turnout of just under 500). We capped off the conference with a boisterous day at Disneyworld and Epcot center, a destination that sadly eluded me for … Continue reading →