Yuri Milner and His Disruptive Investments Into Silicon Valley

I was reading this article on wired:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/mf_milner/all/1

The article was about a russian investor who many of you guys may have heard of, Yuri Milner, because of his many investments into the tech companies of America. Some companies he has invested in include Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify as well as Groupon and Zynga. He is incredibly successful, yet is still considered somewhat of an oddball and outsider to the somewhat hermetic Silicon Valley.

However, I think there is something more critical to note than the worries such as "How is it that an outsider has spotted opportunities that the Valley’s best investors missed?" Instead of worrying about outsiders stealing investment opportunities, I think it is more important to understand the importance of global perspective in these new technologies and media outputs.

A good quote to sum it up: "Who would be more gobsmacked by the implications of social media—the prospect of everyone constantly talking to one another without an arbiter, mediator, or censor—than a citizen of the former Soviet Union? Likewise, who would see it as more revolutionary and valuable?"

I think investments made by people who look at social media as something besides a producer of revenue is really important to how it will be used to shape the world as we know it. I hope I can be optimistic about that.