Shares of Yahoo! (Charts), eBay (Charts) and Amazon (Charts) have all tanked this year. YouTube sold out to Google (Charts) in October for $1.65 billion. Private digital media firms like social networking companies Facebook and Bebo and online video companies Metacafe and Heavy.com are generating a lot of buzz. With all this in mind, should investors expect a new wave of Internet IPOs in 2007, especially from companies with a foothold in the whole user-generated media phenomenon?
Trends to watch out for ... Social Networking - a lot of interest around sites that incorporate video in a creative way, online photo services. In addition to Google's purchase of YouTube, Viacom (Charts), Sony (Charts), Time Warner's (Charts) AOL and General Electric's (Charts) NBC all bought online video or community-oriented sites in 2006.
Source: CNN . Dec 06