Sorry I’m late to this, I wanted to write about it yesterday when it happened, but didn’t get a chance to. JD had some coverage, but I wanted to talk a bit about the numbers from Adobe. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Adobe blew past analysts estimates for earnings (and even profits) for the third quarter and now the stock is up almost 12% today. So lets dig into the numbers.

Adobe had revenue of $602.2 million, which was at the very high end of what Adobe and analysts had estimated. So here’s how it breaks down.

• Creative Solutions – $328.1 million (54.5%)
• Knowledge Worker Solutions – $154.1 million (25.5%)
• Enterprise and Developer Solutions – $49.4 million (up from 42.8) (8%)
• Mobile and Device Solutions – $9.1 million (1.5%)
• Other – $61.5 (10.2%)

This is what always gets me. Obviously I am a big fan of Adobe, but I deal primarily with the Enterprise and Developer solutions, so these calls are always a wakeup call for me. Why? Because they only account for 8% of revenue in the company. Adobe is still a company that revolves around their tools. Studio and Creative Suite account for a whopping 54.5% of the revenue, so no one is betting the farm on Flex 2 over at Adobe, the big money remains rooted in the tools.

Now does this mean that Flex 2 isn’t important within the company or that enterprise is being ignored? Absolutely not, and revenue from that segment grew at a nice pace from last quarter. But it is still a very small slice of the pie, and the core of the company is still based around the tools and their strategy continues to revolve around that revenue stream.

A couple of interesting tidbits, they finally used Breeze for this conference call. I also noticed that they gave investors and analysts an invitation to attend MAX for one day. I wonder which day and who takes them up on that.

[tags]Adobe, ADBE, Wall Street[/tags]

I realize that a majority of my readers are outside of the Seattle area, but for the few that are, I wanted to post about this. My beautiful wife is in charge of putting on The Seattle Green Living Expo at High Point. If you are thinking of buying a house, or just interested in what is new in “green” (environmentally friendly) building, it will be a great conference for you. There are a number of architects, builders, city planners and building suppliers showing off, so it is a great place to find ideas and inspiration.

More information is available on the website, and if you’d like to volunteer, they would love to have you.

[tags]Seattle, Green Living Expo, High Point, Green Building[/tags]

More information is starting to trickle down about MAXUP so I wanted to throw in my two cents and clarify a couple of things. Ted first talked about MAXUP on his blog. I just saw that Mike Potter had put up a MAXUP section over at the BarCamp page. One few key points for those who aren’t familiar with the BarCamp style:

• Everyone participates – This isn’t a bunch of people sitting in a room listening to a speaker. This is a mix of presentations, conversations and demos where everyone is a presenter. If you have ideas, come to MAXUP, if you have experience, come to MAXUP, if you enjoy talking about technology, COME TO MAXUP.

This is going to be a chance for you to mingle with the teams at Adobe, see what your fellow developers are doing, and meet people who share your passion. That’s really what MAX is all about, and this is like MAX concentrate. You’ll be packing a ton of fun, inspiration, and networking into a single day.

Also, MAXUp is running throughout the conference – 24th, 25th, 26th. I had this wrong before. It won’t be on the 23rd, it will go the entire conference so you can pop in and out between sessions or afterwards.
This is going to be a ton of fun, and I think everyone is excited about it. This is also your chance to shine at MAX. Get people excited about your ideas, get a chance to show off your demo, and build buzz about what you are doing. There are a ton of great ideas out there, and unfortunately most of them won’t end up on center stage at the keynote. With MAXUP, we can remedy that. Hope to see you there!

Okay, I’ve had enough. I stood silently while people all over the blogosphere talked about how minifeeds were great because it showed Facebook was eschewing the “page view model” and presenting information in a brand new way. I wrote it off as typical tech blather as my peers on facebook quickly revolted and joined groups proclaiming how horrible the new Facebook was (I know because it showed up on my minifeed). Some people scoffed at these “kids” who were using the very medium they were so horrified of to protest it. Imagine that. It’s almost like if you want something to change in a democracy, you need to vote! But Facebook isn’t a democracy, and the latest salvo by Zuckerberg and co makes that abundantly clear.

I’ve been using Facebook pretty much since it started. I remember when it was REALLY exclusive, as in just for the Ivy Leaguers. Penn was one of the first to get access to this new fangled facebook (we ARE the social Ivy after all). Then, slowly, more schools were added to the mix. Since then, it has become a college phenomenon, and all of the pundits are correct when they say that Facebook users adjusted to the lessened exclusivity of the product (including the addition of High Schools). But we all had something in common, we were college students. Even when it was opened up to “professional networks” only a trickle of “adults” joined. Mostly it was a way for people already on Facebook to connect with people whom they were now working with.

But now the gloves are off and Zuckerberg has shown that he is no longer on the same wavelength as the college students whose rank he belonged to not so long ago. He is opening up Facebook to everyone. Of course, all many of the tech pundits think this is a great good idea, and they are applauding Zuckerberg for enhancing the business model and taking on MySpace. However none of these people actually use Facebook (Update: In fairness, John Botter, linked as ‘tech’ above, does have an account). If they have an account, it is only so that they can demo the service. They haven’t added friends, they haven’t created photo albums, they haven’t emotionally invested themselves in the service.

Last week’s debacle shows that Facebook users are very, very invested in the service. Zuckerberg’s open letter shows exactly how much of an impact they had. What the bloggers were heralding as innovation ended up leaving Facebook with egg on its face. Opening it up will do the exact same thing. So as you’re reading all of these posts about how this move is so good for Facebook, remember that we young people are a fickle bunch, and we like being exclusive. This is a terrible move Mark and your users are going to hate it. I know I do.

Update: Liz Gannes, who I enjoy reading when it comes to Facebook because she’s even younger than I am, posted about the news. Unfortunately it is more of a factual post than an opinion piece.
[tags]facebook, blogging[/tags]