social-media

Jacqueline Corbelli: Insights on Tech as an Agent for Transformative Change, on Madison Avenue and Beyond

by Jacqueline Corbelli on April 9, 2012

Huffington Post…

When you think about advertising, it’s not likely that the latest tech gadget immediately leaps to mind. But, new technologies and digital devices play a vital role in how today’s digitally connected consumers engage with and experience life, and as an extension brands. Over the past ten years, technology has helped redefine the way businesses in most industries add value. From online banking to internet advertising, the business landscape has been reshaped by the ways consumers discover, interact with, and absorb information and content. And there’s a pattern — when technology proves it can enhance our experience as consumers, it tends to catch on. Pure technology solutions on the other hand (‘technology for the sake of technology’), most often, do not. From advising CEOs on how to best harness and capitalize on the promise of technology, to my current role leading the TV advertising company I founded and architected off the same premise back in 2003, I consistently find that true technology solutions feed our desired behaviors and preferences as consumers, rather than simply change or replace them. Smart phones, tablets, mini-laptops, connected TVs — the value to us of this ever-increasing array of devices lies in the ways we combine our use of them to specifically fit our life; our decisions are most often guided by choice, ease of use and control. As part of my new contributed blog series, I’m going to cover the various ways technology is influencing our behavior, what and why we adopt and the impact of true technology solutions on the world — from mental models to business models, economic development to keeping a business relevant to consumers. All with a persistent focus on the winning formula: a sustained commitment to increasing the impact and quality of the end consumer experience. I’ll begin with one of my latest passions, advertising. Digital Killed the TV Star? Digital media reporters have asserted that Silicon Valley is the new Madison Avenue. With so much focus on digital and social media, you would have expected technology to successfully kill the 30-second TV commercial. Not true. In fact, TV advertising and how you experience it has been going through a decade of gradual transformation that allows your favorite brands to build an interaction and relationship with you, through deeper engagement and an ongoing dialogue. It’s a widely held belief that as consumers we hate advertising; many point to our desire to skip commercials in favor of a TiVo or VOD experience. However, the latest statistics on the topic show there is a place for advertising in consumers’ lives. That, indeed, when made enjoyable and to fit seamlessly with the way we prefer to watch television, ads not only “break through” the clutter and noise of our busy lives, they actually can inspire us to voluntarily watch and interact with them — at a rate of millions per week, to be exact. As a result, major consumer brands — and the country’s top advertisers — have set their sights on the latest in interactive TV advertising as a way to build an ongoing dialogue with their target consumers. Here are just a few of the brands running the newest, most innovative forms of interactive TV ads that viewers can watch right now: Axe, via Xbox and iPhone iAd Degree for Men, via Xbox Dr. Pepper, via Xbox, DIRECTV and Dish GM Chevy Sonic, via DIRECTV and Xbox Hellmann’s, via Dish and Verizon FiOS Suave Keratin Infusion, via DIRECTV, Cablevision and iPad iAd Tresemme, via DIRECTV and Dish Red Bull, via Xbox What’s most shocking to some is the results these interactive campaigns are generating. iTV ad campaigns average 3 to 5 percent click rates. For some perspective, this compares to best performance benchmark online of just less than one percent. In addition, TV viewers are spending up to 15 minutes playing custom branded games, downloading recipes, entering sweepstakes, ordering products and more, all with their remote control. According to Nielsen, these interactive campaigns consistently outperform traditional TV and online advertising in generating awareness, engagement and ROI. I’ll touch more on these compelling figures in my next blog post, “New Digital Technologies Set to Advance Interactive TV Advertising.”

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Jacqueline Corbelli: Insights on Tech as an Agent for Transformative Change, on Madison Avenue and Beyond

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Stephen Fitzpatrick: Smart Meters – Meters Without the Smart?

by Stephen Fitzpatrick on April 8, 2012

Huffington Post…

Hard-pressed households may be facing yet another kind of energy bill because an upcoming launch of smart meters is going off the road. They are meant to save us money, help us control our energy use and help the country hit its environmental targets. It’s now three years since the previous government announced a national roll-out of smart meters to every UK home by 2020 but the creation and nature of the installation program has suffered repeated delays and changes in direction. The specification for smart meters, due last autumn, was finalised last month by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and they’ve sent it to the European Union to be approved. The delays mean that right now, any existing smart meters already installed and not to the anticipated sophisticated technical standard will need to be removed from homes by 2020. As a result the meters won’t last their certified life, which is just wasteful, the cost of buying them will be significantly higher for energy suppliers and some customers will have two meters installed within a short period. For households with pre-payment meters, the government has said it won’t decide how to manage this at the same time as normal payment meters meaning that their existing ‘non-smart’ meters will be in place for longer, leading to a two-tier system. It’s been reported that at least two of the ‘Big 6′ suppliers have halted their smart meter trials due to some of these uncertainties. There’s a suggestion that smart meters could be made optional (for suppliers who may not choose to offer them and for the public who may choose not to have one installed) but we think this makes little sense. How will the UK meet its 2020 commitments to reduce carbon emissions if smart meters are optional, when our homes contribute almost 30% of the UK’s emissions? Smart meters are likely to be more expensive for everyone, as new systems and meters will have to be paid for by a smaller number of customers – with the uncertainty leading to less investment by suppliers and less choice for you and me. We have to ask whether the government is wavering in its commitment to smart meters? Switching suppliers is often a good way to get a better deal, but if you have a smart meter from one of the existing trials and want to switch supplier before 2014, you’ll rely on the old supplier making information available to the new one – but there’s no incentive to do this quickly. We’re likely to lose access to our smart data for a while following a change of supplier – or be put off from switching which could cost us more in energy bills. We’ve suggested to DECC and Ofgem, the industry regulator, that smart meter installers should be made to provide smart data to new suppliers until a central communication body is set up to manage this. The complexity of the suggested process may lead to suppliers thinking it’s too complicated and administratively intensive so the customer’s new supplier may then only offer the ability to use the meter in a non-smart mode until at least 2014. The government is saying that energy suppliers will have to provide standardised IHDs (In-Home Displays) when installing approved smart meters. From the evidence we’ve seen, we don’t think most people will use these regularly to reduce or change their energy usage, meaning they could be a huge waste of time and money. We think it would be better to let households buy an IHD of their choice – or even receive the data on a smartphone or tablet app – creating competition and ensuring a greater chance of people using the piece of tech that’s right for them. The Energy Retail Association (ERA), the industry body for the ‘Big 6′ suppliers appears to have been tasked with creating the guidelines for installing smart meters. We think the independence of the code is compromised as the ‘Big 6′ energy companies are being allowed to heavily influence it – despite someone from the DECC chairing the steering board. The danger is that the process might be skewed in favour of salesman rather than what’s best for bill-payers. And the ability to educate the public about the rollout of smart meters could be irreparably damaged if everyone realises that the installation process is being controlled by companies that already suffer from tarnished reputations. In fact, negative press about smart meters already seems to far outweigh the positive, with bad experiences reported in the US. Until all of these factors are resolved, consumers will not have all of the information in order to decide, when the time comes, whether a smart meter is a smart idea for them.

Continued here:
Stephen Fitzpatrick: Smart Meters – Meters Without the Smart?

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Women 2.0: From Idea to Patent: Inventing Blinx and Replacing the Traditional Paper Business Cards

April 6, 2012

By Carrie Chitsey (Founder & CEO, 3Seventy) When we started our mobile company over three years ago, we were attending several tradeshows to learn more about mobile and innovation. We developed a handy SMS (text messaging) technology using keywords for our company so people could reach us after the shows. We thought it was unique and would help us stand out from the piles of paper business cards. With Blinx , people could now whip out their phones regardless of device (regular mobile or smart phone), text our name to a short code, then instantly get our business card. It would download into their phone and a reporting system showed ROI on your business card. This showed the user who was requesting their card and who downloaded it. What we quickly discovered was other people loved the concept, and wanted one of their own. We kept hearing, “Where do I buy that?” from individuals we met. After further discussion, it went from a fun idea to something we wanted to make and patent. Getting Down to Business — The Patent Process Developing a product for patent meant that we had to develop a new website, get payment processing, develop an easy user interface and create a business model of how we were going to make money. This was done while furthering the technology to a 2.0 platform with more functionality. We developed a new mobile website to signup, added advertiser network, a new keyword logic and shortened signup process. The next step was to document the process and technology and start working on the patent. The patent process was not an easy one — we spent about three months going back and forth writing the documentation of our product, the process and the technology. We had a handful of people working on this and then spent another 30-60 days getting it into the format the Patent Office requires it to be in (we started this way but apparently it changes). Once the patent was filed we got letter of acceptance for the provisional patent in about four months. The provisional patent was out there for about 1.5 years and we then got the final patent about two years after filing. While launching the product to the masses, we aligned the launch with SXSW. We rented a 50-foot tour bus, blasted music, provided free beverages and food and educated the audience about our new product. The product name was originally “BlinxMe.com” but we nicknamed it “Blinx.” We wanted the name of the product to be catchy and we wanted people to say “blinx me your card.” Sustaining our Brand We have broadened our demographic beyond business people to include aspiring environmentalists, moms, college students and singles who are in the dating scene. Blinx has been mentioned in Fast Company and was named one of the Top 10 Dating Technologies by Match.com. Sometimes, you end up with a product that you weren’t setting out to create for the masses. Blinx is a sub-brand of our parent company 3Seventy, so it’s not our core business. It is however, a fun product that we love to use and talk to customers about. Try it yourself by getting a free card here . Editor’s note: Got a question for our guest blogger? Leave a message in the comments below. About the guest blogger: Carrie Chitsey is the Founder and CEO of 3Seventy . She been a serial entrepreneur in many sales, marketing and technology ventures. Carrie brings the pragmatic experience of working for the Big 5 Consulting Firms and the vision of a forward thinking, “out of the box” entrepreneur. She has received a Six Sigma Green Belt and is certified in multiple technologies such as Avaya, Siebel, Nortel and others. She serves on the board of several charity organizations in Texas.

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Josh Levy: Hey America! We’re Ranked #16 in Broadband!

April 3, 2012

Q: Do you live in America? If you answered, “yes,” you can proceed directly to the “You live in a country ranked 16th in the world in broadband penetration, speed and price” section below. You live in a country ranked 16th in the world in broadband penetration, speed and price. It’s true . The U.S. ranks an average of 16th in the world in these three categories. That puts us behind countries like Portugal (15th), Belgium (9th) and Denmark (2nd), whose residents enjoy greater access to a faster, cheaper Internet than Americans do. There’s one core reason for our poor global performance. As journalist Rick Karr explained in his film on the state of broadband in Europe, a simple “game changer” — competition — leads to better broadband. But competition in the U.S. broadband market is virtually nonexistent. That means that millions of Americans live without high-speed Internet access, and those who do have it experience slower speeds and higher prices than their European counterparts. Most U.S. residents have a choice of only one cable provider, with slower DSL and satellite providing a cheap façade of competition . Big broadband companies are all too happy to point to this “competition” whenever they’re asked why they’ve been allowed to become quasi-monopolies that dictate how — and for what price — we connect to the Internet. Now the tiny sliver of broadband competition that still exists in America could disappear completely. Verizon and a group of cable companies including Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable have settled on a deal that would allow them to divide up the broadband market among themselves, leaving Internet users in the lurch. In short, Verizon would purchase a big chunk of wireless spectrum owned by the cable companies in exchange for an agreement to resell those companies’ broadband services to its customers — customers who once hoped that Verizon would build out its own FiOS network to compete with these very same cable companies. This deal amounts to an agreement between Verizon and these cable companies to stop competing. Whatever slices of the broadband market they currently dominate, they’ll continue to dominate — without the threat of competition. With that threat removed, these companies will have little incentive to lower prices, increase speeds or build out to underserved areas. Meanwhile, Verizon’s wireless spectrum purchase would make the already concentrated mobile market even more so — with AT&T and Verizon controlling two-thirds of all wireless subscriptions, 80 percent of the most valuable wireless spectrum and 80 percent of the entire industry’s profits. The U.S. broadband market is in bad shape. More competition could help fix it, but shady business deals and bad government policies are fostering more concentration, not less. How do we solve this competition problem? We’re asking Congress, the Justice Department and the FCC to block Verizon’s proposed deal . That’s a start. But we also have to support other forms of broadband competition, like municipally owned networks that compete with — and often beat — big incumbents like Comcast when it comes to speed, access and affordability. Unfortunately, those incumbents have spent millions to pass state-level bills that outlaw such networks. A movement is coming together to support communities’ right to decide for themselves whether to build such systems. You can join it here . You can also learn more about the history of corporations trying to control our access to basic utilities at the expense of residents who have depended on those utilities for their very survival. Indeed, many people see the battle for broadband as the 21st-century equivalent of the fight for rural electrification . We oppose the Verizon-cable deal and support community-owned broadband networks for one simple reason: Without competition, companies will leave Americans behind when it comes to the basic information utility of our time.

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Tom Grasty: The Difference Between "Invention" and "Innovation"

April 3, 2012

Two and a half years ago, I co-founded Stroome, a collaborative online video editing and publishing platform and 2010 Knight News Challenge winner . From its inception, the site received a tremendous amount of attention. The New School, USC Annenberg, the Online News Association and, ultimately, the Knight Foundation all saw something interesting in what we were doing. We won awards; we were invited to present at conferences; we were written about in the trades and featured in more than 150 blogs . Yet despite all the accolades, not once did the word “invention” creep in. “Innovation,” it turns out, was the word on everyone’s lips. Like so many up-and-coming entrepreneurs, I was under the impression that invention and innovation were one and the same. They aren’t. And, as I have discovered, the distinction is an important one. Recently, I was asked by Jason Nazar, founder of Docstoc and a big supporter of the L.A. entrepreneurial community, if I would help define the difference between the two. A short, three-minute video response can be found at the bottom of this post, but I thought I’d share some key takeaways with you here: INVENTION VS. INNOVATION: THE DIFFERENCE In its purest sense, invention can be defined as the creation of a product or introduction of a process for the first time. Innovation , on the other hand, occurs if someone improves on or makes a significant contribution to an existing product, process or service. Consider the microprocessor. Someone invented the microprocessor. But by itself, the microprocessor was nothing more than another piece on the circuit board. It’s what was done with that piece — the hundreds of thousands of products, processes and services that evolved from the invention of the microprocessor — that required innovation. STEVE JOBS: THE POSTER BOY OF INNOVATION If ever there were a poster child for innovation it would be former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. And when people talk about innovation, Jobs’ iPod is cited as an example of innovation at its best. But let’s take a step back for a minute. The iPod wasn’t the first portable music device (Sony popularized the “music anywhere, anytime” concept 22 years earlier with the Walkman); the iPod wasn’t the first device that put hundreds of songs in your pocket (dozens of manufacturers had MP3 devices on the market when the iPod was released in 2001); and Apple was actually late to the party when it came to providing an online music-sharing platform. (Napster, Grokster and Kazaa all preceded iTunes.) So, given those sobering facts, is the iPod’s distinction as a defining example of innovation warranted? Absolutely. What made the iPod and the music ecosystem it engendered innovative wasn’t that it was the first portable music device. It wasn’t that it was the first MP3 player. And it wasn’t that it was the first company to make thousands of songs immediately available to millions of users. What made Apple innovative was that it combined all of these elements — design, ergonomics and ease of use — in a single device, and then tied it directly into a platform that effortlessly kept that device updated with music. Apple invented nothing. Its innovation was creating an easy-to-use ecosystem that unified music discovery, delivery and device. And, in the process, they revolutionized the music industry. IBM: INNOVATION’S UGLY STEPCHILD Admittedly, when it comes to corporate culture, Apple and IBM are worlds apart. But Apple and IBM aren’t really as different as innovation’s poster boy would have had us believe. Truth is if it hadn’t been for one of IBM’s greatest innovations — the personal computer — there would have been no Apple. Jobs owes a lot to the introduction of the PC. And IBM was the company behind it. Ironically, the IBM PC didn’t contain any new inventions per se (see iPod example above). Under pressure to complete the project in less than 18 months, the team actually was under explicit instructions not to invent anything new. The goal of the first PC, code-named “Project Chess,” was to take off-the-shelf components and bring them together in a way that was user-friendly, inexpensive and powerful. And while the world’s first PC was an innovative product in the aggregate, the device they created — a portable device that put powerful computing in the hands of the people — was no less impactful than Henry Ford’s Model T, which reinvented the automobile industry by putting affordable transportation in the hands of the masses. INNOVATION ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH Given the choice to invent or innovate, most entrepreneurs would take the latter. Let’s face it, innovation is just sexier. Perhaps there are a few engineers at MIT who can name the members of “Project Chess.” Virtually everyone on the planet knows who Steve Jobs is. But innovation alone isn’t enough. Too often, companies focus on a technology instead of the customer’s problem . But in order to truly turn a great idea into a world-changing innovation, other factors must be taken into account. According to Venkatakrishnan Balasubramanian, a research analyst with Infosys Labs, the key to ensuring that innovation is successful is aligning your idea with the strategic objectives and business models of your organization. In a recent article that appeared in Innovation Management , he offered five considerations: 1. Competitive advantage: Your innovation should provide a unique competitive position for the enterprise in the marketplace. 2. Business alignment: The differentiating factors of your innovation should be conceptualized around the key strategic focus of the enterprise and its goals. 3. Customers: Knowing the customers who will benefit from your innovation is paramount. 4. Execution: Identifying resources, processes, risks, partners and suppliers and the ecosystem in the market for succeeding in the innovation is equally important. 5. Business value: Assessing the value (monetary, market size, etc.) of the innovation and how the idea will bring that value into the organization is a critical underlying factor in selecting which idea to pursue. Said another way, smart innovators frame their ideas to stress the ways in which a new concept is compatible with the existing market landscape, and their company’s place in that marketplace. This adherence to the “status quo” may sound completely antithetical to the concept of innovation. But an idea that requires too much change in an organization, or too much disruption to the marketplace, may never see the light of day. A FINAL THOUGHT While they tend to be lumped together, “invention” and “innovation” are not the same thing. There are distinctions between them, and those distinctions are important. So how do you know if you are inventing or innovating? Consider this analogy: If invention is a pebble tossed in the pond, innovation is the rippling effect that pebble causes. Someone has to toss the pebble. That’s the inventor. Someone has to recognize the ripple will eventually become a wave. That’s the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs don’t stop at the water’s edge. They watch the ripples and spot the next big wave before it happens. And it’s the act of anticipating and riding that “next big wave” that drives the innovative nature in every entrepreneur. This article is the seventh of 10 video segments in which digital entrepreneur Tom Grasty talks about his experience building an Internet startup, and is part of a larger initiative sponsored by docstoc.videos, which features advice from small business owners who offer their views on how to launch a new business or grow your existing one altogether.

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Penny C. Sansevieri: How to Market Your Fan Page With the New Facebook Changes

March 27, 2012

Starting on March 30, Fan Pages on Facebook will be undergoing big changes, and if you aren’t sure what’s going to happen to your Fan Page you should know that the changes are pretty significant. I’ve asked our Facebook expert Amy Porterfield to share some insights into these changes. First up, Amy can you tell us what the biggest difference is with the new Fan Page changes? Here’s the thing, it is no longer about the number of Likes. Just because you have a lot of Likes, a lot of fans, doesn’t mean you’re going to have success on Facebook. If you want bottom-line results you must create ways to keep fans coming back for more, collect leads from quality fans and get them to take action inside and outside of Facebook. With all the new changes, Pages are now more visually stimulating, which means that you can actually get more engagement just by the fact that there’s a new layout on your Facebook page. To couple that with some of these strategies we’ll talk about in this blog post, you’ll have some surefire ways to get more action from your Facebook fans. A lot of people are concerned that their Welcome Tab is going away and there’s a new cover photo that some businesses are already using, can you tell us about that? You bet. First let’s go over the Timeline Cover Photo. Here are some specifics about these changes. As you probably know, on March 30 your page will change to the new timeline cover layout. You can change it over now or you can wait until March 30. What’s going to happen is when you do change over to the new timeline layout you’re going to have a big cover photo on the top. That big cover photo is a great opportunity for you to brand your business. First of all what you need to know is the specs for that cover photo are 851 x 315 pixels. I know 851 is kind of an odd number but the closer you get to that, the crisper your photo is going to be, it’s not going to be blurry or it’s not going to be stretched too much or whatever. Also, you have a new profile image. Here ‘s an example of Coca Cola’s page where you see the little profile image on the left. That image is 180 x 180 pixels. Here’s the frustrating thing about these new timeline covers for pages. There are a lot of restrictions. You can see these right on the Facebook Blog, too: Facebook says that you cannot include price or purchase info, such as 40 percent off or Download it at our website, you can’t put that type of information on your cover photo. You also cannot include contact information such as web address, email, mailing address or any other info intended for your About section on your Facebook page. You know we all have that About section where we can give details of how to reach us. They don’t want that type of information on your cover photo. In addition, you cannot reference a user interface element. What that means is you can’t say “Like” or “Share” or any other Facebook site features. They don’t want you to say Like our page or Share our information on Facebook on that cover photo. No calls to action, which is the hugest bummer. You can’t do “Get it Now” or “Tell Your Friends” or “Sign up here” or “Go here to get more info,” you can’t do any type of call to action. Facebook says that the cover timeline photo is not meant for promotions, coupons or advertisements. They also say that the cover photo should not be primarily text-based or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. As you can see, these timeline restrictions are pretty strict. There are a lot of things that we cannot do on the timeline cover. Here are some examples of what other companies have done with their cover photo: www.facebook.com/social.fresh : They have a really cool image, it’s colorful, it catches your attention and it makes things interesting on their page. You could just go with an image and do some type of creative branding like they’ve done here. www.facebook.com/CaptainMorgan : Or you can do what Captain Morgan does, and they’ve basically expanded their brand. www.facebook.com/AmyPorterfield : With mine, I set it up to be more of a list building opportunity. I will say I know that I’m walking the line with this experiment here. I promoted my webinar on my cover photo. I’ve heard that they have taken people’s cover photos down and you’ve had to fix them and replace them. I haven’t heard anybody losing their Facebook page over this but do what you feel most comfortable with because I don’t want to get you into any trouble. Facebook is rolling out something called Applications, or Apps, can you speak to that? Along with the timeline cover photos being a huge change on Facebook, Facebook has also changed how we use tabs. Tabs used to be on the left column of our Facebook page — now tabs are called Apps. Tabs and Apps — those words are pretty much interchangeable right now. It’s your custom page that you can create inside your Facebook page. The specs for these custom apps are now 810 pixels wide which really allow you to do so much more with your custom pages inside Facebook than you ever could before. I’m going to show you some examples of this. In addition to that, Facebook has also allowed you to create thumbnails to highlight your different applications. You can create thumbnails that have an image on top of them. That image could be 111 x 74 pixels, kind of a weird number but trust me, these are the best dimensions to make your images look really great. You cannot have thumbnail images on top of photos, videos, notes, Likes and events. Those application boxes cannot be changed. Also you can move around your thumbnails and you can have up to 12 applications on your Facebook page. If you go to my Facebook page, right below my cover image you’ll see my applications and you’ll only see the top four unless you click that button on the right, then it will be a drop down and you’ll see the other four. What’s cool about this is I was able to create custom thumbnail images for the three you’re seeing right there on top and the two on the bottom; Social Media Updates, Free Video Series, Webinars, those are all thumbnails that I created. I created the jpeg image, then uploaded it. There are some strategies for thumbnails that I want you to think about: Create a reason to click inside your thumbnail — as you saw, I have Social Media Updates, Free Video Series, these are things that I know my ideal audience will find valuable. Get strategic with the three apps above the fold — those three that you saw next to the big thumbs up; those three you can move around. Make sure those are the best three you have on top because until someone clicks that blue arrow to the right that I showed you, they won’t see the ones below it. Rename the app itself, and you should think in terms of getting your fans to take action. There’s a lot you can do with the Applications or Apps, and we’ll talk about that in part two of our Facebook Fan Page Marketing strategy session with Amy Porterfield. About Amy: Amy is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies and a Social Media Strategist for entrepreneurs and small businesses. With 12+ years marketing experience, Amy has worked with mega brands like Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, along with Tony Robbins International where she oversaw his content marketing team and collaborated on multiple online marketing campaigns. She currently creates online programs to teach entrepreneurs and small businesses how to leverage social media to gain greater exposure, attract quality leads and turn their fans and followers into loyal customers. To learn more about Facebook and social media for your business, check out Amy’s blog. www.amyporterfield.com .

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Eliot Van Buskirk: A Brief History of Spotify’s Attempt to Become the ‘OS of Music’

March 26, 2012

Spotify recently rolled out a third batch of music apps that run within its desktop software, offering new ways to find stuff to listen to on your desktop, whether you pay for Spotify or not. This didn’t “just happen.” Rather, it’s part of a concerted effort on the part of Spotify to become, in the words of its director of developer platform Sten Garmark, “the OS of music.” That phrase might be confusing, because don’t operating systems run on computers, and not on the Internet? Basically, it means that Spotify would become sort of like Twitter, which might be considered “the OS of 140-character messages.” The same way app developers can build Twitter and Facebook into their applications, they would build in Spotify to handle music playback — and many of them already do, not only in the desktop version, but on iOS as well. You heard it here first, in an article that rose to the top of Techmeme in which we predicted that Spotify would double-down on becoming an app platform — a necessary step on its journey to become “the OS of music.” Our prediction was accurate, but it was not formed in a vacuum. Here’s a short history of Spotify’s attempt to become a musical operating system for the Internet, web and apps: 2011 4/11: Spotify limits free listening , most likely in preparation for its launch in the world’s biggest music market, the United States. 5/25: Spotify and Facebook reportedly hatch a plan to scrobble Spotify plays on Facebook, which they eventually did . Now, if you hear something in a Spotify app, your Facebook friends can find out about it (but only  if you want them to ). 7/14: Spotify officially launches in America . Some members of the U.S. press had already been using it for years. 8/26 Evolver.fm posts a collaborative Hurricane Irene playlist on Spotify. The “collaborative playlist” feature telegraphs Spotify’s intentions to become an operating system for music — especially in a social context. 8/31: Spotify announces an API that lets iOS developers build apps that hook into its catalog of officially-licensed music. As they do today, users must subscribe to the Premium version of Spotify in order to use them, because they run on smartphones . 9/20: A third-party developer creates a hack for Spotify that adds an equalizer , hinting at things to come. 9/26: Spotify defends its relationship with Facebook. ( Sean Parker owns part of both Spotify and Facebook.) 9/30: After some users complain (and some executives argue), Spotify adds a “private listening” feature that lets you play stuff without telling the world about it. 9/30: Spotify’s partnership with Facebook pays big traffic dividends . 10/7: Spotify developer community manager Andrew Mager appears at a small event in Brooklyn, New York to demonstrate 10 awesome apps that run on Spotify… and also mentions that the company is working on a commercial API that will let developers charge for apps that run on Spotify (it has yet to roll out). 10/4: Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly argue about the plan to require Spotify users to log in with Facebook. 11/1: Evolver.fm posted Occupy Wall Street playlists in Spotify. 11/22: Evolver.fm predicts that  Spotify would become a music platform for apps at its upcoming press event. 11/30: Spotify officially  becomes a music platform , launching its first round of apps that run within the desktop version. 11/30: Spotify-powered apps are free (and still are), but the company is working on a commercial API that will let developers charge for them, sharing revenue with Spotify. 12/1: The app-developing launch partners tell Evolver.fm they expect Spotify to put their creations on the map . (From the ones we’ve talked to, they were right — see Songkick’s latest investment round , for example.) 12/2: Spotify unveils a ” preview version ” of its app-running desktop client, which rolls out to all users shortly thereafter. 12/2: Spotify UK managing director Chris Maples calls the company’s app platform “arguably our biggest announcement since we launched .” 12/9: Soundrop CEO talks to Evolver.fm about his real-time group-listening app that runs within Spotify on the desktop (and now on the iPhone too ). 12/20: Spotify launched its second round of desktop apps , focusing this time on helping fans curate music for each other. 2012 1/4: A neat app allowed SXSW attendees to plan their festival calendar by listening to SXSW bands on Spotify . 1/6: Spotify prepares to add new limits to the free version of its service, which we figure was a prerequisite in order to maintain licensing from record labels and publishers who objected to it giving away so much for free. 1/12: Facebook announces ” real-time social listening ” with Spotify as the main launch partner. 1/13: The combination of Facebook and Spotify proves so powerful that developers at a competing company  complain . 2/10: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek (pictured in post to the right)  explains his app strategy to Evolver.fm. 2/27: Spotify throws its own ” Music Hack Weekends ” to attract more app developers (see also: SongJitsu  and ” Search for music by drawing a picture of it “). 3/6: Spotify announced that its app users listened to 1,500 years of music in three months . 3/13: Spotify chief content officer and managing director of North America Ken Parks tells Evolver.fm about Spotify’s app strategy and more. 3/19 Soundrop goes mobile , letting people carry around listening rooms in their pockets (as with Turntable.fm ). 3/22: The third round of Spotify desktop apps appears,  featuring  apps from record labels and distributors, with an emphasis on educating the listener. Whew! That brings us up to date. Stay tuned , to continue to monitor Spotify’s progress and music apps in general.

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Michelle Chen: Even With Daisey’s Lies Peeled Away, Apple’s Rotten Core Exposed

March 26, 2012

Apple’s brand glared in the media spotlight this past week, after the public learned that performance artist Mike Daisey’s theatrical rendering of the struggles of Apple factory workers contained false claims — painfully exposed on an episode of the radio program This American Life . But if one fundamental truth has emerged from the scandal surrounding Daisey’s dramatic fudging, it’s that the lived reality of many Chinese workers is undoubtedly bleak — no embellishment needed. Daisey’s personal account is gratuitously peppered with fabrications, but the story of systematic exploitation is essentially true. For years various watchdog groups have tried to hold Apple accountable for harsh working conditions in China, which have been linked to workplace-related suicides and health hazards. Since a number of young workers killed themselves in 2010, the consumer advocacy campaign Make IT Fair, , together with the Hong Kong-based Students Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), has documented systematic abuses: exhausting hours, an oppressive, militaristic workplace culture and, despite conciliatory pay hikes , extremely low wages in comparison to the tremendous corporate profits and brutal working conditions. It should be noted, however, that Daisey’s ” dramatic license ” was debunked largely through the real findings of intrepid investigations by advocates and professional reporters, which some commentators have highlighted amid the media fallout. As part of its “Retraction” episode, in fact, TAL interviewed New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg about the real story behind Daisey’s fictions. On the reported widespread violations of a 60-hour weekly cap on working hours, Duhigg tells host Ira Glass , Apple claims workers volunteer for this excess work: Duhigg: They say, “Look, one of the reasons why there is so much overtime that’s inappropriate and, in some places, is illegal, is because the workers themselves are demanding that overtime.” Now, workers don’t always say that. What workers often say is that they feel coerced into doing overtime, that if they didn’t do overtime when it’s asked of them, that they wouldn’t get any overtime at all, and that financially they would suffer as a result. This is the kind of more nuanced, day-to-day exploitation that Foxconn workers face — not so sensational, but nonetheless driven by global economic forces. Li Qiang, head of the New York-based China Labor Watch , told In These Times that in terms of the situations Daisey described, basically, “What he said about working conditions is true.” He added, “Through this kind of media reporting, maybe more artists or journalists, or others will go to China to investigate the real circumstances in Chinese factories…. This way, this issue can generate more public debate.” While Apple has touted a new partnership with the third-party monitoring organization Fair Labor Association, many critics remain wary that Apple will continue to fail the workers at the dregs of the supply chain. Even worse, Apple might turn the scandal into a marketing opportunity, polishing its reputation with a dab of “corporate social responsibility” measures. Make IT Fair recently denounced the FLA partnership as “a mere PR stunt,” citing comments by FLA president Auret van Heerden praising Apple facilities as “way, way above the average of the norm.” Activists call on Apple and other industry leaders to adopt more stringent ethical codes, which protect the environment from damaging extraction of raw materials, honor collective bargaining rights, and protect workers and their communities from discrimination and rights abuses. Apple’s real attitude toward its workers has been far from charitable. In a statement responding to TAL ‘s retraction, SACOM (whose campaigns have informed both Daisey’s and TAL ‘s reporting) pointed to the ongoing ramificiations of an incident that inspired Daisey’s narrative — a mass poisoning at a facility where workers were exposed to the chemical n-hexane while polishing gleaming touchscreens: In contrast to Apple’s statement that they have all been treated successfully, many workers still suffer from weak limbs and other health problems after nine-month hospitalizations. The victims sent three letters to Apple last year, but the company did not answer them at all. Likewise, after the explosion at the iPad case manufacturer Riteng in Shanghai in last December, which injured 59 workers, Apple has not sent anyone to visit the victims. The young workers are in despair because their faces were disfigured due to the fire from the blast. Some of them suffer from bones so severely shattered that they may be permanently disabled. Three months have passed, but the victims have not received any compensation…. While Apple hypocritically expressed that the company was deeply saddened by the tragedy, it has never apologized or offered compensation to the workers for its negligence in complying with work safety rules. For all his professed empathy for Foxconn workers, Daisey’s exaggerations were stupefyingly self-serving . Even as he awkwardly attempted to express contrition in the follow-up dialogue with Ira Glass, he insisted that within the realm of theater, he had legitimately blended fiction and nonfiction to create a more emotive experience for a Western audience. The claim reveals that Daisey lied to elevate his role in the story. He basically decided that the ugly truth wasn’t quite dramatic enough for him — a sideways insult to the workers whose cause he claimed to champion. In a correspondence with In These Times , SACOM project officer Chan Sze Wan said, “we worry that the public will misunderstand [and think] Foxconn is innocent after the Mike Daisey’s case.” As a research-based group, she added, SACOM “will continue to provide accurate information to consumers to solicit their supports,” but ultimately, voices of workers themselves will need to be heard: Nowadays, Foxconn workers do not have real worker representative system in the factory. So, SACOM has to channel their grievances to Apple. However, we always emphasize that workers should be the ones to monitor the working conditions at their workplace and fight for the rights. Following the string of suicides, a quote from a Chinese blog captured the workers’ story more eloquently than an American performer ever could: Perhaps for the Foxconn employees and employees like us — we who are called nongmingong, rural migrant workers, in China — the use of death is simply to testify that we were ever alive at all, and that while we lived, we had only despair. In the context of that hushed plea, the media hooplah over the fudged Foxconn narrative simply distracts us from the real masterwork of fiction that Apple and other tech giants continue to peddle: the imaginary world of our gadgets, a cosmopolitan universe that pretends to connect everyone while in fact sharpening the lines between consumers and the invisible workers that enable that carefree lifestyle. And we’re all buying it. Cross-posted from In These Times.

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Jonathan Spalter: Watching Wireless Grow Up (and Up and Up)

March 16, 2012

Wireless growth and usage show no signs of slowing as more Americans are increasingly using mobile to connect. In 2011 alone, wireless data traffic grew 133%, and with more wireless subscriptions than people in the U.S. , it’s no wonder. The hype around the new iPad and the reality of mobile video coming to a handset near you are yet two more confirmations that consumers, including a growing number of small businesses, continue to adopt mobile products, services and technologies at a record clip. Looking ahead, Cisco predicts there will be 2 billion networked mobile devices in the U.S. by 2015. With exploding demand for new devices and services, wireless networks are shuddering under unprecedented usage. As wireless adoptions accelerate at a blistering pace, both network operators and policymakers are scrambling to make more spectrum, the radio waves that connect mobile devices, available to stay one step ahead of consumer demand for all things wireless. Let’s take a closer look at the numbers. Since the iPhone debuted in 2007, AT&T reports that traffic on the company’s wireless network increased an astonishing 20,000% . Siri, the omniscient voice of the iPhone 4S, devours bandwidth — using twice as much data as the iPhone 4 and nearly three times as much as the iPhone 3G. And it’s not just the iPhone. Today, consumers can choose from over 400 smartphones on the market, with U.S. smartphone shipments now outpacing PCs. The staggering reliance on wireless devices is leading to a massive spectrum drain. Tablet devices are redefining the wireless ecosystem, with one in three Americans now owning a mobile reading device. New generations of these ubiquitous tablets are further draining the spectrum inventory. The new iPad, for instance, supports faster 4G mobile networks that deliver impressive data speeds — and suck up spectrum. With one billion apps downloaded worldwide each month in 2011, consumers are doing more on their mobile devices leading experts to predict that wireless data traffic will grow 100 times faster than mobile voice traffic over the next 10 years. This is a thrilling future but only if our wireless networks have the capacity to handle the surge in consumer demand and usage. Here’s a startling fact that causes us concern: North American mobile networks already are running at 80% of capacity , compared to the world average of 65%. When you consider the blazing fast speeds needed for streaming video, accessing audio, capturing high-resolution photographs and downloading gaming apps, it is not surprising consumers are taxing mobile networks and the spectrum that fuels them, at unprecedented rates. Given the staggering demand, it is equally predictable that the finite resource that is spectrum is rapidly becoming a very rare commodity. The FCC published its National Broadband Plan in 2010, followed by President Obama’s National Wireless Initiative a year later, both calling for an additional 500 MHz of spectrum for mobile in the next 10 years as an answer to the spectrum crunch. Policymakers have since been at work trying to realize these goals. For instance, President Obama and Congress recently passed legislation authorizing the FCC to conduct voluntary incentive auctions aimed at reclaiming broadcast spectrum for mobile. The NTIA is also studying various spectrum bands used by the government that may be repurposed for commercial use. Secondary market transactions and efficiently maximizing spectrum use round out the work carriers are doing independently to deal with a potential spectrum deficiency, all with a goal of ensuring a quality wireless experience for all U.S. consumers. Today, policymakers have an opportunity to transform challenges into opportunities by adopting policy prescriptions that make more spectrum available for mobile and enable robust wireless investment and innovation. Policymakers cannot keep pace with the innovation we see in the mobile sector but they must act swiftly and make freeing up more spectrum for mobile a top priority. Consumers deserve — and will demand — continued access to the latest and greatest technologies that place the power of information in the palms of their hands. To make the mobile future as bright as possible, the 300 million American wireless consumers and a growing chorus of small businesses now depend on Washington to answer their call. Jonathan Spalter, chairman of Mobile Future, has been founding CEO of leading technology, media, and research companies, including Public Insight, Snocap, and Atmedica Worldwide. He served as an advisor to and spokesperson for Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. Mobile Future is a 501(c)(4) coalition comprised of and supported by technology businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals dedicated to advocating for an environment in which innovations in wireless technology and services are enabled and encouraged. For a full list of members and sponsors and to learn more about the coalition, go to www.mobilefuture.org .

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Kathy Kemper: Gazelles and Entrepreneurs: A to M as Fast as You Can!

March 11, 2012

Technology has always played a key role in driving the U.S. economy forward. But over the past decade or so, it is not just the big players — government, Fortune 500 companies, and research universities — that are benefiting. Personal computers, broadband Internet, and now smartphones have put cutting-edge technology into the hands of small business owners, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs, creating immense opportunities for each person to do what he or she does best. For entrepreneurs, in particular, technology has been a game-changer, dramatically lowering the cost of starting a business — from establishing a supply chain to advertising to building a customer base. Starting a business these days does not require a brick-and-mortar office, upfront capital running into the millions, or even a staff. It does not necessarily take months, years, and decades to get going. Today, a sixteen-year old armed with a computer, a good idea, and a summer break could have what it takes to run a business or come up with the next big innovation. Etsy is a unique example of how technology has enabled one-person shops, in this case, artisans, to survive and even thrive in the midst of the big-box names, which dominate American retailing. Anyone with a slightly creative side — expressed in handmade products ranging from jewelry and quilts to pottery and furniture — can set up an account on Etsy.com , build a profile with pictures and descriptions of the items he or she is selling, and have access to customers worldwide almost overnight. From the very beginning, over 20 years ago, the Institute for Education saw the potential in cutting-edge technology to connect people, lower costs, streamline logistics, and support higher-quality programs. Web, video, and smartphone technology have enabled IFE to build camaraderie among its interns and fellows across the country; use paperless planning to organize events with hundreds of attendees; and work with partners on several continents to promote social entrepreneurship, civility, and youth global citizenship. People have always been surprised by how big IFE’s footprint is relative to the size of its team. Entrepreneurs are just beginning to reap the gains from cloud computing, which enables businesses to scale without running into server capacity limits and mobile apps, which provide individual customer analytics and can help business owners target advertising and products. Both are turning out be potential game-changers. Technology hasn’t, of course, solved everything. As much as costs have come down, access to capital still matters, especially for the entrepreneur seeking to scale up and turn his or her start-up into a “gazelle” business. The days of seeking bank loans to finance a start-up business are done. But angel investors are coming back. Success also has its costs. The bigger companies get, the less agile they tend to be. Many Fortune 500 companies are resting on their laurels and failing to take full advantage of new technology to improve their business models, reach out to new customers, and make use of real-time data. Dell and IBM are unusual examples of large companies that have not only leveraged technology but are linking up with smaller companies and, through procurement, helping them turn into gazelle businesses that go from point A to M as fast as possible. Technology is hardly a panacea, but there is no doubt that it will play a critical role in helping small business owners and entrepreneurs not only create economic value, but address many of the biggest problems the United States and the world face.

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Abortion Website Hacker Confesses

March 10, 2012

LONDON (AP) — A man claiming allegiance to the Internet activist group Anonymous has admitted hacking into the website of a major British abortion provider. James Jeffery appeared at a London court Saturday to admit two offenses under the Computer Misuse Act. The 27-year-old was arrested Friday for breaking into the website of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which has around 40 clinics and other centers across the country. The service said Jeffery wasn’t able to access medical information about women who had sought treatment from the nonprofit, but he stole about 9,000 records of people who had made inquiries through the website. Police said they took swift action to prevent the personal information from being leaked to the Internet.

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Web Giants Gear Up For Battle

March 10, 2012

By Jasmin Melvin WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Emboldened by their victory in quashing online piracy legislation, U.S. Internet companies are gearing up for a battle over whether consumers should be able to restrict efforts to gather personal data. Google Inc, Facebook, Apple Inc and other tech companies have lobbied against congressional and federal agency proposals that would let Internet users press “do not track” buttons on their browsers to block targeted advertising. Consumers could also edit personal information that has been stored about them. With the privacy issue, the multibillion-dollar Internet industry faces a challenge larger than potentially harmful legislation or regulations that could limit their advertising and corporate growth. Their efforts to self-regulate continue to suffer setbacks amidst accusations of privacy violations and last year’s Federal Trade Commission findings that Facebook and Google engaged in deceptive privacy practices. The FTC is expected to issue new privacy recommendations in the coming days, and companies are watching several legislative proposals on Capitol Hill. Privacy advocates are pushing to give consumers greater control over data collection. The companies must convince consumers that they benefit by allowing personal data to be collected and shared. Their pitch – in efforts like Google’s current “Good to Know” advertising campaign – argues that data collection lets companies offer faster, smarter products, like better search results and customized mapping. Internet companies successfully fought legislation to limit Internet piracy. Medley Global Advisors analyst Jeffrey Silva said Web companies may feel confident that they can tackle other government intervention. “I think the lesson they’ve learned is if they don’t like a certain bill, they can organize and create a lot of static and pushback,” Silva said. A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS Internet data collection allows advertisers to target users in a demographic who are more likely to buy their product. These ads often subsidize Web content. Google, for example, has come under fire for a new policy that took effect March 1 that treats information from most of its products, including Gmail, YouTube and Google+, as a single trove of data for advertisers. Google contends the change will benefit customers. The company would be able to spot a signed-on user looking for recipes and seamlessly direct them to YouTube cooking videos. “When we talk about how the Internet will improve and grow for consumers, that’s coming from online behavioral advertising,” said Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Strict privacy rules could lead to substantial cuts in online advertising dollars and an even larger hit to growth over the next five to 10 years, Castro said. A 2010 study by University of Toronto professor Avi Goldfarb and MIT professor Catherine Tucker revealed a 65 percent decrease in ad effectiveness after European countries implemented data collection rules for targeted advertising. Around 96 percent of Google’s $37.9 billion revenue comes from advertising, financial statements showed. Filings ahead of Facebook’s much-discussed initial public offering revealed 85 percent of its $3.71 billion in revenue last year came from advertising. Nearly two-thirds of Apple’s fiscal year 2011 net sales came from its iPhone, iPad and related products and services that rely on tracking a user’s exact location. New government data collection policies could have huge implications. “If Google got 65 percent less revenue than it got last year, that would be a big upset to a company like that,” Castro said. MULTI-PRONGED ATTACK The industry got a break last month when the White House released a blueprint “privacy bill of rights” giving consumers more data control, but relying heavily on voluntary compliance by Internet companies. The FTC’s expected recommendations are causing more anxiety. Analysts and privacy advocates predict that the FTC report will have more teeth, in part because FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently described Google’s new privacy policy as a “somewhat brutal choice” for consumers. The FTC report may call for strict enforcement to ensure firms adhere to their privacy policies, according to sources familiar with the agency’s thinking. It may also try to accelerate firms’ adoption of the “do not track” technology, which could work like the “do not call” registry that caused telemarketing industry havoc. Silva said the FTC recommendations come from “people that live and breathe privacy policy and have a greater knowledge of the law, companies’ practices and an institutional knowledge of what’s happened before. They probably have a better feel for the degree to which self-regulation works or doesn’t.” As for legislation, numerous privacy bills are winding their way through Congress. A notable one is a bipartisan privacy framework from Senators John Kerry and John McCain. It would require companies to reassess their privacy practices for both personally identifiable information and online behavioral advertising profiles. Critics say it could force more companies to start charging for services like e-mail, social networks and other content currently subsidized by advertising. “I’m talking about American companies having rules that control their own destiny, before Europe or other trading partners impose their policies on all our companies,” Kerry said. “Hell, establishing minimum privacy protections in law can help build consumer trust in the marketplace and in turn increase economic activity.” Tech companies have argued that government regulations could cut its revenues, reduce job growth and hurt the broader economy. Lawmakers are looking for the “sweet spot” between too much regulation and none at all, Representative Mary Bono Mack, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade, said. “Any knee-jerk reactions could have a chilling impact on innovation and e-commerce in the United States and threaten our economic recovery,” she said. WEB FIRMS’ FOOTHOLD Internet companies are well-positioned in Washington to push back against regulatory proposals. With the piracy debate, they came together to argue that bills designed to shut down access to overseas websites trafficking in stolen content or counterfeit goods were too broad. They argued that they could undermine innovation and free speech and compromise the Internet’s functioning. What followed was an unprecedented online protest that saw Wikipedia and other sites go dark while bigger players like Google and Facebook displayed censorship bars and arguments against the bills on their sites. The effort was supported with 3.9 million tweets, 2,000 people a second trying to call their elected representatives and more than 5,000 people a minute signing petitions opposing the legislation. Privacy regulations are a harder sell, said privacy expert Amy Mushahwar, an attorney with Reed Smith. “Consumers might not be able to immediately recognize that increased privacy obligations could lead to a lesser amount of content on the Web, which is really what the advertising industry is concerned about,” said Mushahwar, a registered lobbyist for the Association of National Advertisers. Internet companies have tried to get ahead of mandatory reforms by adopting their own policies. The Digital Advertising Alliance rolled out new data collection principles that take effect this year. They explicitly prohibit collection and use of a person’s Internet surfing data for determining their eligibility for employment, credit, insurance and medical treatment. The industry is also using old-school lobbying tactics. It has ramped up its political activities dramatically, spending $1.2 billion between 1998 and 2011. Google spent $9.68 million and Microsoft Corp $7.34 million on federal lobbying in 2011, according to lobbying disclosure reports. Facebook, a latecomer to Washington, has beefed up its lobbying team, adding Joel Kaplan, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, and Myriah Jordan, also a Bush aide and former general counsel to Republican Senator Richard Burr. Facebook’s lobbying expenditures skyrocketed from $351,000 in 2010 to $1.35 million in 2011, reports show. Winning lawmaker support is only part of the battle. The sector also may benefit from the views of average people, said Linda Woolley, executive vice president of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association. Despite recent controversies over Google’s privacy policies, “you didn’t hear of people cancelling their Gmail accounts.” “From where I sit, I do not see hordes of Americans running to Capitol Hill saying we need to do something about this,” she said. (Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Karey Wutkowski and Marilyn Thompson; Desking by Stacey Joyce)

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Fake Pop Star Sells Out Shows In Japan

March 9, 2012

By Chris Meyers TOKYO (Reuters) – Hatsune Miku has a following that would make most Japanese pop stars green with envy, with thousands of fans at every concert and a big international following. She never misses a beat, fluffs a line or messes up a step. But then she doesn’t really exist. Hatsune Miku is computer generated, based on a voice-synthesizing programme developed by the company Crypton Future Media that allows users to create their own music. Her image was produced by the company, but her music is a creation of her fans, Her best songs — the ones headlined at her concerts — have emerged from more than 20 different people. The fans know what the fans like. All 10,000 tickets for the digital diva’s four shows in Tokyo — two on Thursday and two on Friday — sold out in hours despite the 6,300 yen ($76) ticket price. Hatsune Miku was projected onto the stage at the shows while thousands of other fans packed into 24 cinemas to watch live. “It was absolutely amazing, it’s like my heart is still dancing. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,” 21-year-old Yuya Ofuji said as she came out of a concert. Another fan, Hazuki Koide, showed her dedication by dressing up as Hatsune Miku. “I’ve liked her for a long time and wasn’t able to come to the concert last year and watched it in a movie theatre. But this year I thought that I absolutely had to make it,” Koide said. The concert, billed as possibly Hatsune Miku’s last, was also broadcast in cinemas in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Some fans came from further afield to catch what could be their idol’s last gig. “We thought we really had to make a real effort to come because we wouldn’t get a chance to see her in the future,” said Daniel Noll who flew in from Australia. It’s not clear why organizers said these shows could be Hatsune Miku’s last, but if they are, she’ll be going out on a high. Some online polls have her down as the most-requested singer for the London Olympics opening ceremony. Whatever her future, the virtual star has made a real difference to many fans, they say. “She gave a lot of people that didn’t have a voice, a voice to express their feelings and thoughts,” Noll said. (Editing by Elaine Lies and Robert Birsel)

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Google Threatens To Ban Apps That Don’t Play By Its Rules

March 8, 2012

By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc has been pressuring applications and mobile game developers to use its costlier in-house payment service, Google Wallet, as the Internet search giant tries to emulate the financial success of Apple Inc’s iOS platform. Google warned several developers in recent months that if they continued to use other payment methods – such as PayPal, Zong and Boku – their apps would be removed from Android Market, now known as Google Play, according to developers, executives and investors in mobile gaming and payment sectors. Developers say the Internet search giant is trying to simplify consumer payments, hoping apps-buying will rise and offset their higher costs. Google’s payment service charges a higher cut per transaction than some rivals’. But the move also suggests Google is using its powerful position in the mobile apps market to promote an in-house offering. “Although this move by Google might seem high-handed, it reduces the friction for purchases inside Android apps and therefore makes users more valuable,” said Hugo Troche, chief executive of Appsperse, a cross-promotion network for app discovery. A Google spokesman declined to comment on Thursday. Android Market, or Google Play as it is now known, is the company’s answer to Apple’s apps store, where consumers browse and buy or download everything from games and music to individual software or applications. Google wants Google Wallet to be the dominant way that people pay for anything on this platform. In one email sent to a developer in late August, Google said the developer had 30 days to comply, otherwise the developer’s apps would be “suspended” from Android Market. Reuters obtained a copy of the email this week. “They told people that if they used other payment services they would be breaking the terms of use,” said Si Shen, founder and chief executive of Papaya, a social gaming network on Android. “Whether it’s right or wrong, we have to follow the rules.” Papaya placed social games on Android more than two years ago. At that time, the search company’s payment service – now known as Google Wallet – was not available for Android app payments, Shen explained. She said Papaya used PayPal, owned by eBay Inc, and Zong, a mobile payments company that has since been acquired by eBay. Papaya has now dropped PayPal and Zong in favor of Google Wallet for in-app billing, she said. “If we had a choice, the freedom to choose which billing service, then that’s even better. But if we have to follow the rules, we will,” she added. “I want to maintain a very good relationship with Google. We are very collaborative. It’s very important to the business.” MOTIVES The initiative is important for Google. While Android Market has been a hit in terms of the number of smartphones using the platform, there has not been a commensurate increase in purchase activity by users. In early 2011, Android platform manager Eric Chu told a conference that while the number of Android smartphone users was surging, the number of purchases of paid apps in the Android Market was not doing nearly as well, Forbes reported. This is partly because the buying experience has been varied and confusing for users – reducing the chance that they will go through with a purchase, something known as conversion. By pushing all app developers to use Google’s payment system, the experience should be simpler, increasing conversion. “On Android it used to be laissez faire – you could use any payment provider you liked,” said Todd Hooper, chief executive of Zipline Games. “It’s probably naive of developers to think they could keep choosing different payment providers,” he added. “If purchasing on Android is all over the place, that is worrying.” Apple’s iOS platform generates higher conversion rates mainly because the company required developers to use its own payment system from day one, according to Hooper and others. “This is one of the things that has helped Apple succeed,” said Charles Hudson of Bionic Panda Games, an Android-focused mobile social games company in San Francisco. “Every single developer is using the Apple payment system. Google sees the benefits that provides for the Apple platform and wants to create a similar system.” When Bionic Panda started on Android Market about a year ago, Google Wallet was not available, so the company used PayPal initially, Hudson said. It switched exclusively to Google Wallet around the spring of 2011, he added. Developers using Google Wallet typically have to pay Google a 30 percent cut of revenue from purchases – higher than the cut taken by rival third-party payment services. But Hudson and other developers said this may be worth it, if conversion rates increase. When Bionic Panda dropped PayPal it lost some customers, but there was “an overall lift in conversion and monetization on a per-user basis,” Hudson said. “Without having to chose your payment option it’s closer to the one-click experience of the Apple iOS platform,” he added. “The convenience factor would outweigh customer losses.” (Editing by Edwin Chan and Matthew Lewis)

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Bianca Bosker: Why The New iPad Is Like Madonna

March 8, 2012

Apple’s name for the new iPad is “the new iPad.” Or to be more specific, just “iPad.” The third generation of the company’s tablet has bucked Apple’s own tradition of numbering models chronologically — it was widely expected to be the “iPad 3″ — to distinguish them from their predecessors. Whereas the first iPhone was followed by the iPhone 3G and 3GS, then iPhone 4 and 4S, the iPad has gone from “iPad 2″ back to plain old “iPad.” The name change (or lack thereof) has left some people frustrated. Many are confused as to what to call the tablet , disappointed, and altogether displeased. “Let’s be honest, the name ‘The New iPad’ is already a $10 billion mistake, black eye on the Tim Cook era, and it’s an hour old,” tweeted one user . Another chimed in , “So, just to confirm: Apple created a new iPad, declined to give it a real name and barely changed it from the last one? No thanks.” Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller told Fortune’s Miguel Helft Apple chose the name because the company doesn’t “like to be predictable.” But that pithy response glosses over the fundamental logic and branding genius of the return to a moniker devoid of numbers or acronyms. With a single word, Apple has signaled to consumers they should consider the iPad heir to the PC throne, while accentuating the differences between its device and rivals. Whereas Apple’s iOS devices each have suffixes that distinguish one version from another, its PCs have kept the same name from generation to generation. The first MacBook Air, launched in 2008, was called the MacBook Air, as were all subsequent versions of the laptop. And whether the device has an 11-inch screen or a 13-inch screen, a Core i5 or Core i7 processor, 2 GB of memory or 4GB, it’s still the “MacBook Air” — no “MacBook Air 4″ or “MacBook Air 13.4.” Likewise, Apple’s iMac has been “iMac” for more than a decade. Calling the latest iPad “iPad” links the tablet more directly to Apple’s stable of PC devices and suggests the gadget isn’t to be seen as an accessory, but a staple — something to be relied on for multiple generations, or even as a substitute for a PC. “iPad” also shifts the focus away from how the device has evolved and instead emphasizes that it belongs to a class of devices all its own. Apple CEO Tim Cook proclaimed that Apple has “its feet firmly planted in the post-PC future,” noting that 76 percent of the company’s revenue stems from sales of iOS devices. The iPad name is one more way Apple has affirmed this. Apple has also used the one-word “iPad” to distinguish its tablet from a growing number of Android competitors, which, almost as a rule, have impossible-to-remember names that rival the titles of British aristocrats for complexity and wordiness . Tablets touted as alternatives to the iPad include the critically-acclaimed “Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime” and even more befuddling “Asus Eee Pad Slider SL 101″ — both solid devices, but difficult to ask for by name. Samsung has used a system of numbers (with decimals!?) and words to distinguish between versions of its Galaxy Tab. The company’s line of tablets include the Galaxy Tab 7.7, Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Galaxy Tab 8.9, and Galaxy Tab 10.1, titles that correspond only generally to the capabilities of each device. The onerous names of Android gadgets have become so notorious that they’ve spawned a website , “Android Phone Name Generator,” mocks smartphones’ names with titles such as “Acer Liquid Vivid Z E G1.” The simplicity of the iPad’s name not only makes it easy to remember, but suggests that Apple’s tablet is exceptional. Madonna doesn’t need a last name. Nor does the iPad, it seems. Check out the slideshow (below) for everything you need to know about the new iPad .

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Apple Announces New iOS

March 7, 2012

Developing: Updates to follow Apple has announced that iOS 5.1, the newest version of its mobile operating system, will be available for download starting today. The latest version of iOS will offer Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant, in Japanese, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. (We’re assuming it’ll have more features than that, and will update the post as they’re announced) “Siri is your best friend, your intelligent personal assistant who gets things done just by asking. It’s a whole new way of interfacing with your phone, and our customers tell us that they love it,” Cook said during Apple’s press conference Wednesday, according to gdgt So, how can you download iOS 5.1? Well, if your iPad or iPhone is already running a version of iOS 5, and you’re connected to a WiFi network, then you don’t have to plug in a thing: Just follow the handy instructions in the slideshow below. For photos from Apple’s March 7 event, check out the slideshow (below).

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Watson, Computer Jeopardy Champ, Gets A Job On Wall Street

March 6, 2012

ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) — IBM’s Watson computer is going into finance. Citigroup and IBM said Monday they will look into how the famous computer system’s technology can improve banking for customers. Citi said it’s hoping to improve the accuracy and speed of making decisions, assessing risk and finding lending opportunities. In a blog entry, an IBM general manager suggested Watson could eventually help customers decide how much money they needed to retire or whether they should reshuffle their investments. Watson is best known for defeating the best “Jeopardy!” players on TV. It’s also being used by health insurer WellPoint Inc. to help diagnose medical problems. In a previous collaboration, IBM and Citi announced in 1954 that IBM’s “electronic brain” reduced the time for a cost-benefit analysis from 1,000 man-hours to 9.5 minutes.

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The Schwartz Is Strong In This One

March 6, 2012

MONTREAL – Singer Celine Dion is part of a consortium that has purchased a landmark Montreal restaurant, famous partly for its food and partly for its generations-old decor. The Quebec diva and her husband, Rene Angelil, have teamed up with other investors to buy Schwartz’s, a downtown deli. The establishment is famous amongst Montrealers, and tourists, to a certain extent because of its smoked-meat sandwiches but also because of its appeal as a larger-than-average time capsule. Founded in 1928, the St. Lawrence Boulevard shop regularly draws long lineups of tourists eager to grab a seat in a place that looks untouched by the passing decades. In a news release Monday announcing the transaction, Angelil shared his memory of first going to Schwartz’s as a young musician in 1961 with his friend and manager, Ben Kaye. “I have so many great memories of being there with the guys, and with Celine and our families throughout the years. It’s the most unique restaurant in the world and we’re thrilled to be a part of it,” Angelil said. This won’t be the first smoked-meat venture for Dion and Angelil. They have also been partners in Nickels, a chain of retro 1950s diners that sells mostly fast foods including the famous Montreal sandwiches. Without referring to his previous chain venture, Angelil sought to assuage the concerns of any purists that he’ll create a similar business model out of Schwartz’s, a place immortalized in the literature of Mordecai Richler. Angelil promised not to allow franchises, and to keep the authenticity of the establishment. “Of course, we’ll make a few improvements as necessary, but we’re not interested in diluting the brand by franchising, or making the deli something that it isn’t,” he said. “It’s truly one-of-a-kind, and we intend to keep it this way.” The group of partners includes Angelil’s nephews and the Nakis family, longtime Montreal restaurateurs. The sale price was not disclosed.

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Camilla Webster: Banking on Social Media: The Right Experts Count

March 5, 2012

Just the other day, a high net worth fund manager said to me, “I won’t tweet. I won’t do it. I earn $1,000 an hour. Taking time to tweet would be a waste of time for me.” My first reaction was “Oh no” we must all tweet for ourselves. Certainly that has been the party line for Tweeters I’ve met on blogger nights, but I had to consider said executive was not in the media and just might be right about this, and that generated another thought: Tweeting is a waste of time for the wealth manager but it is not a waste of time for the wealth management business. It may be a waste of time for the lawyer buried in term sheets or appellate briefs, but it is not a waste of time for the independent law firm itself. You see one of the biggest challenges for a private business in traditional areas like finance and law even in a networking hot house like New York City, is it’s extremely challenging to grow a client base and to consistently send out a brand message to new clients, younger clients and new moneyed clients. Social media is a great modern response to this age old conundrum. But you can’t just hire any young thing if you’re in the business of selling advice and strategy and here’s why: you devalue your brand, new potential clients lose trust and you run the risk of looking shoddy. One of the ongoing trends as social media has spread, is for companies to engage tech experts who generate fake followers, and spread information via Tweetdeck and/or Hootsuite. However, in a business like finance, law or say a medical practice this seems like a passive approach when the dissemination of information is this type of business is the owner’s most valuable asset. We have seen in the media business “social media editor” and “social media expert” take on a new status at newspapers and TV networks. Their social media experts are serious journalists handling hundreds of stories over the Twitterverse and other platforms. They publish breaking news updates, press releases, engage in Twitter fests; and share all sorts of information that cannot be left to an algorithmically driven social media service. I advise taking a page out of their book and use the media effectively and approach it seriously. If you want to create new value and reach beyond the outdated Industrial Age landscape for traditional enterprise, while maintaining and increasing the value of your brand, I strongly advise hiring an expert to communicate over social media for your business, particularly if you own a private company. This expert must actually be an expert in your day to day business, not a tech superstar. Do not waste your money on a college student with a social media start-up or even a major social media business if you run or own a company that depends on your advice i.e., law, finance, healthcare. The level of your messaging must reflect the sophistication of your business. If you have a law firm, hire a lawyer to tweet or a paralegal or a former associate: somebody who absolutely understands the law and the cases that cross your desk and what a link to a supreme court case would say about your firm. A partner in an independent firm, engaging a social media expert recently said, “If you did not understand the law I wouldn’t do this with you, it [the social media approach] has to be in line with what I do and you need to understand that.” If you’re in finance, it’s not hard to find an out of work experienced Wall Streeter or top financial journalist who understands how to comment on the important finance stories of the day, wealth management studies and key institutions. They will know the banks, traders and market movers to follow. It’s most important that the person has the appropriate degrees and expertise to language in 140 characters or less as the voice of your business and your company in the social media universe. They are in fact often talking to new clients, building relationships and acting as the voice of your company in social media discussions and you should have a general understanding of how this works yourself. Use your computer help desk to set up the basic Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more accounts. In New York I recommend using Juicy Orange if you are in the process of designing your website and accounts. I advise you use Cartwheel if you’re looking for overall computer and mail support. If you’re out of work in a certain field that requires multiple degrees and years of experience, I may have just found you a new small business to start — hello, social media editor — get out there and find some clients.

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More Lawyers Join Man’s Fight For Facebook Ownership

March 5, 2012

BUFFALO, N.Y. — An upstate New York man who says he’s entitled to half ownership of Facebook has added five attorneys to his legal team. Paul Ceglia’s (SEHG-lee-uhs) lead attorney, Dean Boland, said Monday that the addition of the lawyers should be seen as an indication of the case’s strength. Ceglia is suing Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg in federal court in Buffalo. Ceglia says a contract he signed with the then-Harvard University freshman in 2003 entitles him to half of the multibillion-dollar social networking site. Lawyers for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company say the contract is doctored and had nothing to do with Facebook. The social networking site has 845 million users and recorded $3.7 billion in revenue last year. A scheduling conference is set for April 4.

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Michael Geist: CMA Needs to Change its Tune

March 5, 2012

Last week I wrote about the astonishing demands of the Canadian music industry as it seeks a massive overhaul of Bill C-11, the copyright reform bill. The Canadian Independent Music Association is seeking changes to the enabler provision that would create liability risk for social networking sites, search engines, blogging platforms, video sites, and many other websites featuring third party contributions. If that were not enough, it is also calling for a new iPod tax, an extension in the term of copyright, a removal of protections for user generated content, parody, and satire, as well as an increase in statutory damage awards. CIMA and ADISQ, which represents the Quebec music industry, appeared before the C-11 committee last week and the demands only seemed to increase. For example, ADISQ is asking the government to add a requirement for Internet providers to disclose customer name and address information to copyright owners without court oversight. Conservative MP Paul Calandra rightly noted the obvious parallels to Bill C-30, where the government wants similar disclosures to law enforcement. In this case, however, ADISQ wants the information disclosed to a private party based on nothing more than an allegation of infringement. Calandra’s comments suggest that the government recognizes the dangers of such an approach. The proposed lack of due process is not limited to the disclosure of subscriber information. During its appearance, CIMA said it wanted a takedown system without any due process. Mike Lake, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, took the organization to task for the proposal. In response to Lake’s concerns, CIMA replied: Don’t get us wrong there. We believe that there should be some due process. What we don’t believe is that it’s practical to expect. In other words, CIMA believes in due process, but doesn’t think Canadians should expect any. As for where proposed mandatory disclosure of subscriber information in copyright claims and content takedowns might lead, the industry also wants unlimited damage awards for individuals. When asked for a figure, CIMA responded: Quite frankly, we’d rather see no limit on statutory damages, but in the spirit of the act, I don’t think, as an association, we’ve talked about a specific ceiling. We were hoping to engage in more discussions on that with folks on your side of the table to talk about what is an appropriate level, if it is deemed that there should in fact be a level. The comments bring to mind assurances from movie industry representatives last year that there are no plans to file lawsuits against individuals, only to launch dozens of lawsuits against individuals over the alleged downloading of the Hurt Locker movie a few months later. The Bill C-11 hearings continue this afternoon.

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Foursquare Co-Founder Is Leaving

March 5, 2012

Is there a way to check-out on Foursquare? Either way, Naveen Selvadurai is doing it. The location based service’s co-founder announced on Sunday that March will be his last month at the company. On his blog Selvadurai writes that while he will continue to be involved with Foursquare (he’s on the board and will continue to advise the company), he hopes to get back to “what I love most — being an entrepreneur, learning and building new things.” “[A]fter three years, I feel I’ve done all I can do and I’m moving on,” Selvadurai writes in his blog post. “Going forward, I’m going to continue to be connected to the company: I’m on the board, I’ll still be advising, and I’m obviously going to be the single most vocal user. But the spring is time for things that are new, and I realize that I have a desire to do something new as well.” A Foursquare spokeswoman said in an email statement to The Huffington Post: When Naveen and Dennis launched foursquare at SXSW 2009, they had a few hundred beta testers. Now, as we approach our third birthday, we have a community of over 15 million that has checked in over 1.5 billion times. This wouldn’t have been possible without Naveen’s creativity, vision, and tireless work. We’re sad to see him go, but excited to see what he builds next. We can’t thank him enough for everything he’s done to make foursquare what it is today. The announcement comes days before Foursquare’s third anniversary. Selvadurai and founding partner Dennis Crowley launched the service at Austin’s tech, music and film extravaganza SXSW in 2009. Foursquare allows users to share their real-time locations by “checking-in” at venues using an app on their smartphone. Each check-in confers points which go towards rewards such as becoming the “Mayor” of a location or acquiring venue specific badges. Check-ins also can be used to claim discounts and loyalty rewards. In his blog post Selvadurai writes with pride about the company’s quick success: [I]t’s hard to believe that now, three years later, instead of one hundred beta testers, the company has over a hundred incredibly talented employees helping us realize that vision. and they’re building amazing things. In June of last year, the company announced via blog post that there were more than 10 million Foursquare users around the world. Now, there are over 15 million. According to CNET, 750,000 merchants have signed up to participate in the service. Selvadurai was a software architect for Sony when he began working with Crowley on a program that would allow people to digitally bookmark the places they’d been around the city. In June 2011 TechCrunch reported that Foursquare had a reported valuation of between $500-600 million.

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Facebook Reportedly Plans To Increase Already Huge Credit Line

March 1, 2012

By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc plans to increase its $2.5 billion credit line to help cover a major tax hit when employee stock awards vest shortly after it goes public, according to two sources familiar with the company’s plans. The world’s largest social media network, which boosted its borrowing capacity by two-thirds just six months ago, is taking advantage of its strong position to get more financing for its phenomenal growth, the sources said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about such plans. A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment. “All these tax obligations are being created and you need cash to take care of it. You see this all the time but in this case it will be substantial,” said Michael Moe of GSV Capital, which owns Facebook shares. “Having the cash to be able to take care of that makes a lot of sense. That would be the motivator of a larger credit facility.” Facebook has said it plans to pay taxes on its employees’ restricted stock units, or RSUs, when they vest six months after the company’s initial public offering. The exact amount is likely to total billions of dollars, based on Facebook’s stock price at the time. Helping employees cover tax on RSUs is relatively unusual and leaves the employer with a “very expensive obligation” that could increase if Facebook shares climb, said Bart Greenberg, a partner at law firm Haynes and Boone LLP who advises start-up tech companies. “It could create such a large cash obligation that it eats up most of the credit facility,” Greenberg added. “That facility may have been originally set aside for acquisition opportunities or working capital.” Facebook said it may sell equity securities, tap its credit facility, use cash or a combination of these options to meet its tax obligation, according to its IPO filing. In February 2011, Facebook set up a $1.5 billion credit agreement with affiliates of Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch and Barclays Capital, the leading underwriters of the company’s IPO. In September 2011, the borrowing capacity was increased $2.5 billion. “The golden rule of finance is that you get the money when you can, not when you need it,” said Moe, who co-founded investment bank ThinkEquity. “Creating maximum flexibility will allow you to be efficient with your use of capital but also opportunistic when appropriate.” Some other tech companies that recently went public have also arranged similar credit facilities. Zynga, the social games giant, set up a $1 billion facility with some underwriters of its IPO, which happened late last year. Facebook and Zynga generate substantial profits, but the companies have big credit facilities because it is good corporate finance strategy to line up back-up cash from a position of strength, Moe and others said. The months leading up to an IPO are a good time for companies to arrange credit facilities because they have the most negotiating power with banks vying for lucrative roles in equity offerings, according to the chief financial officer of a large private tech company who asked not to be identified. (Reporting By Alistair Barr; Editing by Richard Chang) Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Nathan Newman: Solving the Google Privacy Problem Will Largely Solve the Google Antitrust Problem

March 1, 2012

We seem to be having two debates about Google — on the cultural side, the question is whether the company violates user privacy too much and, on the business side, is Google a monopoly threat in the marketplace? But these are not separate issues at all. Larry Page and Sergey Brin did not create Google because they are prurient people interested in rifling through peoples’ personal lives. I don’t think they could care less. As the saying goes, for them it’s just business. Because Google’s business model is based on obliterating user privacy as much as possible, solving the Google privacy problem will largely solve the Google antitrust problem. Start with one basic reality: users of Google Search, Gmail, YouTube and the rest of its services are not Google’s customers. They’re the product. Those services are honeypots used to attract users, strip them of personal data, and then package them using their demographic and behavioral data for advertisers — Google’s real customers. Today, Google’s most recent move to completely integrate user data generated on different company sites, with a single privacy policy governing all services takes effect. This just ratifies the reality of an integrated market for user data across the Googleverse. In Europe, the Article 29 Working Party of data privacy regulators in Europe has demanded Google reverse this decision. As the French data agency CNIL wrote in a letter to Google this week, speaking on behalf of European regulators: [O]ur preliminary analysis shows that Google’s new policy does not meat the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection… Moreover, rather than promoting transparency, the terms of the new policy and the fact that Google claims it will combine data across services raise fears and questions about Google’s actual practices… The CNIL and the EU data protection authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of data across services and have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing. Stating that they intend to act to change the policy by Google, the European regulators are aiming at the heart of the Google problem, but there should be a more explicit regulatory discussion linking the privacy and antitrust aspects of this issue. Regulators need to more clearly recognize that when Google moves into a new sector and gives a consumer product away, the destruction of rival businesses is just a byproduct of its goal of annexing more user data to its Borg-like mass of data. Google doesn’t even have to completely control any of those sub-sectors, since no rival in any of them have its integrated access to user data across so many different services. And that control of user data gives Google an almost complete monopoly on its core real business of selling search advertising. While a user of a search engine may be able to think that competition is “just a click away,” the reality for advertisers is that there is no alternative. For advertisers, the choice is between Google, which in Europe has intimate personal information on over 80% plus of online users, versus competitors like Bing of Yahoo with a tiny percentage of search user information and without Google’s comprehensive multi-sector reach into user private information. And the failure of competition shows up in the prices charged to online advertisers. In theory, if competition was functioning, while Google would make more money overall with more users clicking ads, the cost per click should be nearly the same for Google competitors. However, Google actually gets a premium prime per click, even in the United States where Bing has a more significant share of searches, indicating serious monopoly power with the power to get a monopoly price from its advertising customers. According to analysts, Google receives anywhere from twice to five times as much for the same ad using the same kind of search terms. So the result is that while Google is printing money from its online advertising operation, Microsoft lost an estimated $2.6 billion last year on its Bing operation. However, if regulators act to tighten privacy policy, they will in turn restrict the source of Google’s monopoly power as well. A good first step is the Article 29 Working Party’s demand that Google not collapse privacy policies across its different services. Users should retain the ability to choose which data they share with Google on each and every individual service they use–and not have the data from one service used on another by advertisers. Requiring a clear “opt-in” agreement by users for each and every use of their personal data will also help encourage users to demand full economic value for their data and refuse its use for the most exploitive purposes. And users should have clear ways to see exactly what data is known and revoke access to that data for marketing purposes at any time. The end-product of tighter user control of their privacy will be less data controlled by Google, more room for alternative companies to compete by accommodating those privacy concerns, and less antitrust concerns about Google. Google will be forced to compete based on better technology again, not pure brute control of user data, and the company itself will be all the better for it.

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Women 2.0: A Challenge to the Startup Investment Community: Going Beyond Pattern Matching

March 1, 2012

About the guest blogger: Christina A. Brodbeck is the co-founder and CEO of TheIceBreak , a service that helps keep the spark alive in your relationship. Prior to TheIceBreak, she was on the founding team of YouTube, the company’s first UI Designer, and the Mobile Design Lead. Christina is also an active angel investor. Silicon Valley and the tech community is built on hope. It’s built on beliefs, expectations and a desire for things to happen. As an entrepreneur, you passionately believe in your idea. As an investor, you believe in a particular founder or team. As a community, we want to believe that anyone and everyone has an equal chance of success. Hope is what keeps us going; it acts as a bridge to seeing a desire become reality, and it acts as an initial catalyst. There’s been a lot of talk recently about making Silicon Valley a true meritocracy, and I am so excited to see these discussions happening because it means we as a community have hope. It’s exciting to me because first comes hope, then comes action, and then comes change. And, I feel like we are just now on the cusp of action… I’ve been fortunate enough to sit on both sides of the table, both as an angel investor and as an entrepreneur. My day job is being the founder of TheIceBreak for couples, a startup that helps keep the spark alive in your relationship). This dual role has taught me much about hope and also about the realities of the ecosystem. As an entrepreneur, I wear the hat of an optimist first in the face of doubt. As an investor, I wear the hat of cynic first in the face of doubt… until convinced otherwise. When I first started investing, I came from the entrepreneurial side of things (I was a very early employee at YouTube), and I naively believed that everything was equal. I didn’t know anything about angel investing, didn’t know any other angel investors, and I just took the plunge with my first investment — a trial by fire of sorts. I absolutely love angel investing and love helping entrepreneurs, but to be honest in some ways seeing the investment community first hand has been disillusioning. I quickly learned that biased pattern matching exists. I learned that in large part it is only a meritocracy for those who already have success behind them. I learned about the concept of social proof. In reality, social proof is just another form of pattern matching; it’s matching other investors and their past successes or failures to a potential future investment. Despite these disheartening realities, I have been encouraged recently by a couple of incredibly positive happenings that I believe are making waves (no matter how small) towards moving our community from just hope into action. These encouraging changes are: Beginning to recognize a problem in pattern matching. We can’t make a change without first recognizing that we have a problem. I love that people are starting to talk about this topic honestly, and that there are actually conversations happening about the existence of biased gender, race, and age pattern matching. It’s even more wonderful that people in positions of power are admitting that it exists. The CNN special Black in America about Silicon Valley and poignant blogs like that from entrepreneur and angel investor Chris Yeh are beginning to shine a much needed light on the issue. Closing the loop from creating founders to funding founders from underrepresented groups. We can educate and help create all of the founders we want, but without being able to actually get them funded, we’re going nowhere. There has been a lot of work done in the last few years to support founders from traditionally underrepresented groups, but there have been few places for them to go to get funding and few education programs for creating investors out of people from minority groups. In the past month, I took part in two completely separate events that made me hopeful that we are now beginning to take action to close this gap. On the creating founders side, I was a judge for Women 2.0 PITCH Conference & Competition and was completely blown away by the room of 1,000+ enthusiastic women all either already doing their own startup, working for a startup, or interested in joining one. These are 1,000+ women who one day, or even right now, might need funding. On the investor side, I was asked to be a speaker at the Pipeline Fellowship Conference , the culminating event for a program that educates women philanthropists to become angel investors. What’s fascinating about the Pipeline Fellowship is that it’s not just talk but action — at the end of the program, each new angel investor commits to investing in a woman-led venture. How do we continue this momentum and move from action into change? There is no silver bullet, but I want to challenge the investment community (including myself) to do the following: When making an investment decision, remind yourself that biased pattern matching does exist. Ask yourself if you are pattern matching in this specific case based on gender, age, or race. It’s natural to look for similarities for potential success, but you can do this based off of things like “ambition” that aren’t based on race, gender, or age dependent patterns. Actively bring up conversations with other investors and entrepreneurs about this topic. We need to keep the conversation going. Don’t worry about being “that person” that people think always brings up the same thing over and over again. Some topics are too important not to talk about. Learn to trust your own decision making more. Input from peers can be very beneficial, no doubt, but it’s hard to know what you really think and feel if you find you are following more than leading. The more you talk to other people about an investment decision, the more noise you put between yourself and your own gut reaction. You don’t really know what makes someone else invest in a company (you can hear what they say and tell you, but you’re not in their head and thoughts completely), so you don’t know if they have some pattern matching bias. So maybe you make a deal that no one else would consider doing next time, and maybe it’s in someone who would have been ruled out by unconscious or conscious biased pattern matching…but at least you took one small step towards enacting change. Who knows, maybe that minority led company will be huge… and then you’ve helped create a new type of positive signal for the community. Expand your search beyond just the warm introduction. Don’t just look to the same people or familiar groups of people to fill future firm roles or receive investment. Go beyond just warm introductions, and actually look for a more diverse group of people to connect with. Actively reach out. If you’re any way in a position of power, do some research (scour the web, go beyond your connections and circles of degrees on LinkedIn) and reach out to someone that you normally wouldn’t ever meet but who sparks your attention. Actively invest in them as a person. Investment doesn’t have to be monetary at first — it can start with just a connection or even mentorship. We have a long way to go, but I have hope…

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Natalie Pace: Apple Joins the $500 Billion Club

February 29, 2012

On February 29, 2012, Leap Year, Apple achieved what only five other companies have ever done. Apple hit a market capitalization of $500 billion. Before we analyze whether or not Apple is worth being the most valuable company in the world — worth more than most countries — let’s take a quick peek at the five other companies that have hit this mark. (There are only 19 countries with more than $500 billion in GDP.) $500 Billion Club (Date – Company – Highest Market Value) March 2000 – Cisco Systems – $538 billion July 2009 – Exxon Mobil – $513 billion August 2000 – General Electric – $581 billion August 2000 – Intel Corp. – $503 billion December 1999 – Microsoft Corp. – $604 billion Feb. 29 2012 – Apple Inc. – $505 billion source: Howard Silverblatt, the Senior Index Analyst for the Standard & Poor’s Indices Where are they now? As you can see in the chart below, only one company — Exxon Mobil — has remained the 2nd most valuable company in the world. The others are worth less than half of their all-time high, with Cisco and Intel falling to 20% and 27% of that value, respectively. Company Market Value on 2/28/12 Cisco Systems $109 billion Exxon Mobil $411 billion General Electric $203 billion Intel Corp. $136 billion Microsoft Corp. $267 billion Apple Inc. $498 billion So, will our Apple addiction be as profound and long-lived as our oil addiction? Certainly not if Google and Amazon have anything to do with it. However, the Apple edge is entrenched in a number of key metrics, which make the valuation deep and difficult to dislodge. It’s hard to imagine that the largest company in the world, Apple, boasts 73% earnings growth (year over year), the second highest net profit margin (25.80%) of the $500 billion club, the lowest debt (zero), a treasure chest of cash (over $31 billion ) and one of the lowest price to earnings ratios, at just 15.44 . Perhaps the biggest bruise to Apple is yet to come, however. On February 21, 2012, ABC’s Nightline featured an inside look into the Foxconn factories in China that make Apple (and other company’s) products. The news show highlighted the low salaries and dismal work life of the Foxconn workers. So, will this become another “Nike moment?” as when Nike received all the bad press for having children stitch their shoes? Will Apple receive a lot of bad press? A Google search on “Apple” revealed a page of store locations, cool product reviews and exciting stock information, with only one Twitter mention of the ABC show. Foxconn and Apple moved quickly to position the companies favorably prior to the February 21, 2012 airing. On February 17, 2012, just days before the show, Apple joined the Fair Labor Association and Foxconn raised wages of its Chinese workers by 16-25 percent, the third rise since 2010. The new salary level is $290 per month — double what it was three years ago. That helps the factory worker (if only slightly), without digging too deeply into Apple’s profit margins. Incidentally, the last time the Foxconn factories made headline news, in the summer of 2010, not even multiple suicides could get major media channels to feature ” The High Price of Cheap Goods .” So, if you’re interested in improving the lives of the young workers in China who make your iPhone and iPad, before their plight vanishes from our TV screens and minds, join 240,000 others who have signed an online petition . It’s only February 28, 2012, and already the story is fading… If the heat is turned up on Foxconn and Apple to improve the working and living conditions of the factory workers in China, that could, eventually, begin to squeeze Apple’s fat profit margins. And if Google and Amazon continue to gain market share on smart phones and Internet pads, then the price of Apple products will have to come down to compete. There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in those sentences. And since Apple is sitting on top of the world with a mountain of money, don’t bet on it falling off its throne anytime soon. Data for this article was gleaned from Howard Silverblatt, the senior index analyst for the Standard & Poor’s Indices, Money.MSN.com, Sec.GOV and other respected, independent data sources. About Natalie Pace: Natalie Pace is the author of You Vs. Wall Street and Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is. She is the founder and CEO of the Women’s Investment Network, LLC (a global financial news, information and education site), where she has been adding a splash of green to Wall Street and transforming lives on Main Street for more than a decade. She is a blogger on HuffingtonPost.com and a repeat guest on national television and radio shows such as Good Morning America, Fox News, CNBC, ABC-TV, Forbes.com, NPR and more. As a strong believer in giving back, she has been instrumental in raising tens of millions for public schools, financial literacy, the arts and underserved women and girls worldwide. Follow her on Facebook.com/NWPace. For more information please visit NataliePace.com.

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Edward Wasserman: Threat to Online Privacy Starts With the Way the Internet Makes Money

February 28, 2012

There’s something quaint about the ruling last week from an appeals court in Indiana concerning an anonymous comment posted on the Indianapolis Star ‘s website. The 2009 posting suggested a local notable had embezzled money from a troubled project, and he wanted to sue for defamation. Trouble is, he didn’t know whom to sue because the author of the posting used a make-believe name. The newspaper wouldn’t help because it believed the writer deserved protection as a confidential news source. The court ruled , essentially, that if presented with compelling evidence that the posting was false and damaging, the trial court could order the author identified. It’s not the wisdom of the decision that interests me. It’s the way that courts, when they address the nettlesome question of Internet privacy, do so with care, transparency, and precision. That’s what is so quaint. Because those same values have almost no role in the way the big, sweeping contours of Internet privacy are taking shape in the new millennium. Instead, they’re emerging from a corporate-government kabuki that is about as transparent as the online Terms of Service Agreements we users thoughtlessly sign: Giant Internet companies introduce glittering services that lubricate the invisible process of appropriating and sharing information about their customers; then, once outraged users get wise to what’s happening, the companies launch new measures to protect privacy; next, those safeguards are exposed as ineffectual, the government gets annoyed, the Internet companies circle back and try again, settlements are reached, checks are written. And the corporate search goes on, unstoppably, for clever new ways to flush out, capture and make money from user data. Just this month, Google admitted finding a way to outwit Apple’s privacy settings on iPads and iPhones so it could harvest data from Apple’s customers, and Facebook settled charges it had deceived its users. California reached an agreement on privacy protections with industry heavyweights Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Blackberry’s maker. Those are only the latest in the cascade of privacy-related embarrassments — Facebook’s 2009 Beacon initiative, which told “friends” about user purchases; Google reprimanded in 2010 because its Street View collected passwords and emails wirelessly while photographing people’s homes; Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android transmitting user locations back to their parents; Google exposing user information via its Buzz social networking application. An encouraging development was news last week that the Obama administration had come out with voluntary guidelines on online privacy, including a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. And an Internet advertiser coalition announced support of “do not track” options, which let users block implantation of cookies — the bits of code that enable their activities to be monitored, recorded and sifted. Those initiatives were applauded although, as Consumer Reports noted, the guidelines have gaps. They won’t stop all Internet tracking, since “market research” and “product development” are exempted, and enforcement is likely to be haphazard. But there’s a vastly bigger problem. Any reforms that halt the harvest of personal information that is most nettlesome on privacy grounds would be fundamentally incompatible with the Internet’s essential business model. Listen up: Surveillance is how the Internet makes a living. All those apparently free services — those drowsy kittens on YouTube, visuals on Google Earth, the vitality of Facebook and Twitter, the overflowing treasure chest of mobile apps — users pay for all that, not with money, but with the information they relinquish about themselves, what they do and whom they do it with, which is used to make money from them. If “do not track” were widely adopted, it would be as if, a generation ago, people who watched network television could block the ads that came with the shows. The business model on which broadcast TV was based would have been destroyed. At a minimum, any effective privacy option will come with a price: A sharply reduced level of Internet service — discriminatory access. It’s not talked about, but it is a certainty, just as disabling the cookies now embedded in your browser reduces your ability to see what’s on the sites you visit. The battle over Internet privacy won’t be won through hollow, if alluring, formulations that ignore the need to re-examine the realities of Internet economics — which make no provision for people to pay for services other than by letting strangers put their lives under a microscope. The careful steps the Indiana court mandated to keep the online commentator from being identified to the angry subject of that posting are ironic in view of the near-certainty that the unnamed poster was known to dozens, if not hundreds, of online information providers.

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Underwater Cables Cut Causing Epic Internet Outage

February 28, 2012

Underwater data cables linking East Africa to the Middle East and Europe have been severed, bringing transfer rates to their knees in nine countries.

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Is Google+ Really A ‘Virtual Ghost Town’?

February 28, 2012

It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering.

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Sir Peter Westmacott: The Innovation Generation

February 27, 2012

After just 6 weeks in this fascinating job, I can hardly believe how much I am learning. South Carolina and Florida in my first 10 days to get a flavour of the Republican presidential candidates race, some time in Washington finding my feet and rediscovering old friends, then 3 days in New York followed by, this last weekend, almost as long in Texas. As Texans like to remind us, they fought for their independence from Mexico and then enjoyed almost a decade as a sovereign state before joining the United States. Bigger than France, where I was ambassador until less than 2 months ago, and the state which last year created more new jobs than the rest of the United Sates combined, it is not a place to be messed with. Visiting the Alamo for the first time was as good a way as any of taking a crash course in Texan identity and culture. The frontier spirit seemed more present than ever. In the company of George Osborne, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer , who was visiting the Lone Star state on his way to a G20 meeting in Mexico , I went to the LBJ Memorial Library, in the company of members of the late president’s family. A treat which brought back fond memories of Sunday lunch with Lady Bird at the Johnson family ranch 15 years earlier, and was another reminder of both the humanity of this huge political figure and the immense difficulty he faced in stepping into the shoes of JFK just minutes after witnessing his assassination in Dallas. Austin is about so much more than its history. It is of course the state capital but also, I learned, the fastest-growing city in the United States. There must be many reasons why, but I was struck by the impact of the vast University of Texas on business life and the encouragement it has given to thousands of high-tech start-ups. Why else would Facebook have chosen Austin as its second US headquarters after Silicon Valley? And be doubling its staff after just 2 years? As in New York a week earlier when visiting the revolutionary ecosystem — as the dynamic start-up business incubator General Assembly calls itself — I was introduced to a new, exhilarating world by a group of brilliant, passionate young entrepreneurs — many fresh out of University. Learning from practitioners and each other rather than from business school professors, they are busy harnessing the potential of digital technology to improve the way the world does business and to rediscover the growth and enterprise which the “old” economies of Europe and North America so badly need. Just when governments are — admirably — looking to invest in high-speed broadband so that no-one is left behind by the digital revolution, here are these twenty-something CEOs saying it might be better to skip fibre optics altogether and go straight to mobile. At General Assembly, one young inventor told me how his $300 a month membership and rented desk, and the opportunity to bounce ideas off others with similar innovative ideas, had allowed him to create a box of tricks which will modernize and accelerate computer systems so effectively that hard-up governments and hospitals will no longer have to throw out their obsolete equipment every 4 years. I asked whether the invention would make money. He seemed surprised by the question and simply replied: ‘it’s going to change the world.’ As a Brit, I was of course very pleased to hear the same entrepreneurs say that they were excited by the way Tech City in London , and a variety of other government support measures, was making the UK the obvious place in Europe to set up similar businesses. As they reminded me, it’s halfway to the markets of Asia. Many of the best start-ups are of course snapped up by early-stage investors. But the great thing about this new culture is that bootstrap companies are often so small, and dependent on human rather than financial capital, that they can get going without having to mortgage their birthright to the banks. Anyone out there wondering whether to study engineering or electronics rather than law or liberal arts should hesitate no longer — unless it is over whether to take design instead. Technology and design are rapidly becoming the most sought after courses of study amongst dynamic young people who want to do their own thing rather than sign up for a big organization where they won’t be their own bosses for a very long time, if ever. Meanwhile, there is Texas the oil and gas capital of the world making some equally key decisions about the future of the world’s energy markets and technologies. With gas in the US now selling for a quarter the price it commanded just a few years ago, thanks largely to shale technology, where are we now going with nuclear, renewables, and wind? Is the latest spike in the world price of crude about growing demand (probably not), or about geo-political uncertainty in the Middle East? Coupled with tight markets? If so, what are the industry and our governments going to do about it? Our best prospect for growth in the coming years must be the unprecedentedly fast urbanisation of countries like China and India. All will need housing, light, heating, food, transport, and wiring. But will they perhaps require different forms of energy, wiring, heating and transport?

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Steve Rosenbaum: The Patent Condundrum – for Startups

February 26, 2012

Let me start by saying I’m a believer in openness and sharing. The concept of owning ideas seems to stifle innovation, and in particular, the emerging re-mix culture we’re seeing explode seems like it’s on a collision course with owning and controlling IP. So when Fred Wilson pens a blog post that calls for the abolition of patents, I found myself nodding in vigorous agreement. But then, something happened. The United States Patent and Trademark office sent me a letter. My Patent had been granted. US Patent # 8,117,545. My first reaction was… “Huh???” Then, it all came back to me. The year was 2006, and I had an idea of what the future of web video would be. We had invented a process, created code, built out a solution, and written a patent. Then we hired a patent attorney and we waited. Along the way the world changed. Software became more prevalent and iterative. Companies sprung up to buy IP, and turn innovation into a series of chilling litigations. And the line between early stage IP and big corporate patents became a battle line. Cross it at your own peril. So — here we are, holding a patent today that was filed many yesterdays ago. What’s an entrepreneur to do? Fred, always the friend of the startup — had an easy word of advice. “Patents are the anti-Christ,” he told me. Ouch. But the more I thought about it — the more I found myself feeling like Fred was telling other young entrepreneurs not to use a tool that is very much part of the current landscape of how larger players manage their intellectual assets. Would Fred ask Google, or Apple, or Microsoft to relinquish their patent portfolios? What about TIVO, a company who’s entire future hung in the balance until their patents paid off? Are software patents bad? For arguments sake lets say yes. But, like any peace treaty — the decision to set down arms needs to be bilateral. Will the big tech companies burn their patent portfolio if I burn mine? If so, then we’re on all on an even playing field. But so long as every employee at Google or Apple is writing patents and adding them to the value of those companies — then Magnify.net and our feisty startup friends should be able to do the same. After all — it’s not often you get a letter from the Federal Government that says you’ve been awarded protection under Federal Law. So on behalf of my investors and clients, having protectable IP is a good thing. And so long as a patent is the coin of the realm, then owning one seems like a good thing to me. There’s only one problem; within the startup world, patents are seen as anti-competitive, and a force that stifles innovation. So for companies like Magnify.net — we’re in a place where we need to walk a tightrope between the world of predatory patent prosecution and the need to promote your invention and innovation within the context of current patent law. As I explained to a friend the other day — it’s like getting someone a puppy for their birthday. Much as they may be happy, now they have to feed it. And that can be a time consuming and costly effort, depending on how big the dog gets. By all measures, our patent has big paws. So stay tuned. Originally published on Forbes.com .

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Flickr Disables Pinterest Pins On All Copyrighted Images

February 25, 2012

As the third most popular source of content on digital pin-board site Pinterest, Flickr and its photographers are subject to frequent acts of copyright infringement. But a site-wide update to Flickr promises to better protect members and their copyrighted works.

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James Dyson: The Award For Engineering Goes To…

February 25, 2012

It’s one of the year’s most hotly anticipated competitions. The contenders look nervously across the wings as the host steps up to the podium. The envelope is fumbled. The noise in the room drops in anticipation. Who will take away the coveted prize… the Mississippi regional middle school Science Bowl? You have to be realistic. Amid the hype and intrigue of ceremonies like the Oscars, a regional Science Bowl doesn’t grab headlines. I’d be a curmudgeon to deny talented artists recognition, or global audience shows like the Oscars or the Grammys. The problem is that by focusing so exclusively on celebrating the popular arts we deprive society, and more importantly children, of other people to look up to. No wonder many children’s role models are, well, models. The US now graduates more visual and performing arts majors than engineers. The same is true in the UK, where a recent survey found that while 4% of teenage girls want to become engineers and 14% scientists, 32% wanted to be models. But can we blame youngsters for wanting to be pro-athletes and actors when the media fixates on celebrity on a daily basis? Natalie Portman, who took home best actress Oscar last year, has more than acting prowess to distinguish herself: she was once a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search competition for her research on an environmentally friendly method of converting waste into energy. Of course, the former achievement scored more highly in the publicity stakes. President Obama has spoken about treating science fair winners the like Super Bowl Champions. Unlikely, but what steps can be taken to at least partly fulfill the rhetoric? There’s a real opportunity here. Young people are clued up on contemporary issues that need to be fixed, from climate change to food shortages. But, despite the fact that toddlers can grasp the basics of a smartphone, not enough of them aspire to become the people that can solve them: scientists and engineers. In part, this is because of a lack of association between the technology we use – computers, cars and cell phones – and the people who develop and invent them. Because we just don’t celebrate them. This lack of cultural awareness is a problem. Fewer Americans and Brits choose to study science and engineering. Engineers and inventors are lionized in US. The problem is that the ones we celebrate are often a hundred years dead. There are television shows that are trying to change perceptions: PBS’s Everyday Edisons and the Science Channels How it’s Made on the Discovery Channel for example. But these are the exceptions. It’s not just down to the media. It’s up to politicians and companies to help change these perceptions and fly the flag for invention. China gets this one right. Science and engineering are increasingly ingrained in Chinese culture – so much so that most members of the Chinese Government have engineering degrees. The evidence of this mindset can be seen in thousands of high-profile Chinese infrastructure projects. We need to help educate people on engineering and manufacturing – shaking off the outdated dreary image of factory and monotonous lab work. Today’s factories aren’t Dickensian work houses. They’re high tech and exciting. I was warned that if I failed my exams that I’d end up in a factory. As it happens I did, and I enjoy it immensely. Our factory has a microbiology lab with a dust mite zoo, robotic testers, an electro-magnetic chamber and 3D printers, among other things. And I get to develop ideas with 600 like minded engineers and problem solvers every day. Engineers and scientists are not nerds but creative polymaths who think with their hands and their heads. Inspirational individuals to be respected, not mocked. Let’s give them a soap box for the 21st century. Talking up science and engineering won’t solve the manufacturing malaise. But it’s a good, and cheap, start. Many of the 14% of UK girls who wanted to be scientists were specifically interested in becoming forensic scientists. Why? Because of programs like CSI beamed to millions worldwide. Television can do a lot to help raise the profile of scientists and engineers. The media and politicians can too. Rather than dwelling on the delayed Dreamliner, let’s applaud the latest MIT breakthrough. Let’s celebrate our everyday Edisons and put them on the silver screen, during prime time. Jam es Dyson is the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. His Foundation runs the James Dyson Award – a global competition for student inventors and designers: http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/

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Court-Martial Begins For WikiLeaks Suspect

February 23, 2012

By Lily Kuo FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) – U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, accused of the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, deferred a plea in a military court arraignment on Thursday, marking the first step in a court-martial that could land him in prison for life. In Thursday’s procedure, Manning, 24, was formally charged with 22 counts including aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet and theft of public property. Military prosecutors say Manning downloaded more than 700,000 classified or confidential documents and transferred thousands to WikiLeaks, which promotes leaking government and corporate information. Manning’s plea deferral allows his defense team time to strategize and see the outcome of several motions to be heard before the trial begins, which could be as late as August. “It basically leaves their options open,” said a legal expert with the Military District of Washington, the Army command unit for the capital region, who was present at the arraignment. The expert could not be named under rules imposed on media covering the proceedings. When asked if he understood his rights to counsel, Manning, in a dark green military dress uniform and black-rimmed military glasses, spoke quickly but forcefully. “Yes, your honor,” he said. Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, announced that Manning would defer his plea as well as a decision on whether to face trial by a military judge or a panel of military members, made up of senior officers or enlisted members of rank no lower than Manning’s. At the beginning of the arraignment, Manning entered from a back door and walked briskly to the front of the room. During the proceedings, he leaned forward on to a desk, occasionally conferring in whispers with Coombs. Military prosecutors say Manning, trained on various intelligence systems, was a trusted analyst who knowingly and methodically downloaded thousands of files from the military’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, while serving in Iraq. They sought to link Manning to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, introducing logs of web chats that an investigator said appeared to show conversations in which the two discuss sending government documents. Manning’s lawyers have cast him as an emotionally troubled young man whose behavioral problems should have prompted superiors to revoke his access to classified information. Manning has gained a following of supporters who see him as a whistleblower who acted on behalf of his country. At the end of the arraignment one Manning supporter, a protester with the anti-war group Code Pink, stood up and yelled out, “Judge, isn’t a soldier required to report a war crime?” (Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Flickr Is Getting a Major Makeover

February 22, 2012

The new photo view will hit on Feb. 28, Mr. Spiering said, and with it comes a new upload interface. Flickr’s uploading page now looks more like an app than a website. Goodbye, retro blue links. Hello, swoopy drag-and-drop.

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AT&T CEO Takes Whopping Pay Cut

February 21, 2012

NEW YORK — AT&T Inc.’s board cut CEO Randall Stephenson’s 2011 pay by $2.08 million because he engineered the failed deal to buy T-Mobile USA, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. Opposition from federal antitrust regulators forced the Dallas-based phone company to give up on the $39 billion deal in December. That meant it had to hand over $4.2 billion in cash and spectrum rights to T-Mobile as a so-called “break-up fee” to compensate T-Mobile for the failure. Looking at that $4.2 billion charge, AT&T’s board cut Stephenson’s cash bonus by 25 percent, and cut his stock award by 6 percent, for a total of $2.08 million. That left Stephenson’s 2011 total pay package at $18.7 million, according to the Associated Press formula. His compensation was down from $20.2 million in 2010. It’s unusual for company boards to cut CEO compensation for specific missteps. But the cost of the failed T-Mobile deal was exceptional. It’s standard practice to offer break-up fees to get acquisition targets to sign on to a deal, but the one AT&T promised was unusually large. The AP’s compensation formula includes Stephenson’s salary, bonus, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations don’t include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals that companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with regulators. For all of 2011, AT&T earned $3.9 billion, or 66 cents per share, on $126.7 billion in revenue. That compares with net income of $19.9 billion, or $3.35 per share, on $124.3 billion in revenue in 2010.

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Microsoft Office For iPad Expected In Coming Weeks

February 21, 2012

Back in November, The Daily initially uncovered the existence of an iPad version of the Microsoft Office Suite. Sources now say that the app will soon be submitted to Apple for approval.

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Top Olympus Exec Found Dead In Apparent Suicide

February 21, 2012

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A top executive of Japan’s scandal-ridden Olympus Corp was found hung to death outside his apartment in suburban Delhi in a likely suicide, police said on Tuesday. Tsutomu Omori, 49, head of the company’s medical equipment business in India, appeared to have killed himself late Sunday, Lal Singh, investigating officer of Gurgaon Police told Reuters. There was no immediate suggestion his death was linked to a $1.7 billion fraud that has rocked corporate Japan and led to the arrest of senior executives in Tokyo. “At this stage of probe, it looks like he committed suicide. One of his company executives told us he was depressed for the last two weeks,” Singh said, adding that the Japanese Embassy was informed of the death on Monday. Two handwritten notes, one in Japanese and the other in English, were discovered from Omori’s home in Gurgaon. “I am sorry for bothering you,” the note in English, read, according to Singh. The police officer said his team had not yet translated the note written in Japanese. An official at the Japanese embassy told Reuters the mission was aware of the ongoing probe. “The police told us on February 20 that a Japanese national’s body was found in a park outside his apartment. The cause of the death is being investigated by Indian authorities,” the diplomat said. Earlier this month, Tokyo police arrested seven top executives of Olympus Corp for their alleged involvement in the accounting fraud, one of Japan’s biggest corporate scandals in recent times. (Reporting by Satarupa Bhattacharjya; editing by Ed Lane)

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Ex-Google CEO To Sell Off Shares

February 18, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO — Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt plans to sell up to 2.4 million shares of stock currently worth nearly $1.5 billion. Schmidt, now Google’s executive chairman, intends to stagger the sales of the stock over a one-year period. Google disclosed Schmidt’s plans in a Friday regulatory filing. The company said Schmidt, 56, is trying to raise some money and diversify his investment portfolio. If all 2.4 million shares of stock are sold, that will reduce Schmidt’s stake in Google Inc. from 2.8 percent to 2.1 percent. Schmidt’s decision to sell some of his shares comes 10 months after he ended his 10-year stint as Google’s CEO and turned the job over to one of the Internet search leader’s co-founders, Larry Page. Page and co-founder Sergey Brin filed plans to sell 5 million Google shares apiece in 2010. Those sales are scheduled to be completed in 2015. Together, Page, Brin and Schmidt hold the majority of shareholder voting power at Google. They will retain that control even after they reduce their stakes. All three have been billionaires since Google went public in 2004. Google shares fell $1.88 Friday to close at $604.64. The company disclosed Schmidt’s plans to lower his holdings after the stock market closed. The shares fell 44 cents after hours.

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Former Facebook Employees Launch Expedia For Prescription Drugs

February 16, 2012

“GoodRx will have an impact on buying prescriptions the same way Expedia and Travelocity has changed buying airline tickets,” he added. Consumers find the cheapest prescription drugs, so they don’t have to leave their doctor’s office and feel like they can’t afford the prescription.

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New Users Flocking To LinkedIn

February 9, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO — LinkedIn provided further evidence of online networking’s popularity and moneymaking potential with a fourth-quarter performance that got a glowing review on Wall Street. The results announced Thursday indicate LinkedIn Corp. is playing an increasingly influential role in the employment market as millions more people post their resumes there. The professional-networking service has been turning into a digital rolodex for headhunters and job seekers alike. LinkedIn added another 14 million profiles during the final three months of last year to bring its total membership to 145 million. Meanwhile, more companies have been paying to get additional access to LinkedIn’s membership as the U.S. economy has been steadily adding jobs in recent months. LinkedIn gets more than two-thirds of its revenue from fees it charges companies, recruiting services and other people who want broader access to the profiles and other data on the company’s website. The rest comes from advertising. The trends helped LinkedIn fare far better than the company’s own management and analysts had predicted. The pleasant surprise came a day after online coupon distributor Groupon Inc. raised investor doubts about young, rapidly growing Internet companies by announcing an unexpected fourth-quarter loss. LinkedIn’s numbers seemed to lift spirits; the company’s stock surged more than 8 percent late Thursday. The ebullient reaction may bode well for an upcoming IPO from Facebook Inc., which has built an online network of 845 million users by focusing on family and friendships instead of career advancement. Facebook filed papers last week for an initial public offering of stock. It’s expected to be completed in May or June. The IPO is expected to value Facebook at $75 billion to $100 billion. LinkedIn, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has emerged as one of the stars from last year’s crop of Internet IPOs. During the first nine months of trading, its stock has remained well above its IPO price of $45 and is moving upward again. The stock rose $6.44, or 8.4 percent, to $82.83 in extended trading Thursday after the release of results. LinkedIn earned $6.9 million, or 6 cents per share, during the final three months of last year. In 2010, the company had income of $1.6 million, or 3 cents per share. It’s not directly comparable because LinkedIn’s outstanding shares have ballooned since its IPO in May. Before figuring the net income credited to shareholders, LinkedIn’s net income for the latest quarter increased 30 percent from $5.3 million If not for certain accounting items unrelated to its ongoing business, LinkedIn said it would have earned 12 cents in the fourth quarter. That figure topped the average estimate of 7 cents per share among analysts polled by FactSet. Revenue more than doubled from the previous year to nearly $168 million – about $8 million above analyst estimates. Management’s projections for the first quarter and full year also called for revenue above analyst forecasts.

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Huge Shakeup At Yahoo

February 7, 2012

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and three longtime board members are leaving the troubled Internet company. The shake-up announced Tuesday continues a drastic makeover of Yahoo’s leadership during the past month as the company tries to win back investors frustrated with years of broken turnaround promises. Yahoo Inc. ushered in a new era last month by hiring former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its fourth CEO in less than five years. Then Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board. Bostock is departing along with Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson. Many Yahoo shareholders have been clamoring for Bostock to step down since the company balked a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft Corp. in 2008.

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Chrome For Android Finally Here … Sort Of

February 7, 2012

Google has released a long-awaited beta version of its Chrome web browser for Android-powered phones and tablets, but the software only works on devices running the latest version of Android. The test version of Google’s popular Internet browser was made available for download today in the Android Market . Notable features of the software include the capacity for tabbed browsing, the option to browse the web in “incognito mode,” accelerated page loading, and the ability to sync bookmarks and passwords between users’ other devices on which they use the Chrome browser. Unfortunately, the acceleration technology these features require means the browser is limited to the few Android mobile devices that currently use Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android operating system. Those devices include the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and Asus Transformer Prime, Business Insider reports . But experts expect Google Chrome to dominate Android devices in the future as users upgrade their phones to ones capable of running the newest Android operating system. “Even in beta, it’s a compelling browser at least on the Galaxy Nexus I tried it on, and it’s and a much better match for Apple’s Safari on iOS,” Stephen Shankland wrote in a review of the software for CNET . “And eventually, its success is all but assured when it simply becomes what ships with Android.” Today’s beta release caps off a three-year effort on the part of Google engineers to converge Android and Chrome , the company’s two fastest growing products, according to Mercury News . Both products were launched at the end of 2008 and soon became favorites of many users and developers. Android is currently the world’s most popular mobile operating system, while Chrome recently shot past Mozilla Firefox to become the second most popular Web browser behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Early feedback from users reviewing the software on Android Market has been largely positive, with the first 500 commenters giving the software an average rating of 4.3 stars out of five. Check out a slideshow of screenshots below: WATCH:

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TiVo Share Price Drops, Some Wonder If Google Will Grab

February 5, 2012

(Reuters) – TiVo Inc is trading at a compelling discount and could be a possible acquisition target by Microsoft or Google, Barron’s financial newspaper reported on Sunday. TiVo, whose brand is synonymous with digital video recorders, has turned to litigation to generate revenue from licensing fees as the industry pioneer has struggled to fight competition from low-cost rivals in recent years. In January, it pocketed $215 million from AT&T to settle a patent infringement dispute. The settlement could bode well for TiVo’s lawsuit with Verizon, which is centered around the same patents. Barron’s said the company may one day sue Time Warner Cable, which has more subscribers than AT&T and Verizon. TiVo added subscribers in the third quarter for the first time in four years, Barron’s said. It has signed distribution deals with Virgin Media, a cable company based in Britain, and other operators such as Spain’s ONO and DirecTV in the United States. TiVo’s shares closed at $11.23 on Friday. Barron’s said the stock is trading significantly below some analysts’ price targets of $17 and $18 per share. The company could fetch a takeover price in the mid-$20s if it was acquired by Microsoft or Google, according to Barron’s. (Reporting By Liana B. Baker; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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Happy Birthday, Facebook!

February 4, 2012

Today marks the eighth anniversary since the social network first launched at Harvard University in Mark Zuckberg’s dorm room on February 4, 2004. After Google, Facebook is the most visited site in the world and may reach as many as 1 billion members by August , notes Mashable. On February 1, the company filed a Form S-1 with the SEC in preparation for an IPO worth $5 billion. Some speculate that once Facebook begins trading publicly, it could be valued as high as $100 billion . According to Facebook’s S-1 , the company pulled in a whopping $1 billion in net profit on $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011. But much of Facebook’s success has come from building a better user experience and resisting the temptation to make fast money. Indeed, the S-1 featured a section titled “The Hacker Way,” a declaration by Mark Zuckerberg, who wrote that the company’s mantra has long been to focus on delivering features first and improving later. WIth over 800 million members worldwide, it’s pretty amazing how Facebook has grown and changed our lives over the years. It now seems almost impossible to imagine life without witty status updates, friend requests, relationship statuses or photo tags. Users became even more attached to the site after the company rolled out interactive features like chat, the timeline and the subscription button . Some might even say the site resembles a digital resume, especially since now you can turn your timeline into business cards . Even more notable is how Facebook expanded internationally. Available in over 70 languages, 80% of the company’s monthly users are from outside the U.S. and Canada . Happy Birthday, Facebook.

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Micron Gets New Chief After CEO Dies In Plane Crash

February 4, 2012

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The board of directors for Micron Technology Inc. has named Mark Durcan the company’s chief executive officer, a day after longtime CEO and Chairman Steve Appleton died in a plane crash. The board on Friday appointed Durcan the interim CEO hours after Appleton’s experimental plane crashed moments after takeoff at the Boise Airport. He was the only person on board. The board’s action Saturday removes the interim title, and also makes Durcan the director of Micron’s board of directors. The 51-year-old Durcan had been the company’s president and chief operating officer, and just last week announced his intention to step down in August. Company spokesman Dan Francisco told The Associated Press on Saturday those plans had changed and Durcan was no longer planning to leave in August.

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Life On Facebook May Be More Pleasant Than Life On Earth: STUDY

February 3, 2012

NEW YORK (AP) — The goody-two-shoes among us say it’s better to give than to receive. That’s not true for the average Facebook user, though. A new study out Friday found that the average user of the world’s biggest online social network gets more than they give. That means more messages, more “likes” and more comments. Yes, even more “pokes.” Behind all that is Facebook’s relatively small group of “power users,” who do more than their share of tagging, liking and uploading. The report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project comes two days after Facebook filed for a $5 billion initial public offering of stock that could eventually value the company at $100 billion. Key to that mammoth valuation will be Facebook’s ability to convince advertisers they can make money from the billons of connections and interactions that people partake in on its website and beyond. Though Pew’s findings don’t address the commercial side of people’s activities, they shed important light on how people use the site and what they get out of it. The study is the product of Pew’s analysis of Facebook users’ activities in November 2010. It consisted of data that Facebook provided to Pew after 269 users gave their permission. Those users were identified through a random telephone survey about broader Internet issues. The researchers found that about 20 percent to 30 percent of Facebook users fell into the “power user” category, though they tended to specialize in different types of activities on Facebook. Some of them sent a lot of friend requests, while others tagged more photos than the average user. Only 5 percent were power users in every activity that Pew logged. The way this plays out is that the average user is more “liked” than they click “like” on other’s posts. They receive more friend requests than they send. On average, 63 percent of Facebook users studied received friend requests in the survey month while only 40 percent made a friend request. The result? It feels good to be on Facebook. It might even feel better than life off Facebook. After all, there’s no dislike button, and friends are unlikely to post harsh comments on your page. Instead, people you might not have seen in years bombard you with positive affirmations day after day, year after year. “You keep getting all these wonderful positive rewards,” said Keith Hampton, the study’s main author and a Rutgers University professor. “That’s pretty hard to give up.” Getting more than you are giving, in terms of emotional support, “is kind of what you are looking for,” he added. This might be the lure of Facebook, the reason it could be worth $100 billion and the reason it has 845 million users who are not leaving even if they’ve been on the site for years. The study found no evidence of “Facebook fatigue,” the idea that people get tired of Facebook after they’ve been on it for a long time. In fact it was the opposite. The longer someone had been using Facebook, the more frequently they posted status updates, pressed “like” and commented on friends’ content. “For most people, the longer they are on Facebook, the more they do on Facebook,” Hampton said. The original phone survey of 2,255 adults was done in October and November of 2010 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. At the end of that survey, users were asked for consent for Facebook to share data. Twelve percent of the survey participants agreed.

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Google Or Facebook: Whose Users Are More Valuable?

February 3, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO — For all the huge numbers in Facebook’s IPO papers, a surprisingly small figure stands out: $4.39, the amount the site generated per user last year. It’s one of the company’s major challenges because the total is paltry compared with competing Internet companies. Google makes more than $30 a year from each registered user. Even struggling Yahoo and AOL make $7 and $10, respectively. Once Facebook goes public, Wall Street will surely demand more. That means the social network will almost certainly have to attract a lot more users or be more aggressive with its advertising, perhaps by mining personal data even more than it does now. But can Facebook do all that without spoiling the user experience? The company may have a tough time increasing the number of ads on a site that has become primarily a home for online conversations. “It’s a communications tool. Can you imagine what a turn-off it would be if we were talking on the phone and AT&T tried to play an ad in the middle of our conversation?” said University of Notre Dame finance professor Tim Loughran, who studies IPOs. Facebook stock probably won’t begin trading until at least May, but analysts already believe the company will try to sell shares at a price that will give it a market value of at least $100 billion – more than Yahoo, AOL and Hewlett Packard Co. combined. To justify a valuation like that, Facebook will need to maximize its revenue to get closer to Google, one of its biggest rivals. Google’s revenue of nearly $38 billion last year translated into about $35 per registered user. Facebook recorded $3.7 billion in revenue last year. The question is whether it can bring in more money without alienating the 845 million users who have become accustomed to hanging out with friends and family on the social network without an onslaught of ads. Part of that online environment has been by design. Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to get as many as people as possible to create profiles on the website before figuring out the best ways to profit from all the information about their interests and connections. In theory, those insights should enable Facebook to target ads to people most likely to be interested in certain products or services. That should appeal to marketers, giving the site enough leverage to charge more for its ads than other sites. If the ads work, Facebook should easily be able to increase revenue per user to $10 to $12 annually, said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. Before Google went public, it also faced questions about its ability to make money from selling ads next to search results, in emails and within videos. Evidently most users don’t mind because Google’s annual revenue is now about 25 times higher than in 2003. Advertising isn’t the only way Facebook can make money. It charges a commission for some of the sales of games and other services on its website. Although advertising accounted for 85 percent of Facebook’s revenue last year, that was less than at Google, where ads accounted for 96 percent of revenue. Most of Facebook’s non-advertising revenue comes from commissions paid by Zynga Inc., the maker of such popular Web games as CityVille and Words With Friends. In its IPO papers, Facebook says it may try to increase its revenue by introducing fees for other e-commerce features on its website. Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., easily could offer sales of movies, music, even houses and cars. But believing it can expand into those markets requires a huge leap of faith, said Hudson Square Research analyst Daniel Ernst. “It’s like saying because Chipotle has been good at selling burritos in certain urban markets in the U.S., it should be able to make more money selling Chinese food in France,” he said. Facebook says roughly half its audience – about 425 million people – now gets access to its service on smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices. But the site acknowledges it hasn’t figured out the best way to make money from mobile users. The application-driven systems on mobile devices pose another threat because they could allow Zynga and other services to offer their own mobile apps to bypass Facebook and connect directly with users. The rise of mobile devices also opens up an opportunity for Google to expand the audience of Plus, its social networking alternative to Facebook. Although it hasn’t done so yet, Google could make Plus part of the Android operating system that runs 250 million smartphones and tablets. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s controlling shareholder as well as its leader, is promising to put users’ interests ahead of the company’s financial interests. “Simply put: We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter included in Wednesday’s IPO filing. “These days, I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.” ___ AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.

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How Does Twitter Handle Piracy? An Inside Look

February 2, 2012

Last week, in the wake of protests over SOPA and PIPA, the controversial Internet anti-piracy legislation in Congress, Twitter released a database that offers a detailed view of how the company handles piracy. A look at the data yielded some surprises. To understand why, it’s helpful to know a few basic things about how Twitter works. Say someone posts a link to a pirated movie or song on Twitter. The record label or film studio that owns the right to that material can fire off a message asking Twitter to remove it. These messages are called DMCA requests, after the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the 1998 law against online file-sharing, and the Twitter database contained an archive of all of these messages from the past two years -– more than 4,000 of them. Powered by Tableau In other words, Twitter answered the question, “Which companies are most aggressively pursuing pirates who use Twitter to promote their sites?” Universal Studios? Sony? Warner Brothers? All of those companies have plenty of material to protect — and plenty of resources, one would assume, for chasing copyright violators. But no. A New York film distributor called Magnolia Pictures was responsible for a third of the messages. Magnolia isn’t exactly a Hollywood powerhouse. The most recognizable name on the list of its recent releases is “Melancholia,” a movie about the end of the world made by a European director, Lars Von Trier, known for his formal inventiveness and his fascination with stories of alienation and despair. The movie made only $3 million at the box office in the U.S., and it’s not like most films in Magnolia’s pipeline figure to do much better. The Magnolia website describes one of those movies, “Beyond the Black Rainbow,” as “a Reagan-era fever dream inspired by hazy childhood memories of midnight movies and Saturday morning cartoons.” So Magnolia’s disproportionate presence in Twitter’s inbox is a bit of a mystery, until you realize that one of Magnolia’s owners is Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks and an outspoken commentator on copyright issues. Cuban is well acquainted with the world of online entertainment. In 1998, he started Broadcast.com, offering live-streaming radio and video. He was an early and frequent critic of YouTube’s business model, and from his online soapbox, Blog Maverick, he has criticized the recording industry for going after customers who download private material, while advocating a nuanced approach to the protection of intellectual property. We asked Cuban why Magnolia was responsible for so many of the Twitter take-down requests. He responded with an email that looked as though it could have been dashed off on a Blackberry from the sidelines of a Mavericks game. Pirates, he wrote, “use twitter to automate the process of distributing content, we automate the process of finding them and taking them down.” “This isnt about personal use,” he added, “I dont care about that.” In fact, as it turns out, Magnolia’s automated attack on piracy was largely the work of another company, Web Sheriff. A British firm founded by an entertainment lawyer named John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff has contracts with several Hollywood companies, including Universal Pictures and Sony, and is one of the most prominent of the third-party companies that send take-down notices to Twitter, file-sharing sites, fan forums, and other corners of the web where pirated material is posted. According to Giacobbi, Web Sheriff was responsible for at least half the Twitter take-down notices. Like Cuban, Giacobbi advocates a nuanced approach to fighting piracy. “We treat our fans as fans, not criminals,” Giacobbi said. He said he works with band managers to get them to provide fans with two free tracks, which he can then post on their forums alongside the messages asking them to take down the illegally uploaded material. Though Cuban described Magnolia’s piracy response as “automated,” Giacobbi and his employees apparently take a lot of time to engage in conversation with fans and potential pirates. Giacobbi pointed to a comment thread on a forum for fans of the British band Prodigy. It stretches 18 pages and consists mainly of fans mocking Web Sheriff and posting pictures of cops and donuts, while Giacobbi and his company play along, making fun of themselves and at one point offering to treat everyone to a donut feast. According to Giacobbi, Web Sheriff aims at “working with the fans instead of against them.” In a world where the Internet reigns and piracy is the norm, there may not be many other options. Click here to download the Twitter DMCA data used in this report.

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Which Facebook Investors Are About To Get Rich(er)?

February 1, 2012

On Wednesday, Facebook submitted its S-1 filing to the SEC in preparation for going public, which according to Business Insider is a move that will create over 1000 new millionaires. Here’s a rundown of a few of the people who are getting rich off the hours you spend looking at pictures of your minor acquaintances. According to S-1 documents, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, the 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, took home $1.49 million in total compensation in 2011. Zuck spent almost $800,000 on airplane travel for himself and his friends and family, and invested $90,850 into estate and financial planning, reports Mashable. Among Facebook’s many investors, Zuckerberg owns a the largest voting stake in the company at 28.2 percent (more than 533 million shares). Writes AllThingsD , “Facebook’s filing said he will sell some shares in the IPO, although it doesn’t specify how many. However, it noted that most of the proceeds from the sale will go toward paying taxes on his purchase of 120 million options of Class B common stock he also has.” If Facebook is valued at $100 billion, Zuckerberg could reap as much as $28 billion after a successful IPO. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, was the most compensated employee in 2011. Sandberg took home $382,000 in salary and bonuses and $30.5 million in stock, bringing her total compensation for 2011 to just under $30.9 million. Even with almost 2 million shares, Sandberg owns less than one percent of the company, which would come to under $1 billion if Facebook is valued at $100 billion. Facebook’s first angel investor Peter Thiel, who invested $500,000 in 2004, owns over 44 million shares, which translates to a 2.5 percent stake in the company and may be worth $2.5 billion if the company IPOs at a valuation of $100 billion. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz owns 7.6 percent of the company. In March 2011, Forbes named Moskovitz “world’s youngest billionaire,” a title he won by being eight days younger than Zuckerberg. At the time Moskovitz had a net worth of $2.7 billion. If Facebook’s achieves a valuation of $100 billion when it starts trading publicly, Moskovitz’s stake in the company could be worth $7.6 billion. Venture capital in firm Accel Partners owns over 200 million shares (an 11 percent stake), which could yield $11 billion if Facebook’s valuation reaches $100 billion. Russian investment firm DST Global Limited, with 94 million shares worth a 5 percent stake, stands to make $5 billion off a potential $100 billion valuation. Goldman Sachs with 66 million Class A shares worth a little over 56 percent of those shares. Maryland-based investment firm T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. with 12 million shares, worth 0.7 percent of equity. Other Facebook employees who are making mint include Facebook CFO David Ebersman, a Brown University alum who started at Facebook in 2009, made $382,000 in salary and bonuses and $18.3 million in stock awards last year. Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s vice president of engineering, took home $24.4 million in stock and $334,000 in salary and bonuses. Netflix CEO and Facebook board member Reed Hastings, owns 20,000 restricted stock units. Check out the slideshow (below) to see 9 huge risks that could threaten Facebook’s success , as outlined in Facebook’s S-1 filing. Read on to find out some of the coolest facts Facebook just revealed about its massive size .

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