Facebooks opens up, and passes YouTube

Facebook is loosening its "privacy" restrictions to share information with the world, according to Softpedia. And is passing YouTube in Alexa as a worldwide number 3 website.

The new publishing engine of Facebook now has the default option to share the content you post with “Everyone”, and thus allows a user to distribute its content to any application or person, just like Twitters or blogs are visible for everyone, unless the user decides otherwise. The hunger to win from competition, is driving Facebook in the right way. Actually, it is a big surprise that a social network like Facebook is able to pass Google's YouTube in terms of online traffic. Without the help of Google - 20% of YouTube's visits come via a search engine (i.e. Google) versus only 10% of Facebook's visists - YouTube would have already been passed by Facebook a long time ago.

As Facebook is still privately owned, one can just wonder how long it will take before Google or Microsoft are approaching them again with a serious multibillion takeover bid. Last year's transactions valued Facebook already at 15 billion USD. Despite the crisis, it is unlikely that the price will have gone down. At the other hand, Facebook's revenues in 2008 were only about 300 million USD and it is likely that it is actually highly overvalued, despite its significant growth frigures. It still would have to grow with a factor 50 (!!!) to live up to last year's market expectations.

The Virtual Crisis of 2009

The virtualization of mortgage derivatives into an incomprehensible trillion dollar market and the subsequent collapse into NOTHING... we can call it the Virtual Crisis of 2009. The Virtual Krach. As no one understood what it was all about, the media were copycatting each other by using the C word: CRISIS. Mortgage Crisis. Financial Crisis. Economic Crisis. A lot of what happens now has nothing tot do with the original financial crisis, but with perceptions, with fears and anticipations on fears.

Gradually, the fears are passing, and the first signs of a new Spring are visible. But also the first signs of a new world order. Who are the winners?
- The Euro is a clear winner
- China, India and a few other fast-growth economies kept their growth figures
- The Globalizing Internet Economy
- Green industries

Who are the loosers?
- The developed countries: Europe, North America, but also Russia
- The US dollar lost much of its credibility
- Western financial institutions
- US car industries

Is it bad that this happened? No, not at all. It is a big correction. Bubbles have burst. The US is creative and resilient enough to go through a new revival. The Eurozone continues its geographical expansion, and will stay the biggest economy for some time to come. The rise of China and India will force the European Union to think out-of-the-box. I foresee the inclusion of a democratizing Russia in some decades; a nation then tired of cleptocratic dicators. Also an expansion with Southern Mediterranean countries is not unlikely when the Islamic countries have gone through a stabilizing democratic development in which extremism and fundamentalism are coped with.

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