MyDubaiMyCity.com start-up launches as Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5bn
Posted on 11 May 2011 with no comments from readers
Ten years after the dot-com crash and there is a new boom in Internet companies. Yesterday software giant Microsoft paid a whopping $8.5 billion for Skype.com, the Internet telephone company that was a dot-com start-up just eight years ago.
Welcome then to the newest Internet start-up in Dubai, MyDubaiMyCity.com which launches today. The site offers a video guide to the city through a series of short videos made by its own production team and acts as a social networking site for the uploading of video content by members.
Video content
ArabianMoney is an early participant with a roof-top profile of editor and founder Peter Cooper (click here), a look around the Old Gold Souk (click here), some thoughts on silver (click here) and a visit to the Dubai Financial Market (click here).
We will be working with owners The Travelling Shoe to bring video updates of relevance to our readers, but do not have any other link with the website.
It already has rich content with a couple of hundred videos at launch that present a fascinating snapshot across Dubai society and culture, from Lebanese fashion designers to the best in local restaurants.
Youtube.com is one of the best loved website in this region, so one dedicated entirely to Dubai video clips ought to be very popular with Internet and mobile phone users.
Future sale?
Will MyDubaiMyCity.com one day be like Skype.com and snapped up for $8.5 billion by Microsoft? That is unlikely, Microsoft goes for technology platforms rather than original content. But for an Arab media group hungry for original content who knows.
Yet many in the tech business think the Microsoft purchase of Skype might well be the top of the current boom in dot-com companies. Facebook’s recent $50 billion valuation was also flagged as the top like Time Warner buying AOL in 2000, though that record breaking $182 billion deal is still unmatched.
Certainly Microsoft is paying a very full price unless it has found a synergy with Skype that nobody has understood. That said you should never underestimate the business potential of a dot-com business in the right place at the right time.
