Really smart company research has always been hard to find, and today it’s
getting harder. On the one hand, many sell-side institutions are scaling back
their equity-research operations, and encouraging what analysts remain to spend
more time on the phone to high-value clients, and less time writing research
reports for the masses. On the other hand, there are thousands of bloggers with
opinions about individual companies, but it’s very hard to separate out the
signal from the noise.
Occasionally, however, the blogosphere comes up with the kind of analysis that
any highly-paid analyst would be incredbily proud of. In the past couple of
days, we’ve seen both Marc Andreessen and Esther Dyson
publish their takes on Facebook freely on the web, without any kind of corporate
firewall or conflict of interest. If you’re interested in the direction that
the web is going, both of these are must-read pieces.
says that "the new Facebook Platform is a dramatic leap forward for the
Internet industry," while Dyson
is thinking even bigger:
Facebook supports the attention economy — as opposed to the purchase intention
economy. Mark Zuckerberg said to me long ago (paraphrase): "The other
guys think the purpose of communication is to get information. We think the
purpose of information is to foster communication."
Think of Facebook not so much as information exchange as a place where you
can establish and spread your presence, and get attention back. That’s the
currency of the future … and it may or may not be directly exchangeable
for money.
Of course, Facebook isn’t a public company (yet), so all of this analysis is
hard to monetize. But if you’re interested in the future of the technology space,
increasingly blog entries are at the top of the required-reading list.