Posts tagged think
Live Drawing SXSW: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think
Mar 10th
In our last drawn session of the day, Dr. Peter Diamandis shares his vision of an abundant world. The gap between the haves and have nots is staggering, but Dr. Diamandis expects a world of automation, AI and other amazing technologies will create an environment that meets everyone’s needs, abundantly. @visualhero captured the session as it unfolded.
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Think Before You Pay Too Much for Social Media Monitoring
Mar 7th
With the meteoric rise of social media marketing, it only makes sense that tools to monitor those marketing efforts would proliferate. Paid tools run the gamut, from blessedly affordable (for solopreneurs and small businesses) to outrageously expensive (only the big guys can even hope to afford them) Just like Web analytics tools, social media reporting systems [...]
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Daily Wrap: Facebook’s Offsite Mods May Know More Than You Think
Mar 5th
The offsite moderators for Facebook may have user information that might make some Facebook users uneasy. This and more in today’s Daily Wrap.
Sometimes it’s difficult to catch everything that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.
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Reports Raise Questions About Who Has Access To Your Facebook Profile
Some Facebook moderation is performed by an external vendors. The employees of these vendors may have more information on Facebook users than some people expect. Beyond the flagged content, the moderators can see, in some cases, the user’s name and other identifying information.
From the ReadWriteWeb community:
jdavid_net — the problem is if facebook truly is a social utility, then, it becomes part of the infrastructure of human inter relationships.
Nick Stamoulis — It’s doubtful that the average Facebook user thoroughly understands Facebook’s privacy policies. Most probably haven’t even bothered to read it. Facebook is a “free” service, and it’s obvious that you are giving up something to use it. Really, it’s pretty simple. If in doubt, don’t share something on Facebook.
More Must Read Stories:
How Technology Changes Our Relationships
Ah, the Internet. The once magnificent and glorious tool has transformed from being a fast-paced information highway to that place where we all admit, rather begrudgingly, that we spend too much time on. Alone. We love the immediate answers, the idea of relying on Google as one aspect of our “external brain”. We crave instant gratification. We make important decisions (such as impulse buys) without a second thought. We are turning into Internet speed fiends, and we are doing it alone. (more)
Google Gets Into the Airline Ticket Business
Just in case it wasn’t clear Google is going into the business of selling airline tickets. It’s starting small with Cape Air, an independent New England-based regional airline. (more)
The Best SLA Ever
You no doubt are somewhat cynical about service level agreements (SLAs), those little-reviewed documents that promise the level of service from your hosting provider. Little-read that is, until something goes awry. Enter SingleHop, a Chicago-based provider that is trying to make a name for itself by actually delivering a solid “Bill of Rights” for customers and promising to pay when they don’t meet their SLA. It is an interesting idea. (more)
Now You Can Pin Quotes to Pinterest
Pinterest is the new home to images from around the Web. Artists, interior designers, fashionistas and excited brides-to-be are using Pinterest to organize and curate their aesthetic. Among the photos of vintage duffle bags and cheese plates, word-only images have begun to pop up. Toronto-based developer Adam Rotman saw the opportunity and jumped on it. His new site, PinAQuote.com, offers users a way to grab text they see somewhere on the Web and turn it into a sharable image for Pinterest. Drag the PinAQuote bookmarklet into your bookmarks bar, which works well in Firefox or Chrome. (more)
How Spam and the Cloud Can Save the Future of Email
Email is dead, according to some high profile figures.
Meanwhile, email use continues to grow steadily, and by some estimates nearly 80% of all business data can be found in email. Yet, even many of email’s greatest fans believe that after nearly 40 years of evolution, email has pretty much settled into its final form. I think they’re wrong – we have only seen the beginning of what email can do. (more)
Experts Weigh In On What Facebook Premium Means For Users, Advertisers
The premium advertising platform Facebook launched last week, which includes an increased emphasis on mobile, is getting mixed reviews from industry professionals.
“Bottom-line- this is gonna fail because People don’t want to recommend an ad,” said Natalie L. Petouhoff, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. “They want to recommend a product, service or company that they have had an amazing experience with. (Or they want to share great content.) That expression of joy, surprise, wonderment… is a natural thing that people share with each other.” (more)
Betting on the Future, Washington Post Hires Slashdot Founder
To say that journalism has changed in the last few years is putting it mildly. Those that watch the news industry and have a concern for its future are all too the familiar with the statistics. Dramatic drops in print advertising revenue are followed by layoffs, pay cuts and even the occasional closure of an institution that have informed the public for generations. Meanwhile, an entirely new digital news ecosystem is slowly emerging on the Web and mobile platforms, even if not everybody has figured out the best way to monetize it yet. (more)
Can Big Data Replace Domain Expertise?
One of the recurring themes last week at the O’Reilly Strata Conference in Santa Clara was the idea that skill with machine learning and analytics could trump domain expertise in getting results.
The argument goes something like this: Given the right data set, a data scientist with no domain expertise can out-perform experts that have been working in the field for decades. For example, providing weather insurance or marketing strategy. (more)
The Benefits and Pitfalls of ESPN’s new Developer Center
What do you do when you have a treasure trove of valuable data that developers would love to get their hands on? Release an API and let them create applications for you. That is precisely what sports network ESPN did today by announcing its Developer Center replete with multiple APIs for programmers. Developers can tap into ESPN’s reservoir of data on athletes, teams, media, stats and research to create sports apps with rich data for fans across the world. (more)
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8 Things to Think About Before You Make Your Next Product Pitch
Mar 1st
St. Louis became the 22nd city to have a branch of the Founders Institute today. The operation helps entrepreneurs in a very structured four-month paid mentoring program. It involves intensive coaching and has resulted in more than 700 startups, with over 40% of them receiving funding. We have written about FI before here.
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At the St. Louis kickoff meeting last night, I heard about one of the group’s signature tenets, what you need to know before you make your next pitch to a similar entrepreneurial group. These come from FI’s founder, Adeo Ressi. He launched his first business at the ripe old age of 22 back in 1994, and eventually sold it for $600 million.
As I was listening to local VC Kyle Welborn go through these items, I was struck how these can be used the next time you are thinking about making any pitch for something new, such as a product idea or a project for your own company. So let’s take a look and see what they are.
- First, share your idea frequently. This really isn’t a question, but gets at the heart of what anyone who is trying to do something new is all about. The more often you try out your idea on others, the more you tend to think about it and rephrase or reformulate it. And don’t worry about someone else stealing your idea. You might even find someone else who is simpatico to partner up with.
- Simple ideas win over complex ones. This seems pretty obvious, but is worth repeating.
- Have a single revenue stream. The best businesses, and the best products, have focus. Don’t muck things up with making it more complicated. This isn’t to say that you can have multiple products with different revenue streams.
- Identify your ideal and hopefully sole customer. This doesn’t mean that you are trying to make a sale to a limited market (see below). Just that you again focus on someone who you know in your mind is the ideal customer. As a writer, I started out my career with similar advice, keeping in mind a particular reader as I was writing my stories.
- Small markets suck. While you want focus, you also want your idea to find a large market with plenty of potential customers. Many firms have died trying to find a very small niche. That isn’t to say that you can’t find a niche and dominate it – just make sure it is a sizable market.
- Explain your idea in less than 10 words. Keep this short and sweet. At the pitch meeting last night, prospects had a minute to do their pitches. Some did it in less time, which was pretty awesome.
- Have a secret sauce. You need to find something that you can do better than anyone else, to establish your own street cred and also the value of your approach. Explaining that sauce (you don’t have to go into details) is what makes the pitch come alive.
- Be original, be new.
At the meeting, Welborn put together a MadLibs kind of structure to the ideal pitch:
I am developing (my idea) to help (my intended audience) to solve (my particular problem) with (my secret sauce).
Good luck with your pitching!
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Why SEO will be gone in 5-10 years – Customer Think (blog)
Feb 28th
 PR Web (press release) |
Why SEO will be gone in 5-10 years
Customer Think (blog) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps businesses and obviously also individuals or any other group to be found in the Internet. And as long as people search for a product not knowing their name or a technology, not knowing its source or a solution not … Profit By Search Declared As #1 SEO Company India By Topseocompanies.in 4 Ways SMBs Can Get More From Their SEO Brick Marketing Creates 2012 Updated Version of Popular Social SEO Guidebook |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Social Media 101 for Professional Associations – Customer Think (blog)
Feb 21st
 North London Today |
Social Media 101 for Professional Associations
Customer Think (blog) Blogging has the additional benefit of aiding your professional association's website to ensure greater search engine optimization (SEO) benefits as well. Obviously, social as a promotional channel is well known by most associations. Instant E-Training Launches Social Media WebConference & Certification Program … 4 Great Reasons To Use Social Media For Your Business SES New York 2012 Agenda Includes Mobile, Local SEO and Social Media Experts … |
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FTC on Mobile Apps: Will Android, Apple Please Think of the Children?
Feb 20th
The Federal Trade Commission has released the results of a report complaining that mobile applications for children lack privacy policies and disclosure. Apps specifically marketed to children were evaluated in the App Store and Android Marketplace.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Think Wall Street Executives Make Too Much Money? Check Out Facebook
Feb 17th
Where did Facebook’s profits go last year?
Fortune is pointing out that, according to the company’s initial public offering, 8% went to its top five executives. That’s more than most Wall Street firms, including JP Morgan Chase, which only shelled out $79 million to its top five executives.
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That is even more remarkable when you consider that the investment bank has 239,831 employees, compared to Facebook’s 3,200.
Facebook isn’t commenting as it waits out a quiet period ahead of its shares hitting the market. But the scrutiny is something the company should get used to: excessive executive compensation is a surefire way to tick off shareholders and would-be shareholders.
As Fortune senior editor Stephen Gandel points out:
“You can make the case that start-ups have to pay out a higher ratio of their bottom line in pay than a big bank would because they don’t make a lot of money. But Facebook isn’t your typical start-up. It’s bottom line is already $1 billion. What’s more, in the year before Google (GOOG) went public back in 2004, the search firm top executives collectively received just $2.2 million in pay. Of course, those guys were set to get a huge payday from IPO, but so is Zuckerberg and Co.”
The chart above was compile by Fortune shows Facebook’s executive compensation as a percentage of profits when compared with similarly-sized companies.
Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.
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Big Question (Answered): “What Do You Think of Google’s New Google Bar?”
Feb 14th
Google has been iterating on their nav bar in recent months, quite frequently. As Jon Mitchell points out, the newest version of the nav bar replaces the gray bar that was released in November. The gray bar replaced a black bar released mid-2011.
This new hybrid bar appears to some, though others will still see the gray bar. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the screenshots of the hybrid Google nav bar. Do you like it? Is it easier to use or were you just getting used to the previous iteration?
We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.
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[Study] Android Fragmentation Not as Bad as You Think
Feb 1st
Fragmentation is often seen as the biggest bane for publishers developing Android applications. There are hundreds of Android devices on the market, running different versions of the operating system across disparate screen sizes and pixel resolutions. But it might not be as bad as many people think. Mobile analytics company Localytics studied Android fragmentation and notes that things might not be quite as bad as everyone fears.
Localytics found that between that nearly 96% of all devices in its network are running either Android version 2.3 Gingerbread or version 2.2. Froyo. From a screen size point of view, there are only five major smartphone screens. While there is certainly more to deal with when developing for Android, focusing on key areas should ease the pain for many publishers.
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Gingerbread Still Dominates
To a certain extent, Localytics assertions are a little misleading. We are currently at the early stages of the rollout process of the newest flavor of Android, version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. That means while ICS is adopted, the fragmentation of the OS itself will once again grow as Gingerbread and Froyo are phased out. Gingerbread was found to run on a vast majority of devices that Localytics tracks, with 73% of the market. Froyo is still kicking strong at 23%.
Since Localytics tracks applications and recognizes the device it is running on, these numbers may be a little high. For instance, last month 54.9% of Android target devices were running Gingerbread and 30.4% were on Froyo. The new target device numbers from Google should be released later this week, likely on Friday, Feb. 3, and we will see how close Localytics numbers are to the actual landscape. Gingerbread will certainly see an appreciable uptake from last month with Froyo taking a commensurate dive though it would be unlikely that Gingerbread jumped a full 20% in a month. Ice Cream Sandwich will also make a bigger blip on the radar though likely no more than 5%.
To put this in perspective, Localytics told us last month that 66% of iOS users had upgraded to iOS5.
Screen size is a better indication of fragmentation because it is not as volatile on a month-to-month basis. Of all app usage used for Localytics study, 41% of Android devices used 4.3-inch screens. 4-inch screens had 22% of application sessions while 3.2-inch screens had 11% and 3.7-inch 9%.
Almost two-thirds of screens were running at 900×480 pixels. Pixel density is often one of the biggest problems cited by developers when working around Android fragmentation. No other pixel density had more than 15%, with 480×320 pixels at 14%. That means that the most popular Android spec was a 4.3-inch screen with a 800×480 pixel density, or consistent with many of Samsung’s popular models as the picture on the right shows.
7-Inch Tablets Abound
From a tablet perspective, the three most popular Android slates were the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook and the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. In reality what that means is that 74% of all Android tablet usage was on a 7-inch screen, running Gingerbread at a resolution of 1280×800 pixels. The only real 10.1-inch tablet on the market, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, had 22% of usage (there are other 10.1-inch Android tablets but none with an appreciable market share).
About 71% of Android tablets were running Gingerbread with 14% running Android 3.2 Honeycomb. The 14% is significantly higher than Google’s released target device numbers, which put Honeycomb 3.3% of total devices in January.
The best thing we can say about these numbers is that the Android ecosystem is stable … for now. In six months when there is a flood of Ice Cream Sandwich devices on the market, developers will be dealing with the need to support a vast number of Gingerbread devices while also supporting the newest functions in Android 4.0.1. In terms of the operating system itself, the nature of fragmentation is cyclical as new updates are released. From a device perspective though, do not look for much to change. Smartphones will likely stay in a 3.7-inch to 4.3-inch range and developers can hit most tablet users by supporting either 7-inch or 10.1-inch screens.
The various permutations of the options still make testing difficult. Though the most likely device will be a 4.3-inch screen running Gingerbread at 800×480 pixels, there will still be a 4.0-inch screen running Froyo at 480×320, or other combinations thereof. The best an Android developer can do is take the most utilitarian approach and try to make the best app for the most amount of people while still supporting the rest of the ecosystem. Bottom line is that you cannot please 100% of people 100% of the time. Do the best possible job for as many as possible.
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