Is Ortsbo from INT really worth 210M$

THAT COMPANY SEEMS TO BE AN EMPTY SHELL AS OF NOW AND INVESTORS LOST THEIR SHIRTS ON THIS ONE" REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE BOARD MEMBERS FOR FUTURE REFERENCE"

The latest value that INT (Intertainment Media) assigned to Orstbo was 210M$ for a translator plug in that works perfectly even if at this time it is still having some minor glitchs when trying to translate local expressions in most languages.

(By the way, they are actually working on a wiki type of dictionary that will fix most of the problem.)

Actually on the last reading (end of 2011) Orstbo had acquired 107M users and the speed at which they are increasing that user number is absolutely incredible to the point that i would not be surprised to see another 25-30% increase at the end of March 2012. And i am not even mentionning mobile users numbers.

So when looking at value per user ( December 2011) at around 2$,  that is way too low based upon market value for other companies in the social media arena.

Sure the revenues per user are not that fantastic at this time but it is absolutely the right thing to do to have such a great number of users that advertising companies will be willing and begging to get in and pay a right price to advertise.

Imagine for a second that INT would have done the opposite: increase revenues per user and forget user number expansion. The result: each user would be targetted so many times a day that it would be annoying to them to the point that most users would only get rid of the application. Simply imagine a fantastic application on which 3/4 or the displayed page is reserved to advertising and 1/4 for the app. That would not make sense.

Think about Angry Bird: imagine that each time you shoot, an add would pop-up...

No, INT did the best thing for Ortsbo and don't see any reason why this coming company could not be valued more than 1B$ (yes 1,000,000,000$). They have the user base growing faster than Facebook, they have a fantastic app that translate instantly in 53 different languages and this is only the beginning.

As for the total value of INT, well at this time even if it was only for Orstbo, it's value is definitely a lot more than 50 cents. Do not forget all the other start up companies that they have invested in (too many to list them all here) and it is a no brainer that INT value is a lot more than Ortsbo.

Here is an excerpt from The Washington Post explaining one of the reason why Facebook paid 1B$ for Instagram. By reading it i am sure that it will pop up some ideas about other INT divisions and how they could easily be assembled together to form the next Instagram company to be bought out by either Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Nokia...the list of potential buyers is again too long to list themn all.

(From the Washington Post)

Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram is a clear sign that Facebook, at least, is taking the rapid shift to mobile platforms seriously. While the social network has one of the most popular apps on the market, the company is still centered around the desktop experience and has admitted that it’s a little concerned about its mobile strategy.

In fact, it paid out twice as much as Instagram’s last estimated value to snap up the photo start-up — possibly because it’s a purely mobile application.

Guy Rosen, the chief executive of Onavo, which monitors mobile data, said the acquisition is “definitely a huge milestone for mobile.” There hasn’t been an acquisition this large of something purely mobile, he said, but the Facebook acquisition recognizes that “Instagram is on to something, on to what it means to be viral,” he said.

Apart from viral appeal, though, Instagram has the loyalty of a growing community of creative people that distinguishes it from other flash-in-the-pan fads such as Color, another photo-sharing app that launched to much fanfare and failed to gain traction, prompting a redesign only months later.

In its two years, however, Instagram has grown on the iOS platform and recently opened its community to Android users. The service now has 30 million users — up from 5 million in June — and the app is the sixth-most downloaded iOS application, according to Onavo’s numbers. That means it shows up on roughly one of every 10 iPhones.

“It’s the most popular social network apart from Facebook and Twitter [when it comes to apps], and the only mobile-only network,” Rosen said. “You can see how Facebook is really trying to address this gap by tapping into Instagram.”

Michael Scissons, president and chief executive of the social marketing firm Syncapse, said that Facebook is smart to look to Instagram and attempt to capture the creativity of its users in the same way.

“This is part of Facebook's. . . strategy toward making Web their own,” he said. “And it is based on users building their own content.”

Scissons said that he believes Instagram will become a core part of Facebook, which has said in the past that photos are a vital part of its social network. He also believes that the social network will do its best to keep the spirit of the photo service intact to keep its fans coming back and to keep Instagram’s talent happy.

“If you pay $1 billion for that team, there’s a strong probability that it will remain independent,” he said, drawing comparisons to Google’s acquisition of YouTube.