Entrepreneur - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

Perhaps one of the most challenging questions for an entrepreneur to answer is 'what does my company really do and what is its true role in the marketplace?'

It's a simple question. But it is difficult for many entrepreneurs to answer realistically, because there's a natural tendency on their part to think their companies do more and have more potential than is actually true.

This week's hodgepodge of articles I found interesting includes news that could impact the Microsoft-Yahoo courtship, online streaming music, digital thieves and young entrepreneurs.

Would you:

1. Put $20m into a company that you're valuing at $75m and has no proven mainstream appeal, scalability problems or business model?
   
2. Invest $25m at a $200m valuation in a company that has already raised $12.5m, has reportedly generated about $1m in revenues since its launch in 2005 and was unable to develop acquisition interest at $250m?
   
3. Give $50m and a $500m valuation to a profitless company that does $10-12m in annual revenues and whose CEO has said, "We’re like a teen in our clock cycle. Now, we have to figure out how do you get a job and work in the real world"?

You have to hand it to Henry Blodget. The infamous securities analyst who arguably promulgated more hype in Bubble 1.0 than anybody else on Wall Street seems to have a knack for bubbles.

His blog, Silicon Alley Insider, or SAI, is an increasingly influential force in the tech blogosphere and has given Blodget the ability to establish a front row seat for Bubble 2.0.

Social media, in some forms, is quite popular. One need only look at the rise of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook to recognize this.

But there's an inconvenient truth that proponents of these sites tend to ignore - the average person just doesn't have the ability to participate fully in social media.

There are fewer exits available to overhyped startups these days, and I don’t think it’s just because of a troubled economy.

Bebo may have found its sucker in AOL, but for other players, finding a company that wants to buy the Brooklyn Bridge is harder than many may have anticipated.

If you are wondering why your competitors are ranking above you in Google on highly trafficed keywords, it is probably because you are missing a key part in the SEO equation.

To start outperforming your peers on the search engines, I suggest following these five steps:

Record labels, faced with declining CD sales due in large part to rampant digital piracy at the consumer level, have increasingly been willing to "play ball" with internet companies.

The recently-announced MySpace Music joint venture between MySpace, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group is the latest example.

Vertical search is the new breed of Search Engines that more intelligently mine data, from searching for keywords in audio files to focusing on specific industry sectors.

The landscape of Search is changing and I recently noticed three vertical search applications, which may end up threatening Google’s position.

Late last year, Channel 4 Education announced a complete rethink of its TV-heavy commissioning strategy and said it was devoting its entire 2008 budget to cross-platform projects.

But it seems the broadcaster is not just keen to acquire new digital content – it also wants to invest in companies that support it.

According to commissioning editor Matt Locke, it is one of a number of firms that has just ploughed “a six figure sum” into School of Everything, a UK-based start-up that aims to encourage informal learning via the web.