Check out a thoughtful post by Mark Clare on the Valuecruncher blog. He points out that Private Equity firms are able to raise debt (borrow money) at much lower interest rates than other potential Yellow Pages purchasers (such as Telstra, whose shareholders demand more return than low interest rates). By plonking a huge amount of …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Living Large
Olivia from Trade Me has started blogging – at Liv Large. Expect some interesting stuff as Liv has not only been at Trade Me for a long time, but she is also the person at Trade Me responsible for buying and selling advertising. There is lots of growth coming down the pipeline for online advertising …
Ferrit – 2 unsubstantiated rumours….
Last night in the pub I heard from someone, who overheard someone else saying: 1: Ferrit offered discounts to Telecom staff in the pre-Christmas period 2: Ferrit is now asking retailers to discount certain products and are picking up the tab In the style of Wonkette I’m just passing on these scurrilous rumours… but would …
Is Stuff down?
08:39 and I get this from Stuff… My ISP is Orcon, and everything else seems to work. Scoopit!
Read this if you are in advertising or media…
The Digital outlook report is a bit over-produced, but there is some very good stuff in there. (It isn’t exactly easy to view on the internet – unless, ahem, you have a 30 inch monitor) Some of it is obvious, some irrelevant to NZ, but there is much there to read and discuss. Guy Kawasaki’s …
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Scoopit – fair and balanced?
Why does this promotional post get rated in the Scoopit rankings when this promotional post already exists? (I previously did this related post) Moreover – count the votes on the Scoopits – this has 9 votes, but 6 voters. This has 6 votes, and 3 voters. Clearly Scoop members (e.g. althecat, graeme, scooper) get two …
telecom strategy
Some interesting things to glean from Telecom’s consumer strategy document, and the wholesale technology document – presented at an analyst day today. Read it – there is a lot there. (Juha found these) Firstly – it is actually not that bad – the strategy seems coherent. Secondly – The biggest source of retail income (page …
Pimp my plane…..
How cool is this? AirNZ lets us pimp my plane… <update: a picture!> Scoopit!
Your house is already on the market
via economist blog via trendwatching: “Finnish real estate site Igglo lets potential buyers ‘pre-order’ houses that aren’t on the market. Igglo has photographed every building in Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, and combines these photographs with satellite images and maps. Every property is listed, not just those that are currently on the market. (Their …
eBay aussie give Tax Office seller records
Via Tamebay – the ATO is getting data on sellers with over OZ$50,000 in sales, affecting an estimated 1000 sellers who should be GST registered. eBay handed over records from 2003 to 2006. Here in NZ the threshold for GST is lower at $40,000 worth of purchases, and I expect there will be plenty of …
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mobile phone promos
If I cannot understand it, why do you think I will buy it? The link is a landing page from a Vodafone ad in Stuff. It starts off with a ‘due to huge demand the blah blah blah has sold out”, continues on to list a confussingly long list of T’s and C’s and I …
Paymex paygo paypal paywhatever
The battle for payments in NZ is on. Or is it? We have a plethora of wannabe players, but nobody seems to get it. Paypal doesn’t care – after all eBay isn’t around and why support Trade Me? Pago is just woefully bureaucratically crippled, and they can’t spell Paymex looks ok, but who the heck …
Love Calculator – Vodafone and Google shame
I really hadn’t looked at the scam that is love calculator. Google ads are still displaying for these fraudsters. Juha has the full run down. Step one: click on a google ad (still displaying!) Step 2: enter your name, mobile number and star sign Step 3: enter a code that was txt’d to you. “Your …
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iBankers have to be real estate agents
Apparently, I read in the Independent Financial Review last week, people that receive a success fee for helping a company sell are required under NZ law to be licenced real estate agents. The “investment bank” that helped Trade Me sell was specifically mentioned as a candidate for this law. 1: Trade Me had no formal …
What is happening to Xtra?
On March 1 xtraMSN split to form Yahoo!xtra and msn.co.nz. Let’s track the results using Netratings data. (Alexa does not have anything interesting, and I do not have Hitwise data) The old Xtramsn site is now 1 page, which lets you choose between yahoo!xtra and msn. Neither of those new sites are yet tracked by …
Lance Wiggs 