Filed under: Fun, Internet, Features, Web services, Social Software

If you can’t get enough of the English-language Weblogs, Inc. blogs, you can always check out some of the ones we serve up in other languages — Autoblog Chinese or Engadget Spanish, for example. What? You don’t know any other languages? Well, it’s time you learned.

Babbel is a well-designed Web site designed to instruct you a foreign language. It’s part instruction, part wiki, and part social (isn’t everything these days? What’s next? A social network for wood stork enthusiasts? But we digress). Babbel incorporates a few different methods to facilitate learning one of the five languages they offer: Spanish, French, Italian, English, and German.

Continue reading Learn a new language at Babbel, por favor

Read

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

If you go to sign up for a new LiveJournal account, you may notice something missing. The company behind the blogging service/social network has removed the Basic account option, while leaving the Plus and Paid options in place. For $2 a month you get the capability to post more picturs, receive more notifications, and store more media on the web than you could with a free Plus account. And you don’t have to put up with advertising.

The Basic option used to be ad-free as well, but users didn’t get advanced search options, additional storage space and many other features that came with Plus and Paid accounts. In other words, LiveJournal wasn’t really making any money off of Basic account holders. You know, unless you count the fact that Basic account holders were adding value to the service by creating a community of active users that was so popular that some people were even willing to pay for advanced features.

When LiveJournal management announced the change earlier this month, LiveJournal users didn’t exactly keep their concerns private. As of this writing, there are 68 pages filled with comments, most from users who are critical of the change. But since the new policy affects new users more than existing users, it will probably take a while to determine what impact the change will have.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Read

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Financials and analyticals, Raising money, Private equity industry, Investments

There has been much speak about how the credit squeeze and slowing economy has affected the public markets, but how has it affected private-equity firms? An article in the Hartford Business discusses how private equity firms are feeling the pain, especially as many private-equity owned companies have very high risk ratings and default risks. This appears to be more concerns of the past coming to fruition over leverage and credit quality more than breaking news, but it may come front and center before long.

Additionally, private equity-backed companies have large debt loads and when combined with decreased consumer spending, companies have less cash to service those loans. Leverage has enhanced returns, but it also augments the losses and decreases the returns to the private-equity firms that own the companies. This states that 25 of the 42 companies that ratings bureau Standard & Poor’s says have the lowest credit ratings are owned or controlled by private-equity firms, which gives them the highest chances for default.

It also appears that many private-equity firms overestimated the potential value and performance of the companies they bought, or at least that conditions exists now that credit is tight and the economy slower. If many industries and sectors are struggling in today’s economy, it should come of no surprise that private-equity firms that bought them with leverage are feeling the burn as well. A less-leveraged economy isn’t leaving the billionaires entirely immune.

Share This

Share This