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Are these widgets worth half a billion?

money.cnn.com — A lot of eyebrows were raised on Wall Street in January when two giant investment firms, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, paid $50 million for a 9.1% stake in Slide, a San Francisco- based company best known as the purveyor of entertainments like SuperPoke, which lets Facebook users "ninja kick" or "bodyslam" or "throw a pillow at" their friends.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 25, 2008

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52 Comments

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  • ALyken, on 03/25/2008, -0/+27Honest answer? No!
  • EggSaladKing, on 03/25/2008, -1/+24Hello bubble 2.0
  • enclaved, on 03/25/2008, -2/+21Yes, but 10% of half a billion is 50 million. Welcome to math, please enjoy your stay.
  • Tiler, on 03/25/2008, -0/+15I appreciate their thought process but when is big corporation going to realize you can't "create" viral?
  • mrheyguy, on 03/25/2008, -1/+14$50m for a 9.1% stake means the company is worth ~$549m
  • Radigg, on 03/25/2008, -1/+10well, if facebook is worth $15 billion, why not?
  • Stavrosian, on 03/25/2008, -1/+109.1% != 100%, genius.
  • mrgoat, on 03/25/2008, -1/+9I read 'midgets' for 'widgets'. I am disappointed now. Can I have my money back?
  • chris9902, on 03/25/2008, -0/+7The bubble grows bigger...
  • Kamael, on 03/25/2008, -1/+7If the widgets were mine, hell yes...
  • daedalus779, on 03/25/2008, -2/+8then why didn't you reply to his comment you jerk?
  • Spuy767, on 03/25/2008, -0/+5As soon as investments in ***** like this lead to the next Tech crash.
  • theneb29, on 03/25/2008, -0/+4since they paid approx. 10% in the company for $50mil, 100% = appox. $500 mil = approx. 0.5 billion.
  • xTRUMANx, on 03/25/2008, -0/+4Funny thing is, all this is just to get the best advertising space and I don't think I've ever clicked on an ad for years. Advertising is only useful for awareness for me, it never entices me to buy something. I wonder if that's how everyone see advertising or if there are people who can't wait to buy the Lightspeed briefs they just dreamt about.
  • waz67, on 03/25/2008, -0/+3Only because he co-founded PayPal. Us regular Joes struggling to make ends meet would be told to come back when we've got 5 years of solid profit under our belts, and then they'd give us half a mil for 50%.
  • gojcaj, on 03/25/2008, -0/+3My widget collection, let me show you them.
  • Picer, on 03/25/2008, -0/+3Why is the market getting drunk over too many web 2.0 properties; I doubt slide makes anywhere near 1/2 a billion, they pay too much money for worthless properties (in the context of their profit-stock price).
  • EvilDoer, on 03/25/2008, -0/+3They paid 50 million for **9.1%** of the company which works out to be half a billion if they bought it all.
  • inactive, on 03/25/2008, -0/+2No. If I had any money in Fidelity or T. Rowe Price I'd be taking it out.
  • aladrin, on 03/25/2008, -1/+3I dunno, I've seen quite a bit of corporate-created 'viral' lately. iheartbees comes to mind pretty quickly.

    It's just a different kind of advertising is all. It takes a different way of thinking to make it happen, but it's not really any harder than standard marketing. (They fail pretty miserably at that, too.)
  • Spuy767, on 03/25/2008, -0/+2FAIL
  • psevium, on 03/25/2008, -0/+2"Levchin offers two answers. The first has to do with the changing nature of the Web, where social networks are the fashion of the day. Online search - which is where Google does most of its ad business - today accounts for only 6% of what people do online. This leaves a lot of contested ground."

    No *****, who the hell would spend more than that amount of time searching? I mean search engines are useful but it's hardly an enthralling activity to search for 17 hours a day
  • punkcat, on 03/25/2008, -0/+2facebook ads look shockingly similar to its interface. thats the only reason that ***** has ever had a click from me.
  • TimDigg, on 03/25/2008, -0/+2I used to work at T. Rowe HQ in Bmore on the tech side...on the investment side, they KNOW what they're doing, they're like a mini goldman sachs
  • JackpotCity, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1holy moly that's a lot off moolah to shell out. they might need a scam me to superpoke!
  • benholmes, on 04/21/2008, -0/+1killroy1970, I think there's an aspect of the delivery of television content that makes sheople much more amiable to the message. Wasn't there a Rand study done in the 50's or 60's that showed this?
  • buddamus, on 03/25/2008, -1/+2Thats Insane and retarded
  • synthpop, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1this will be bigger than Webvan I tells ya!
  • ephemerae, on 03/25/2008, -0/+1Like this annoyware actually deserves any more money.
  • unklesam666, on 03/25/2008, -0/+1i second gcod's statement - unless that ***** i ate this morning drove me insane, they either misspelled 500 at least twice, or the author of the article is an idiot
  • embeemb, on 03/25/2008, -0/+1ouch. mistakes do happen you know? a misplaced reply can sometimes be better than a duplicate if I we can't delete replies altogether.
  • gcod, on 03/25/2008, -1/+2Since when 50 millions equal half a billion (500 millions)?
  • tutivlahos, on 03/25/2008, -0/+1Go back to school. If I buy 50% of your company for five dollars, your company is now WORTH ten dollars.
  • freezeout, on 03/26/2008, -1/+1we'z gonna party like it's 1999! superpoke me, babeh!
  • Sonof8Bits, on 03/25/2008, -1/+1I've been Adblock'ing stuff since forever, i don't know why they advertise anyway. It's allways the worst deal i can find! (I can get is cheaper somewhere else without the need for a creditcard)

    As for people still believing they are the 1000000 visitor...
  • nelav, on 03/25/2008, -0/+0How do you dump Fidelity, it's a privately held company. If you mean by their managed funds, then I guess, but this has zero impact on anything at all.
  • milanverstegen, on 03/25/2008, -0/+0What do you think about corporate widgets? The upcoming Corporate 2.0...
  • punkcat, on 03/25/2008, -0/+0thank god i dumped fidelity
  • 4321234, on 03/25/2008, -1/+0But they bought 9.1% for $50 mil. So .....
  • inactive, on 03/25/2008, -3/+2this is DIGG, you should have said "little people"
  • raynar, on 03/25/2008, -6/+4obligatory $50 million not equal to half a billion comment.
  • killroy1970, on 03/25/2008, -3/+1If the large, billion dollar per year advertisers start spending even just 25% of their ad budgets on-line, then these types of properties will look cheap 5 years from now. If you think wasting money on these on-line ads is a waste of money, think of the billions spent on traditional TV advertising that no one cares about. The true question would be to whether to cut total ad spending, but when you are in charge of this budget line, that option is never one that is discussed - "use it or lose it" is the mentality and budgets are always pushed to go higher, not lower. Note however this is all a big IF in terms of % spent on on-line ads.
  • meropealcyone, on 03/25/2008, -5/+1nice try, though.
  • Rowan187, on 03/25/2008, -12/+6oh yeah, ***** math.
  • xchino, on 03/25/2008, -6/+0I don't know if the author of this article failed remedial math but $50 million is NOT half a billion
  • Rowan187, on 03/25/2008, -23/+1750 million is not half a billion.
  • jaybird1905, on 03/25/2008, -7/+1I know I was schooled in the south ... but since when is $50 million half a billion?
  • DonSlice, on 03/25/2008, -11/+2$50,000,000 =! $500,000,000
  • embeemb, on 03/25/2008, -14/+2I second Tiler.
  • deadlift, on 03/25/2008, -21/+5Did anyone read it as "Are these midgets worth half a billion?"

    Dugg for rhyming with midgets!

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