Torrent Articles

Facebook Might Lose 4/5 of All Users in 3 Years

2014-01-31T02:06:00.000-08:00

According to the researchers at Princeton University, the most popular social network in the world, Facebook, has spread like smoke, but now people slowly become immune to its attractions. The predictions are that the platform will be largely abandoned by 2017.

The expectations of Facebook’s impending doom build on comparing the growth curve of epidemics to those of online social networks. The researchers believe that, like bubonic plague, Facebook may also eventually die out.

Facebook celebrates its 10th birthday this week and has survived longer than its many rivals like Myspace and Bebo. However, the Princeton forecast states that the network will lose 80% of its user base within the next several years.

The researchers have based their prediction on the number of times the word “Facebook” was typed into Google search. According to Google Trends charts, Facebook searches peaked a year ago and have since been slowing down. The researchers explained that ideas, just like diseases, have been spreading infectiously between people before dying out one day. This model is successfully described with epidemiological models and can be applied to online social network dynamics. The matter is that ideas are spread between people who share ideas with each other, but once idea manifesters lose interest with it and no longer manifest the idea, they get “immune”.

Four months ago, Facebook reported almost 1.2 billion monthly active users, and the company is due to update investors on its traffic numbers soon. Although desktop traffic to the service is reported to be falling, it can be explained by the fact that people now mostly access the network via their mobile phones.

The researchers used a “SIR” (susceptible, infected, recovered) model of disease for their study. The latter creates equations to map the spread and recovery of epidemics. Different equations against the lifespan of Myspace were tested before being applied to Facebook. The former network was created in 2003 and reached its peak in 2007 with 300 million registered users, but fell out of use by 2011. Acquired by News Corp for $580 million, Myspace soon signed a $900 million deal with Google and was once valued at $12 billion. However, in the end it was sold by News Corp for as little as $35 million.

Well, the 870 million users who access Facebook via their mobile phones can easily explain the drop in Google searches – they don’t have to type the word Facebook into Google to log on, because they have mobile apps now. Still, Facebook has officially admitted that during the previous 3 months they did see a decrease in daily users, especially among younger teens. However, the company’s investors are quite happy with Facebook’s share price, which reached record highs this month, valuing the social network at $142 billion.

UK Will Block Payments to Sites Failing to Restrict Children Access to Porn

2013-10-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

It seems that UK banks and credit card companies will be asked to hold back cash from customers of sites hosting explicit content if they fail to implement restrictions to stop children from accessing it.

Financial entities and the video services regulator are going to meet in October to finalize the deal. Media reports also reveal that a voluntary deal might be agreed with credit card firms. It seems that government would be prepared to consider legislation, if necessary.

While some online services require users to verify their age, most of them offer free and unrestricted access to any visitors. This is why the authority regulating British websites hosting videos decided to act against services operating in this way. In the beginning of 2013, regulator Ofcom fined Playboy £100,000 for failing to protect kids from porn content. A couple of websites owned by Playboy allowed everyone to access explicit content without having acceptable controls in place to check that users are adults. Ofcom claimed that Playboy’s failure to protect kids from potentially accessing adult content was serious, repeated and reckless.

The UK government supports the work that the watchdog has undertaken, and it will explore with local financial organizations and credit card companies the possibility to decline processing payments to websites operating outside the EU that allow British kids to view porn content.

The authorities also support efforts to encourage the Internet industry to design new effective ways of verifying the age of visitors. In the meanwhile, it wouldn’t be appropriate to block outright all online services providing free hardcore porn because they host legitimate content for adults to view.

So, the meeting is scheduled to October with the UK Cards Association, the British Bankers Association, the Payments Council and the leading credit card companies. It is already known that the financial services companies had provided a “very positive response” to the proposal.

As you remember, the UK Prime Minister has suggested a new initiative earlier in 2013 aimed at getting ISPs to put filters in place. Online giants including Google and Yahoo are set to be called back to Downing Street in October to update the Prime Minister on the progress on such measures.

Internet Connections to Sudan Cut off

2013-10-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

All online connections to Sudan were abruptly cut off after riots erupted over the ending of fuel subsidies. The government seems to make the move in order to prevent protesters from using social media to organize riots. Although the real reasons are unclear, the Internet monitoring firms point out that it was either a coincidental catastrophic failure of all three independent ISPs and their connections out of Sudan (as well as a terrestrial link into Egypt) or some centrally directed, government action.

In most cases of a failure of this kind which is not governmentally directed (for example, a power failure or a cut cable), ISPs switch to their satellite backups. However, this time it didn’t happen. It was a total shutdown, as happened earlier in Egypt.

Cutting off Internet is normally used by some governments in Middle Eastern countries in order to regain control amid heated protests. As you now, the now-defunct Mubarak regime in Egypt and the Assad regime in Syria have severed online links in attempt to restrict protests. Indeed, cutting international links makes it difficult to upload videos of protests to YouTube, among other things.

The industry observers confirmed that Sudan’s Internet connectivity abruptly dropped to zero. According to media reports, it broke out after the local government removed fuel subsidies, with a number of petrol stations and a university building set on fire. In the meantime, security forces fired teargas to disperse protesters who have demonstrated and set fire to a police station in Khartoum.

Since the protests have gone on for a few days after the country’s Council of Ministers decided to stop the subsidies, the price of fuel immediately doubled. The industry experts point out that the cut in subsidies followed the split of South Sudan to form an independent state two years ago. The latter took more of the main oil-producing territory which had previously been part of Sudan. In addition, the International Monetary Fund has previously told Sudan to cut the subsidies, as they consumed over 3/4 of the government’s total tax revenues. As a result, the people have no access to Internet and are in isolation from the world.

Twitter Is Seeking Loan Ahead of Flotation

2013-10-03T14:23:00.001-07:00

The company could float within 2 months and has reportedly entered negotiations with Wall Street banks seeking a loan of up to $1 billion ahead of its IPO. Media reports reveal that the float may take place before the US Thanksgiving holiday on 28 November.

The social network announced its plans to float earlier in September but didn’t disclose its timetable, filing S-1 documents for the initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States. Twitter is not obliged to specify its launch date until 3 weeks before the IPO.

In the meantime, investors value the company, founded 7 years ago by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, at over $10 billion. According to media reports, the loan facility is yet to be finalized but the company is in talks about a credit line of between $500 million and $1 billion. This funding would give the social network extra flexibility to bolster its position ahead of a float with possible acquisitions able to improve its financial ability.

The recent acquisitions of the company include MoPub, a mobile advertising network, and Trendrr. The latter tracks “second screen” communities chatting during TV shows. In addition, financing ahead of a public flotation can enable Twitter avoid having to return to the capital markets to finance international expansions following a stock market launch. This move follows a well-worn route of other organizations that have floated. For example, Facebook took out an $8 billion financing package before it launched its IPO (though it didn’t help to succeed), and social games company Zynga raised about $1 billion as well.

Google Will Ditch Cookies

2013-10-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

The search giant has decided to kill cookies and is ready to switch to an anonymous identifier for advertising – AdID. It would replace 3rd-party cookies as the way advertisers track users’ browsing activity for marketing purposes.

The new instrument will allow users to limit advertisement tracking via browser settings. AdID can be reset by the browser every year, and people are able to create a secondary AdID for super secret Internet browsing sessions.

In case Google goes ahead with the plan it could mark a major change in the $120 billion digital advertising industry. The AdID would only be passed to advertisers and advertisement networks which have agreed to basic guidelines. The search giant believes it would give consumers more privacy and control over how they surf the web.

The company is going to show the idea to industry participants, government bodies and consumer groups very soon. Industry observers confirm that lately 3rd-party cookies have been too popular, and many browsers started blocking them. In case Google follows through with its own version of this approach, the users will get more control over how they are tracked on the Internet. At the same time, it will also give Google a lot more power.

How Much is Twitter Worth?

2013-09-30T11:02:00.001-07:00

Twitter has finally made its first step towards an IPO, with its revenues growing at a pace. In the meantime, painful memories of Facebook’s IPO are fading, with the social network finally worth more than its $104 billion float price.

Financial analysts predict that if Twitter comes to market at the end of 2013, its valuation will be nowhere near that claimed by Facebook. According to experts’ estimation, it will be worth somewhere $15 billion. Unlike Facebook, the microblogging platform will IPO while revenue grows in triple digits.

In most cases, companies are valued according to their underlying profit, but Twitter admits it is still loss-making while investing to grow. Since Twitter has filed for a confidential IPO, financial details are unknown to the public, so the experts can only use revenues to measure how much the company will worth. If the float will be conservatively priced at 20 to 30 times revenue, then Twitter will be worth up to $15 billion.

Indeed, the company’s early forays into advertising have been a success, especially on mobile platforms, where much of its traffic comes from. The researchers point out that Twitter’s revenues have almost doubled to $583 million since 2012, and are expected to reach $950 million in 2014.

The company’s userbase consists of 200 million users sending 2 messages a day on average, so Twitter may not have Facebook’s scale but people are on the platform do use it intensely. In the meanwhile, the heady mix of politicians, business leaders, celebrities and journalists dominating the service makes Twitter an important destination for advertisers seeking to influence the influencers.

Talking about digital advertising, Google and Facebook dominate in this area – the former has 1/3 share of global spending, while the latter accounts for 5%. As for Twitter, it ranks 8th with less than 0.5%. However, if you focus on pure mobile advertising, Twitter boasts 2% share and is in the 4th place. Thus far, Twitter shares on the secondary market have been priced at $26 for small lots and $28 for larger lots.

It should be noted that Google floated when demand for technology stocks was weak. The company was forced to lower its offer price from $135 to $85 per just a few days before the float, but the very next day the shares had popped, reaching $100. So, Twitter’s CEO would be wise to opt for a Google pop rather than risk a Facebook-style flop.

Google’s CEO Talks about the Nature of US Surveillance

2013-09-29T06:54:00.001-07:00

Eric Schmidt recently claimed it was time for a public debate about the nature of the NSA’s surveillance activities, while admitting that spying was an undeniable fact of our modern life. Schmidt said there had been spying and surveillance for years, and he wasn't going to pass judgment on that, because it was the nature of the society.

Along with other largest tech firms in the world, Google has been pressing the American government to be more transparent about the surveillance orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). Schmidt pointed out that the search giant has filed legal briefs to force the court to disclose more data.

Eric Schmidt also clarified that his comments were based on the presumption that information disclosed by Edward Snowden was “roughly accurate”. Snowden revealed that the NSA operated a program called PRISM, which internal agency documents claimed offered direct access to the servers of tech giants including Google. However, Google denied this characterization.

Schmidt, who has been at Google for a dozen years, said he believed most citizens of the United States would support the NSA working to protect people, but wouldn’t appreciate the government misuse of their information. Google also expressed concern that the publicity surrounding Snowden’s revelations would lead to the Internet becoming less global, as some countries tried to enact greater protections for their citizens.

Eric Schmidt explained that the real danger of this publicity is that other countries would try to put very serious encryption (so-called “balkanization”) – to essentially split the worldwide web and that the Internet would become more country specific. This could break the way the Internet works.

Google’s representative was also talking about innovation and the impact of new technologies on the society of the United States. In his talk, Schmidt dismissed criticisms by such experts as Evgeny Morozov, the Belarusian author of The Net Delusion, who were skeptical of claims that the worldwide web would lead to greater democratization. Eric Schmidt pointed out that Morozov was a unique critic in that he was the only one making those arguments, but he later added Julian Assange to the list as well.

Facebook and Twitter Available in Iran, Finally

2013-09-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

Facebook and Twitter have finally become widely accessible to Iranian users for the first time within the last four years. The social networks were blocked in the country when there were widespread protests against former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Although the unfreezing of the services hasn’t been officially announced, the representatives of foreign press residing in Tehran have tweeted that they could finally access the service freely. In the meantime, the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has also received numerous reports from people using several different Iranian ISPs. The reports confirmed that the block appeared to have been lifted. Aside from Facebook and Twitter, other websites which had been blocked were also suddenly unblocked.

Iranian government banned Facebook and Twitter more than four years ago, when Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election victory provoked massive protests and such social media as the US giants were used to organize demonstrations.

Fortunately, new president, the moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani, has announced he will adopt a much different approach to social media from that of its hardline predecessor.

Saudi Prince Investing in Twitter

2013-09-29T06:17:00.000-07:00

It was just a few months ago that the Saudi religious police claimed that anyone using Twitter had lost this world and their afterlife, with the wonderfully titled grand mufti calling Twitter users “fools”. This is why it has come as a surprise to many involved in the Twitter initial public offering that Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal happens to be a key investor in the company. As such, he will have a sizeable share in the coming floating.

According to the prince, he has invested $300 million in the microblogging platform and is not going to sell his stake at all. Alwaleed bin Talal believes that with user base of 300 million people and half a billion tweets per day, the growth potential of Twitter is tremendous.

It seems that the official hatred for Twitter in Saudi Arabia means nothing to the Prince, who is against anybody trying to control or censor this service or any other social media, even if it is local authorities. Alwaleed claimed that Twitter accelerated the process of disseminating news and should therefore remain an open forum for everyone.

The prince admits that fighting Twitter is a losing war, though it might be a bit strange given that the imam of the Grand Mosque’s public TV appearance warned the citizens that “Twitter was a threat to national unity”.

Alwaleed bin Talal is a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and owns international investment company Kingdom Holding. The prince is a closely watched figure in international markets due to his successful investments through Kingdom Holding in such companies as Citigroup and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.