Music site Last.fm bought by CBS for $280m

BBC NEWS Technology Music site Last.fm bought by CBS

So, another mammoth price for an online media business. Last.fm has been bought by CBS Corporation for $280m, making it the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition…so far.

Last.fm was founded in the UK in 2002 and claims it has more than 15 million active users.

I’ve heard lots of good reports from Last.fm users but I have an account and have never really got engaged with the service. I wonder if in the due diligence I was counted as an active user?

It is always interesting to do this sum:

price paid/active users = price per email address for future marketing

In this case it is:

£140m/15m = £9.33

I seem to recollect a figure of £10 per email address being bandied about when Friends Reunited was purchased by iTV.

Bing, it bounced

I was rather enthused about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. I Tweeted about this a few days ago saying, “Giving Bing www.bing.com a go. It’s good and localisation seems to work well. I also like the ‘format to phone’ feature; ace on Blackberry.”

Today I was further impressed by the following email that I received:

Hi Kevin,

I’m writing on behalf of Microsoft to invite you to a discussion about Bing, the new search engine that recently launched in beta in the UK.

The session will be a small round-table event to discuss Bing and since we saw your recent tweet regarding the use of Bing on a phone, we thought that you might be interested in coming along. The idea would be to get your initial thoughts and you’ll get an update on the future steps for Bing which are being developed specifically for the UK. During the session you’ll have the chance to talk with Microsoft representatives and other people from social media like yourself, who have expressed some early opinion.

This will take place in the next couple of weeks, so if you’re interested in coming along, or have any questions, just get in touch and I’ll send you some more details.

Thanks,

Colin Mercer

Excellent, cooking on gas, was my thoughts. I replied straight away and guess what? The email bounced with this message:  

Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender 

This is the mail system at host safetwo.sceur.ch.

I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster. If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

Perhaps Bing will struggle against Google? Or perhaps this was a freak occurrence.

Apparently Colin works for 1000heads. He was representing Life Without Walls which is a Microsoft sponsored initiative run by 1000heads that organises events, social gatherings, trials and a host of other enlightening activities.

 Bing, it bounced

Doing business on the web

There’s tons of stuff on the internet about web 2.0. This extract from Positively Glorius! is part of a very good article.

The basic point is that if you are there interacting with people, finding ways to help them, then the rest will fall into place. It’s not marketing, it’s involvement. If you tell me you can solve my problem, I may (but probably won’t) trust that you can and will. If you simply solve my problem or help me in another way, or even just connect with me on a personal level, I may (and probably will) trust you and continue to build a relationship. It may not lead to a financial gain from me immediately, or ever, but it will be a relationship. And those relationships are what will help you survive and grow.

The article talks about about some of the fears businesses have with interactivity on the web. Use this link to read the rest.