Generally, at the end of the year, predictions stream forth as to how this or that new technology will transform the world in the next 12 months. This article is a link collection to articles that try to do that.
2012 and the Technology Blahs article mentions few predictions: We will continue to see innovation around cost savings and information flow. There’s no stopping the momentum of consumerization of technology in 2012. Smartphone owners are increasingly paying a high price for free mobile applications, with 2012 set to be a disruptive year of widespread mobile hacking.
TechCrunch has an interesting predictions on how HTML5 and 2012 will change the web in The Definitive Guide To HTML5: 14 Predictions For 2012 article. Apart from making the whole web more interconnected between different websites, web browsers starting to look and behave more like iPad, complete with push notifications and geolocation, and HTML5 ads replacing majority of flash based ads, the article also predicts that browser makers will start to introduce App Stores within their browsers. In fact, Chrome already has one and Facebook will also get a lot more seamlessly integrated with your desktop. Marketing speak decoded:
“Push notifications” -> ads rammed up your ass
“Apps” for browsers -> pay per view content
“HTML5 ads” -> ads take over the whole screen.
“Facebook will be seamlessly integrated into the desktop” -> all your info belongs to us
If there is a way to exploit the consumer with technology, companies have ALWAYS done so. Everything you do, everything you see, everything you eat, every breath you take, every move you make… it’s worth something to someone and they will always do everything they can get away with to capitalize on it. The only areas which aren’t being exploited are either prohibited by law or new enough that they haven’t yet figured out how to best exploit.
Late-Stage Web Companies Took In The Largest Tech Investments Of 2011. Facebook Poised to Lead Biggest U.S. Internet IPO Year Since 1999 Bubble article says that Facebook Inc. and Yelp Inc. are set to lead the biggest year for U.S. initial public offerings by Internet companies since 1999. That would be the most since $18.5 billion of IPOs in 1999, just before the dot-com bubble burst. There are companies that would like to go public, but are waiting for the right market environment to do so. The IPO market in Europe is six months behind USA.
6 Game-Changing Digital Journalism Events of 2011 article tells that after an incredible year of news events and milestones, online journalism in 2012 has a tough act to follow. We can certainly expect more successes and more failures when it comes to business models and mobile strategies. News organizations will clamor to be the first on new social networks. 2012 is a year of very new games.
SOPA opponents may go nuclear and other 2012 predictions article tells to expect an article page blackout as a way to put “maximum pressure on the U.S. government” in response to SOPA. Technically speaking, it wouldn’t be difficult to pull off. Antitrust on the rise because it tends to be far cheaper to pay lobbyists to cripple your rival than compete in the marketplace. If 2011 was the Year of the Hackers, 2012 may be the Year the Hackers Upset the Political Establishment, especially ones supporting SOPA and similar legistlation. Computer hackers plan to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit.
Click here to find out more! Study Predicts Growing Use Of Social Media In Healthcare article tells that men are more likely than women to turn to Facebook and other social networks for healthcare purposes. Facebook was the most popular site for people searching for healthcare information, followed by YouTube. Another study says that Facebook a Factor in a Third of UK Divorces. When they say cited, they mean just that: That something from Facebook was brought up in the courtroom.
The 5 Hardest Jobs to Fill in 2012 article tells that finding a talent is in short supply, especially in these five areas: Software Engineers and Web Developers, Creative Design and User Experience, Product Management, Marketing, Analytics.
Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012: Responding Like a Trained Monkey, Mindless Traditions, Reading Annoying Things, Work That’s Not Worth It and Making Things More Complicated Than They Should Be. Eliminating these five activities is likely to save hundreds of hours next year. What are you going to stop doing and how are you going to leverage all that extra time?
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Reality Check: 10-15% Of Brands’ Social Media Fans, Likes And Reviews Will Be Fake By 2014, Says Gartner
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/17/reality-check-10-15-of-social-media-fans-likes-and-reviews-will-be-fake-by-2014-says-gartner/
Fake fans, fake “likes” and fake reviews are some of the worst aspects of social media — or at least for those of us earnest enough to take user-generated content and the will of the crowd seriously. Now, new research from Gartner lays bare the fact that it’s only going to get worse, as paid social media interactions become a more established industry unto themselves. The analysts predict that by 2014, some 10%-15% of all social media reviews and other forms of engagement will be fake, paid for by the companies getting endorsed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century
http://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century
Goldman is a good example of a new key player in organizations: the “data scientist.” It’s a high-ranking professional with the training and curiosity to make discoveries in the world of big data. The title has been around for only a few years.
But thousands of data scientists are already working at both start-ups and well-established companies. Their sudden appearance on the business scene reflects the fact that companies are now wrestling with information that comes in varieties and volumes never encountered before. If your organization stores multiple petabytes of data, if the information most critical to your business resides in forms other than rows and columns of numbers, or if answering your biggest question would involve a “mashup” of several analytical efforts, you’ve got a big data opportunity.
Much of the current enthusiasm for big data focuses on technologies that make taming it possible, including Hadoop (the most widely used framework for distributed file system processing) and related open-source tools, cloud computing, and data visualization. While those are important breakthroughs, at least as important are the people with the skill set (and the mind-set) to put them to good use. On this front, demand has raced ahead of supply. Indeed, the shortage of data scientists is becoming a serious constraint in some sectors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t abandon HTML5 just because Mark Zuckerberg hates it
http://www.citeworld.com/development/20652/mark-zuckerberg-hates-html5-but-you-dont-have-to?source=ctwincpt_cite_zuck
Mark Zuckerberg had harsh words for HTML5 today on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, saying that Facebook’s big HTML5 bet was “one of the biggest strategic mistakes we made.”
But just because it’s not right for a high-profile commercial app, that doesn’t mean corporate developers should ignore it and go all native.
Zuckerberg said that Facebook bet on HTML5 about 20 months ago
“It just wasn’t ready,” Zuckerberg admitted today. The resulting apps were slow and unreliable, while other mobile apps were offering a much better experience. Eventually the company realized that “good enough is not good enough. We have to get to the highest quality level, and only way we’ll get there is to do native.”
So HTML5 was a bad choice for Facebook. Does that mean it’s a bad idea for enterprise mobile apps as well?
Not necessarily.
Tomi Engdahl says:
W3C Announces Plan To Deliver HTML 5 by 2014
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/21/0345212/w3c-announces-plan-to-deliver-html-5-by-201
The World Wide Web Consortium has proposed “a new plan that would see the HTML 5 spec positioned as a Recommendation—which in W3C’s lingo represents a complete, finished standard—by the end of 2014. The group plans a follow-up, HTML 5.1, for the end of 2016.” Instead of working toward one-specification-to-rule-them-all in 2022, features that are stable and implemented in multiple browsers now will be finalized as HTML 5.0 by 2014 with unstable features moved into HTML 5.1 (developed in parallel).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Have smartphones killed boredom (and is that good)?
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/mobile/oms-smartphones-boredom/index.html
Thanks to technology, there’s been a recent sea change in how people today kill time. Those dog-eared magazines in your doctor’s office are going unread. Your fellow customers in line at the deli counter are being ignored. And simply gazing around at one’s surroundings? Forget about it.
Between smartphones, tablets and e-readers, we’re becoming a society that’s ready to kill even a few seconds of boredom with a tap on a touchscreen.
And 42% of all mobile phone users say they expressly use their phone for entertainment when they’re bored.
Researchers say this all makes sense. Fiddling with our phones, they say, addresses a basic human need to cure boredom by any means necessary.
“Smartphones are like cigarettes are like junk food are like chewing your nails or doodling …,” Lynn wrote in a May essay for the Evolutionary Studies Consortium. “Does the naked space of your own mind and the world around you send you screaming into oblivion when you walk across campus, across a street even? Pull out your smartphone and check your email again — that car will swerve around you.”
With their games, music, videos, social media and texting, smartphones “superstimulate” a desire humans have to play when things get dull, Lynn told CNN in an interview. And he believes that modern society may be making that desire even stronger.
“When you’re habituated to constant stimulation, when you lack it, you sort of don’t know what to do with yourself …,” he said. “When we aren’t used to having down time, it results in anxiety. ‘Oh my god, I should be doing something.’ And we reach for the smartphone. It’s our omnipresent relief from that.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Say Hello to Gifts, Facebook’s New Mobile Revenue Stream
http://allthingsd.com/20120927/say-hello-to-gifts-facebooks-new-mobile-revenue-stream/
Facebook on Thursday unveiled Gifts, the company’s major initiative into the world of social gift giving and e-commerce.
It’s exactly what it sounds like. Users can choose, mail and pay for real-world, physical gifts — not the lame virtual ones Facebook offered a few years ago — to send to one another, all completely inside of Facebook.
It’s a major undertaking for Facebook, tackling an entire new segment of online commerce and adding a brand new revenue stream to its business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Facebook Just Opened an Online Store
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/facebook-gift-store/
Citing its unique ability to recommend products, Facebook opened an online gift store. The move edges the social network onto the turf of e-commerce king Amazon, but at an opportune time: Amazon is busy making movies, computer hardware, cloud computing services, and entering other markets far afield from its core business of selling physical goods.
Not that Facebook is trying to usurp Amazon just yet. The launch of Facebook Gifts is modest: Facebook is emphasizing sub-$50 products like socks, cupcakes, teddy bears, and Starbucks gift cards. The idea is that Facebook will see words like “happy birthday” or “congratulations” on someone’s wall and prompt friends to buy the person something through the new store.
It’s an obvious and proven idea, one Facebook acquired when it bought year-old mobile gifting startup Karma in May. In the ensuing months, Facebook has rebranded the service and created a desktop version of the app, which is what is being launched today as Facebook Gifts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s Become Tragically Clear That Facebook Chased The Wrong Business For Years
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fbx-2012-9
Facebook has always sold ads the old-fashioned way, disguised as something new.
Now, as Facebook has begun selling ads in a different, much more lucrative way that others have been doing for years, it feels like Facebook’s tactic has put the company years behind schedule.
How Facebook has sold ads for most of its history: Advertisers tick off a bunch of boxes on the type of people they’d like to reach and then Facebook shows their ads to these people.
That’s the “old-fashioned way,” because that’s basically how advertisers have been buying TV ads for decades.
In other words, they look for inventory that is targeted to an audience based on data a publisher provides about its audience.
Facebook has sought to improve on this old-fashioned model by giving advertisers more detail about the type of people they can market to.
nstead of just knowing where those people are located, their gender, and their age, Facebook can tell advertisers where the people viewing ad inventory work, their marital status, and what their “interests” are.
All this extra data was supposed to be a gold mine for Facebook, and Facebook built up a huge ad sales apparatus to sell ads targeted with it.
Facebook has begun selling ads in a new way that makes its massive inventory much more valuable—three times more valuable, according to one company buying the inventory and reselling it.
This new method is called re-targeting. It has been used by ad-sellers outside of Facebook for years now.
Facebook has selected a dozen or so companies that will buy Facebook ad inventory and sell it to marketers using re-targeting.
How re-targeting works: You visit Warby Parker, the online glasses seller. You look at a pair of glasses you might like to buy. You decide not to buy them right then. You leave the Warby Parker website. Later, on other Websites you see ads with the pair of glasses you liked.
You see those ads because when you visited warbyparker.com, your browser downloaded a tiny piece of software, called a “cookie,” that told the ad servers on sites using re-targeting that you had previously gone to warbyparker and looked at a certain pair of glasses.
Ads that are “re-targeted” in this way are clicked on a lot, and it’s pretty obvious why. Unlike most ads in banners on the Internet, re-targeted ads are ones that you may actually want to see because they are based on your demonstrated interest in a product.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 Big Myths About SEO
http://www.inc.com/michael-mothner/seo-marketing-myths.html
Your understanding of the way Google works is probably three or four years out of date–and that’s an eternity in Web time.
In the world of online marketing, misinformation abounds–and it gets compounded exponentially by an incredibly dynamic and rapidly evolving world. Most of the things you think you know (but don’t) about search-engine optimization, or SEO, may have been true a few years ago but have changed; one of the following was always a myth.
Here are some of the myths you need to move beyond to get smarter about SEO.
Myth 1: Metatag Descriptions Help Your Rankings
Myth 2: The More Inbound Links, the Better
Myth 3: PageRank Still Matters
Myth 4: Google Prefers Keyword-Rich Domains
Myth 5: Websites Must Be ‘Submitted’ to Search Engines
Myth 6: Good SEO Is Basically About Trickery
Tomi Engdahl says:
The unpalatable business of spam
http://timharford.com/2012/09/the-unpalatable-business-of-spam/
A new article provides a fascinating overview on the dynamics of unsolicited email and the fight to keep it at bay
Spam email rarely reaches my inbox these days, but this isn’t because spam itself is a thing of the past. Most emails “out there” are spam, but the vast majority are intercepted at some point.
So where do these emails come from? How? Who pays for them? And who pays for our defences against them? A new article by Justin Rao and David Reiley in the Journal of Economic Perspectives provides a fascinating overview.
One group of researchers identified 30 pharmaceutical merchants who, between them, were using almost 1,000 different “store front” web-page styles, more than 50,000 domain names and almost 350 million distinct URLs.
But who buys these products, typically shipping from China or India, from such obviously shady sources? Almost nobody. Rao and Reiley estimate that the hit rate is about one sale per 10 million emails sent – but then sending 10 million emails might only cost $50 or $60, so the spam continues.
If it’s clear who benefits from sending spam, it’s less clear who pays to block it.
This seems typical: the big beasts of the internet have the incentive to fight spam, and it’s striking that the big three webmail providers with the resources to keep spam at bay – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo – have seen their market share rise from under 60 per cent to over 80 per cent since 2006.
Economists often talk about “negative externalities” – private activities that produce public costs.
Driving a car might produce a social cost of about 10 pence for every pound of private benefit, which is why economists advocate fuel duty and congestion charges.
But the externality ratio for spam is about a thousand times higher – perhaps £100 per pound of private benefit. Vast resources are devoted to blocking spam, or deleting it when it gets through, but the actual benefit to the spammers is relatively tiny.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Net Threat: The Dangers From Global Web Regulation
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/10/02/net-threat-the-dangers-from-global-web-regulation/
A grave threat to the Internet as we know it has emerged as part of well-intentioned, but fatally flawed proposals to update an international telecommunications treaty. If these radical changes are adopted, the results could be devastating. It could break the global Internet into unconnected islands of national or regional networks, extend telecommunications regulations to computing, or lead to onerous government regulation of the Internet.
The story goes back to 1984, when there were approximately eight wired telephones installed for every 100 people on the planet
Nearly 30 years later, there are only slightly more than twice the penetration of wired telephone lines, 17 per 100 people.
The astonishing achievement, however, is that while there were practically no mobile or Internet connections in 1984, globally there are now 86 mobile telephones, 33 Internet users and 24 broadband subscriptions (fixed and mobile) per every 100 people.
What may be a surprise is that this huge growth in communications – mobile and Internet – occurred largely outside of traditional telecommunications regulation and out of the focus of a 1988 ITU international treaty, the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs).
The fact that the Internet developed outside of traditional telecommunications regulation is no accident. Rather it was the conscious decision of countries that fostered the Internet’s early development.
The Internet has transformed the way we work, learn, play and communicate with one another, independent of place and distance. Entire new industries have been created, existing industries are being transformed, governments are providing their citizens better and new services and people are engaging with each other, and their governments, all enabled by an open global Internet.
In short, the Internet has become the key innovation engine of the 21st century economy.
But this growth and innovation is at risk. There are some who want to use the review of the 1988 ITRs in December at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) as an excuse to impose legacy telecommunications regulation on the Internet and Internet Protocol networks and services.
Some proposals for the WCIT would control the routing of Internet traffic in the name of security but would balkanize the Internet and threaten Internet freedom. Other proposals would radically redefine telecommunications to encompass computing.
This is not to say that the growth of the Internet has not raised important questions and challenges, as well as opportunities, for governments, individuals, traditional companies and their business models, and industry. However, the way we answer these questions and challenges should not be an extension of the ITU’s old rules that were written at a time when most of the world’s telecom companies were subsidiaries of government departments, often the post office. Extending an ancient regulatory model designed for another time to the rapidly evolving Internet would stifle innovation and investment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WebRTC gets real as Google adds more video chat functionality to Chrome
http://gigaom.com/video/webrtc-gets-real-as-google-adds-more-video-chat-functionality-to-chrome/
Google just inched closer to plugin-free video chat in your browser by adding a key component of the new real-time messaging framework WebRTC to the beta version of Chrome. However, there are still some roadblocks ahead before WebRTC becomes a widely adopted standard.
WebRTC is a big deal for Google: The company aims to replace the proprietary plugin it has been using to facilitate Google+ Hangout video chats with a standards-based solution that would work in a variety of browsers without the download of any additional plugins. WebRTC could also eventually lead to more interoperability across a number of video chat and messaging services, and it could be an even bigger disruption to mobile video communication.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Share of online advertising budgets of advertisers is growing, says TNS Gallup Online Advertising 2012 study. 77 percent of respondents planning to increase the share of online advertising in their marketing.
Views on advertising in social media were contradictory.
Some of the interviewees feel that the contacts are enough advertising and social media advertising effectiveness is difficult to verify.
The study also found that consumers’ purchasing process, the different stages of the easiest social media influence.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/talous/2012/10/03/mainokset-porskuttavat-verkossa–some-laahaa/201239111/7?rss=8
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Klout is a new social media service that attempts to quantify how much ‘influence’ you have, based on your social media profile. Their metrics are bizarre”
Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/10/03/1831210/why-klouts-social-influence-scores-are-nonsense
Tomi Engdahl says:
Could Your Crummy Klout Score Keep You From Getting a Job?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/10/03/online_privacy_can_employers_use_klout_scores_facebook_profiles_to_screen_applicants_.html
Last week, California passed a law forbidding employers to ask workers or job applicants for access to their social media accounts. It was following the lead of Maryland, which became the first state to pass such a law after reports surfaced that the state Department of Corrections was requiring applicants to log into Facebook during job interviews so the interviewers could see their profiles, photos, and wall posts. Other states have either passed or are considering similar laws, and congressional Democrats have drawn up bills along these lines as well.
It’s unclear how widespread this practice really is, but the impulse to legislate it is understandable.
In particular, Olanoff takes aim at a Salesforce.com job posting for a “community manager” that lists a “Klout Score of 35 or higher” among the desired skills for the position.
It’s one thing to argue that hiring managers might be missing out on great candidates if they focus too much on users’ Klout scores. But Olanoff doesn’t stop at telling hiring managers how to do their jobs. He wants the government to tell them how to do their jobs—by making it illegal to even consider applicants’ Klout scores.
Whether or not you agree with Fernandez that Klout is a useful signifier of someone’s social media expertise—and I’ve pointed out some of its limitations in the past—to suggest that it should be legally off-limits to employers is to reify a degree of social media privacy that simply doesn’t exist.
This is not to say that it’s impossible for anyone to maintain a modicum of privacy on Facebook or Twitter these days. Doctors, accountants, teachers, construction workers—people in any number of fields can still safely abstain from tweeting without fear that it will cost them their next job.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google: Voters Less Enthusiastic Than Ever
Search giant compares 2004, 2008, and 2012.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/google-voters-less-enthusiastic-than-ever
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gephardt Gets It: Scam involves negative online reviews
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=22400616&nid=1105&title=gephardt-gets-it-scam-involves-negative-online-reviews&s_cid=queue-16
If you are a company owner, or work for one, watch out for a new scam that involves bogus negative online reviews.
A company is putting horrible reviews of small business online, and then offering to improve the company’s reputation and take the reviews off for a fraction of the cost that a real reputation improvement company would charge.
they received a call from a “reputation improvement company” telling them they had a negative review online and that the company would take the review offline if Sierra West paid $500. Then, for that same $500, they would monitor the Internet to remove any other bad reviews.
Branscomb says it was clear from the writing that this bad reviewer had never even been to a Sierra West Jewelry store.
So, when the supposed reputation improvement company called again, Branscombe was prepared.
“We asked hard questions they didn’t want to answer, like who was the head of your company? What did the initials stand for? Why aren’t you on Google search?” Branscombe said.
Here’s another clue you’re dealing with a scam — they hang up on you.
Here’s part of the problem: There are legitimate reputation improvement companies out there. If you run into a “real” negative online review, you have options. Online expert Matthew Hunt with smallbusinessonlinecoach.com says:
Look at it as a positive – If it’s a real review, use it as a learning experience.
Contact the reviewer – Thank them for their feedback, ask how you can make it right and if they wouldn’t mind amending their review.
Be on the offensive – Counteract that bad review with a bunch of good ones.
If you encounter a scam, there are agencies to contact. For instance, the Small Business Administration has a whole department trying to fight fraud.
Tomi says:
CHART OF THE DAY: Online Ad Spending Is Closing In On TV
Online ad spending for the world’s largest media companies is closing in on TV ad spending according to this chart from BI Intelligence on the State of the Internet.
It’s important to note in this chart that TV’s share of the ad spend has actually grown, though only slightly, over the last six years. Online is taking share from print, radio, and outdoor spending.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-online-advertising-2012-10#ixzz28MN9ybt3
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Is Too Big To Hate
The first billion was just the beginning. Only 6,000,000,000 to go.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbuchanan/what-a-billion-facebook-users-means
Facebook has a billion users. A B I L L I O N. That’s one-seventh of the entire mass of humanity that covers this planet, one-hundredth of the number of human beings to have ever lived, ever. Staggeringly few other cultural experiences have been shared so broadly, so synchronously. It’s a genuine milestone not just for technology, but for humanity (seriously). And that’s exactly how Facebook hopes we’ll see it when we look back in a few years.
There weren’t a billion PCs in use until just four years ago. And as of the end of last year, roughly one third of the world’s 7 billion people — 2.3 billion, give or take — were using the internet. In other words, nearly half of the internet-using population is on Facebook, and that’s with it officially banned in China.
That is what a billion users means. The only other company that can even credibly claim to begin to do that — or try to — is Google, whose mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
But Facebook is on the verge of becoming something even more than the world’s fastest, smartest librarian. It’s not about about sheer data. It’s about connections; it’s about identity.
And so we’ve perhaps reached the point at which Facebook is too big to fail. (At the very least, it’ll take a generation or two, as web pioneer Dave Winer says.) You might hate using Facebook, but you still do.
Facebook has become something more than just another social service, uttered in the same breath as Twitter and Google Plus — that it’s become a core piece of social infrastructure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When news breaks, most Americans seek a second, trusted source for more info
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/190640/when-news-breaks-most-americans-seek-a-second-trusted-source-for-more-info/
When Americans first learn about a breaking news story, 83 percent seek out a second source to get more information, new research says.
Half of them turned to a different type of platform (i.e., heard the news on TV then went online to read more) for follow-up, and of the people who went online, 60 percent turned to a traditional news outlet like The New York Times, CNN or Fox News.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Wallet: Rub our button, cough 15p for quick read
Tests the waters on pennies-for-content
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/05/google_wallet_buy_our_bits/
A new scheme launched by Google is allowing internet users to pay to access content on individual pages on websites.
The internet giant has partnered with a select number of publishers – including Oxford University Press and Peachpit – to enable users of its ‘Google Wallet’ mobile payment system to buy content from individual pages. Google has described the move as an “experiment to see if users will be prepared to pay for individual web pages if the buying process is sufficiently easy”.
Under the scheme, individual articles are available for between $0.25 (£0.15) and $0.99 (£0.61) each, according to a report on TechRadar.
“When you add the Google Wallet button to your site, users will be able to purchase your content in just one click,” Google said on its Google Wallet ‘web content’ page. “Millions of people already buy with Google Wallet – their payment information is securely stored, so they can buy quickly.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s ‘Next Billion’: A Q&A With Mark Zuckerberg
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-04/facebooks-next-billion-a-q-and-a-with-mark-zuckerberg#r=read
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook: The Making of 1 Billion Users
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-04/facebook-the-making-of-1-billion-users
Tomi says:
“HBS lecturer Robert C. Pozen says it’s high time for management to stop emphasizing hours over results”
“managers create a perverse incentive to not be efficient and get work done during normal business hours.”
They Work Long Hours, but What About Results?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/business/measure-results-not-hours-to-improve-work-efficiency.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&
IT’S 5 p.m. at the office. Working fast, you’ve finished your tasks for the day and want to go home. But none of your colleagues have left yet, so you stay another hour or two, surfing the Web and reading your e-mails again, so you don’t come off as a slacker.
It’s an unfortunate reality that efficiency often goes unrewarded in the workplace.
From the law firm’s perspective, billing by the hour has a certain appeal: it shifts risk from the firm to the client in case the work takes longer than expected. But from a client’s perspective, it doesn’t work so well. It gives lawyers an incentive to overstaff and to overresearch cases. And for me, hourly billing was a raw deal. I ran the risk of being underpaid because I answered questions too quickly and billed a smaller number of hours.
Firms that bill by the hour are not alone in emphasizing hours over results.
Working on the weekends makes a very good impression. It sends a signal that you’re contributing to your team and that you’re putting in that extra commitment to get the work done.”
The reactions of these managers are understandable remnants of the industrial age, harking back to the standardized nature of work on an assembly line. But a measurement system based on hours makes no sense for knowledge workers.
By applying an industrial-age mind-set to 21st-century professionals, many organizations are undermining incentives for workers to be efficient.
If employees need to stay late in order to curry favor with the boss, what motivation do they have to get work done during normal business hours?
It’s no surprise, then, that so many professionals find it easy to procrastinate and hard to stay on a task.
Many of your results-oriented strategies will be specific to your job and your company
few general ways:
LIMIT MEETINGS: Internal meetings can be a huge waste of time.
REDUCE READING: You don’t need to read the full text of everything you come across
WRITE FASTER: First, compose an outline for what you are going to say, and in what order. Then write a rough draft, knowing it will be highly imperfect. Then go back over your work and revise as needed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Web porn for peace (and other good causes)
The masterminds behind Come4.org would like to make online-porn viewing a moneymaker for social causes.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-57527412-235/web-porn-for-peace-and-other-good-causes/
“We are aware that around the world, many people suffer because they lack the resources necessary for food, water, medicine, and housing. At the same time, we have noted the exponential growth of online pornography,”
“Hence, we devised Come4, our way to rethink pornography with ethics and to launch a new sexual revolution in the Internet era.”
The way it would work, according to Annoni and Zilli, is that users would set up an account and could then watch and/or post videos, each of which would be associated with a social cause chosen by the uploader from a selection on the site.
Annoni and Zilli seem also to want to transform and destigmatize porn itself.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automated DMCA Takedown Notices Request Censorship of Legitimate Sites
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/10/08/0136232/automated-dmca-takedown-notices-request-censorship-of-legitimate-sites
“Microsoft has sent automated DMCA notices to Google demanding the removal of several legitimate URLs from its search results”
“The erroneous DMCA notices are being sent automatically by rights holders, who are increasingly using such techniques.”
Microsoft DMCA Notice ‘Mistakenly’ Targets BBC, Techcrunch, Wikipedia and U.S. Govt
http://torrentfreak.com/microsofts-bogus-dmca-notices-censor-bbc-cnn-wikipedia-spotify-and-more-121007/
Over the last year Microsoft asked Google to censor nearly 5 million webpages because they allegedly link to copyright infringing content. While these automated requests are often legitimate, mistakes happen more often than one might expect. In a recent DMCA notice Microsoft asked Google to censor BBC, CNN, HuffPo, TechCrunch, Wikipedia and many more sites. In another request the software giant seeks the removal of a URL on Spotify.com.
In recent months the number of DMCA takedown requests sent out by copyright holders has increased dramatically, and it’s starting to turn the Internet into a big mess.
One of the problems is that many rightsholders use completely automated systems to inform Google and other sites of infringements.
That these automated tools aren’t always spot on is nicely illustrated by a recent DMCA notice sent to Google on behalf of Microsoft.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Zynga Failed
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/05/more-competitors-smarter-gamers-expensive-ads-less-virality-mobile/
The year was 2008 and Zynga had it all figured out. Facebook became a portal to games for those who had never played. Viral growth there was unchecked. Facebook ad rates were low, so buying traffic was cheap. And most games were played on the desktop. But soon everything changed, and Zynga never recovered.
Back to 2008. There was a big untapped market of new potential gamers on Facebook, and Zynga needed a way to reach them. Yet brands weren’t too interested in Facebook ads yet, and other game companies hadn’t realized how powerful they could be for user acquisition. That meant the cost of a Facebook ad click was low, and you didn’t have to make too much money off a gamer to get a return on investment.
Eventually, direct advertisers, brands, and other game companies started pouring money into Facebook ads, and rates increased.
That means Zynga can’t buy new users as efficiently as it used to. That forces it to rely on organic viral growth,
Zynga quickly became a viral juggernaut. It built games where you’d win by asking friends for help, and constantly interrupted play to ask you to share “Can you milk my cow?” stories to every one of your friends.
Game spam from developers like Zynga soon got so bad it threatened to drown out status updates and photos from friends, ruining the Facebook user experience.
For years, Zynga got to sell virtual goods on its Facebook desktop games untaxed. It was essentially selling cost-less copies of digital images for real money, and the margins were great. Facebook finally forced all developers onto its virtual currency Credits in July 2011 and started taking a 30 percent cut.
Back in Zynga’s heyday, most Facebook usage was on the desktop where its games were. But the shift to mobile was quick. It seemed to take Facebook by surprise, and it hit Zynga, too.
Zynga’s solution was to buy its way in, but that hasn’t panned out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU green-lights ‘copyright land grab’ law on orphan work
Euro states ordered to join free-for-all
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/08/eu_orphan_works/
EU ministers backed new laws to allow libraries, museums and universities – among other organisations – to digitise works that have become “orphaned” from their creators.
The Council of Minister’s formal adoption of the EU’s Directive on orphan works means that member states will now have to implement the laws into their own national frameworks within two years of the date still to be set upon the Directive’s entry into the Official Journal of the EU. The European Parliament formally approved the terms of the Directive last month.
“The new rules will facilitate the digitisation of and lawful cross-border online access to orphan works contained in the collections of libraries, educational establishments, museums, archives, audiovisual heritage institutions and public service broadcasting organisations,”
A search for the unknown owner of copyright works would be the responsibility of designated organisations in the country where the material was first published or broadcast. If material is deemed to be an orphan work in one EU member state, then it would have the same status in all EU countries. A single online database will contain details of the information related to the orphan works and include the ‘diligent search’ results.
Under the Government’s plans organisations that wish to use orphan works will have to conduct a “diligent search” for the owner of the works before they can use the material. Those searches must be verified as diligent by independent authorising bodies, which have yet to be designated by the Government.
The IPO admitted that what constitutes a diligent search in one creative sector may not meet the standards for conducting a diligent search in another. This is because of the complexity involved in identifying who rights holders of certain material are, it said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Overfocus on tech skills could exclude the best candidates for jobs
Is the unemployment problem about a lack of qualified applicants in the workforce?
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/07/overfocus-on-tech-skills-could-exclude-the-best-candidates-for-jobs.html
Is the problem that there are no qualified people? Or is the problem with the qualifications themselves?
There certainly have been structural changes in the economy, for better or for worse: many jobs have been shipped offshore, or eliminated through automation. And employers are trying to move some jobs back onshore for which the skills no longer exist in the US workforce. But I don’t believe that’s the whole story. A number of articles recently have suggested that the problem with jobs isn’t the workforce, it’s the employers: companies that are only willing to hire people who will drop in perfectly to the position that’s open. Hence, a startup requiring that applicants have developed code using their API.
It goes further: many employers are apparently using automated rejection services which (among other things) don’t give applicants the opportunity to make their case: there’s no human involved. There’s just a resume or an application form matched against a list of requirements that may be grossly out of touch with reality, generated by an HR department that probably doesn’t understand what they’re looking for, and that will never talk to the candidates they reject.
Even for a senior position, if a startup is only willing to hire people who have already used its API, it is needlessly narrowing its applicant pool to a very small group. The candidates who survive may know the API already, but what else do they know? Are the best candidates in that group?
A senior position is likely to require a broad range of knowledge and experience, including software architecture, development methodologies, programming languages and frameworks. You don’t want to exclude most of the candidates by imposing extraneous requirements, even if those requirements make superficial sense.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft is not alone in misusing DMCA takedown notices, however the system Microsoft uses to identify allegedly infringing URLs seems only to add to the mockery that is the DMCA and its goal of censoring the internet.
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1psqW)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Owners the right to ask for more and more reckless Google to censor content.
TorrentFreak predicts that removal requirements will increase in the future. At the moment, the “false alarms” will not be penalized in any way, so at worst mistaken public copyright requirements can hamper access to legal services activities.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/microsoftin+poistopyynnot+holtittomia++vaatii+googlea+sensuroimaan+luvun+45/a845773?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-09102012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oct 8, 2012 – 7:23AM
Can finger-biting Charlie profit from spin-off series?
http://paidcontent.org/2012/10/08/can-finger-biting-charlie-profit-from-spin-off-series/
It’s the most viewed YouTube viral ever. Now the stars of Charlie Bit My Finger will get their own professional web series, as agents aim to monetise viral amateur stars on TV’s big screen.
It’s YouTube’s most viewed viral video of all time. But does virality equal longevity?
Harry and Charlie Davies-Car, stars of their hit amateur Charlie Bit My Finger video, will appear in new “original programming” in a deal between viral video management firm Viral Spiral and online video distributor Rightster.
The family has already made “in excess of £100,000″ from its web video
Charlie-branded mobile apps have since been unleashed, garnering 100,000 downloads in the first week, according to Collier.
“We’ve licensed his video all over the world to TV shows and ad agencies for campaigns from Samsung, LG, Sprint and Gurgle,” said Collier, whose firm also represents many other popular videos starring babies and animals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Google Seeks To Avoid EU’s Antitrust Wrath By “Labeling” Its Own Services
http://searchengineland.com/report-google-seeks-to-avoid-eus-antitrust-wrath-by-labeling-its-own-services-135940
The Financial Times (FT) is reporting that the thrust of Google’s antitrust settlement proposal to European Competition Czar Joaquín Almunia primarily involves “labeling” its own services to distinguish them from other organic search results.
“Under the proposal, Google would put its brand on any of its own maps, stock quotes, airline flight details or other pieces of information returned with search results. It is an attempt to resolve regulators’ fears that Google is unfairly squeezing out other specialist information services on the web.”
However FairSearch.org preemptively came out with an argument against such an approach a few weeks ago
A “labeling solution” would probably look very much like what already exists in the case of many Google “vertical” results
critics are unlikely to be satisfied because they’re more concerned with ranking on the page. And such an approach is also unlikely to have any impact on ranking or consumer behavior whatsoever.
Commissioner Almunia is thus likely to push for something beyond pure labeling. It’s unclear what that remedy would be, however.
Tomi Engdahl says:
As mobile rises, desktop search declines for the first time
Analysts at the Macquarie Group say mobile devices could account for a third of all search traffic by year’s end.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57530726-93/as-mobile-rises-desktop-search-declines-for-the-first-time/
In a sign of the mobile-centric times, desktop Web search declined in September for the first time since Macquarie Group began tracking it in 2006.
ComScore data for September showed that searches declined 4 percent year over year, according to a note Macquarie sent to clients. Growth rates in search have been slowing since February, when searches were up 14 percent. The increasing number of mobile searches appears to be the biggest reason for the decline, Macquarie analysts said in their report.
The decline in desktop search makes intuitive sense. These days, we’re less likely to search for a destination on a map site before leaving the house; that’s what turn-by-turn directions are for. We might not even search for a restaurant to eat at until we’re out the door; a number of apps can give us recommendations on the go. And nontraditional search engines are on the rise: we might search for clothes on Fab.com instead of Google, or airfares on Hipmunk, or a friend’s e-mail address on Facebook.
Collectively, all those trends point to a long, slow decline for traditional desktop search. And it’s a reason why companies like Google and Microsoft are investing heavily in mobile search applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Googling others affects voting, hiring and dating
http://news.cnet.com/8301-33619_3-57532151-275/how-googling-others-affects-voting-hiring-and-dating/
A new study confirms the importance we place in personal search results. Plus, tips on improving what others see about you.
Despite all the new ways of learning about someone — including Facebook and LinkedIn — Googling others remains a major online activity. A new survey by BrandYourself, an online reputation company, and polling giant Harris Interactive shows that when it comes to voting, business and dating, people place a lot of emphasis on what they find in personal search results.
Question: What surprised you the most about the survey?
Ambron: While it wasn’t surprising how often people Google other people (I do it all the time), I was surprised by how much the results influence our decisions and opinions of other people, especially among younger people. It’s easy to forget that this next generation grew up with these types of technology. To them, you are who Google says you are. It’s that simple.
How has the rise of social media affected personal search results?
Ambron: Social Media has put everybody online. Even if you don’t happen to be one of the 1 billion people using social media on a regular basis, you have friends, family, and acquaintances out there, posting updates, tagging photos, and mentioning your name. The point is, it’s no longer reasonable to believe you can remain anonymous or hidden in Google. That’s why it’s so important to be proactive about your own Google results. If you don’t define yourself, someone else will define you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Basic solidarity in WikiLeaks & Anonymous.
By Julian Assange
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/jl9vdt
Freedom isn’t free, justice isn’t free and solidarity isn’t
free. They all require generosity, self-discipline, courage and a sense of perspective.
Groups with unity flourish and those without unity are
destroyed and replaced by those who have it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nobody “Goes Online” Anymore
http://allthingsd.com/20121017/nobody-goes-online-anymore/
A large survey of Internet users found that they say they spend fewer hours per week online than they did a year ago.
Wait, really?
Well, it’s a matter of perception. This was a Forrester survey, and people were asked how much time they spend using the Internet. On average, they said 19.6 hours per week, versus 21.9 hours per week when asked the same question in 2011.
But Forrester thinks that the drop is more about perception than reality, because many people are virtually always online these days.
“Despite the fact that they always have connected devices and are always online, they don’t really realize they’re online,” said Forrester analyst Gina Sverdlov. “They’re using Google Maps or checking in on Facebook, but that’s not considered online because it has become such a part of everyday life.”
It makes sense. Why talk or think about “going online” when you’re already there?
Sverdlov said she sees this difference between how people talk about the Internet and what they actually do in other areas, too.
“We’re seeing somewhat of a cannibalization of other Internet activities because it’s possible to do all that on social networking sites,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Secret Behind Pinterest’s Growth Was Marketing, Not Engineering, Says CEO Ben Silbermann
http://allthingsd.com/20121020/the-secret-behind-pinterests-growth-was-marketing-not-engineering-says-ceo-ben-silbermann/
Pinterest, which CEO Ben Silbermann describes as a tool that helps people find inspiration, is now the third-largest source of referral traffic on the Internet.
But growth wasn’t easy for the company, Silbermann told a rapt audience at Y Combinator’s Startup School at Stanford University on Saturday.
The way Pinterest grew had little to do with Silicon Valley wisdom. It was about marketing — mostly grassroots marketing — not better algorithms.
In 2010, three months after Pinterest launched, the site had only 3,000 users.
“Instead of changing the product, I thought maybe I could just find people like me,” he said.
So Pinterest started to have meet-ups at local boutiques, and to take fun pictures of people who attended them, and to engage with bloggers to do invitation campaigns like “Pin It Forward,” where bloggers got more invites to the site by spreading the world.
“A lot of people in Silicon Valley didn’t get, and I don’t know if they still get, Pinterest,” Silbermann said. “The fact that it made sense to someone is what really mattered to me.”
But ultimately, Pinterest didn’t need better engineering, said Silbermann. It needed better distribution.
And so if there’s any broadly applicable lesson from Pinterest’s success, he said, it’s that there are many ways to succeed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the Huffington Post handles 70+ million comments a year
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/190492/how-the-huffington-post-handles-70-million-comments-a-year/
The Huffington Post has accumulated more than 70 million comments so far this year, far surpassing the 2011 total of 54 million.
All news sites struggle with user comments in some way or another, but moderating this enormous volume of messages is a unique test of whether online conversations as we know them — a dozen people making a few points on a blog post or article — can scale infinitely larger without collapsing into cacophony.
Justin Isaf: You can definitely have meaningful community at scale. 70% of our comments are replies to other people, even on articles with 100,000 comments. People are actually paying attention to each other and having interesting discussions.
For us, the solution has been to work really hard to keep the community safe and enjoyable by investing significant time and energy into pre-moderation to keep those bad actors out… Our belief boils down to a very simple “if you are intentionally or consistently making this a less enjoyable place to be, you and your comments may be removed from it.”
The technology solution to connecting the right people involves LOTS of data crunching, smart algorithms and some elegant design. For example, our Pundit program on the Politics vertical — which highlights comments and conversations that are going to be generally more interesting to a large audience — leads to some of the most engaging and deep conversations on the site even when there is a high volume.
Clearly that kind of effort also takes significant resources to maintain, right?
Isaf: Now, we’re a bigger team with the equivalent of about 30 full time moderators. They work 24/7/365 in six-hour shifts going through hundreds of comments per hour each. They’re all based in the U.S. or in the country of the edition they are working on so that they get local cultural context and conversations. It’s a very specific skill set and takes a certain mentality to do it well. I am constantly in awe of this team.
Julia is a machine learning algorithm (JuLiA stands for “Just a Linguistic Algorithm”) that we’ve taught to understand several languages and that we continue to teach on an ongoing basis (yes, she learns over time). She reads everything submitted to HuffPost and helps the moderators do their jobs faster and more accurately. We’ve really done a lot with machine-assisted moderation, allowing us to pre-moderate 9.5 million comments a month, and Julia is core to that.
Isaf: There’s often a trade-off in design choices — people reading and people conversing often have different needs.
It’s a balancing act to be sure
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook CTR, CPC and CPM trends are ‘win-win-win,’ Spruce Media says
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/10/25/facebook-ctr-cpc-and-cpm-trends-are-win-win-win-spruce-media-says/
Trends in Facebook clickthrough rates, costs per click and costs per impression indicate a “win-win-win” situation for Facebook, advertisers and users, Facebook ad company Spruce Media says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8 is a revolutionary operating system. But it is a different matter whether the upheaval worthwhile. The transparency of the orientation is low.
In recent years, computer usage has shifted to the browser. It has been a natural evolution, and guaranteed services function in virtually all computer users. Well-designed websites have opened for almost every device, which can be found only a web browser.
Now, Microsoft is pushing development in the other direction. Windows 8 transfer services from the network available to their own applications.
Saddest thing is Windows 8 applications is the fact that some of them have been built html5-description language. In practice, the application could therefore also act as a conventional web browser. But no. I now have to the network address instead of writing navigate Windows Store and download the application.
Sure own applications also offer opportunities that are not a Web browser can be implemented.
But for small applications are a step away, open to all services. In particular, they can be irritating who want to abstain from some other operating systems than fresh Windows 8.
Microsoft’s approach is understandable. Personal computer sales have lagged in recent years, while the tablet computers have been sold.
Source: http://m.tietoviikko.fi/Uutiset/Kaikille+avointa+interneti%C3%A4+suljetaan
Tomi Engdahl says:
Surmounting the Insurmountable: Wikipedia Is Nearing Completion, in a Sense
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/surmounting-the-insurmountable-wikipedia-is-nearing-completion-in-a-sense/264111/
And that’s something of a challenge for the collaborative encyclopedia going forward
It may seem impossible for an encyclopedia of everything to ever near completion, but at least for the major articles on topics like big wars, important historical figures, central scientific concepts, the English-language Wikipedia’s pretty well filled out. (There is, of course, room for improvement in articles that have received less attention, but that is a different, yet still very important, set of challenges.)
There’s always going to be some tidying — better citations, small updates, new links, cleaner formatting — but the bulk of the work, the actual writing and structuring of the articles, has already been done.
“There are more and more readers of Wikipedia, but they have less and less new to add,” writes historian and Wikipedia editor Richard Jensen in the latest issue of The Journal of Military History.
Most of the major Wikipeida articles were written in 2006 and 2007, and “and have gotten relatively little attention from editors since then.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes archived!
http://blog.archive.org/2012/10/26/10000000000000000-bytes-archived/
Ten Petabytes (10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of cultural material saved!
On Thursday, 25 October, hundreds of Internet Archive supporters, volunteers, and staff celebrated addition of the 10,000,000,000,000,000th byte to the Archive’s massive collections.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The report reveals the “surprise”: Consumers do not like online advertising
Online advertising is irritating to the majority of users. Adobe, which showed that traditional advertising are more favorable than online advertising.
68 percent of respondents said that online advertising, irritable, and 66 percent had television advertising, the better.
Advertising was really important for companies and their distribution. 94 percent responded that marketing is a sales and business strategy in terms of importance.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/selvitys+paljastaa+quotyllatyksenquot+kuluttajat+eivat+pida+nettimainonnasta/a853110?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-05112012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner Symposium: 10 technology trends to watch
http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20121031/enterprise/gartner-symposium-10-technologies-trends-watch/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Via @BarackObama, the Most Popular Tweet of All Time
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/via-barackobama-the-most-popular-tweet-of-all-time/264809/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available).
Skype and Messenger are coming together. By updating to Skype, Messenger users can instant message and video call their Messenger friends.
Source: http://blogs.skype.com/en/2012/11/skypewlm.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Web radio growing faster than on-demand services (study)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57546854-93/web-radio-growing-faster-than-on-demand-services-study/
Webcasters, such as Pandora, saw following increase by 27 percent while on-demand players, such as Spotify and Rhapsody grew by 18 percent.
Music listening patterns continue to evolve and not just from analog to digital but from downloads to streaming, according to findings from Internet research firm, NPD.
For the quarter ending in June, the audience for Internet radio services in the United States, which include companies such as Pandora Media, grew 27 percent from the same period a year earlier, NPD reported. In comparison, on-demand services such as Spotify, YouTube and Rhapsody, grew 18 percent over the same period.
Web radio stands to be an important money maker and it’s not hard to figure out why the music sector and Pandora Media are preparing to go to war with each other.
Tomi says:
Online viewers start leaving if video doesn’t play in 2 seconds, says study
http://gigaom.com/2012/11/09/online-viewers-start-leaving-if-video-doesnt-play-in-2-seconds-says-study/
Better connection speeds and more content means media companies are turning to video as an important revenue source. But to succeed, they must reach viewers fast. Here are some facts and graphics from a new study that shows how long viewers will wait.
A new study reports that faster internet connections have made viewers more impatient, and that people begin abandoning videos if they don’t load within two seconds. Every second of additional delay results in approximately 6 percent more viewers jumping ship. This chart shows how about 20 percent of viewers are gone after five seconds but that viewers are slightly more patient for long-length videos
Tomi says:
The Problem With Measuring Digital Influence
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/09/can-social-media-influence-really-be-measured/
Social media is a required avenue for brands to engage their customers. However, social media engagement is primarily based on conversations and personalized interactions that are difficult to scale.
One of the reasons that brands don’t understand digital influence is because they don’t seem to realize that no one actually has any measured “data” on influence (i.e. explicit data that says precisely who actually influenced who, when, where, how, etc.). All influence scores are computed from users’ social activity data based on some models and algorithms of how influence works. However, anyone can create these models and algorithms. So who is right? How can we be sure your influence score is correct? In other words, how can we validate the models that vendors use to predict people’s influence?
An influence score is really just a measure of how well people game the influence scoring algorithm.
If you tweeted a lot yesterday and your influence score jumps up today, you’ve just discovered that you can increase your influence score by tweeting more. Knowing this, would you continue to tweet more? Most people probably would, especially if they care about their score. This has created a lot of loud mouths who are not actually influential in any meaningful way. Therefore, his influence score is merely a reflection of the fact that he has successfully gamed the algorithm into giving him a higher score simply by tweeting more, but not actually doing anything truly influential.