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'Think before you act' and more rules for journalists on Twitter

2012-01-29T11:01:28Z

By Steve Fox: A couple of weeks ago I was at a hockey game with my son. During the game, as I absentmindedly checked emails on my phone, I saw a Twitter note from an alumni of the UMass program saying "Look at what this person is saying about you!" Without thinking, I clicked on the link....and instantly kicked myself for doing so, as the link spawned a Twitter spam, sending the virus to hundreds of my Twitter followers. It was the first time for me, but definitely reminded me about the power of social media. I heard from friends, colleagues and students about the spam, and ended up apologizing more than once for not following my own advice to students: Think Before You Click!

The social media dustup surrounding the early and inaccurate reports of Joe Paterno's death once again brought to the forefront how the rapid nature of social media can lead to bad journalism. It was deja vu all over again: A year ago NPR mistakenly reported that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died after being shot in the head.

Why do journalists keep botching the facts on Twitter?

I posed a question along these lines on the Social Journalism Educators group on Facebook and received some of the requisite "it's not Twitter's fault;" and Twitter is "only" an amplification device. As much as I love most of what Matthew Ingram writes, his post on the Paterno screw-up being another example of "news as a process" worries me. Defenders of the social media realm rarely seem to want to get at why these massive ethical lapses continue to occur on Twitter. And I just won't buy the idea that "this is the way it is" or "letting everyone know you made a mistake is great for transparent journalism."

Don't get me wrong, I love the many benefits of social media and I teach about its journalistic value. But I also feel that we all need to begin practicing "safe social media" practices to protect us all.

After the Giffords debacle, Alicia Shepard, the former ombudsman for NPR, wrote a column about the need for journalists to re-learn the lesson of checking sources. And she counters the shrugs inherent in many comments from social media defenders by reminding us all why it's important to get it right, even if it's not first: "...To report a death, incorrectly, is a serious, serious error and may have caused untold grief and pain for many who know Giffords." Journalism is about process but the process is to get the correct information out, not to throw spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks and sort it all out later.

So, what to do?

The main issue indeed seems to rest with amplification. The nature of the Twitter beast is to retweet something you see IMMEDIATELY to your followers. I first found out about the Paterno report from a Facebook friend who teaches social media and whose insight and opinions I respect. She attributed the news to CBS -- which was part of a long laundry list of news organizations that retweeted what proved to be a shaky report from Onward State, a student-run website at Penn State.

I've been a part of too many "not dead yet" stories so I hesitated on retweeting and re-Facebooking and went to ESPN's site. ESPN had a story about Paterno being in grave condition, but had not jumped on the Onward State bandwagon and declared him dead. It was responsible journalism as well as an affirmation of ESPN's social media policy prohibiting reporters and editors from breaking news on Twitter -- which drew a substantial amount of criticism from the defenders of the social media realm last year. (Full Disclosure: I work as a part-time editor for ESPN.com.)

ESPN's policy is a step in the right direction. The policy makes ESPN journalists stop and think before hitting the retweet. But there is something else at work here. The natural inclination when journalists and journalism educators see tweets from news organizations like CBS and NPR is, well, to believe what is being tweeted.

That just needs to stop.

A new Twitter ethos is needed. Here are a few ideas:

* Retweeting. Don't retweet immediately. Especially if it's breaking news. A colleague and I were talking about the Days Before The Web and how the wire services used to send off bells on major breaking news events. (Ronald Reagan getting shot was 10 bells.) So, think about waiting for those 10 bells to go off.

* Trust. Stop trusting mainstream news organizations. Just because a major name is attached to the tweet doesn't mean it's true. Live by the old adage: "If your mother tells you it's true, check it out."

* Pick Up The Freaking Phone. In both the Giffords and the Paterno cases, journalistic disaster could have been easily averted by news organizations picking up a phone and doing some original reporting. Again, don't trust, verify.

* Verify, Verify, Verify. Stop the lazy journalism folks. Hitting the retweet is easy. Do some work instead.

Think before you act!

Data Analysis 101: Seven Simple Mistakes That Limit Your Salary

2011-10-31T09:42:42Z

Data analysis is not easy. It takes years to get good at it, and once you get good at it you realize how much more there is to learn. That is part of the joy. You are always learning. You are always growing.

This blogpost is a collection of tips I share with my friends who are just starting out. Each tip is a "simple" mistake that is easily avoided. My hope is that you'll skip them if you are aware of them, and move on to making more important valuable mistakes. :)

My plan is to wrap each tip with additional observations, context that will be of value even to those who have been at this game for a very long time.

Ready for a can of concentrated compressed energy?

Let's do this.

1. Never Compare Apples to Watermelons.

There are some things that are quite promising about this graph.

I love that the analyst is segmenting the data rather than showing the aggregate trend ("all data in aggregate is essentially crap" – me). I also like that the analyst is showing a six month trend.

But there is something fundamentally wrong about this analysis. Before you jump to my reveal below this graphic, can you guess what's wrong with this data? Try it?

Found the problem?

Four different segments are being compared (yea!), but they are calibrated wrong (boo!).

On the surface this is hard to detect.

The part that is clean is that there is very little overlap between Search Traffic and Referral Traffic. If you use Omniture's Site Catalyst or Google Analytics or whatever, they do a good job of collecting clean data into those two segments. But Mobile is a platform. That traffic (or conversions in this case) is most likely in both Referrals and Search. So it is unclear what to make of that orange stacked bar. Is that good? Is that bad? Additionally it is showing conversions already included in Search and Referral (double counting) and because you have no idea what it is, it is impossible to know what action to take. [The analyst recommended a higher investment in Mobile based on this graph!]

Ditto for Social Media. It is likely that the Social Media conversions are already included in Referrals and, of course, in Mobile. Making that green graph useless. [The analyst recommended a massive increase in investment in Social Media as well. An imprecise conclusion.]

Ensure that you always calibrate the "altitude" of your segments. Always.

So if you want to analyze Mobile performance then you want to compare Mobile and Desktop segments. Very easy to create. For bonus points you can analyze Mobile Search traffic performance with Mobile Non-Search traffic performance. You can analyze Mobile Search performance with Mobile Referring traffic information. Then compare those two to Desktop Search and Desktop Referring traffic. So on and so forth.

Nice clean segments that will help you find nice clean answers (as good or as stinky as they might turn out to be :).

For Social Media you can compare it to Search (with no other changes to that segment, use the Default in GA/SC/WT/YWA), and for Referring Traffic make sure you create a new segment where you take out Referrers such as Facebook.com, Twitter.com, plus.Google.com, Stumbleupon.com etc., etc. So you'll be comparing clean buckets of Social Media, Search and Referring Traffic with no social referrals included.

Nice clean segments that provide you nice clean answers.

Always pause and ask yourself: "Are my segments all at the right 'altitude?' Are they individually unpolluted by the other?"

Then go analyze and confidently make recommendations based on what you find.

2. Don't Alarm HiPPOs and Sr. Leaders Unnecessarily.

Creating graphs is easy, and I could fill five blog posts with all the nonsense one can accomplish by playing with the axes. Yes it is a pet peeve of mine.

What do you think is wrong with this commonly available graph?

Look at it carefully? Found it?

It artificially inflates the importance of a change in the metric might not be all that important. In this case for my data it is not statistically significant (more on that later in this post), but there is no way you would know that (or not know that) just from the data in front of you. Yet the scale used for the y-axis implies that something huge has happened.

I am going to go out on a limb…. unless you are performing surgery and the above graph is showing the heart rate or blood pressure, try and avoid being so melodramatic in your data presentation. It causes people to read things into the performance that they should most likely not read.

You don't always have to have the y-axis at zero. But over-dramatizing this 1.5 point difference is a waste of everyone's time. And you know what happened to the boy who cried wolf one too many times right?

Another important thing.

Label your x axis. Please.

What time period does this graph cover? The last x hours? The last y weeks? The last z months? Depending on what you choose the data is completely ignorable or deserving of insane additional analytical love. (Assuming of course that you fix the y-axis first.)

As the analyst you hold a lot of power in your hands when it comes to visualizing data. Use that power with caution, and great responsibility.

3. Calibrate Your Time Series Optimally.

I am positive that many of you, including my friends who are just getting started, will have taken this screen shot out of Google Analytics and included it in a dashboard or presentation of some kind.

Don't scroll down yet.

Look at it carefully…. what's wrong with it?

It is a chart that shows nine months of performance… by day! The "trend" is completely useless.

But because this is the default view in Google Analytics everyone uses is. [Arrrrrhhh!] The uselessness comes from the fact that when you look at individual days over such a long time period you are effectively hiding insights / important changes.

It is impossible to find anything of value above.

Let's switch to looking at the exact same time period but by week.

Much better right? No more puke of squiggly lines that mean nothing, show nothing. You can kind of sort of see some kind of trend above, especially towards the end of the graph (even this simple thing was essentially hidden before).

Here's the amazing thing… when looking at long time periods you can do better!

The best practice I recommend in Web Analytics 2.0 is that if you are looking at four weeks of data then you can look at the daily trend and still find interesting insights.

If you look at three months of data (one quarter) then you should switch from the day view to week view. The macro trends won't get masked/hidden in the daily noise.

If you look at time periods long than that then it is optimal to look at the monthly view of the data.

In our case this is what that would look like….

Sweet, right?

You can clearly see the dip from Jan to Feb. You can see the nice consistent dip through July. Then something magical happened (What! What! What!) that has traffic rising to record levels.

All of this was nearly impossible to see in the daily graph, and most of it was hard to see in the weekly graph.

Do remember this really important point: When you look at lots of data, nine months in this case, you are usually not looking for tactical bits, you are trying to find big hairy things… calibrate your time series accordingly.

And if you calibrate your segments optimally you can quickly start doing deep dive analysis looking for some answers. What happened post July? What caused the funk between March and July? Why did x or y or z not happen? All the right good questions that otherwise might have been hidden in plain sight.

Simple best practice. Use it.

4. Always, Always, Always Make Your Point Clearly! (Oh, and Colors Matter.)

Everyone of you will present decks with 95 slides. Or at least 55. : )

When you are doing that data regurgitation it is important to try to make life for the person at the other end (typically your boss, or worse your boss's boss) as easy as possible.

At some point in the data tsunami you unleash eyes glaze over and life becomes boring.

So try to… ok, what do you think the two colors in the below graph represent? Don't look at the legend.

Bonus, what do you think the data is telling you? Don't scroll, think for just five seconds.

I my first thought was how come only 29 percent of the organizations have more than one person! That is bad.

Wait. That did not make sense.

I went back to read the question. Then the graph. Then the legend. Then back to the question. Then the legend.

Problem one is that "red" denotes "good" in this case and "green" represents "bad."

Here's something very, very simple you should understand and slavishly follow: Red is bad and Green is good. Always. Don't try to be cute. People will instinctively think that. We have been patterned that way. So show "good" in green and "bad" in red. It will communicate your point faster.

Problem two, much worse, and perhaps only for me, was that it was harder than it should be to understand what this data. First stacked bar above: "Yes 71 percent of the organizations Yes, more than one person." Too many yesses.

And what is the 29 percent? If the question is how many people are directly responsible for improving conversion rates and 71 percent have more than one person, then 29 percent are those that have less than one person or no one? Or just less than one person? Unclear (and frustrating).

[Third bar above] And if 62 percent of the people said "Yes we have no one responsible for improving conversion rates," then what does the 38 percent in green mean? Is it: "No, No we have someone responsible for conversion rate improvement?"

This graph actually comes from a source I deeply respect, an organization with really great analysts. But I'm afraid I completely failed to grasp the point. Do you understand it?

Sometimes you just want to skip the graph.

I don't understand the data above so I'm going to make some numbers up, but would a table like the one below have worked much better to communicate the point?

Why do the graph at all?

Okay so sometimes the application of something humorous might not work (I do always try :). But the rest of the table? Effective?

And if you have data for the last two years then perhaps this table is even more valuable…

Much, much better with context. I love context dearly. Amazingly so does your boss.

Or perhaps if you want to show it to very senior executives then maybe the numbers themselves are less than useful. You could go with something like this…

Scroll back up.

Look at the graph.

Now look at the table above.

I'm riding a horse! No, not really. What do you think?

I love graphs as much as all of you. But above all, what I crave is simple and effective communication. I want to make the point as fast as I can so that we can begin the politics and hard work of taking action. That is after all what pays our salary right?

5. Statistical Significance is Your BFF.

Okay I gave this one away with the title. We all (novices and experts) make this mistake all the time.

We create a table like the one below. (Mercifully the segments are calibrated right, hurray!) We create a "heat map" in the table highlighting where the conversion rate is good. We declare Organic to be the winner, Direct is close behind. Then the other two. And we recommend doing more SEO.

What's the problem with that?

None of this data could be significant – as in the fact the numbers seem to be so different might not mean anything. [Looking at July...] It is entirely possible that it is completely immaterial that Direct is 34% and Email is 10%, or that Referral is 7%.

One simple fix (covered in more detail in this post: 4 Not Useful KPI Measurement Techniques ) is to share the raw numbers to see if the percentage is meaningful at all. For example all the data in the Direct row could represent conversions out of 10 visits and all the Referral data could be representing conversions from 1,000,000 visits each month.

The better, much, much better thing to do would be to compute statistical significance to identify which comparison sets we can be confident are different, and in which cases we simply don't have enough confidence.

I have something special for you. I've just uploaded a brand spanking new Statistical Significance Calculator to my old post on that topic. It does 1-tail and 2-tail tests and the even more beloved chi-square test. Download it. Adapt it for your use. Ecstasy will follow.

One of the most common complaints of our Sr. Leaders is that we engage in massive data puking (true!) and never help them identify with any degree of certainty if an action you are recommending will produce results. Well, this is our chance. If you check to see if the results you are seeing are statistically significant, then make recommendations of action knowing that that will produce results you want (all other things held constant).

Remember ecstasy awaits!

Update: Bonus: If you use Google Analytics the always wonderful Michael Whitaker has created something delightful (triggered by our discussion in comments below). A Z-Test calculation that you can embed directly into Google Analytics!

Here is a mini-tutorial on how to use this delightful feature:

1. Visit Michael's blog and drag the bookmarklet into your browser's bookmarks bar. Stats calculator for Google Analytics.

2. Go to any report in Google Analytics and switch to a Goal tab or the Ecommerce tab.

3. Click Z-Test bookmarklet in your bookmarks bar.

4. At the bottom of your GA report table you'll see a new button called Z-test.

5. Check the box next to two dimensions for whom you would like to check statistical significance (apply the Z-test).

6. Press the button at the bottom of the table, Z-test, and boom (!) you have your answer. Green is good, red (lower then 95%) means you need to collect more data before you decide.

The conversion rate between our two main PPC keywords is 1.33% and 1.94%. Is that data statistically significant? Should we go ahead and invest more in Calico Critters (if we are using fixed budgets or there is more inventory)? Let's check…

Why yes of course we can!

Twitter sends 5,546 Visits and has (on a non-ecommerce website) a Goal Conversion Rate of 5.27%. Facebook sadly only sends a fraction of traffic and has a lower conversion rate 4.71%. Stop spending money/time in Facebook based on this data? Deprioritize it at least? Let's check….

No! See how that saved your goat, you were just about to plunk down a million dollars into Twitter! :)

7. Celebrate your new found awesomeness!

This only, currently works for Ecommerce Conversion Rate and Goal Conversion Rate key performance indicators.

For computing significance ("are the two conversion rates different enough that you can confidently take action") on Ecommerce Conversion Rates you can use this with no thought. (Ok always apply some thought!) But for using it to compute significance for Goal Conversion Rate you should be a little more careful. Unlike Ecommerce Conversion Rate, it is possible for a person to have more than one unique Goal Conversion during a visit in Google Analytics. So when you apply the Z-test you'll be comparing "rotten apples to rotten apples," i.e. measuring the same way for all dimensions. In the most ideal scenario you would apply the Z-test to each goal by itself. I still believe it is of value to use the Z-test for Goal Conversion Rates, but be aware of the nuances.

One more important caveat. Z-test / statistical computations are most optimally applied to results of controlled experiments and not to observational data because in the latter there could be other, uncontrolled, variables at play. So this is not "pure" in some sense. But (as I mention below in comments) we are better off being aware of this purity and still using this test because the insight delivered is better than just "eyeballing" the number to figure out when to take action.

Many thanks to Michael for doing this. No more going to excel (at least for GA), we can be a little smarter quicker directly in our web analytics tools. Makes me wonder why web analytics vendors are so enamored with data puking and can't build all this stuff natively to make more of us Analysis Ninjas!

6. There is Such a Thing as Too Little Data!

A variation on the above "simple" mistake.

I know we all get excited about having data, especially if we are new at this. And we get our tables and charts together and we start reporting data and having a lot of fun.

This, dear reader, is very dangerous. You see there is such a thing as too little data.

You don't want to wait until you've collected millions of rows of data to make any decision, but the table on the left is nearly useless. Recommending doubling down on Facebook (as the Analyst did) this early in your evolution would be a profound mistake.

Things can change so much in just a few days (and they will for you!).

So you can't do anything with data like this?

Pretty close.

But what you can do is look at this report to see if places you've invested time in earning links from are sending you traffic (or not). Look for surprises, places you did not invest money, and see why they linked to you. You can get a tiny bit of understanding of your initial marketing strategy.

Do other useful things.

Look at your search keyword reports. Do you see a few people coming on keywords you SEOed the site for? Better still, go into Webmaster Tools and look to see if your site is well indexed. Look at the keywords for which your site is showing up in Google search results. Are they the ones you were expecting?

Even better… spend time with competitive intelligence tools like Compete / Trends for Websites, Insights for Search, Ad Planner and others to seek clues from your competitors and your industry ecosystem. At this stage you can learn a lot more from their data than your data!

We all tend to read too much into data sometimes. A good analyst knows when there's just not much there and volunteers her/his time on helping run a Task Completion Rate survey or creating new/better Inbound Marketing programs. Go get traffic!

7. Pie Charts Are Evil.

Okay maybe not evil. They are useful on rare occasions. See "Enchanting Analysis: Rule 2: Establish Macro Importance" in this post: Mate Custom Reports With Advanced Segments!

But most of the time they are an active hindrance to communicating anything of value.

Examples of horrible pie charts abound. But let me share this really simple one that I am sure you've seen or perhaps created yourself. :)

Take a moment to breathe it into your brain. What do you think?

The 3D effect does not help. Trust me on that.

This set of charts very cleverly hides any available insights because it makes your executive do these operations for every segment of understanding: Look left, find the interesting slice. Commit the color and number to memory. Go right. Find the color and segment and commit the new number to memory. Now subtract the first number from the second. Decide if the result is good or bad.

Repeat five more times.

Remember to remember only the interesting bits.

When the chart was created did you think you were going to torture your executive today? Would it be surprising then that everyone atom in this universe thinks "omg, numbers are so haaaarrrrd!"?

Why torture people who are so critical to your financial well being?

Just use a table (as we did in #4 above).

Much easier, right?

At the very least, you don't have to dart your eyes from left to right all the time and commit numbers to memory to understand what's happening.

And since you the Ninja-in-making are not being paid to just data puke, why even show things that might not be material?

Just go with this…

Would the discussion with your management team be much more focused now? And faster?

Oh and… you've already put so much effort into collecting and analyzing the data. Why not use your intelligence (and the statistical significance calculator) to filter data and just show what's most relevant?

It is easy to make things hard to understand. Working hard to make them easy to understand is what brings glory. Sustained glory.

So do that.

Okay it is your turn now.

What are the simple mistakes that you've learned to avoid? Would you recommend a different strategy to follow for one of the mistakes above? Got a better picture to submit? The mistake that most sets you off in the field of web analytics? How did you learn not to make these mistakes?

Please share your feedback, pictures, complaints, mistakes via comments.

Thanks!

Data Analysis 101: Seven Simple Mistakes That Limit Your Salary is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Dear social web, Let’s try keeping it real.

2011-10-27T23:47:07Z

I hesitate to be drawn into the Klout firing line again but I have had so many requests from the {grow} community to comment on the Klout Meltdown this week that I guess I need to respond. At the risk of adding to Klout weariness, here are a few observations.

My Klout score dropped from 82 to 64. Who cares? My wife and kids still love me.
Klout’s biggest competitor is PeerIndex. My score on PeerIndex is 64. Funny. They’re the same level now.
Nobody complained that their PeerIndex score was too low.
My friend Elizabeth Reusswig remarked that “60 is the new 80.” It’s true. As I looked at how this affected others, my RELATIVE influence stayed about the same.
Here is the big idea most people miss about Klout. In the long run, Klout doesn’t give a damn if you’re happy with your Klout score or not. You’re not their customer. As long as they deliver the goods to brands we can go ahead and howl all we want.
I admire Klout CEO Joe Fernandez but he created a hole for himself by announcing that the new changes would affect most people’s scores very little. If he just would have said most scores will drop for a re-set in the name of accuracy, it would have gone down a lot better.
Recently Blogger Danny Brown ran some really concerning stuff about Klout and privacy. I agree with him. Klout has got to get on top of that or they’re going to jeopardize their success.
Some people said that this drop in scores “proves that Klout is on the way out.” Ha! That made me chuckle. This week, Klout received another $30 mm in funding and is already valued at $200 mm. Ummm, no, they are not on their way out.
Klout is kicking ass. They are getting tens of billions of hits to their API every month. PeerIndex just hit 100 million hits. Klout is that far ahead.
Disney, American Express, EA Sports and other well-known brands are lined up for Klout programs. Klout said they are nearly “sold out” on Perks for December. You may think Klout is dumb, but these companies don’t. Pay attention.
Another thing that makes me laugh … people are “heart-broken” because they put so much work into their Klout score only to see it drop. Are these the same people who are incensed when they work so hard to be the Foursquare mayor at Dunkin’ Donuts and get replaced? C’mon folks let’s get real. Go make something. Go sell something.
I saw another big line of complaints from people who were afraid a score drop would jeopardize their job prospects. When I wrote about Klout and employment opportunities a few months ago, people thought I was making it up. Apparently some companies believe it is a sign that you are adept at using the social web. Or, it might be a sign you have too much time on your hands. Either way, it’s going mainstream.

Here is the big take-away for me over this brouhaha. Accomplishment doesn’t matter on the social web. Social proof in the way of Twitter followers or a Klout score matter more than success on your job or the great charities you support. It’s painful to acknowledge that, but it’s true. That’s the real reason people are so upset. Klout scores DO MATTER. In an information-dense society, it is an easy short-cut to determine worth.

I cover this phenomenon quite a bit in my upcoming book (There! A Tease! Power on the social web. Hmmm … wouldn’t that make a fascinating book?).

People are literally crying over a fake numeric Internet badge. Yes my friends, we are living in a very, very weird world.

Create and curate great content. Nurture a network of people who care about you. Be kind. The influence will take care of itself.

Now I am going to go play tennis with my wife.

Samsung launches solar powered schools in Africa

2011-10-27T13:18:35Z

This morning, we told you all about the Apple initiative in Zimbabwe, bringing solar powered iPads to schools, and have just come across another technology initiative targeting Africa, this time courtesy of Samsung.

Samsung has just launched its Internet Schools Programme, starting in South Africa, with plans to bring it to Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan, in the coming years. The schools are completely mobile, and like Apple’s initiative, are also solar-powered.

Unveiled at the Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy in Boksburg, South Africa, where the program is being piloted, the first rural attempt will take place in Qunu, in the Eastern Cape.

Over the next 5 years, the company is aiming to cater to 2.5 million students in remote and rural areas with limited access to electricity. According to Samsung, less than 25% of rural areas in Africa have constant access to electricity.

According to the CSR Africa Daily, the portable schools, built to withstand all kinds of weather, are made using 40-foot shipping containers, with rubber solar panels, which can power the classroom for up to 9 hours a day.

Each classroom is equipped with a 50″ Samsung Interactive Whiteboard, printers, solar powered netbooks and Galaxy Tabs, and can accommodate up to 21 students. The schools also come with a refrigerator, a file server with access to the South African school curriculum, a router, Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS), video camera and wi-fi camera, making it easy to monitor, communicate with and provide information to the schools.

Speaking about the initiative, KK Park, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics Africa said:

“Our goal was to create an environment that would facilitate learning for whole communities in remote areas that otherwise don’t have access to education tools or internet connectivity.”

Apple building solar farm for data center

2011-10-26T01:25:34Z

Apple has been laying plans for a solar farm next to its massive data center in Maiden, North Carolina, according to The Charlotte Observer. The solar project — dubbed Project Dolphin Solar Farm — will reportedly be built on 171 acres of land across the street from Apple’s planned $1 billion data center, which had the code name Project Dolphin, but is now being called iDataCenter, and will likely partly serve the Apple’s cloud-based service iCloud.

The report provides few details, and leaves us wondering about the size of the solar farm, the companies that will build the solar project, and how much Apple is spending on the project (or the price at which Apple is buying the clean electricity). Solar farms that have been built next to data centers in the past commonly are relatively small and can only power a small portion of data center’s power needs.

While Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others have been rather vocal about their interest in clean power and greener data centers, this is one of the first times I’ve heard about Apple showing any interest in providing its data centers with clean power. In fact Greenpeace estimated that Apple only sourced 6 percent of the power for its data centers from clean power (the worst on Greenpeace’s list), and gave Apple a straight “F’ for its decisions to build its data centers in areas with little clean power.

North Carolina has one of the dirtiest electrical grids in the country, with 61 percent of the power coming from coal, and 31 percent from nuclear. It also has some of the cheapest power, which is likely why Apple decided to build its data center there.

Greenpeace was so harsh on Apple because Internet companies, with their strong consumer brands and significant balance sheets, have an opportunity to have a big effect on how utilities source their electricity. If a company like Google or Apple ask for clean energy from utilities — or even build their own clean power farms — then the web companies can go a long way towards providing both leadership for the industry and also for reducing their sizable energy footprints.

Building more energy efficient data centers and finding cleaner sources of power for data centers, has suddenly become an important issue, as more and more web services have been moving to the cloud, and hyper-connected, always-on devices, have emerged as the norm. iCloud is Apple’s big foray into cloud-based music and photos. Apple has two data centers planned for the Maiden, North Carolina site, and I’m not sure which one the solar farm will contribute power to.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Local Recommendations App Alfred Now Does Group Recommendations

2011-10-26T13:00:14Z

Clever Sense’s local recommendations app Alfred was already doing a great job suggesting restaurants, coffee shops, bars and nightclubs using its artificial intelligence-based system. But today, it’s going to do something even more extraordinary - it will make suggestions based on who you’re with. This new feature, rolling out today through an app update in iTunes, will combine your personal likes and interests with those of your friends in order to suggest places you will all agree on.

In case you’re not familiar with what Alfred does, check out Jason’s earlier review here and his deep dive into its tech here. Simply put, Alfred is a smart, algorithmically-based recommendations system that understands what you like using something called model-based learning. This system lets Alfred build sophisticated, but highly personalized, recommendations.

To generate its suggestions, Alfred sorts through hundreds of attributes associated with a given user. According to CEO Babak Pahlavan, each user has, on average, 200 of these “tags” that help Alfred understand a person’s individual interests. And this is in addition to an average of 24 explicit “likes” on Alfred itself. When combining and comparing these tags from one user with another, you’re now talking about thousands of data points Alfred has to consider. The breakthrough here is that Alfred can do exactly this, even for groups larger than two, with minimal impact to the performance of its recommendations engine.

In other words, Alfred just got a lot smarter but it didn’t slow down in doing so.

The group recommendations feature, however, only works if your friends are also Alfred users. To encourage your friends to try the app, so you both can use the new feature, the app now suggests you send them a text or email invite.

In the future, Alfred will begin to surface recommendations for other categories of businesses, but in the near-term, it’s working towards using its technology for deal recommendations. Instead of us being spammed with emails from daily deal providers like Groupon and LivingSocial, Alfred will use its knowledge of your personal interests to recommend which deals it knows you’ll like.

Pahlavan says this deal curation feature is on track to arrive by year-end. The company is also working on a Web-based and Android version of its system.

The updated app will roll out to iTunes users sometime today.

Crunchbase

CLEVER SENSE

Company: Clever Sense

Website: thecleversense.com

Launch Date: November 4, 2008

Funding: $1M

The Clever Sense Platform makes sense of the real world by harvesting and sifting through the vast amount of information available on the Web. The platform is designed to connect the online world with the offline world: delivering the right information to the users in the right context (right time, right place, right intent). At the heart of the Clever Sense Platform is the Serendipity Engine: a personalized context-aware right-time discovery engine. The Serendipity Engine adds a layer of real-time...

Learn more

Axe Celebrates Halloween With 'Hot Girl vs. Zombie'

2011-10-26T09:50:10Z

Here is Axe's gift to you this Halloween—a 1:20 horror spot featuring one of the genre's classic matchups: hot girl vs. zombie. It's adequately executed, although the zombie could look better. It also extends the brand promise to ludicrous new heights—that literally anyone can get some action if they wear Axe. Via Brainstorm9.

Google fait monter les enchères sur le front de la musique

2011-10-25T07:00:00Z

25/10/11 | Musique

[ACTUALITÉ] YouTube, la plateforme leader d’hébergement et de streaming vidéo, lance un service de téléchargement de musique, de vente de tickets de concert et de merchandising. Avec ces nouveaux services, Google peaufine sa stratégie dans le secteur de la musique.

Visual Storytelling: New Language for the Information Age

2011-10-25T13:00:01Z

We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is. We’re extracting meaning from our minds and our own lives.”

These words of wisdom come from legendary inventor and futurist George Dyson, who in a recent interview contemplated the growing disconnect between information and meaning in the age of data overload. Over the past several years, our quest to extract meaning from information has taken us more and more towards the realm of visual storytelling — we’ve used data visualization to reveal hidden patterns about the world, employed animation in engaging kids with important issues, and let infographics distill human emotion. In fact, our very brains are wired for the visual over the textual by way of the pictorial superiority effect.

Visual Storytelling: Inspiring a New Visual Language, from the fine folks at Gestalten, gathers the most compelling work by a new generation of designers, illustrators, graphic editors, and data journalists tackling the grand sensemaking challenge of our time by pushing forward the evolving visual vocabulary of storytelling.

Vahram Muratyan: Paris vs. New York: L’obsession

Peter Ørntoft: Information Graphics in Context, a project illustrating a ranked list of social concerns in Denmark

Gregory Ferembach: The Movies Flowcharts

Carl Kleiner's 'Homemade Is Best' IKEA cookbook

Part of the 'Oceans' campaign for Greenpeace, showing the devastating effects of FADs (fish aggregation devices) used in commercial tuna fishing

An infographic showing the details that go into a Formula 1 event, from traveling furniture to vodka to spare engines

Jan Schwochow, Katharina Stipp, David Weinberg: A graphic comparing highway speed limits in countries around the world and showing the number of traffic deaths per 100,000 inhabitants

Road Map of the Eye, part of Katja Günther's Cartographic project visualizing information by mapping relevant elements

Orenzo Petrantoni: Piece was commissioned by the Wall Street Journal for an article about the countries, themes, and characters involved in the Gulf crisis

Alexandra Muresan: The Paper Pie Chart; various paper products such as tissue, cardboard, writing paper, and newsprint are used in corresponding amounts to make a pie chart representing the breakdown of paper production in the united states in 2000

From hand-drawn diagrams to sophisticated data visualization, by way of graphic design, illustration, photography, and information architecture, this magnificent volume of contemporary and experimental visual storytelling explores what it means to convey information with equal parts clarity and creativity, speaking with remarkable aesthetic eloquence about the things that matter in the world today.

Wataro Yoshida: Composition of Mammals, a fictional exhibition using fictional places to study the anatomy of mammals with displays of taxidermy and skulls and accompanying informational posters about the complex structure of each mammal's body

Lucas Van Vuuren: Lunch, a thorough decision tree

David Garcia Studio: MAP 001 Antarctica, part of MAP (Manual of architectural Possibilities), a publication that aims to merge science and research with architectural design

David Garcia Studio: MAP 002 Quarantine

Stunning, ambitious, and thoughtfully curated, Visual Storytelling is part high-concept dictionary for a language of increasingly critical importance, part priceless time-capsule of bleeding-edge creativity from the Golden Age of information overload, the era we call home.

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Job Search Engine SimplyHired Integrates With Viadeo

2011-10-24T17:41:56Z

Job search engine SimplyHired.com, which aggregates jobs listing across the Web, is now adding international professional social network Viadeo to its supported services. The new integration will allow users to see which of their business contacts work at the companies surfaced by job searches on SimplyHired’s website.

SimplyHired previously added support for Facebook and LinkedIn to do the same.

Viadeo is not as commonly known here in the U.S. as its rival LinkedIn, but it has a fairly good-sized user base of 35 million members worldwide. (In comparison, LinkedIn now reports having 120 million users.) However, Viadeo reached 30 million users back in May 2010, which means that it has grown by just 5 million in the months since. Considering that the company has been targeting highly populated Asian countries like India and China, the opportunity for additional growth is still abundant.

In May of this year, Viadeo put plans for its IPO on hold so it could focus on growing its core business. At the time, its Chief Executive Dan Serfaty said it might revisit the question of going public in about 18 to 24 months.

The new Viadeo integration goes live on SimplyHired.com in 12 countries today, including Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. U.S. users, though, will not have the option.

Apple’s Television project reportedly headed up by Jeff Robbin, creator of iTunes

2011-10-24T23:33:19Z

Apple’s rumored project to build a prototype television that woud offer a cohesive internet-connected TV experience with iCloud features is reportedly being headed up by Jeff Robbin, reports Bloomberg.

Robbin is the engineer who is responsible for building iTunes out of the bits and pieces of SoundJam MP, which Apple purchased in 2000 to aid it in developing a jukebox software to allow users to purchase legal music and, eventually, load it onto their iPods.

Three sources have told the publication that Robbin, who also had a hand in the iTunes media store and iPod, is guiding the project internally at Apple.

According to a Fortune report from earlier today, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, a longtime proponent of the Apple television theory, has used Jobs’ words in the bio to bolster his research that Apple has invested in LCD panel manufacturing facilities in China and that other components are ‘in the works’.

The talk of an Apple television product has been sparked by the fact that Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he had figured out how to produce an interface for a TV that would allow it to succeed in the living room. His words to Isaacson were “I’ve cracked it. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine.”

Hopefully whatever interface this eventual TV has, it’s better than the one in iTunes, which isn’t all that hot.

How do you make your content go viral — offline?

2011-10-25T06:02:51Z

You’re probably stressed.

It’s likely that you (and your customer contacts) are doing the job that used to be done by three people. The information density of our world is overwhelming. Budgets and resources have been slashed.

It seems that everything is working against our ability to connect with customers and share information that could influence a purchasing decision and close a deal!

On the Internet side of the business, a new model for personal power and influence has emerged. Enabled by widespread access to high-speed Internet and free publishing tools like blogging and Facebook, a new generation of influencers has emerged who have created a niche by being able to create compelling content and move it through an engaged network.

So now I want to take this idea a step further and push this thinking a new way. If you have been immersed in the social web for awhile, this idea of influence probably makes sense. But how do we apply this same model to the OFFLINE world?

How do we establish power and influence by creating compelling content and moving it through a HUMAN network instead of a digital one?

For example, success in sales often depends on your ability to tell the story of your company and the benefits of your product. But that task is more difficult than ever. The competition is fierce, and your procurement contacts have less and less time to learn about what you do … let alone understand it.

So how can we use Web 2.0 communication tools to break through the clutter and move our marketing message virally through Procurement, through corporate gatekeepers, and into the hearts and minds of executive decision-makers?

Here are a few lessons from moving content online that might help move it offline too:

Infographics – While we might be weary of infographics, wouldn’t that be an interesting way to cut through the clutter with a busy purchasing manager? Instead of giving them a glossy brochure or power point presentation, why not a one-page, cleverly-designed picture of your business?

Aggregate content – When I interview customers during my market research activities, I always ask them what they hate about their jobs. I look for activities that my client might be able to take on for them to make them indispensable. The answer usually leads back to something about stress and a lack of time to get things done. How can you use Web 2.0 utilities to help customers solve problems and save time? Can you aggregate industry content in a helpful way so that a message from your company cuts through the clutter once a week?

Make ‘em say wow – Let’s face it. Most company corporate communications are bland. They’re little more than glossy, buzz-laden press releases. Yet the communications that really stand out and get shared ENTERTAIN people! Do you remember the day last year when the Google logo was a little PacMan game? If you saw it, I’ll bet you remember it, played it, and probably shared it. It was a little thing that helped them stand out and make people go “wow!” If you have ever seen an example of a corporate marketing communications that makes you go “wow” I’d like to see it. Rare exceptions … but why?

Visual selling — I don’t know what you call this technique, but many magazines are now doing lists where you can feature the “top 10 of something” by flipping through a picture or graphic and a small amount of text. An example from Inc. is here. This is an effective communincation format when you want to summarize the highlights, yet I have never seen it used out side of this magazine format. Sort of a Flipbook/infogrpahic combination.

I don’t have all the answers, but what do you think about the idea? How can we apply online marketing principles and best practices to the offline world to get to decision makers?

Dropbox’s Mobile API Gets A Security Boost (And Is Now Mobile Web-Friendly)

2011-10-21T20:44:27Z

Red-hot startup Dropbox — you know, the file syncing service that just raised $250 million at a $4 billion valuation — has announced something this week that’s getting slightly less attention than its massive funding round, but is exciting all the same: the company has released an improved version of its mobile APIs, making the service better both in native apps and mobile web apps alike.

Dropbox first launched its mobile API in May 2010, and it’s been implemented in loads of mobile app since then. But it’s had a few issues that have been remedied with the new version of the API.

For one, it’s now adding support for ‘app folders’. Prior to this update, if you wanted to let a third-party app hook into your Dropbox account, you’d be giving it access to your entire account — which didn’t necessarily make sense for, say, a camera app. Now apps will be able to associate themselves with a single folder (which the user can move and rename as they’d like), without having to hand over the keys to the kingdom.

Likewise, security has now been beefed up using an authentication system that doesn’t require you to enter your credentials within a third party app itself. Instead, when you go to authenticate with an app, you’ll be swapped over to either the mobile web version of Dropbox or your native Dropbox app (Facebook and some other services use a similar mechanism).

The API also gives third party applications access to the versioning/revision system that Dropbox uses, which’ll let users jump back to previous versions of files and undelete them.

Crunchbase

DROPBOX

Company: Dropbox

Website: dropbox.com

Funding: $257M

Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Frustrated by working from multiple computers, Drew was inspired to create a service that would let people bring all their files anywhere, with no need to email around attachments. Drew created a demo of Dropbox and showed it to fellow MIT student Arash Ferdowsi, who dropped out with only one semester left to help make Dropbox a reality. Guiding their decisions was a relentless focus on crafting a...

Learn more

iOS developers said to earn more from app sales than Google makes from its mobile business

2011-10-21T20:25:27Z

Developers who build and sell apps for Apple’s iOS platform will collectively earn more money over the next year than Google will earn from its entire mobile business. Following Google’s third-quarter earnings report last week, David Barnard, founder of App Cubby, posted an interesting observation on his company’s blog. Google reported a run rate of $2.5 billion for its mobile ad revenue based on third-quarter earnings, up from $1 billion a year earlier. While that growth is impressive, Barnard noted that Apple paid developers about $500 million during the 89 days between July 7th and October 4th for a run rate of $2 billion. Add to that the money third-party ad networks like Milennial Media and Admob pay out to iOS developers over the course of a year, and “the iOS developer run rate is likely higher, maybe even significantly higher, than Google’s mobile run rate.”

Read

Publishers: What are you doing while Amazon eats your lunch?

2011-10-17T16:13:32Z

Amazon started out as a book retailer, a company that was arguably a friend to book publishers, since it expanded the market for many of their books. But increasingly, the web giant is becoming a competitor to those traditional publishers, as the New York Times details in a recent article and as we have noted a number of times. Just as it did with book retailing, Amazon has its sights set on lowering the barriers between authors and readers, both via the Kindle and through its own publishing deals — and in many cases, the biggest barrier between authors and readers is a traditional publisher. Until that changes, Amazon will continue to win.

Although some are just beginning to see the company as a publishing competitor, Amazon has been marshalling its forces for some time now. As GigaOM Pro analyst Mike Wolf has described in a number of posts, the company has been putting together the pieces of a “book industry in a box” for the better part of a year — launching new imprints of its own for various different genres, including one devoted to popular thrillers. Then in May, it hired publishing-industry veteran Larry Kirshbaum, former CEO of the Time Warner Book Group, and opened a New York office.

In the months since then, Amazon has signed deals with a number of prominent authors, including one with popular writer Tim Ferriss, whose books — such as The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body — have sold millions of copies. The terms of the deal with Ferriss weren’t released, but the author said “The opportunity to partner with a technology company that is embracing publishing is very different than partnering with a publisher embracing technology.” Amazon also signed thriller writer Barry Eisler, who gained attention earlier this year when he turned down a $500,000 two-book deal with a traditional publishing house and said he planned to self-publish instead.

It’s not just about the money

Why are authors signing these kinds of deals? In some cases it could be about the money (a deal with former TV star Penny Marshall was reportedly for $800,000 according to the New York Times), but in many cases it seems to be mostly about getting past some of the legacy processes that are typical with traditional publishers, and expanding the potential market for a book. The core of the problem confronting the industry is summed up in a comment by Amazon executive Russell Grandinetii in the NYT piece, in which he says:

The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader. Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.

If you look at the comments made by Barry Eisler about why he decided to take a deal with Amazon instead of self-publishing, he says virtually nothing about the money, or about other factors that traditional publishers are used to focusing on. It’s the other terms of the deal that he was swayed by: for example, the fact that Amazon was going to come out with an e-book version within a matter of days after the book was finished, and then follow that quickly with a paperback — and that both were going to be sold at a cheaper price, instead of the traditional industry’s approach of trying to charge print prices for electronic books.

What I care about is readers, because without readers I can’t make a living [and] I want people to read a lot. To that end, if I can find a way to get readers books that cost less and are delivered better and faster, I want that.

Just part of a wave of disruption

And as we’ve described before, Amazon signing deals to publish authors is just part of the bigger wave of disruption that is sweeping through the industry: self-publishing via the Kindle is becoming a larger and larger phenomenon, thanks in part to advocates such as JA Konrath and the kind of success that writers like Amanda Hocking have had by publishing their own books. Authors such as John Locke have shown that selling a million copies of a self-published book is not only possible but entirely feasible — and the fact that he and other writers who do so get to keep 70 percent of the proceeds is yet another wakeup call for the traditional industry.

And what kind of response have mainstream publishers had to all of this? Most have just continued to offer the old deals they are used to — deals that serve the publisher’s needs, but not necessarily those of the author. And in some cases, they have tried to punish authors who try to meet those needs themselves: the NYT piece describes how Hawaiian writer Kiana Davenport, who signed a book deal with Penguin last year, was threatened by the publisher after she packaged some of her short stories into a Kindle e-book. Penguin wanted all copies of the book removed from the internet; when the author refused, the publisher cancelled the deal and is now suing her for breach of contract.

Here’s a hint for book publishers: take a lesson from the music industry, and don’t spend all your time suing people for misusing what you believe is your content — think instead about why they are doing this, and what it says about how your business is changing, and then try to adapt to that. Amazon is giving authors what they want, and as long as it continues to do so, you will be at a disadvantage. Wake up and smell the disruption.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Umberto Salvagnin and Marcus Hansson

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Le tweet de l’emploi : chercher un job sur Twitter

2011-10-17T12:05:27Z

J’ai vu La Gueule de l’Emploi et j’en ai opportunément imité le titre, mais je ne vais pas me plaindre et vous faire croire que mon expérience est traumatisante comme celle des candidats passés à la moulinette par les recruteurs de RST Conseil. J’ai la chance de bosser en freelance et de pouvoir faire un peu le difficile. Chercher un job sur Twitter, c’est pas stressant, c’est juste relou.

Trouver le bon tweet

Créez vous une recherche sur “emploi”, “poste”, “CDI” et le nom de votre job, et consultez la régulièrement. Ajoutez les quatre ou cinq autres façons dont on peut désigner ce que vous faites (digital web strategist, social project manager, chef de planning 2.0… ) Prenez conscience qu’on parle beaucoup trop de votre job dans toutes les langues du monde et, sauf si vous êtes intéressés par un job au Pérou, laissez tomber. A moins que votre job n’ait un intitulé en français, auquel cas c’est l’effet inverse : vous n’avez aucun résultat, parce que sur Twitter, plus personne ne veut embaucher quelqu’un qui fait un de ces vieux boulot qu’on désigne encore en français.

Contentez vous alors de trouvez les quelques comptes qui retweetent toutes les annonces dans votre domaine, et faites savoir à tous vos followers que s’ils voient passer une annonce pour vous, vous leur donnerez du Klout contre un petit DM.

Normalement vous devriez finir par voir passer plusieurs tweets-annonces par jour. Vous pouvez les classer en deux camps : d’abord il y a celles qui renvoient vers une annonce plus descriptive sur bale.fr, Monster, etc… A partir de là, on est dans le monde normal du marché du travail, et c’est pas marrant. Les annonces qui nous intéressent, ce sont celles qui ressemblent à ça : “Cherche community manager #CM. DM if intéressé. Merci de RT“.

Ca ne dit pas grand chose sur le job, mais justement, quand ça en dit trop, vous découvrirez neuf fois sur dix que si on a ressenti le besoin de rendre l’annonce intéressante, c’est que le “poste” est un stage non rémunéré.

Postuler pour un job inconnu

Vous allez donc probablement envoyer un CV et une lettre de motivation en connaissant au mieux le nom de l’employeur et l’intitulé du poste. Recherchent-ils quelqu’un de plutôt junior ou senior ? Quelqu’un qui sait parler anglais, qui est prêt à aller travailler tous les jours dans les Yvelines, qui connaît bien le marché du steack haché ou qui sait tricoter ?

Peu importe : le recruteur présume toujours que vous voulez de son job, quelles que soient les conditions. Et quand vous le rencontrez trois semaines plus tard, il se plaindra que le processus a été long parce qu’il a reçu “énormément de candidatures”.

Du coup, on découvre vraiment le poste en entretien, ce qui peut amener à des dialogues très sympas. “Je ne peux pas vous dire le nom du client ni où ils sont, mais rassurez vous, c’est à peine à une heure de voiture de chez vous. Vous avez le permis bien sûr ?”. “En fait, l’intitulé du job c’est “community manager” mais il faudra surtout répondre aux mails et faire du café”. Et le grand classique :

- Quelles sont vos prétentions salariales ?

- 50 Kinder Maxi par mois.

- Nous avons alloué 2 Schoko Bons au poste. Je peux peut-être convaincre la direction de monter à 2,5.

Les réseaux sociaux, c’est révolutionnaire.

Tout ça aurait pu être évité avec une annonce de plus que 140 caractères, mais c’est encore très normal. Il y a des employeurs, par contre, qui poussent le “recrutement par les réseaux sociaux” un peu plus loin, parce que les réseaux sociaux, c’est “révolutionnaire”.

La semaine dernière, un ami me fait suivre un tweet d’e-loue, start up française de location communautaire, qui recherche un community manager. Je ne sais rien de plus sur eux, alors je les contacte au cas où, c’est toujours marrant de rencontrer des start up. Leur réponse m’étonne, puisqu’en plus de mon CV ils me demandent “un article qui pourrait figurer sur notre blog”. Pourquoi pas. Sauf que je découvre, sur leur blog, qu’ils viennent de lancer le “premier concours CCM : un CDI pour un community manager“.

Le principe du concours : les billets “exemple” sont publiés, et la “communauté” est censée donner son avis et voter pour leur préféré. A travers un module de commentaire qui ne marche pas, au passage. Donc en gros, on est censé faire un billet et surtout un “buzz’ autour de leur site gratuitement pour un poste dont ne sait ni en quoi il consiste (en demandant poliment j’ai juste obtenu une annonce un peu vague sur Remix Jobs) ni combien il serait payé.

Et ils ne sont pas les seuls à organiser ce type de concours, la version cheap des concours “best job in the world”, sauf que là il y a un vrai job à la clé. Bonne chance pour eux s’ils se retrouvent au bout du compte avec comme “community manager” celui qui aura su créer le plus de faux comptes Facebook avec lesquels voter.

Bonne recherche !

Apple may launch ‘iPad mini’ in early 2012 to fend off Kindle Fire

2011-10-12T13:40:43Z

Apple may be working on a new entry-level tablet scheduled to launch early next year. In a note to investors on Wednesday, Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White recounted numerous meetings with technology supply chain companies at a trade show in China this week. White noted a general ominous environment, with the majority of the companies he met with commenting on weakening demand across the industry. “The whole world is shrinking,” one company representative told the analyst. Read on for more.

White’s meetings with Apple suppliers has turned up an interesting note, however. “Our research is pointing to the unveiling of a lower priced iPad in the first few months of 2012 that is aimed at expanding the company’s market potential by tapping into a more price sensitive consumer segment,” the analyst wrote. “Essentially, this ‘iPad mini’ will also fend off the recently announced Amazon (AMZN, $235.48, NR) Kindle Fire that addresses the low-end tablet market with a $199 price tag but could lead to bigger tablet ambitions from the online retailer in the future.”

White continued, noting that the “mini” moniker refers to the tablet’s lower price and not necessarily a smaller screen size. “We believe this lower priced iPad could be priced in the mid-to-high-$200 range,” White said. “We expect this will be followed by a much more powerful, feature rich standard-priced iPad 3 in 2Q12.”

White reiterated a Buy rating on Apple stock with a 12-month price target of $666.

foursquare announces social location feature called ‘Radar’ for iOS5

2011-10-12T16:24:01Z

In a blog post today, location-based app foursquare (yes, intentionally no capital F apparently) announced a new feature specifically for iOS5 called ‘Radar’.

A lot of app makers are creating new features that take advantage of all of Apple’s new iOS5 functionality, and foursquare was quick out of the gates to announce its own. The update for foursquare is not on the Apple App Store yet, as we’re sure that the company is inundated with new app updates for today’s iOS5 public launch.

The company said this about Radar:

The initial vision for foursquare centered around one question: can we build something to help make the world easier to use. Until now, we’ve focused around sharing what you’re doing and building expertise, with features like checking in, tips and recommendations. Today, we’re super excited by what some of iOS 5′s newest features allow us to do. Specifically, say hi to foursquare’s ‘Radar,’ a huge step in the evolution of the foursquare vision.

Now, if you follow a list, like the 101 Best Dishes of 2011, foursquare will let you know when you’re next to one. Or you save that yoga studio to your To-Do List (because you really want to try it); we can remind you when you’re close. Or, better yet, if you’re driving home and three of your friends are getting together nearby, we’ll tell you so you can meet up. The app doesn’t even have to be open, it just works. We call it foursquare Radar, because it finds things nearby that you normally wouldn’t know about.

Telling you that you’re close to a location is a great thing for users of the app, but more importantly it’s a perfect way for merchants to gain exposure about their offerings and deals. For example, if you’re at dinner, you can be notified that a few of your friends are at a near-by bar for a night-cap. This type of functionality is something companies have tried to get right for a long time. foursquare has owned the check-in market, despite Facebook’s launch of its “Places” offering.

On a side note, the company has also changed a color that we’re familiar with. The familiar purple in the app and icon has been changed to green.

Real-time deals and opportunities are important because people increasingly have their smart phones with them at all times. The only issue about location services that are “always on” is that it tends to use up more of a smartphone’s battery, especially the iPhone 4 – then there’s the privacy issue for people who have forgotten. The iPhone 4S could have better standby time, but we won’t know for sure until we have one in our hands. With Radar, foursquare is primed to control real-time location opportunities for users.

Building A Company vs Building A Business

2011-10-09T14:36:20Z

Matt Blumberg, CEO of our portfolio company Return Path, wrote an interesting post last week about the differences between building a company and building a business.

I've been an investor and board member of Return Path for over a decade and I've witnessed the company fail with its first product/business and then through a series of acquisitions build a very strong business and company. Matt and his team built the company first then the business, which is backwards, but it worked.

Matt is right that most of our portfolio companies build the product first, then the business, then the company. And building a company is often difficult for founders because they are so focused on the product.

Roelof Botha, a leading VC with Sequoia, once gave me a great piece of advice in helping founders start to focus on company building. He said founders should think of their company as a product and build it and shape it with the same passion and care. I've taken that to heart and passed it on a few times.

No matter how or when you do it, building a company is a required step to sustainability. Positive cash flow is not enough to keep the company independent and solvent. You need a culture, systems, and processes to keep everyone happy and functioning well. That is company building and Matt and his team are among the best I've seen at it.

Please. Stop making your company blog suck.

2011-10-10T00:43:52Z

Mark Schaefer on Blogging

Let’s face it. Company blogs suck. They just do, at least most of the time.

But they don’t have to and I’m on a mission to bring the world my message of blog anti-suckology. I’ve been giving a lot of presentations lately and this has been one of my most popular!

I haven’t been using Slideshare too much but thought you would enjoy this particular presentation, which I have embedded above. Highlights include:

A few stats on blogs
Ten reasons to blog, even if nobody reads it.
New directions in corporate blogging.
Ten super huge ideas to make your blog less sucky.

My presentations are very funny, lively and conversational so I know some of the slides might seem cryptic since I don’t read off the slides, but I think you’ll get the gist of it.

By the way, I don’t do much self-promotion, but of course I’m available as a corporate trainer or speaker for your next conference, sales meeting, or event. I can do anything from an hour to a full day. In addition to blogging, some of my favorite speaking topics include:

Social media strategy executive overviews
Social media for non-profits
Social media for governmental organizations
Social media for economic development
Business networking through the social web
The Tao of Twitter
Power and Influence on the social web
Business blogging
The three things all small businesses should know about social media
Digital Distance – The future of social media and customer engagement

Does it make sense to share more slide presentations from my speeches? Or, are you too busy to really look through something like this? Be honest, I can take it!