Netizen

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Wikileaks And SOPA

I see a connection between the two. In both cases the traditional nation state felt threatened, or still does.

The NYT’s Bill Keller on why we should defend WikiLeaks

Internet technology is bringing about a fundamental rethink on the relationship between the individual and the state. And state actors often times act defensive. The embrace part is when politicians use social media.

Amazon-Apple

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Amazon is a sturdy property. Jeff Bezos some have talked as the next Steve Jobs. But 12 years ago it would have been very hard to imagine the two companies would ever cross paths. The two have inexorable moved toward each other's turfs.

Apple-Amazon War Heats Up

Amazon's Kindle App was recently the fifth-most downloaded free iPad app of all time, according to Apple. And Amazon sells a substantial number of iPods and iPhones on its namesake website. ..... Apple and Amazon have a common and key weapon: unparalleled data about their customers, particularly their credit-card numbers.

Will Amazon build a smartphone? How can it not? Amazon should perform a similar price trick as did with the Kindle Fire. That would be an instant differentiator.

But this is not two dimensional chess. It can be argued this is four dimensional chess. Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook. Each has or will have a smartphone. We live in the age of mobile.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The Facebook Phone

SUN VALLEY, ID - JULY 11: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Laura Arrillaga Andreesen, chairwoman of the Silicon Valley Venture Fund, attend the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 11, 2011 in Sun Valley, Idaho. The conference has been hosted annually by the investment firm Allen & Company since 1983 and is typically attended by many of the world's most powerful media executives. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Facebook coming into the smartphone space is a big deal. I mean, this is hardware. But it perhaps makes a ton of sense. Facebook is likely the top app on all mobile platforms. So might as well.

If Robert Scoble is to be believed, it will be a contextual phone.

The coming automatic, freaky, contextual world and why we’re writing a book about it

Google Now tells you to leave early for your next appointment because traffic is bad. Automatically..... new kinds of apps that will, in real time, hook up to all sorts of databases about us and the businesses we buy from or work for, and bring us back interesting smart alerts and more.

Facebook Is Said To Work With HTC On Mobile Phone For Mid-2013

Asked in an interview at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, about his greatest challenge right now, Zuckerberg said it was “the shift to mobile.” .... Facebook could use a modified version of Android for its smartphone.

Brazil: Rio De Janeiro: Statue Of Christ: Photos

BuzzFeed Success "Secrets"

Chris Dixon is sharing some insider information.

BuzzFeed’s strategy

BuzzFeed. We passed 30M unique visitors last month, our revenue is on pace to be more than 3 times what we did in 2011, we have grown from 26 full-timers at the start of last year to 117 today ..... Nobody has built a truly great publishing company for the social age and we have a good shot to be the ones who do it. ..... we don’t publish slideshows. Instead we publish scrollable lists so readers don’t have to click a million times and can easily scroll through a post...... we don’t show crappy display ads and we make all our revenue from social advertising that users love and share. ...... we focus on publishing content our readers love so much they think it is worth sharing ...... We manage our own servers, we built our CMS from scratch, we created our own realtime stats system, we have our own data science team, we invented own ad products and our own post formats, and all these products are brought to life by our own editorial team and our own creative services team. We are what you call a “vertically integrated product” which is rare in web publishing. We take responsibility for the technology, the advertising, and the content and that allows us to make a much better product where everything works together. ........ skill is 63% luck. ..... “social advertising will be the biggest media business since cable television.” ...... we are equally obsessed with 1) entertaining content, 2) substantive content, and 3) social advertising. The teams that focus on each of these areas are equally important which is a key part of our success. We want our cute animals, humor, and animated gifs to be the best of their kind on the web – they aren’t just a cheap way to generate traffic. We want our reporters to have the best scoops, the smartest analysis, and the most talked about items – they aren’t just a hood ornament to lend the site prestige. And we want our advertising to be innovative, inspiring, and lead the shift to social – and not just be a necessary evil that pays the bills. ....... We love the silly, we love the substantive, and we love making advertising that is actually compelling

Boom Decade

Allied lines of communication in India, Burma, and China in 1942–43. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is yet another sign that this is going to be a boom decade.

NEA Has Closed On $2.6 Billion For Its 14th Fund, Perhaps The Biggest In VC History

“We’ve been very active in India and China for over a decade, and we’re interested in investing across a lot of different geographies. Brazil is very interesting to us, other parts of Southeast Asia [beyond India] are interesting to us. There are a lot of exciting economies that are really ripe from our perspective.”