Monday, February 21, 2011

Making Money Fast

Standing in front of a fast-charging station at the Chicago Auto Show, Gov. Pat Quinn called on automakers to bring electric vehicles to the state in light of charging infrastructure planned for the Chicago area.

“We’re going to have electric vehicles galore in the state of Illinois,” he said. “We want to be the nation’s capital for electric vehicles.”

In announcing that Chicago has signed a contract to have 280 charging stations installed in the area, Quinn said the infrastructure will go a long way toward making the state’s environmental goals a reality.

He called on Nissan, Chevy and other plug-in vehicle manufacturers to bring their cars to Illinois, which will have the largest number of fast-charging stations in the country once the $8.8 million project is complete. Only Ford has announced Chicago as an initial city for its electric vehicles.

Nissan has said it expects to rollout nationwide in 2012. A spokesman said this week that the charging infrastructure announcement has not changed its timeline to bring electric vehicles to Chicago.

Mariana Gerzanych, chief executive of 350Green LLC, the San Diego company awarded the approximately $2 million contract — half federal and half state money — said it is mapping a strategy that includes installing the stations where people park for longer periods of time.

“We start with: ‘How do people drive? Where do people park? How long do they stay there?’” she said.

That strategy also means working with Commonwealth Edison Co. to ensure that the electrical grid can handle the fast-charging stations.

Dan Gabel, ComEd’s manager of electric vehicles, said demand from 73 DC Quick Charge stations, which can charge a vehicle in less than 30 minutes, is significantly more than from Level 2 (240 volt) charging stations, which can take four to eight hours to charge. He equated the requirements for each charging station to those needed to support a shop in a strip mall. Depending on the charging station site, the costs to upgrade electrical equipment could be borne by the site owner or by ComEd customers, he said, and those costs would vary from site to site.

Social game maker Zynga is reportedly talking to investors about raising a new $250 million round of funding that values the company at $7 – $9 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That valuation is much higher than the $5 billion value Zynga had on the secondary market( where employees sell shares to private investors). And it shows investors are still going gaga about social games and anything related to fast-growing social media platforms such Facebook.

Zynga has 275.8 million monthly active users on Facebook, including 96 million who are playing the company’s hot CityVille game. CityVille is the fastest-growing game ever, as it hit 100 million players in just 43 days before sinking down again more recently.

The funding shows that investors consider Zynga to be in the hot class of social media companies that includes Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, and LinkedIn. Both LinkedIn and Pandora have filed to go public, but Zynga has postponed its IPO by raising large rounds from investors such as SoftBank and DST.

Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said the decision to raise a round could be weeks away and may not happen. Zynga is valued so high because it has figured out how to make money online through the free-to-play business model. Pioneered in Asia, that model lets users play games for free. But to progress faster in a game, they can pay real money for virtual goods such as tractor fuel in FarmVille. Zynga has also made a lot of deals to market its games and virtual goods via 7-Eleven stores and American Express cards. The company has made itself more attractive to investors by expanding into new territories and moving into mobile games.

The $7 – $9 billion figure is astounding, since Zynga’s revenues in 2010 were estimated to be $850 million. Investors are valuing Zynga at 10 times revenue. Compare that to a successful mainstream game company like Electronic Arts, which has a market value of $6 billion and is valued at less than two times revenue.

Zynga had an estimated $400 million in profits in 2010, the Wall Street Journal said. Zynga declined to comment to the WSJ. Zynga’s value is closing in on the biggest video game maker, Activision Blizzard, valued at $13 billion.

Zynga doesn’t need a lot of money for operations, but it has been buying about one company a month to acquire new developer talent so that it can keep making better and better games. To date, Zynga has raised $360 million from investors, not counting a rumored Google investment that was never announced.

The WSJ said that Zynga will likely avoid the “special-purpose vehicle” that Goldman Sachs created for wealthy foreign clients to invest in Facebook. That deal raised concerns among regulators in the U.S.

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Thursday, February 17, 2011

Making Money in Wotlk

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How To Use Facebook's News Feed Filters

Facebook hasn't formally explained the latest upgrade to news feed filters, and some users are confused. Some postings describe the default settings almost like a grand conspiracy to hide updates. Let's set the record straight.