Facebook is now very much in the mobile race. In recent months they’ve released Facebook Home, an Android based service that makes sure you’re never Facebook-free. If you’ve read my earlier blogs, you know how I feel about that one. But FB isn’t stopping there.
Facebook is now partnering with Waze, an Israel based traffic and navigation app, for the sake of integration. It’s rumored Waze has been offered around a billion dollars for their services. There’s even talk of bringing all Waze offices to the USA. If this deal comes to past, it would be Facebook’s biggest purchase since Instagram, which cost around $750 million. Was the deal worth it? That depends on who you ask. As of April 2013, Facebook has 750+ million mobile users. I access it on my?Apple device.?In 2012, Facebook surpassed one billion users. ?They say the next billion users will come from countries like India and China, with their booming economies and population growths.
Let’s look at Waze. They have 47 million users, more than twice the users they had last year. The majority of those users are outside the US. Both companies are keeping hush about this possible merger. But this makes perfect sense to me. But Facebook, let’s do this right. Learn a lesson from Apple maps, and what a fiasco that was. And if FB and Waze can come together and reach out to rising economies like China and India, that would be an economic dream for both companies. Plus, let’s say someone using FB gets lost in a foreign land. They can just go on Waze and find their way. What other ways can both companies benefit? Or is this merger a bad idea?
I’m beginning to call CEO Melissa Mayer the savior of Yahoo. A year ago at this time, the online company was on the brink of failure. But thanks to a workplace culture change and new innovations, Yahoo has found it’s stride again. But she’s not yet satisfied.
At the 2013 WIRED Business Conference, Mayer stated she wants Yahoo on every PC, laptop, tablet and smartphone. She wants Yahoo on wearable computers, like watches and glasses. ?As of today’s blog, there are 700 million Yahoo users. Over 300 million are mobile users. She’s anxious to cross that billion mark, although Ms. Mayer admits that will be easier said than done.
Let’s look at what they’d done in the past nine months. They have an outstanding weather app. Mine has a picture of the great Fenway Park. Their stock has grown almost 50 percent since last summer, and this growth has no end in sight. Yahoo is partnering with Microsoft so both powerhouses can serve the public better.
You know, some people just come around and do the right thing at the right time. Marissa Mayer seems to be one of those people. By her own admission, it will take years to build the company to grow at a rate she wants it. I’m not saying give her the Nobel Prize, but it’s wonderful to see a CEO take the company from death’s doorstep back to an online powerhouse. Not many American CEO’s can see that these days. How can Yahoo, or any online company, strive for the next level?
Technology isn’t just for geeks anymore. It effects everything we do. Like Facebook, which has 1.1 billion monthly?users, up from approximately 900,000 monthly users in early 2012. Let’s see and contrast other numbers.
Facebook just posted it’s earnings for Q1 2013. They made 1.46 billion dollars in revenue, up 38% from 12 months earlier. This even exceeded Wall St. standards. Despite these expectations being beaten, stocks are only up slightly. Ad revenue was up 41% from the year before. They’re even stepping up their mobile game. Mobile revenues are up 23%. Their next venture, Parse, is a mobile development platform. It was purchased by FB at 85 million dollars, so they might or might not profit off it any time soon. App install ads are expected to be another of FB’s money makers.
So how do I process all this? At least Facebook is going in the right direction, at least on paper. Look at the kind of quarter, or year, Apple has had. One thing that strikes me: while monthly, daily and mobile users are growing, year-over-year users have decreased. Should Facebook be alarmed? I think constant and experienced users are great, especially for new ventures like Parse and these app install ads. Then again, they’re getting enough new users to sell these ventures. Maybe Facebook can do a better job holding users, and these ventures can help that. Will new FB users trust the social media site enough to use Parse and the app install ads?
Remember last week, when one tweet caused the stock market to lose 150 points and over $136 billion dollars in an instant? It did recover, but it’s a sign of powerful social media is, and how easily it can be abused.
You can’t blame this all on the hoaxer. It was the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency watchdog for business and stock exchange, who allowed Twitter and Facebook to be broadcasting sites. This hoax went out to financial data terminals, which sent that data to financial institutions, and on and on. I wonder what would have happened if the hoax was never found out. Let’s not forget: this hoax broke out around the same time?when Syrian hackers attacked the Associated Press.
These Syrian hackers are the main suspects of this hoax. Keep in mind Syria is in the midst of a civil war and in the middle of an unstable region. Fortunately, enough traders were close enough to?a media outlet?to know there were no injuries or explosions at the White House. Then things went back to normal, sort of.
The SEC and other agencies are working hard to prevent a repeat of this. Of course, Twitter and Associated Press are keeping quiet. But lets’ get closer to home. How many tweets or Facebook posts or You Tube videos do you know have put out false doctrine? Remember the social media hoax that said Eddie Murphy was dead? Or the one where Bill Cosby made this ‘I’m 83 and Tired’?post and it wasn’t really him? They didn’t even get Dr. Cosby’s age right.?I have a solution: Don’t believe everything you read! When you hear something this fantastic, check and double check these sources. One thing about social media, it’s easier to catch on to these lies.?What other lies will be fed to us next?
By now, many people have discovered they can boost their social life and express themselves by using social media site Twitter. Some have discovered they can speed up the process by creating phony Twitter followers.
According to two Italian researchers, fake?Twitter following?has become a multi-million dollar business. One can get 1,000 phony followers for under $20. And this research says this market is by no means limited to the underworld.?Major corporations from Pepsi to Mercedes-Benz?have been called?out for suspicious?number of Twitter gains and losses in one day, so have some U.S. politicians, even celebrities. There are over 20 million fake Twitter followers out today. And last year, as a conservative estimate, $40 million dollars were made from fake Twitter followers.
The difference between Twitter and Facebook is that Facebook requires emails for sign-up. Twitter, it’s a lot easier to pull off phony followers. Do I have a problem with this? Yes and no. From a business standpoint, I understand why people and corporations would use this boost. You may not get that many likes on Facebook, but if you got a bunch of Twitter followers, real or not, you suddenly look really good! On the other hand, it’s not really the same as getting real life people as followers. In some ways, it almost feels like cheating. Plus, Twitter is working to get rid of fake followers, so they’re not going to last long anyway. So what do you think of fake Twitter followers: a good thing or a fraud?
Iran, 2011. A corrupt election drives many Iranians to the streets in protest. They use social media to introduce the world to their struggle, a struggle that includes police brutality and other injustices. The world saw what the Iranian people really went through, not just what the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad wanted us to hear. Can that happen to North Korea?
Not in it’s present state. I have it by good authority the people there are so isolated most have never even heard of You Tube, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. They’ve never typed on a desktop, carried a laptop or played Angry Birds on a smartphone. They’ve never sent an email or seen a power point presentation. Ten years ago, it was a capital offense to even carry a cell phone!? However, things are slowly changing.?Now, thanks to their kind hearted gov’t (note the sarcastic tone) one million North Koreans have mobile phones. And some even have Internet access. So some ingredients are being put in place, ingredients to connect them to the outside world.
But dictators and regimes know what power 21st century technology has, and they’re bent on getting a hold of it before their opposition does. Don’t expect them to let?the majority have these technological necessities. What’s worse? They’re training their higher ups to suppress?and stop democratic urges. Instead of spending money on food, education, health care?and infrastructure for their people, they’re spending it to build technology to spy on their people, to tighten the leash on them.?They can do this through facial recognition systems, voice scans, DNA,?and the?kinds of things once only seen in James Bond movies or spy TV shows. Even in?American cities like Chicago, they’re trying to put a surveillance camera on every corner in the city. In some parts of England, the camera will talk to you if you so much as jaywalk or litter! I always feel like somebody’s watching me! That’s because they are.
I am not here to knock technology. I’m so thankful for the advances that have been made just in my lifetime. I’m saying they can be used for good and evil, depending on whose control it’s in. The Internet has done far more good than harm. You can best believe while dictators and aristocrats are working hard maintain power, freedom fighters are working hard to win democracy. Social media gives these people more power than they’ve ever had before. Remember what TV did for the Civil Rights Movement back in the 1960s? Where will you be when Pyongyang has it’s online?revolution?
