Category Archives: facebook

Weekly Reader: Facebook virality, Twitter patents and Groupon’s Lefkofsky

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

This contains a summary of my work this week. I had two very important non-Groupon stories this week, on Facebook and Twitter. My work Secrets of Facebook’s success: Virality — Facebook’s photo tagging feature was an important driver of its growth. … Continue reading →

Posted in daily deals, facebook, groupon, twitter | 2 Comments

Why Facebook investors should be concerned about international growth

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

In the short-term, much of Facebook’s user growth will come from international markets. Unfortunately, that’s not where the money is. Based on my analysis of Facebook’s S-1, Facebook generated $13.99 in revenue for each U.S. user and $2.81 for foreign … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook | 1 Comment

Facebook has 100 million more U.S. users than Google did at IPO

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

In December, Facebook had more than 100 million more unique users than Google did when it went public in August 2004. In December 2011, Facebook had 162.5 million unique users in the United States. In August 2004, Google had 61.9 … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, google | 2 Comments

Twitter and Google are both responsible for you not being able to search tweets

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Chris Dixon ignited a firestorm on his blog when he said it was Twitter’s fault that Google doesn’t index tweets. It’s the fault of both parties, really. Neither has the moral high ground. Twitter does not block Google from crawling … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, google, search, twitter | 4 Comments

Why Google’s acquisition of Zagat matters

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

Today, Google announced its acquisition of Zagat, the company that publishes the venerable restaurant and hotel review guides. It’s a terrific acquisition. If Google executes correctly, this deal could be as significant as the YouTube deal has been. (I was … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, foursquare, google, groupon, yelp | 1 Comment

There are only two deal companies that matter: Facebook and Google

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

Much has been made of Facebook’s decision last week to exit the daily deals space. Yesterday, Yelp told Bloomberg’s Doug MacMillan that it is also exiting the daily deals space. A lot of the analysis has used these examples to … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, google, groupon | 7 Comments

Could Google use Motorola and mobile to muscle its way into social? Does antitrust law matter?

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

Today’s announcement of Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility shines a brighter light on the antitrust conversations that were getting louder at the end of last week.  Bloomberg reported that companies such as Microsoft, Expedia and Yelp may have been asked to … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, google, social networking | Comments Off on Could Google use Motorola and mobile to muscle its way into social? Does antitrust law matter?

An Average User’s First Google+ Experience: “Ug. This Is Already Too Much Work.”

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

Much of the discussion of Google+ has been from the point-of-view of very experienced users and early adopters. In my analysis, I’ve really tried to focus on how a normal user would evaluate Google+, especially someone who was a heavy … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, google, social networking | 22 Comments

Google should just buy Twitter already. At any price.

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

I’ve been thinking more about Google+ since my TechCrunch post on the Google circles colliding. Even if you buy the argument that categorizing your friends into buckets offers user value (which I don’t), that is not a defensible feature for … Continue reading →

Posted in facebook, google, twitter | 5 Comments

The experience is the product

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

Apple retail stores celebrated their 10th anniversary last week. The stores have defied all analyst expectations and have become the highest grossing retailers in the world. The company’s market cap exceeds all of the other players in tech. Its $5,000 … Continue reading →

Posted in apple, facebook, marketing, product management, strategy | 6 Comments