• Twitter To Triple Ad Rev By 2014?
    By 2014, Twitter is poised to triple ad revenue from $139.5 million in 2011 to $540 million, reports Bloomberg, citing a new forecast from eMarketer. Key to such growth, increasing popularity overseas will decrease the microblogging platform’s reliance on U.S. advertisers. As such, the percentage of dollars coming from the U.S. will fall to 83% in 2014 from about 90% this year, EMarketer forecasts. “Twitter’s global reach also is forcing the company to adjust how it manages content,” Bloomberg points out. “The site announced last week that it will add the ability to censor posts by country, rather than deleting …
  • Why Facebook IPO Will "Shame" Markets
    The speculation and predictions continue in anticipation of Facebook’s imminent stock sale. Writing in Reuters, Rob Cox reasons that the IPO will put public markets -- and, consequently, social media supporters -- “to shame.” According to Cox: “Investors will surely clamor for a piece of the social network.” Yet, “Unlike Google’s 2004 initial public offering, everyone who’s anyone has already made a killing off Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm-room project. At a $100 billion valuation, it’s hard to imagine much could remain.” Giving elite investors -- from Sean Parker and Zynga’s Mark Pincus to Goldman Sachs and Microsoft -- early access isn’t …
  • Can Data, Mobile Spur Economic Boom?
    As economic catalysts, “big data,” smart manufacturing and the wireless revolution have the potential to rival electrification, telephony, the automobile, the invention of stainless steel and the radio amplifier. So claim physicist Mark Mills and Julio Ottino, dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University. In the historical context of 1912, “We sit again on the cusp of three grand technological transformations with the potential to rival that of the past century, the co-authors writes in The Wall Street Journal.  Among other recent innovations, information technology has entered a big-data era; processing power and data storage are …
  • Are Blogs Dying Out?
    “What’s a blog?” It seems like only yesterday we were all asking ourselves. Yet amid the continued rise of Facebook and Twitter, Web logs are reportedly falling out of favor with many nonprofessional publishers. Indeed, a new longitudinal study at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth focusing on the online activities of the Inc. 500 (the fastest-growing private American companies) has found a huge drop in the number of companies maintaining corporate blogs over the past year. Only 37% of those interviewed had a corporate blog last year -- down from half of those interviewed in 2010, the UMass researchers …
  • Kayak.com Reshapes In Mobile's Image
    Letting mobile lead the way, Kayak on Monday debuted a new site very similar to its recently updated iPad and iPhone apps. While remarkable, that the travel service found inspiration in the flourishing world of mobile media and design is hardly surprising. “Normally a Web-based company that decides to make an app wants to translate the look and feel of its site to that app,” writes GigaOm. “But Kayak has been there, done that. And from the design team to the executive team, those within Kayak say it now makes more sense to do the opposite.” Said Paul English, Kayak …
  • Yahoo Axes App Roster
    It turns out Scott Thompson has no patience for poorly performing apps. Proving the point, Yahoo’s recently named CEO is pulling the plug on 10 such mobile services, including Yahoo! Finance (Blackberry); Yahoo! Movies (Android); Yahoo! News (Android); Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone); Yahoo! Deals (iPhone); Yahoo Meme (iPad and iPhone), and Yahoo! Answers (Android). “The list is a mix of some of Yahoo’s more popular online brands and some services it created especially for mobile users, but all have one thing in common: they weren’t being used much by consumers,” reports paidContent. “In the words of Yahoo itself, it is removing …
  • FTC Concerned About Bogus Online Reviews
    Taking its cue from federal regulators, The New York Times investigates the murky world of online reviews. Already, regulators have cracked down on a few firms for what NYT terms “deceitful hyping,” while it suspects that these are far from isolated instances. “Advertising disguised as editorial is an old problem, but it’s now presenting itself in different ways,” Mary K. Engle, the Federal Trade Commission’s associate director for advertising practices, tells NYT. “We’re very concerned.” Taking a different tact, researchers like Bing Liu, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, are “trying to devise mathematical models …
  • Warner To Widen Netflix Renter Wait?
    Making life a little harder for Netflix, Warner Bros. has reportedly decided to make subscribers wait 28 days after DVDs go on sale before they can rent them. Company Town says the move is obviously part of Warner's “continuing effort to boost its DVD, Blu-ray, and video-on-demand business.” Starting February 1, when the new agreement is expected to go into effect, Netflix customers won't be able to add Warner movies to their queues until four weeks after the DVDs go on sale, sources tell Company Town. Under the companies' previous agreement, users could add discs to their queues even before …
  • Data: Android Takes Tablet Share From Apple
    Despite rock star Q4 earnings, Apple faces greater challenges than ever. On one key front, new research suggests that Google’s Android operating system is quickly taking tablet market share at the expense of Apple's iOS. According to Strategy Analytics, Android accounted for 39% of the market in the final three months of last year, up from 29% a year earlier, while Apple's share fell to 58% from 68%. (Microsoft's share stood at 1.5%.) Overall, shipments of tablets reached 26.8 million in the quarter, up from 10.7 million a year ago. "Demand for tablets among consumer, business and education users remains …
  • Analysts Cautious About Google's Future
    In the wake of missing financial goals for the fourth quarter, Web watchers are taking a long hard look at Google and its future prospects. “Analysts say Google is simply putting its fingers in too many pies,” reports Reuters. “Forays into television, Android mobile phones and music sales in the past two to three years have left the investment community straining to recognize the company.” The assessment shouldn’t come as a shock to Google, however, as it has recently sought to streamline its businesses -- particularly since the return of co-founder Larry Page as CEO. Adding to analyst concerns was …
« Previous Entries