The operator finally enters the network

This text is published by the newspaper stand and can be read in pdf here , or via online here.

Following the failure of social network launch Ketek in 2008, Telefónica has decided to take 85% of Tuenti for an amount close to 70 million euros. The operation raises many questions, but not exactly the reason for the failure of Ketek , which is not new. What is difficult to understand is how a company like Telefónica was not in the draft Tuenti since its inception, supporting, participating, and led the Spanish startup.

It is more than certain that they would have welcomed with open arms, but I had to have happened four years ago, the time that Telefónica has been slow to understand that today the Internet is something more to sell ADSL and that represents many independent analysts precisely the future of telecommunications companies. One can imagine at this time the directors of Orange and Vodafone, to which the movement has caught contrapié Telefónica. Currently, there are positioned in a sector where, if they grow in the medium term in Spain, was key to invest to prevent Telefónica be advanced.

The foreign market

Another interesting issue lies in how Telefónica will focus its strategy of internationalization in social networks. Brazil, its main market, is dominated by Orkut, Google's social network, with approximately 73% share, while Facebook has approximately 11%. Try to fight hard to believe, much less overcome, these giants of social networking, but unfortunately for Telefonica, Google's social network clearly succeed only in Turkey and Brazil. It is bad luck, but the Brazilian surfer, the orkuteiro, new values that were the first to arrive and to understand what he wanted.

It is time to consider what the future of so many Spanish startup that started as Tuenti and now face the problem of ripening, which was approaching Tuenti. The ripening is a point that eliminates any possibility of sale of promising companies that, as they incorporate new venture capital funds to shareholders in order to expand and see how we are losing at the same time all future option sales. The most valuable of this operation is that Telefónica finally realize that buying online is not only absorb talent and companies.

The lack of talent in their projects has been the biggest mistake that so hard learned over the past 10 years, with releases as poor as Terra, Lycos and a thousand other smaller initiatives. But the talent behind such Tuenti definitely worth 70 million euros. Telefónica is why respect them a 10% shareholding, for which the founders and supporters of the young Spanish company, who have managed to get here, find out how to deal with many questions before us for their future.

Tags: facebook , orkut , Social Networking , startup , Telefonica , tuenti