In an industry full of earnest nerds, Twitter hopes workplace humor is a selling point. The company (which is earnest and nerdy too, of course) released a tongue-in-cheek recruiting video tonight.
“At Twitter, The Future is You!” is described as an internal Hackweek project to “make the best/worst recruiting video of all time.” It does indeed manage to be both laugh-worthy and cringe-worthy. (Bonus: Watch Twitter CEO Dick Costolo try to keep a straight face.)
By the way, this isn’t Twitter’s first witty recruiting video, though one from two years ago was more “Rushmore” where this is more “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!”
For big companies like Google, Salesforce and Microsoft, being active in charitable causes is practically a must-do. Companies of this size often have entire teams of employees focused on philanthropic initiatives and organizing company-wide volunteering events. But at smaller companies that don’t have the same infrastructure in place, employees often don’t have the same opportunities to give back, on-the-job.
Screenshot of Causecast for Employees (click to enlarge)
That’s where a new software platform built by Los Angeles-based startup Causecastcomes in. This week Causecast debuted its Employee Impact Platform, a web-based program that connects companies and their employees with non-profits and charitable causes. With Causecast, employers can select a group of causes to which they’ll provide matching donations to whatever employees give. The platform can also be used to organize company-wide volunteering events. Non-profits plug into Causecast for free, and companies are generally charged a flat rate of around $1 per user per month.
Causecast founder Ryan Scott walked me through a demo of the new platform. To me, the best part to me is how easy Causecast makes it to spend extra-curricular time with your co-workers doing something other than going out for happy hour drinks. Non-profits of course will benefit from more companies donating time and money to their causes — but according to Scott, companies benefit a lot as well. He put it like this:
“Employees who aren’t engaged with their jobs aren’t as productive. And it sounds counter-intuitive, but you often have to leave the office to become more engaged with your work, and with your co-workers. Volunteering is a really great way to get everyone together outside of the office to do something bigger than themselves.”
Causecast, which was founded in 2007, currently has 30 employees. Thus far, Causecast has been self-funded by Scott, who first became known in the late 1990s for co-founding NetCreations, where he created and patented the “double opt-in” process that propelled the email marketing industry. After selling NetCreations in an all-cash deal in 2001, Scott said, he decided to find a way to merge his desire to do some good in the world while still staying active in business.
When Causecast first launched, it was an online platform to let all people contribute to charitable causes touted by celebrities and brands. The shift into the enterprise space is a smart one, as small businesses are becoming increasingly important parts of the employment landscape and the general public is calling more and more for corporations to behave responsibly. With Causecast, small businesses can compete with larger, more established companies when it comes to offering their employees ways to give back. It’ll be interesting to see how the new iteration of Causecast takes off in the months ahead.
Asus is reportedly working on Windows 8 laptops that are equipped with Microsoft’s Kinect technology. The Daily recently reported that it was able to “check out” two different prototype laptops that “appeared” to be made by Asus. The Kinect sensor was built into the area where a notebook’s camera would typically reside, and The Daily also noted a set of LEDs below the screen. Microsoft reportedly confirmed that the notebooks were Kinect-enabled prototypes. As The Daily points out, a Kinect-enabled notebook could allow a user to interact with Windows 8 or play games using motion controls, much like Xbox 360 Kinect users are able to do now. It is unclear when, or even if, the notebooks will ever be released.
Verizon released the DROID RAZR MAXX on Thursday for $299.99 with a new two-year agreement. The device features a massive 3,300 mAh battery and a slightly thicker frame than its predecessor, the DROID RAZR. Other than that, the handsets are identical. Droid-Life confirmed on Friday that both devices run the same exact software, in fact — the Android version on both devices features the same build number, same kernel and same baseband version. We have seen similar products in the past (DROID 2 and DROID R2D2), but they all carried slightly different software versions to accommodate various changes. With the DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX however, it looks like everything is interchangeable, so savvy users already have a wide range custom ROMs to choose from.
Earlier today, Harvard University and New Enterprise Associates announced the Experiment Fund, aimed at making sure that future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates can stay on campus and innovate without having to head West.
The irony of the pair of legendary entrepreneurs dropping out — decades apart — of the even more legendary university to start two of tech most significant companies, Facebook and Microsoft.
No longer, apparently.
The early-stage incubator, which will award funding to four to six start-ups in amounts from $250,000 to $500,000. It will focus on early stage ventures in the area around Harvard, which includes many other schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Experiment Fund was co-founded by Cherry Murray, the dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Its faculty members will advise for the fund, but the university has no financial stake.
In an interview NEA’s Patrick Chung said the intent was to enable talented students to “build a company here in Boston rather than have to go elsewhere.”
NEA will have full-time staffers working on the fund, investing in a wide range of companies. It has already backed a health app company, as well as a live Internet television offering.
“There has been an envy of the left coast, certainly,” said Chung. “Now, these talented engineers don’t have to leave when they reach the boundaries of the university where the ideas are formed.”
Added Chung: “They can walk right out of class and into a place that can make those start-ups real.”
The twin anti-piracy threats that were being considered by Congress — the SOPA bill in the House and the PIPA legislation in the Senate — have been put aside due to the storm of controversy and criticism they sparked. But the media and entertainment industries are unlikely to give up their battle so easily, author Neil Gaiman said in an interview this week, even though what they’re trying to do amounts to “trying to put genies back in bottles.” Gaiman, who recently signed an open letter protesting SOPA with over a dozen other prominent artists, says the content industries have to recognize the Internet has changed the media landscape just as fundamentally as Gutenberg’s printing press did.
Gaiman is probably best-known for his comics and graphic novels — including the Sandman series — as well as the novels American Gods and Coraline, and the screenplay for the film Beowulf. Although British-born, he lives in Minnesota with his wife, musician Amanda Palmer. In the interview, Gaiman said as someone who creates books and screenplays and other content, he is somewhat conflicted about what the Internet and digital media have done to traditional businesses like books and movies:
I as a creator kind of missed out on the DVD era, which is kind of sad, because I would likely be so much richer if I hadn’t — but that era was really such a tiny fragment of time, really just an eye-blink in the scheme of things, in which Hollywood was able to sell a physical object to people that contained content.
I think people in Hollywood are convinced that people would suddenly start buying DVDs again if only they could stop all this peer-to-peer file sharing and so on. They just are fundamentally missing the point… genies don’t go back in bottles once they’re out.
Gaiman said the Internet represents a fundamental change that is altering the competitive landscape for virtually every business whose product can be digitized and uploaded, and they need to adapt or perish. “Gutenberg put an awful lot of scribes out of work too,” the author said. “They had debates back then that seem nonsensical now, like the debate about the evils of printing bibles that anyone could read, rather than having them interpreted for them by monks and priests.”
That disruption isn’t good or bad, Gaiman said, “it just is. It’s a fact of life now.” And while legislators will no doubt continue to push forward with laws like SOPA and PIPA, he said, they won’t be able to turn back the clock to a time before the Internet was invented. In a video interview he recorded last year for the Open Rights Group, which is embedded below, Gaiman talked about how he was initially incensed about people pirating his work, but eventually came to the realization that they were actually promoting his work, and he was selling more in countries where his books were pirated.
Gaiman said in his interview with GigaOM that the biggest single change the Internet has sparked is an explosion of information — and that has been both good and bad. It’s good because anyone can reach an audience, he said, but it can also be bad because there is so much noise, and it’s hard to find the good content in that sea of information:
The biggest change between the 20th century and the 21st is that all of the gatekeepers are going away. For the first million years or so of humanity, information was incredibly scarce, and it was an incredibly powerful thing that people devoted their entire lives to uncovering… but somewhere around 1997 it changed, and we moved from famine to glut.
I read somewhere that there were more books published in a week than there were published in all of 1950, or something like that. Is that a good thing? I’m not sure. It makes it harder to find the things that you like… It’s now the job of the crowd and the hive mind to do that.
And while SOPA and PIPA proponents see only the negatives of the Internet and content sharing, there are some positives as well, Gaiman said — including the ability any artist has to reach an audience with their work. The author described how he and his wife wanted to record part of a performance tour they were on, and set up a donation through the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. “We asked for $20,000, because that was the absolute minimum we needed to do it, and we wound up with $133,000,” he said. “That showed me there was this completely different way of monetizing something.”
That kind of phenomenon allows creators to reach their fans directly, without having to go through a traditional middleman, Gaiman said — and that obviously makes industries that are composed primarily of middlemen rather nervous. But while they will undoubtedly continue to fight for laws like SOPA and PIPA, the author said they are “fighting on the wrong side of history.” At some point, “It’s like King Canute railing against the waves; the waves will continue to come in, and the landscape will continue to change.”
Global mobile phone shipments grew 14% annually to shatter the previous shipment record in 2011. Market research firm Strategy Analytics estimates that 1.6 billion cell phones were shipped last year, representing more than one-fifth of the world’s total population, which surpassed 7 billion in late October last year according to the Population Reference Bureau. An earlier report from the GSMA estimated that there are now more than 6 billion total mobile connections worldwide. Read on for more.
Handset shipments grew 11% to reach 445 million units globally last quarter according to Strategy Analytics, 155 million of which were smartphones. Nokia retained its No.1 position globally with mobile phone shipments totaling 113.5 million units, and Samsung followed with 95 million units. With just one smartphone line that includes just three models, Apple was the world’s No.3 cell phone vendor last quarter with shipments totaling 37 million units.
Nokia was also the top vendor for the full year, having shipped 417.1 million phones globally according to Strategy Analytics’s figures. Samsung shipped 327.4 million units in 2011 and Apple sold 93 million iPhones into distribution channels.
“Smartphone specialist Apple shipped 93.0 million handsets worldwide in 2011, nearly doubling the previous year’s volumes,” Strategy Analytics analyst Tom Kang said. “Currently in just its fifth year of participation in the handset market, Apple is on track to ship well over 100 million units during 2012. China is becoming a key market for Apple this year, and we expect Apple’s share to grow rapidly in 2012, despite countless copycat rivals.” The firm’s full press release follows below.
Strategy Analytics: Global Handset Shipments Reach 1.6 Billion Units in 2011
Boston, MA – January 26, 2012 – According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global handset shipments grew 11 percent annually to reach 445 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011. Apple was the star performer, capturing a record 8 percent market share worldwide during the quarter. Full-year handset shipments reached 1.6 billion units globally in 2011, with annual growth of 14 percent.
Alex Spektor, Associate Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “Despite continued macroeconomic difficulties in major markets like Western Europe, global handset shipments grew a reasonable 11 percent annually to reach 445 million units in Q4 2011. Apple was the star performer, shipping 37.0 million iPhones worldwide and capturing a highest-ever 8 percent market share. Apple’s growth was fuelled by intense demand for its refreshed iPhone 4S, as well as the availability of three generations of iPhones at a variety of price points at operators like AT&T in the United States.”
Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “Nokia’s global handset shipments declined 8 percent annually to 113.5 million units in Q4 2011. Volumes were buoyed by the sales of Nokia’s low-end dual-SIM models in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, but were a little soft overall, as initial shipments of Microsoft Lumia phones could not offset declining Symbian sales. Hot on Nokia’s heels, second-ranked Samsung captured 21 percent share with shipments of 95.0 million units. Samsung’s 18 percent annual growth was fuelled by robust shipments of its broad Galaxy-branded 3G portfolio, headlined by the Galaxy S2 superphone.”
Tom Kang, Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “Smartphone specialist Apple shipped 93.0 million handsets worldwide in 2011, nearly doubling the previous year’s volumes. Currently in just its fifth year of participation in the handset market, Apple is on track to ship well over 100 million units during 2012. China is becoming a key market for Apple this year, and we expect Apple’s share to grow rapidly in 2012, despite countless copycat rivals.”
Exhibit 1: Global Handset Vendor Shipments and Market Share in Q4 2011
[See chart above]
The full report, Global Handset Shipments Reach 445 Million Units in Q4 2011, is published by the Strategy Analytics Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, details of which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3tbnzb6.
Rightly or wrongly, Facebook catches a lot of flak for impeding on privacy by selling user information to advertisers and generally enabling too much sharing. But would users care so much if Facebook gave them a cut of the profits it generates by selling their data? Think about it like Plink’s new loyalty program that rewards consumers with Facebook Credits for eating at certain restaurants, only in reverse.
All of this gets privacy advocates and even Facebook users in a snit, though, because it’s pretty much a one-way street: Facebook gets more money, while users get, um … more Facebook? Everyone knows that users pay for free services by providing their data, but clearly some are starting to sense we’re reaching limit of that model still being a good deal for consumers.
“Like” Starbucks, get a nickel
So, why not encourage sharing and discourage privacy complaints by giving users a piece of the revenue pie? The more they share, the more Facebook pays them. It’s actually not such a crazy idea, and it will be even less crazy if the group of Facebook users currently suing the company over violating their rights to publicity wins its case. The plaintiffs want a piece of additional money Facebook thinks it can get from selling “Sponsored Stories.” To quote from their complaint, quoting Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg:
On average, if you compare an ad without a friend’s endorsement, and you compare an ad with a friend’s [Facebook] ‘Like,’ these are the differences: on average, 68% more people are likely to remember seeing the ad with their friend’s name. A hundred percent—so two times more likely to remember the ad’s message; and 300% more likely to purchase.
This is where the Plink analogy comes in. Its new service automatically credits users’ Facebook accounts with Facebook Credits when they use their credit cards at certain restaurants. It encourages consumers to eat at certain places by rewarding them.
Facebook could conceivably encourage users to engage in particularly beneficial types of sharing by rewarding them. You “Like” a company’s page, you get a nickel (or, likely, a more-complex formula). If it doesn’t want to deal in cash, which might be impossible economically, Facebook could start frequent-flyer-style ecosystem for Facebook Credits. Users earn Credits for sharing and redeem with retailers across the web, maybe even via a “Pay with Facebook Credits” option on third-party sites (assuming that’s legal).
I can tell attest to the power of that type of program. Legal databases LexisNexis and Westlaw compete to win future professional users by providing points to law students for frequently using their products, as well as for completing occasional “fun” (but not really) research challenges. I used them more than I otherwise might have just to earn points, and I got some sweet merchandise from partner retailers in return for my trouble.
As long as the pay-with-data model continues to get more lopsided in favor of websites, web users and consumer-rights groups will continue to get more upset. If the alternatives are make users pay or have someone else enforce strict privacy regulations, why not try something completely different? Maybe that way, when the government comes knocking, Facebook’s users will have its back.
Nine out of the nine finalists for IBM’s Global Entrepreneur of the Year title are analytics startups. That’s either an anomaly or proof that analytics is hot, hot, hot.
Analytics, or business intelligence, helps businesses make sense,even visualize their data so it’s more useful to them.
IBM, like other tech giants, has been on a bit of an analytics bender in the past few years, buying a slew of analytics companies, most recently Algorithmics last fall, but also SPSS, Unica and others.
Raj Aggarwal, CEO of Localytics, a Cambridge, Mass.-based web analytics startup, said his company’s prior relationship with Unica, which IBM bought in 2010, brought Localytics into IBM’s orbit. That relationship is why Localytics entered the IBM SmartCamp competition rather than one of the other startup beauty contests.
Localytics’ services gives mobile app developers a real-time window into the usage of their applications, as GigaOM’s Ryan Kim reported here.
IBM holds several SmartCamp contests for startups around the world. The nine regional finalists will meet with IBM and venture capital companies in San Francisco next week. Winners don’t get prize money, but IBM does provide them with resources — hardware, software — and, perhaps more importantly, access to experts in the company and in the VC community.
Aggarwal said meeting experts at IBM was the biggest perk for Localytics. “They introduce us to people, set up meetings. It’s hard for a small company to do that on its own,” he said. IBM gets a lot out of this too: Access to small, nimble companies focusing on a vertical niche that complements IBM’s more broadly focused software.
The other SmartCamp finalists are:
BitCarrier: The SmartCamp Barcelona winner analyzes real-time traffic (of the automotive type) information.
C-B4 Context Based 4Casting: CB4′s context-based system identifies and analyzes hidden data patterns in large data warehouses.
ConnectM: This company’s machine-to-machine technology analyses machine data from different systems for telecom, utility and transportation industries.
Palmap: This company’s new mapping solution helps mobile users navigate airports and malls.
Profitero: Profitero helps online retailers analyse their competitors’ performance.
SecureWaters: SecureWaters’s patented technology monitors, detects and identifies toxins in surface water and alerts people of their presence.
SkinScan: This mobile application scans the user’s skin to measure skin cancer threat.
Most of these analytics applications are extremely focused on a vertical market — something that IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and other big vendors encourage in their ISV partners. The giant IT platform vendors see small, agile companies like these as strategic partners, filling gaps in their own portfolios.
Apps that will no longer be supported include winners like Yahoo! Meme and Yahoo Mim (say what?), as well as some more general mobile apps like Yahoo Answers for Android and Yahoo Deals for iPhone. Unfortunately, Yahoo! Sketch-a-search, which I didn’t even know was a thing before today, is also getting the axe. (You can see the full list on the official announcement.)
Somewhat paradoxically, Yahoo is pitching its non-support of these apps as part of its “mobile first” mindset. But for anyone paying attention, this could be part of a big step forward for Yahoo as it transitions under new CEO Scott Thompson.
Over at Google, CEO Larry Page calls this strategy putting more wood behind fewer arrows. For a company like Yahoo, which has been somewhat stymied by a lack of innovation, it makes sense to kill off products that consumers aren’t using and double down on those linked to its core properties, like Yahoo Mail, Messenger and Flickr, as well as applications like IntoNow where it can introduce disruptive new technology.
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