One in seven people on the Earth use Facebook. Given that 1.5 billion are under the age of 12, that means one in five and a half eligible people use Facebook. Once we factor in countries that don't have or allow Facebook it gets higher. With its market cap running at $46.8 billion that means …
Facebook examines advertising effectiveness
Facebook has posted an interesting talk by its ad executive, Brad Smallwood, reporting on research they have conducted into the effectiveness of advertising. http://cdn.livestream.com/embed/fbmarketingtalks?layout=4&clip=pla_5b7f92a4-0d8e-4468-a66a-7570e38f92e9&color=0xe7e7e7&autoPlay=false&mute=false&iconColorOver=0x888888&iconColor=0x777777&allowchat=true&height=295&width=480 The first part of the video is most relevant and it lasts about 10 minutes. The summary of the findings is as follows: Impressions create value. 99 percent of sales generated …
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Scott Adams wants to sell an idea
... but he isn't about to let on what it is yet. Here is what we know. First, it's sort of original. I have a specific business idea in mind. It has the potential to change the world in a fundamental way and yet it is little more than a combination of existing ideas that are …
WordPress's evolution as a web publishing platform
WordPress powers this blog. That isn't surprising as WordPress began with the goal of providing a powerful and, indeed, free blogging platform. To be sure, it earns money from premium services but, compared with its predecessors, WordPress is an open platform that gave users and developers the power to slash, hack and design. But now …
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Digging deeper into Apple's maps problem
Since my post last week, Apple's iOS6 maps problem has become this year's '-gate' issue. Despite an incredibly strong iPhone 5 launch and a successful iOS6 launch, the share price has gone down and for the first time in recent memory, consumer satisfaction on an Apple product has dropped. The issue, of course, is how …
Craigslist and monopoly power
Craigslist dominates the classifieds market in the US. But as everyone who has ever used it knows, it is primitive. It reflects an older Internet era that is pre-search and pre-nice interface design. But it is a platform for businesses to post ads and for consumers to search listings. Recently, Craigslist has moved to block …
Particle physics goes open access
From Nature, The entire field of particle physics is set to switch to open-access publishing, a milestone in the push to make research results freely available to readers. Particle physics is already a paragon of openness, with most papers posted on the preprint server arXiv. But peer-reviewed versions are still published in subscription journals, and publishers …
Kickstarter tries to clarify what it's about
As I have written before, I believe that Kickstarter is a novel and important way of allowing innovators and information creators to ensure against some of the risks associated with upfront investment by obtaining some pre-investment signals of demand. Strictly speaking, those signals were supposed to be financial support but ultimately ended up being, for …
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Apple's big mistake
Regular readers will know that I often are willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt. But with iOS 6 released today they have actually made a mistake that makes you wonder "whether Steve would have allowed it." The mistake was to drop Google Maps and replace it with an in-house Maps app with …
'Smart' lightbulbs
I like seeing the ideas coming through Kickstarter. Some are crazy while others are pedestrian. But one just caught my eye and I thought it was worth blogging about. It is LIFX that is billed as a reinvention of light bulb. Basically, these people wondered what could happen if you put WiFi connectivity in each …
Digitopoly 