>In My opinion, it can be easier for businesses to reach the tipping point of paying customers (i.e. break even) vs. the tipping point of users (???, profitabil

>In My opinion, it can be easier for businesses to reach the tipping point of paying customers (i.e. break even) vs. the tipping point of users (???, profitability?, acquisition?). I think MM touched on this. Completely agree, but the possible payoff in the latter case tends to be quite higher. >Myspace hasn't show itself to be a real business yet and either has Youtube. I still can't think of user based acquisitions that have quantifiably proved themselves to be a wise decision, though I think Youtube will. I think that's hard to say. Take hotmail for example, while it might have not generated a $100 mil in revenues yet (or maybe it has?), I would doubt that the purchase was a strategic decision they regret over at Redmond. I think the same could be said for Youtube. If NewsCorp has regrets over the MySpace purchase, they are quite likely much more due to FB´s growth than to MySpace's current revenue. If all these companies decided to grow users before revenue when they where a startup, it makes little sense to try to squeeze revenues quickly out of them, at the expense of user growth, once they've been acquired by a company with much larger pockets. I think the logical thing to do, in those cases, would be to continue the same growth strategy for a few years while calmly exploring ways to monetize them. Startups that don´t get acquired are obviously more pressed to find a way to monetize quickly.