Fast Company

Social Ad Spending To Reach $10B Soon, But How Much For Facebook?

Kit Eaton — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:49:42 EST

News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

A new survey from BIA/Kelsey has looked at the trends in advertising on social media and concluded that by 2016 it'll be a market topping $10 billion per annum, mainly as display ads. For context, some $3.8 billion was spent on these ads in 2011, so phenomenal growth is predicted. In the very week Facebook IPOs this sounds like great news, except for different data coming from Wordstream that suggests Facebook's adverts have less reach and are less effective in generating click-throughs than traditional web ads served up by Google. Meanwhile car giant GM is reported by the Wall Street Journal to be killing its $10 million Facebook advertising campaign because it simply didn't work to generate sales. GM will continue to use free channels on Facebook to generate brand awareness, but it's decision means Facebook will lose out on income.

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GM Pulls Its Facebook Ads Three Days Before IPO

Christina Chaey — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:01:39 EST

News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

Via WSJ: General Motors’ marketing executives have decided to pull the company’s $10 million in paid Facebook after deeming the efforts had “little impact” in reaching consumers. The announcement comes three days before Facebook’s initial public offering. The company will continue to use the Facebook platform to promote its brands, operating on a $30 million budget that covers content creation and management. GM, the third largest advertiser in the U.S. behind Procter & Gamble and AT&T, spent $1.83 billion on U.S. advertisements in 2011. Though GM’s decision may be immaterial to Facebook’s $3.7 billion revenue figure, the announcement comes as Facebook executives attempt to assure investors that its advertising business is solid enough to merit the company’s near-certain $100 billion valuation.

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Patent Watch: Google Personalizing Search Like Facebook Personalizes News?

Kit Eaton — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:51:35 EST

A fresh clutch of patent applications from Google hints at the mysterious search algorithm. Plus, ideas for product placement on YouTube and more on Google's Project Glass.

Personalizing Google Search

Google's algorithm doesn't just decide what pops up on the first page of search results. It's the stuff of complex third-party angst, law-making, lawsuits, and even the idea that the algorithm, based ultimately on decisions by human programmers, is protected under U.S. free speech laws. Google's hyper-sensitive to it too, which makes brand-new U.S. patent number 8180776 all the more interesting.

It's designed to "provide a mechanism and a methodology by which the user can variably adjust the degree to which his interests influence the results of a given search query." It seems a bit like the way you can decide which status updates from which of your friends on Facebook are flowed into your "news" feed--Google's patent outlines a set of parameters that you can adjust so that they affect which search results are featured in its response page after you type in a search query.

The problem with most searches is that while they are very good at matching the words in your query with results, they're not good at reflecting users' personal interests. As Google suggests in the introduction to the patent, this means if two people search for "drug testing in baseball" they'll get the same results even if one is, perhaps professionally, looking to understand drug use in society, and the other is just interested in the sports angle of which teams have applied drug test protocols.

As useful as this would be, it also could be hellishly controversial, upsetting the SEO industry and all the fine-tuned ways that online publications get featured in search results. There would almost certainly be legal ramifications. Brace yourselves.

Product Placement Rewards On YouTube

Advertisers work hard and spend a frightful amount of money trying to grab our attention by paying for carefully constructed advertising campaigns on TV and in the movie theater, both as direct ads and product placements. Now Google's got your back, big brands of the world! New U.S. patent 8180667 is all about "Rewarding creative use of product placements in user-contributed video."

Google points out that hundreds of millions of YouTube clips get uploaded every day. What if you could get paid as an uploader for cleverly including a branded product in your clip? That would encourage you to be creative in making your video, and it would act as a de facto branded advert for an advertising partner (that of course Google would control via its existing paid ad channels). This patent is all about making that process as easy as possible by verifiying that a placed product is indeed featured in a clip automatically, mainly by looking for a branded logo using image processing and pattern recognition techniques.

And it would add an eerie, potentially sickly use of branded product placements in what we can only guess would be a deluge of YouTube clips trying to earn cash. Nyan Cat wearing Nike sneakers, anyone?

TV Channel Logo Detection On YouTube

Of course YouTube is also host to plenty of content that TV networks would rather not be on there, because they'd rather you pay for a cable or satellite subscription. That's why they plaster their logos into the corners of your favorite shows ... and that's what new patent 8175413 is designed for: Automatically identifying these kinds of proprietary logos on uploaded clips so that a judgment can be made on whether they infringe someone else's IP or not.

Geotagged Voice Recognition

Voice recognition on mobile devices is harder than for desktop machines because of the prevalence of background noise. Now U.S. patent 8175872 demonstrates two things about this: First it shows Google expects voice recognition systems to become pretty ubiquitous, and it suggests a way to use geotagging to remove background noise and thus improve recognition.

The idea's pretty simple: If there are several folk speaking to their mobile devices in an area, chances are they'll all be sampling some of the same background sounds. By geotagging your voice uplink, a cloud server somewhere could use that information to identify background noises and then subtract those signals from everyone's audio feed. Brilliant. Clever. And quite definitely creepy.

Project Glass

We know Google wants to change the world with a revolutionary augmented reality device called Project Glass, and we know what it looks like because we've seen a few in the wild already. Now Google's moved to patent the design of Glass's headset in three different versions: One is the high-tech "headband" version that's been shown already, another is just the frame for that headband without a prominent over-eye projection module, and the final is for a fashion-conscious version that looks more like traditional sunglasses.

Great to see Google's concerned that we all don't look like extras from Star Trek when wearing Glass, but what we really want to see is more data on how the actual things work. Guess we'll have to wait.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Innovation Agents: Fab's Bradford Shellhammer Embraces Risk, Defines Design

Adam L. Penenberg — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:39:10 EST

Watch the cofounder of the e-commerce design site explain how he figured out a way to share his obsession--a breakthrough (and risky) moment that established him as the curator of a wildly successful business.

"People who embrace design, it infiltrates their entire life," says Fab.com cofounder (and Most Creative Person 2012) Bradford Shellhammer. "Once you go there, it's hard to go back."

About This Series

Fast Company profiles the personalities behind the ideas that shake up business as usual. Discover more about these pioneers here.

It's particularly true for his company, which started as a limping social networking site for gays but pivoted into a wildly popular hub for shoppers. Fab grabs them with a meticulously curated array of neat stuff. Before visitors know it, they're design junkies.

Shellhammer shares one trait with other Innovation Agents, however: He and his partner took a giant risk on a big idea, one that meant shuttering a site they had poured their hearts into. "We had a 15-minute board meeting," Shellhammer says, in which they pitched the idea of turning the lights off on their social hub Fabulis and relaunching it as an e-commerce site. "We invest in people, not ideas," his board reassured him. Here's the rest of the story from the person behind big idea of Fab.com.

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5 Ways Process Is Killing Your Productivity

Lisa Bodell — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:53:09 EST

If your team spends its days asking for permission before executing, taking an hour to complete expense reports or time sheets, attending redundant meetings, or answering irrelevant emails, you’ve got a problem.

Processes are supposed to help organizations scale up, improve efficiency for new hires and existing employees, and so on--but they can quickly get out of control.

In a study of U.S. and European companies, The Boston Consulting Group found that “over the past fifteen years, the amount of procedures, vertical layers, interface structures, coordination bodies, and decision approvals needed...has increased by anywhere from 50 percent to 350 percent.” What’s more, in the most complicated organizations, “managers spend 40 percent of their time writing reports and 30 percent to 60 percent of it in coordination meetings.” No wonder people feel like they can never get any real work done.

Why do we love process so much? It offers a way to measure progress and productivity, which makes people feel more efficient and accountable. When used correctly, processes should standardize and simplify the necessary tasks that keep business running smoothly. They should enable organizations to undertake complex work, particularly as an organization grows. Expense reporting, for example, should have a process that every single employee follows every single time--that’s just common sense. Smart processes encapsulate bundles of organizational knowledge. And that’s a good thing.

But it’s not a good thing when there are so many processes in place that they restrain the people they’re supposed to help. If your team spends its days asking for permission before executing, taking an hour to complete expense reports or time sheets, attending redundant meetings, or answering irrelevant emails, you’ve got a problem. Exactly when are employees supposed to find the time to innovate when every task or topic is labeled “urgent” and every deadline is ASAP? Something will eventually give, and that something is going to be the part of the job they can keep pushing off until later.

Here are five ways process can kill production:

Empowering with permission--but without action:It’s not empowering when people are given more responsibility, yet must still obtain an unreasonable number of approvals and sign-offs to get anything done. This signals a lack of trust.Leaders focused on process instead of people: In an effort to standardize and sanitize everything we do, nothing at work is personal anymore. Leaders look to processes, not people, to solve problems--and it doesn’t work. Where’s the inspiration, the vision? This signals a lack of humanity.Overdependence on meetings: “Collaborative” and “inclusive” are corporate buzzwords, but productive teamwork does not require meetings for every single action or decision. People become overwhelmed and ineffective when they are always stuck in meetings. This signals that politics have taken precedence over productivity.Lack of (clear) vision: Great companies need a grand vision and important goals. Too often, companies have vision or mission statements laden with jargon but devoid of meaning. This signals a lack of purpose.Management acts as judge, not jury: If the purpose of a meeting is to think, create, or build, management has to stop tearing people down when they propose new ideas or question the status quo. This signals a lack of perspective and openness.

Over the years I’ve encountered organizations, large and small, that have essentially allowed process to become their culture. I’ve also seen businesses suffer when they assumed that if a process worked well for one division, it would work well for the company overall. Good processes can turn especially dangerous when they creep from manufacturing lines and finance departments into brainstorms and research labs. Some of the worst offenders have been companies that implemented overarching processes like Six Sigma, a rigidly data-driven quality-management program originally designed to tackle manufacturing problems. Fifty-three percent of the Fortune 500 have deployed it and of the Fortune 100, 82 percent have used it. Despite its manufacturing origins, Six Sigma has been used across many industries and sectors, and proponents claim it saved Fortune 500 corporations nearly a half-trillion dollars since its inception. If so many successful organizations are using it and saving money, what’s the problem, right?

Again, it comes down to priority. When we shift such a huge amount of an organization’s focus onto standardizing everything, other areas inevitably suffer. According to a BusinessWeek article called “Six Sigma: So Yesterday?,” the program ultimately did more harm than good when it was implemented at Home Depot: “Profitability soared, but worker morale dropped, and so did consumer sentiment. Home Depot fell from first to last among major retailers on the American Customer Satisfaction Index in 2005.”

Another oft-cited example of Six Sigma’s negative effects occurred at 3M. When former GE executive James McNerney took the helm in 2001, he instituted a rigorous Six Sigma program, which meant slashing costs, training thousands of employees to become program experts, and requiring extensive reporting on new products in the R&D pipeline. In the short term, especially in the eyes of investors, it seemed to work. Costs were brought under control, production speed increased, and operating margins rose from 17 percent to 23 percent by 2005. But researchers in the labs were stifled by the demands of the new metrics. 3M had a century-long history of innovation, but now R&D had been cut and inventors weren’t given adequate time to tinker with products before having to demonstrate successful commercialization. “We were letting, I think, the process get in the way of doing the actual invention," said Dr. Larry Wendling, staff vice president at 3M's Corporate Research Laboratory.

After McNerney’s departure for Boeing in 2005--just four years after joining the company--3M began to reevaluate Six Sigma. In addition to the friction it caused among staff, its long-term growth potential appeared compromised and there were concerns that 3M had become “a less creative company...a vitally important issue for a company whose very identity is built on innovation.”

In recent years, 3M has significantly changed the way it uses Six Sigma. The company acknowledges that the program adds value in its factories, so it’s still utilized in manufacturing operations. Researchers working in the labs, however, are no longer beholden to the metrics and rubrics of Six Sigma. The shift has been successful--and there are metrics to prove it. One of the best measures of innovation efforts is the percentage of revenue that a company derives from products introduced in the last five years. At 3M, this number had traditionally hovered around 30 percent, but had dropped to 21 percent after Six Sigma’s introduction. In 2010, the number was back up to 30 percent and may soon surpass 35 percent.

I don’t mean to vilify Six Sigma unfairly. It’s just one example in a long list of top-down processes that people mistake as a silver bullet to improve their entire business. TQM, Lean Six Sigma, ISO, etc.--they all entrench organizations in policies and procedures, minimizing the organization’s innovation potential.

Today, managers are especially in a bind. They’re expected to efficiently produce outstanding short-term results, but the innovation they’re supposed to pursue could very likely hurt their careers. A 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey summarizes the quandary:

“Those in middle management... found innovation disruptive to their day-to-day activities and felt it got in the way of running an efficient operation--which is what they were paid to do.”

When people’s jobs depend on meeting metrics and maintaining the status quo, can you fault them for their reluctance to expend any energy toward creation and invention?

[Image: Flickr user Deja Photo]

Hippie Capitalism: How An Impoverished U.S. City Is Building An Economy On Co-ops

Emily Badger — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:33:39 EST

With sky-high unemployment, Richmond, California, is not a place where traditional business models alone can dent poverty. The city has turned to co-ops in hopes that people who might be unemployable in the traditional economy gain access to both jobs and control over their own labor.

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At the height of the recession, the unemployment rate in Richmond, Calif., topped out at a dismal 19%. That figure has more recently crept down about three points, an improvement that might be worth celebrating if the city didn’t still have so far to go.

City councilman Tom Butt deadpans that Richmond, a city of about 100,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area just north of Oakland, is a place with “more than the usual number of socioeconomic challenges.” A large share of the immigrant population doesn’t speak English. Crime is high--Richmond is regularly ranked among the most dangerous cities in the country--meaning local residents who’ve gone through the criminal justice system have even rougher odds of landing a job. This is not, in other words, a place where traditional business models alone can dent poverty.

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“There’s not a lot of help coming from the federal government, or the state government,” says the city’s Green Party mayor, Gayle McLaughlin. “So we’re kind of on our own.” Two years ago, she went all the way to Spain in search of another economic model that might reinvigorate her city, once the locus of bustling shipyards that produced hundreds of boats for battle during World War II.

The Basque Country in Spain is home to the world’s most famous worker-owned co-op, the Mondragon Corporation, based in the town of Mondragon. The 55-year-old corporation includes some 250 smaller co-ops, with more than 80,000 employees, the vast majority of them members and owners themselves. Mondragon is today the seventh largest company in Spain, with its fingers in finance, retail, and manufacturing, and it has become a kind of Mecca for far-flung groups eager to learn how to create their own co-op businesses.

Richmond has what is perhaps the only official municipal co-op consultant in the country.

“I found that the values of people in Mondragon were very much in line with the values that we were putting forward as part of our political movement in Richmond: standing for equity, standing for justice, standing for community empowerment,” McLaughlin says. And so she brought the idea back to California and hired what is probably the only official municipal worker co-op consultant in the country. As of January, the first co-op born from this campaign, the aptly named Liberty Ship Café, is up and running, with plans for new bike shop, bakery, urban agriculture, and solar installation co-ops on the way.

“I’m working and dreaming and putting my efforts behind the dream of having Richmond become the national capital of worker co-ops,” McLaughlin says. “I really believe we can be that. We have the need, and that’s one thing they told us in Mondragon.” The first and most important thing anyone needs to make this work, the folks in Mondragon said, is need itself. And that is the one thing Richmond has in spades.

It’s the kind of thing that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would probably sneer at. But at the end of the day, it’s just a business model.

To outsiders, all of this might sound like some pretty hippie stuff. You may be more familiar with the concept of a co-op if you’ve been chuckling at the Humus Wars at the Park Slope Food Co-op, or if you know anyone who grew up “out at the co-op,” the universal shorthand for '60s-era communes on the outskirts of some progressive towns. But co-op businesses are still a form of capitalism. The people who work in and own them still want to turn a profit. In this model, however, there is no gulf between the lowly employee and the business partner. All decisions are made communally. And by starting their own businesses, people who might not be employable in the traditional economy gain access to both jobs and control over their own labor. The idea is a good fit for communities dense with immigrants--the beauty of co-ops is that anyone can start them--although Richmond isn’t limiting its efforts only to its immigrant population.

“It’s the kind of thing for example that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would probably sneer at,” Butt says. “But at the end of the day, it’s just a business model, and business is business. And whatever you can do to create economic activity and create jobs, it’s all business. It just shows there’s more than one way to do it.”

In January, the Liberty Ship Café launched in a booth at the local farmer’s market, with the help of the California Center for Cooperative Development, which is also working with the city to fulfill McLaughlin’s vision. The café today has just three worker-owners, immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico, and it does not yet provide a full-time job for any of them. Every Friday, they sell healthy sandwiches, salads, and empanadas at the farmer’s market, and the business is expanding into lunchtime catering around town. Richmond has a long way to go from this one fledgling co-op to a community that will be transformed by the idea in the way that Mondragon has been over decades.

But already the Liberty Ship Café has begun to put a tangible face on all the talk around town about co-ops. “The whole worker-owned co-op thing, it’s most beneficial for the people directly in the co-op, but there’s a trickle-out effect, and we want to talk to people about that,” says Lexi Hudson, a co-op specialist with the California Center for Cooperative Development who has been working with the café. “When one person in the community feels empowered to own their own business and make their own decisions, they’re absolutely going to be affecting everybody else in the community.”

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #USInnovation.

[Image: Liberty Ship Café]

Modify Watch's Low-Tech Business Takeaways From High-Tech Startups

Aaron Schwartz — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:12:28 EST

West Coast business schools are entrepreneurial breeding grounds, but not just for the next hot thing in tech--here's what mix-and-match watch company Modify learned during its launch.

I graduated from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business in May 2010. Friends from school included the founders of ideation space Napkin Labs; an amazing online test preparation company called Magoosh; and an industry-changing waste-heat-to-electricity clean tech startup called Alphabet Energy. While at Haas, I interacted with entrepreneurs and investors while cofounding a gamified sustainability startup--it was the tech maven's dream!

However, rather than going the tech route, I decided to start a watch company after graduation.

I started Modify Watches with a friend, Gary Coover. Together, we design and manufacture interchangeable faces and straps that can be mixed and matched for the ultimate personalized watch. Our products are sold in the Google Store and have been customized for HP, AOL, and others. We will soon launch a line featuring the images of Major League Baseball players.

Despite the low-tech nature of our watches, interacting with techies has had an immeasurable impact on our success. Here are three key takeaways that can apply to startups in any industry--not just Silicon Valley's hottest tech companies:

Test your hypotheses: Gary and I thought that Modify was ideally targeted for young professionals. When we first started, people of all demographics would stop us on the street and say, "Cool watch, where'd you get it?" Taking a note from the playbook of famed entrepreneurs and investors Steve Blank and Eric Ries--our professors at Haas--we reassessed our strategy, focusing on customer discovery and building a minimum viable product. We talked to customers without making more assumptions and instead focused on getting out of the office and testing our hypotheses. Do not create the product of your dreams from the start--you may find that after six months of work and a $50,000 investment, your ideal product does not match a customer’s ideal product. Admit that you don't know what you don't know and find great advisers who do: Before business school, I was a management consultant. Before consulting, I studied history and Hispanic studies at Columbia. I had no direct experience in the fields we operate in now. We brought on advisers who were experts in design, watch manufacturing, and web and retail development. Their advice saved our team countless amounts of money, time, and stress. When we ran into walls, we always sought their advice. Being closed off to the world is a big fallacy--startups too often think that someone might steal their big-ticket idea. The truth is that the deck is stacked against an entrepreneur succeeding, so it's important to become a great listener. Co-create products with your community: After building a strong community, the best tech businesses do a great job of engaging their fans to make sure that all of their product features are useful. Modify's Facebook fans literally told us what features to build into our watches. Not too many people cared about adding a calendar feature to the watch, but everyone asked for a watch that was water-resistant. Thanks to our community, your Modify can go swimming. Before we produce any watch, we poll our community to figure out what patterns and colors they prefer.

There are many more great strategies to observe from other companies of all sizes and from all industries. Look for organizations that are doing analogous work and figure out how you can take their best practices and translate them to your business.

Aaron Schwartz is founder and CEO of Modify Industries, Inc., which designs interchangeable, custom Modify Watches. He loves working on startup ideas and has spent innumerable (happy) hours advising friends and former students on how to grow their ideas.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization composed of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.

[Image: Modify Watches]

Exclusive: New Google+ Study Reveals Minimal Social Activity, Weak User Engagement

Austin Carr — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:48:33 EST

Larry Page recently called Google+ the company's "social spine." If that's the case, then Google's backbone might be much weaker than Page has been letting on, at least according to a new report from RJ Metrics.

This week, the data analytics firm provided Fast Company with exclusive new insights on Google+. The findings paint a very poor picture of the search giant's social network--a picture of waning interest, weak user engagement, and minimal social activity. Google calls the study flawed--we'll explain why in a second--and has boasted that more than 170 million people have "upgraded" to the network. RJ Metrics' report, on the other hand, is yet another indicator that Google+ might indeed just be a "virtual ghost town," as some have argued.

Let's start with the findings. For its study, RJ Metrics (RJM) selected a sample of 40,000 random Google+ users. RJM then downloaded and analyzed every sample users' public timeline, which contains all publicly available activity. One important caveat: RJM was only able to look at public data, which as it points out, "is not necessarily reflective of the entire population of users," since some users are private or at least have private activity. That said, the stats are eye-opening:

According to RJM's report, the average post on Google+ has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one re-shareRoughly 30% of users who make a public post never make a second oneEven after making five public posts, there is a 15% chance that a user will not post publicly againAmong users who make publicly viewable posts, there is an average of 12 days between each postAfter a member makes a public post, the average number of public posts they make in each subsequent month declines steadily, a trend that is not improving

In a statement provided to Fast Company, a Google spokesperson challenged the claims made in RJM's report. "By only tracking engagement on public posts, this study is flawed and not an accurate representation of all the sharing and activity taking place on Google+," the spokesperson said. "As we've said before, more sharing occurs privately to circles and individuals than publicly on Google+. The beauty of Google+ is that it allows you to share privately--you don't have to publicly share your thoughts, photos or videos with the world."

In its report, RJM acknowledged that it only provided insight into "public-facing actions of Google+ users." Still, in many instances, RJM said it was "quite surprised" by the low levels of engagement on public Google+ postings. For example, RJM said it was "shocked at the high average time between public posts among users." On average, a user waits 15 days between making his or her first and second public post. That figure improves with each subsequent post, but only slightly: There is an average of 10 days between a user's fifth and sixth public post.

"Remember that since we are only looking at public posts, it is very possible that users are making non-public posts between the ones that we were able to see," RJM's report indicates. "Despite this, however, we were still quite surprised by the large amount of time between public posts."

Of all the areas RJM studied, it felt social sharing was the one category that was "the least likely to be biased by the fact that we only studied public posts. These public posts will still be visible to each member's private networks, and actually could attract +1's, shares, and replies from external users as well. If anything, we would expect our numbers here to be higher than in the general population."

However, in its analysis of almost 70,000 posts, RJM found:

An average of 0.77 +1's per postAn average of 0.54 replies per postAn average of 0.17 re-shares per post

These low engagement levels do appear to match up with a recent study by ComScore. In February, it was reported that, according to ComScore, non-mobile visitors to Google+ spent an average of roughly three minutes on the network per month, between the months of September and January, compared with nearly seven hours per month on rival Facebook during the same timeframe.

Even with users who have engaged with Google+ on multiple occasions, there are signs that the network never becomes quite addictive. "Once a user has made one public post, the chances that they will make a second post are quite strong: around 70%," RJM's report says. "After that, however, Google+ does not perform as well as we were expecting. In charts like these we typically expect to see the probability of repeat posts shoot up to well north of 90% by the time the user has made several posts."

"This is basically the 'once you're using it you're hooked' principle. With Google+, however, this number never crosses the 90% mark. Even after having made five such posts, the chance of making a sixth is only 85%. This means that 15% of people who have made five posts never came back to make a sixth."

On the other hand, it could also mean that the more a user engages with Google+, the more likely he or she is to engage with Circles, which would yield more private activity.

The same, arguably, could be said of waning engagement on Google+. RJM did a cohort analysis that highlights the rate of public postings throughout time. "This is a cumulative chart, so we're basically showing the 'average number of total posts made' as it grows over time for users in each cohort," RJM's report said.

"The decay rate here is very concerning," the report continued. "Users are less and less likely to make additional posts, even a few months after initially joining."

Part of the reason there have been so many reports on the so-called Google+ "ghost town" is because Google has refused to provide clear figures and metrics for its social network's active user base. The company has said there are 170 million people who have "upgraded" to Google+, which is just a confusing way to say that 170 million people have signed up for the service (which takes about a click or two if you are already a Gmail user).

The company has been asked repeatedly for monthly active users, and it's repeatedly denied such requests, essentially calling them irrelevant. The closest we've seen of active usership was when the company explained how many Google+ users were engaging with Google Plus-enhanced or -related products. The problem is that Google Plus-enhanced products include YouTube and Google.com, meaning if you are engaging with basically any Google property (there are 120 Google+ integrations thus far) while signed up with Google+, Google is basically counting this as engagement with Google+, which is incredibly misleading, as some have argued.

Google has continuously fudged its numbers and dodged specifics around Google+, as search guru Danny Sullivan has recorded in his brilliant rundown of Google's lack of transparency on the subject. To confuse things all the more, Larry Page recently said in an earnings call that "there are 2 parts to the Google+ experience: the part that is the social spine, and the other part that's the social destination part of Google+ exclusively. Both of these are growing fast, but the social destination part of Google+ is growing as a new product with very healthy growth."

There's a simple way to solve this problem: Just provide the number of active monthly users on Google+ (proper). Facebook does it. Google even does it with YouTube, which, as Larry Page boasted recently, has 800 million monthly users. But when I made a request for such figures, Google did not provide them.

This is why the press is increasingly turning to third parties, such as ComScore and RJ Metrics, to learn more about Google+ usage. "Google is just refusing to answer the question for its own reasons," Danny Sullivan wrote, "which is probably because Google+ has far less activity as a standalone social network than either Facebook or Twitter."

Or as RJM's report put it, "At the end of the day, Google+ simply does not show the same level of ravenous user adoption and engagement that we've seen in other social networks."

[Image: Flickr user Snap Man]

Facebook Share Pricing Rumors Hint At High Demand, $100 Billion Valuation [Updated]

Kit Eaton — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:53:27 EST

News updates all day from your Fast Company editors.

Facebook's share price will likely be in the $34 to $38 range, according to sources speaking to AllThingsD, which puts its valuation near the long-rumored $100 billion range. That value will likely be boosted because it also seems likely the company's underwriters will agree to issue around 50 million additional shares to meet keen investor demand. And if you're a trophy share collector, you may be interested in buying a paper share certificate, because this super-high-tech firm has revealed it'll be issuing some of these very traditional objects to be available through speciality websites. Official share pricing will be revealed on Thursday, but we already know one thing for sure: Mark Zuckerberg won't be kicking the trading off in person, instead choosing to ring the Nasdaq bell by remote from Facebook's headquarters.

Update: Facebook just filed a seventh amendment to its S-1 form, noting that it will offer 50.6 mllion extra shares and comfirming a $34 to $38 price ticket. This more or less assures its valuation at near $100 billion assuming it chooses a price at the top of the bracket. It's also a big step up from its previous estimate of between $28 and $35 per share.

Visit our main Fast Feed page during the day to catch up on news like this as it happens.

5 Ways To Smarter Ideas From Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell

David Holmes — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:49:13 EST

At the celebration of Mindshare 50th networking event in Los Angeles, Nolan Bushnell said improving intelligence doesn't require state-of-the-art gadgets or mind-altering medication--just a pair of skis and some yoga pants.

Since 2006, the monthly networking event Mindshare has brought together some of Los Angeles’ smartest entrepreneurs, artists, and inventors with the promise of cheap booze, local music, and often mind-blowing presentations. Described by founder Doug Campbell of Syyn Labs as the lovechild of TED and Burning Man (without the self-seriousness of either of those events), Mindshare commemorated its 50th consecutive month over the weekend with a three-day celebration of art, music, and technology. In addition to featuring curiosities like a giant Jenga tower and musical cacti, the event's impressive crop of speakers explored “what comes next” in fields like space exploration, game design, and health, not to mention more mysterious arts like bio-fashion and something called digital vasectomy or "scrotoscoping" (which isn't actually as frightening as it sounds).

More From Mindshare Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. | Photo: PureNintendo.com

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But the real showstopper came when Atari founder/serial innovator Nolan Bushnell took the stage to impart some of the wisdom he's learned over his 40-year career as an inventor and innovator. Considering his tech-crazed audience, and the fact that Bushnell was arguably the prototype for the modern tech entrepreneur, his advice for the new technorati was surprisingly and refreshingly analog:

Be Uncomfortable

“You wanna build your IQ higher in the next two years? Be uncomfortable. That means, learn something where you have a beginner’s mind. I like to play chess. So it turns out, the neurogenesis (the birth of new brain cells) of chess, for me, is over. My brain grew a great deal when I was first learning, but once I really got it down, it’s very, very incremental. So if you want to do it right, learn how to ski. And then once you feel like you’re kind of under control, learn how to snowboard. And then learn how to rollerblade, then do tai chi, then do yoga. Stay on the uncomfortable path and you will find that you can get smarter.”

Look For Beauty

“Walk to work, even if it’s four miles. Ride a bike to work. Drive a different way. On your way there, try to find beauty. You’d be surprised how much more of the neighborhood you can perceive and experience when you’re looking for unique spots of beauty. When you get to work, you’ll find that you have a better attitude, you’re more content, and you can put away your Zoloft.”

Move Your Body

“Exercise aggressively. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Get your heart rate to 80% of your ability, and then for the next three hours, just learn something. It turns out that when you are exercising aggressively, your brain is creating BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), 'Miracle-Gro for your brain.' That is a precursor protein for dendrite formation (dendrites are branched extensions of nerve cells). You’re putting in hardware for the software.”

Go (The F***) To Sleep

“Remember that we can only in our forebrains handle 5-7 items. Our backbrains can handle massive amounts. So when you’re given a problem, think about it before you go sleep, and chances are you can solve it by the next morning. What’s happening is, your background processing is going on with many many more synapses, and you’d be surprised by the capability you’re able to unlock.”

Trust Your Ideas

“Innovation almost has zero constituency. For example, if I showed you this left-handed purple widget, maybe no one thinks it’s a good idea, yet it’s clearly innovative. And so, when Steve Jobs and I used to hang out, one of the things we used to talk about is innovation, and I told him, 'Steve, if you believe in something, and you go into a room and there are 50 people there, and all 50 of them tell you that you’re crazy, stick with it. Stick with your project.'"

"Innovation is hard. It really is. Because most people don’t get it. Remember, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, these were all considered toys at their introduction because they had no constituency. They were too new. And what you’re working on right now may in fact fall right into that. And if you see clearly, the pathway to the future, stick to it.”

[Top Image: Flickr user x-ray delta one]

LightSquared Files For Chapter 11

Neal Ungerleider — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:52:02 EST

Wireless Internet provider LightSquared has filed for Chapter 11 protection.

LightSquared, the ambitious 4G wireless venture recently poised to bring lightning-fast Internet to the masses, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier today. Government tests found that LightSquared's signals interfered with GPS reception, a setback LightSquared was never able to recover from.

In an official statement, LightSquared's Terry Neal announced that the firm “commenced voluntarily reorganization cases under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to give it time to resolve regulatory issues that have prevented it from building its coast-to-coast integrated satellite 4G wireless network. The company will also file a recognition proceeding in Canada.” Neal also stated that LightSquared would continue normal operations during the process.

Fast Company reported on LightSquared's troubles in 2011. Despite the revolutionary potential of LightSquared's technology to deliver high-speed Internet to computers and smartphones for far less cost than current mobile data plans, LightSquared ran into multiple challenges. LightSquared's biggest issues were limited early testing of their technology--which would have resolved the GPS issue, an overreliance on lobbyists to solve the resulting legal issues, and financial backer Philip Falcone's colorful backstory. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has repeatedly threatened to charge Falcone with securities fraud allegedly related to his hedge fund, and Falcone's wife Lisa Marie is a New York gossip section regular.

According to LightSquared's bankruptcy filing, which is available online, the company maintained an elaborate series of related corporations--including offshore holdings in Bermuda--in what appears to have been a last-minute strategy to stay financially healthy.

In the end, LightSquared's greatest challenge was that their LTE (long term evolution) data network effectively knocked out GPS receivers near their communication towers. Although GPS is not the only satellite geolocation protocol out there, it effectively has a lock on the American market--the only comparable rival is the Russian GLONASS system, which does not have many commercial users. Despite LightSquared's best efforts, the GPS industry managed a highly effective effort to convince the FCC to deny the firm any spectrum rights.

For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Email Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, here or find him on Twitter and Google+.

[Image: Flickr user Barry Skeates]

A Job-Hopper Settles Down On The Farm, With Twitter

Adam Bluestein — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:22:33 EST

Alison Kosakowski, a 33-year-old former New York City brand planner turned dairy farm blogger, now helps farmers use social media to market themselves and share their unglamorous but rewarding reality.

In 2009, Alison Kosakowki was living in New York, working as communications manager at the Maersk shipping company, when a kidnapping at sea brought her to Vermont. The captain of the Maersk Alabama, Richard Phillips, had been kidnapped by Somali pirates; Kosakowski was dispatched to Phillips’s home in Underhill, Vermont, to help the family handle media during the weeklong crisis, the wait for Phillips’s return, and the barrage of interview requests and book deals in the aftermath. While visiting the Phillips family the following August, Kosakowski met a local dairy farmer named Ransom (really!), and a few months later, left the New York City area, moved to Vermont, and joined Ransom and his family’s herd of 800 Holsteins on their 1,000-acre farm. On a blog called Diary of a Dairy Queen, she documented her efforts at beekeeping, raising chickens, and learning to can. After trying out public-relations gigs at a couple of local companies, in December, Kosakowski found a job that merges the personal and professional, as marketing and promotions director at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. Here, she talks about tweeting from the farm stand, the branding of the American farmer, and the challenge of taking the long view.

FAST COMPANY: How did you get into your current job?

ALISON KOSAKOWSKI: After being laid off from a local ad agency, I’d spent part of the summer and fall helping at the farm and using Twitter to drum up customers for corn and pumpkins at the family farmstand. I found out about this job--after Hurricane Irene last summer, which really hurt Vermont farmers, the agency wanted someone to help deal with crisis communications--and I applied for it. I took a pay cut from previous jobs, but I felt I would get value from knowing I was contributing to the greater good. You still have to deal with the realities of reconfiguring your budget, though.

What kind of projects are you working on?

My main job is overseeing crisis communications, managing media relations, planning agency events, and helping build a "brand" for Vermont agriculture. But my pet project has been teaching social media to farmers. I recently did a workshop at the Northeast Kingdom Farm and Food Summit, talking with about a dozen farmers about using new technologies to build relationships with their community. That means using social media to promote their products, tweeting what they’re selling at the farmstand that week. There are lots of opportunities now for farmers--our culture is so fascinated with food and farming now. But there also a disconnect between the precious notion of farming that many people have and the sweaty, squealing reality of it. So I’m also talking with farmers about using social media as a way to educate consumers about real farm practices.

Did working on your blog help you figure out what you’re doing now?

It was really fun, and I think I’ll go back to it with a new name. Right now I’m trying to figure out what the boundaries are between my personal blogging and my public role. I think that writing for the blog helped me package up stories about agriculture and what it’s like to live on a farm in a way that I hoped would appeal to people who aren’t necessarily in that world. I just imagined talking to friends from New York--figuring out what are the things in my life that would be interesting or surprising to them, and telling those stories.

When you go and talk with farmers do they see you as a “suit” or are you able to blend in?

I definitely have more cred because I live on a farm. There’s all kinds of interesting divisions in the farming community--a lot of what I would say are artificial divisions between people using different practices, or some people saying, “Oh, she’s from a dairy family but we’re vegetable growers.” That’s kind of silly because when you think about the number of people in this country that actually get dirty on a daily basis in their job working with animals and plants, it’s such a small number. But in general, I think I get credibility in the agriculture community because I’m living in it. They know my laundry pile is just as dirty as their laundry pile. As an outsider, though, I also understand that the reality is different from the perception. I appreciate how outsiders are enchanted by agriculture--it’s Old McDonald’s farm versus the reality of raising livestock for production.

About Generation Flux Pioneers of the new (and chaotic) frontier of business Flagship Fluxers, Photo: Brooke Nipar

In our February 2012 issue Fast Company Editor Robert Safian identified a diverse set of innovators who embrace instability, tolerate--and even enjoy--recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions. People like author/Onion digital media maverick Baratunde Thurston, Greylock Data Scientist DJ Patil, Microsoft Senior Researcher danah boyd, and GE's Beth Comstock. This series continues to explore the new values of GenFlux. Find more Fluxers here. And tweet your contributions using #GenFlux.

What was the most surprising thing for you coming from your life before and actually living on a farm? Has it been de-romanticized for you?

In New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, there are lots of accountants who have 10 sheep and call themselves farmers. There’s a big difference from that and people who farm for a living, when you’re relying on the weather to cooperate, and you get up at 4 a.m., or you get up to help animals in the middle of the night. There’s a real surrender of control in agriculture, so many things you can’t get your arms around. People say farmers are the salt of the earth, that they’re hardworking and honest, and it’s true. But I think that’s because farmers are more acquainted with the notion that this is all bigger than us. We know we can’t manage everything we think we can manage. Other people have more of an artificial sense of their ability to be masters of their domain, where farmers are, “Well, we gotta be patient. Plant something this spring and hopefully we’ll get something in the fall." That’s interesting to me.

In the advertising industry in New York, you’re always looking, keeping your resume polished and talking to recruiters. That always-looking mentality was deeply ingrained in me. In my 20s I changed jobs every two years. That quick turnaround is the antithesis of what farming is about, which is sticking around and cultivating things over a long period of time, delaying gratification. As someone who often solved problems by getting a new job, I’ve had to acclimate to this longer view of things. Getting comfortable where you are, that’s what farming’s all about. That’s why I think Ransom said to me on our first date, “I’m going to be here forever.” If you want to be with me, you’ll find a way to grow within this environment. I don’t think I realized what that was about at the time.

So, are you settling down?

Well, Ransom and I are getting married in June. And I think there will be a time when I’m much more involved in day-to-day operations at the farm. I don’t think that time is right now. We talk about a vision of where things might go some day--diversifying, expanding the corn business his mom has developed to a seasonal or year-round retailer. Through this job, I’m learning to better understand how it all works together--the research on agriculture, the grant money that’s available. To come into this as a complete outsider would be really difficult. Since moving here, the idea of working on the farm and having my own business has appealed to me, but I didn’t know how to put one foot in front of another to make that happen. I hope to come back to that at some point when I have some more ideas and more clarity about what that would be. That’s the long-term goal.

[Image: Alison Kosakowki]

Innovation Agents: Adam Braun, Justin Bieber, And Pencils Of Promise

David D. Burstein — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:19:52 EST

It helps if your organization is on the radar of one of the world's--and social media's--most influential pop stars. But for Adam Braun, founder of education charity Pencils Of Promise, Bieber was just one building block.

While traveling on a Semester at Sea in 2005, Adam Braun met a boy in India. When he asked the boy what he wanted most in the world, the boy said: “A pencil.” Adam reached into his backpack, pulled out a pencil, and gave it to the boy. It could have sufficed as a poignant rejoinder for cocktail conversation, but the moment stirred something deeper in Adam.

Braun went on to found Pencils of Promise, which raises money to build schools that provide basic education for preschool and primary age students in remote villages. School sizes range from 20 to 200 students. In three countries the schools have served more than 4,000 students. Last month Pencils of Promise reached a milestone, marking the completion of their 50th school. And Braun and his team of 50 (10 in New York and 40 in the field) are on track to add another 50 schools by the end of 2012.

At the heart of Pencils of Promise are members of its influential social media community--namely, one Justin Bieber, who has been a spokesperson for the organization for two years. A 2011 study revealed that on a regular basis 1% to 4% of all tweets are related to Justin Bieber. Bieber himself has 20.8 million followers, and thousands of accounts proudly state their allegiance to the teen idol. Bieber is active online and off, regularly sending out information in addition to visiting projects abroad and meeting with young supporters in the U.S.

If I wanted to start a great nonprofit, it couldn’t be run by passion alone.

PoP's fortune in landing one of the world’s biggest pop stars was no dumb luck. Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber’s manager, is Adam's brother. “Having Justin as a spokesperson definitely helped accelerate our growth,” Adam Braun says. “Early on when he would talk about us, those fans just came to the website to check it out. To this day, if Justin decides to speak about Pencils of Promise we’ll see a flurry of digital activity. That’s really an opportunity to convert those people from Justin Bieber fans who know about Pencils of Promise to true fans of Pencils of Promise and create sustained engagement.”

That drive is what makes Pencils of Promise more than a passion project by a guy with influential friends and family. As invaluable as Bieber's contribution has been, for example, it's not the linchpin of Braun's operation. He and his team have developed several social media initiatives designed to build an influential, active community. One, for example, called PoP Stars, is a web feature that highlights stories--usually found through Twitter or articles--from the organization’s supporters around the world. Every month, PoP community members can vote for the “PoP Star” of the month. Pencils of Promise claims to have one of the largest social media presences of any nonprofit started in the last four years.

Braun's career wasn't supposed to go quite like this. He grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, surrounded by people who worked in finance and hedge funds. For a long time, he thought that might be the world he would end up in as well. However, the fact that his grandparents were holocaust survivors had given Adam a special appreciation for the importance of education. Braun, now 28, said that he realized growing up that “I could enjoy the life that I had by virtue of the educational attainment that my grandparents and parents had pursued. Education was always incredibly valued in our family.”

About This Series

Fast Company profiles the personalities behind the ideas that shake up business as usual. Discover more about these pioneers here.

The impact of Braun’s encounter in India stuck with him throughout college. Yet two years later, when Braun graduated from Brown University, he went to work as a consultant at Bain & Company. Why? “I realized the value of building a great business,” he says. “If I wanted to start a great nonprofit, it couldn’t be run by passion alone. It needed to be run with the same level of diligence, structure, and commitment to results that the best for-profits are run with. The best place for me to learn that was working at a top-tier management consulting firm.”

The idea that nonprofits need to behave more like for-profits has become popular in recent years. But it is still rare for someone to take such a direct path--from for-profit to nonprofit--as Braun chose to do. But he isn’t surprised that other organizations have not followed this path model. Speaking of the nonprofit sector, Braun says, “When you’ve done anything for a long period of time it’s difficult to acknowledge, accept, and then implement radical change. It has to happen incrementally.”

While at Bain, the ultimate goal of starting an education organization was never far from Braun’s mind. Finally, in 2008, on his 25th birthday, Braun launched Pencils of Promise. He put a $25 check in a bank account and threw a birthday party asking each guest to make a small donation, too, to support building the first school. That night over 400 people came, each donated around $25.

The following year, Braun left Bain to focus full-time on his nascent organization. Using what he had learned at one of the world’s leading consulting companies, he began to work on a strategy for what would undoubtedly be a daunting task. From the outset Braun aimed for a focused impact, so he chose three countries: Laos, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Even though there is tremendous international discussion about lifting developing countries out of poverty through education, these three countries--very much in need--have not received the kind of attention that some others in the developing world have. As a result Pencils of Promise sees a bigger need and the potential for a bigger impact in these locations.

When you’ve done anything for a long period of time it’s difficult to acknowledge, accept, and then implement radical change.

In addition to their work in the three countries, Pencils of Promise has focused domestically on building a strong community of supporters. “We’ve really put a big emphasis on trying to grow our movement through digital means,” says Braun. “As the world had become digitized, the nonprofit industry has seen a mandated move towards greater transparency. Donors want to see exactly where their money goes.” On the Pencils of Promise website anyone can view the details of each school, when it opened, how many students it serves, the village name, the school name, and photos of the students who attend the school. From Braun’s perspective this level of detail not only provides financial transparency, but uses visuals to build a direct connection between the organization’s work and those who support it.

The skills Braun learned at Bain are still evident in all the organization’s operations. From social media to building schools, a focus on efficiency and measurement is deeply felt. The process of building each school has been refined in a business style. The first step is to identify and evaluate an appropriate site in a village for a school in close collaboration with local residents. Second, they build a physical school using local labor and local materials. Then they hire local talent to staff the schools and provide ongoing educational support to each school. Once a school is up and running, Braun has introduced a system of constant monitoring and evaluation of all schools. “If we were to see a situation where we saw a drop-off in efficacy of the programs, in attendance, or the retention of student in a school that we built,” Braun says, “we would greatly prioritize the programs around community development, teacher training, and student scholarships more so than physical builds. Our commitment is not to school count, it’s to the quality of programs we deliver on the ground.”

While some might see Braun as an idealist, he could just as easily be described as a pragmatist. “Making the world better is no longer a personal pursuit that lives separate from your career. Traditionally you had profit, which was your career, and then you had purpose, which might have been your family life or volunteer work. The only way the world is going to solve so many of the big global issues that we face is when those two intersect in the pursuit of profitable purpose,” Braun says, emphasizing the phrase he introduced in a speech at last year’s Google Zeitgeist: “The rise of social entrepreneurship that we’re seeing right now is the most promising way in which profitable purpose can become the norm.”

[Photo Illustration: Joel Arbaje]

$50 Million Lost To Online Romance Scammers Annually

Neal Ungerleider — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:31:33 EST

A just-released report shows how fake debt collectors, fake state troopers, and fake soulmates are responsible for a new wave of highly complicated online scams.

Forget your broken heart and wounded pride. The true cost of Internet romance scams is $50,399,536.16, the amount of losses reported by Americans in 2011 to the The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a low-key quasi-project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

Women constituted more than $39 million of the losses, with the most vulnerable segments of the population being specifically women in their fifties and over the age of 60; however, even within that group, women in their fifties are more likely to hand over large sums of money to scammers than their older counterparts. As the IC3 soberly puts it, the scammers “use poetry, flowers and other gifts to reel in victims, while declaring 'undying love.'" Then, of course, the PayPal payments and checks start arriving.

The IC3 is one of the nation's top authorities on cybercrime, and each year it releases an annual report that details the latest trends in online fraud. Unlike most government reports, the IC3's annual Internet crime report is an engrossing read that melds the craziest parts of Elmore Leonard, David Pogue, and inbox spam into a coherent whole.

In addition to outlining details of complaints about online romance schemes, the report states that work-from-home scams are the most prevalent form of Internet fraud in America after stolen credit card numbers. More than 17,000 Americans reported victimization by work-from-home scams last year--and lost over $20 million in the process. Unscrupulous criminals, often based in Nigeria, Russia, or elsewhere, use Craigslist, Monster.com, newspaper classifieds, and other outlets to rope the naïve unemployed into envelope-stuffing or financial services “jobs” that are really fronts for money laundering and identity theft. In one case highlighted by the IC3, a woman in Long Beach, California was arrested by police on suspicion of facilitating the U.S. operations of a Nigerian work-from-home scam. The woman would allegedly accept packages, sell the contents, retain 20% of the profits and then wire the remaining funds back to unknown suspects in Nigeria. All the victims “had posted their resumes or ads online seeking job opportunities.”

Other scams are just plain ingenious. More than 70 New York residents received emails from a spoofed nyc.gov email address that claimed to be from the New York State Police. The New Yorkers, who apparently failed to realize that the New York State Police were unlikely to send mail from a New York City government Internet email addresses, were told they had an outstanding traffic ticket to pay. Payment was supposed to be sent to an address in the upstate town of Chatham Hall--which does not exist. What did exist, however, were the malware-loaded file attachments recipients were instructed to download for “antivirus” purposes.

The Internet is also the perfect place to build a sketchy business empire with numerous fraud opportunities. IC3 officials noted the bizarre saga of Donald Lapre, whose infomercials for “the greatest vitamin in the world” regularly appeared on late-night television. Lapre encouraged out-of-work Americans or folks seeking to start home businesses to sell his vitamins over the Internet; more than 226,000 victims lost a collective $51.8 million in investments. Lapre, who later committed suicide in federal custody, was accused of 41 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, promotional money laundering, and transactional money laundering. Participants in Lapre's home business projects were essentially hustled into buying expensive online advertising and marketing products.

One of the fastest-growing Internet scams is also tied to the ongoing economic crisis. Nearly 10,000 loan intimidation scams were reported to the IC3 in 2011. In these scams, callers--armed with a person's date of birth, address, employer phone number, bank account numbers, and names and telephone numbers of relatives and friends--call victims' homes, mobile phones, and workplaces demanding that they repay a delinquent payday loan.

Of course, the payday loan in question never existed. The fake debt collectors often claim to be representatives of the FBI or ”Federal Legislative Department,” and threaten arrest or physical violence if the mark doesn't pay up. Although the IC3 doesn't specify how the extortionists obtained detailed personal information on their victims, they strongly suggest that the scam architects built fraudulent online applications for loans and credit cards that the unsuspecting victims filled out.

The IC3 compiles their data through complaints filed directly by victims with the organization, complaints filed by Internet crime analysts working with open- and closed-source public information databases, and complaints filed by law enforcement personnel. Their annual reports are believed to underestimate the amount of annual Internet fraud due to the “shame factor” many scam victims feel.

For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Email Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, here or find him on Twitter and Google+.

[Image: Flickr user theperplexingparadox]

American Express Leverages Spending History, Location For Mobile Deals You Actually Care About

Austin Carr — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:03:06 EST

My Offers taps what AmEx calls the "spend graph" to give cardmembers access to deals and discounts at nearby merchants. And it knows your mom couldn't care less about getting 50% off tickets to a three-day electro-fest.

When 1-800-Flowers fails and the local bakery is out of cupcakes, desperate, last-minute Mother's Day shoppers turn to the one bastion of hope left: Groupon, LivingSocial, Google Offers, and any other daily deal service accessible in one click. There's just one problem: The deals are rarely, if ever, relevant. No, my mom does not need Taekwondo lessons, paintball reservations, Lasik eye surgery, or tickets to a three-day electronic music festival.

To address this pain point, American Express is launching later today its own mobile offers engine to give cardmembers access to deals and discounts at nearby merchants. The engine, called My Offers, will tap into AmEx user spending histories and location data--what the company refers to as the "spend graph"--to rank offers by relevance. "In an increasingly crowded marketplace, where consumers are bombarded with daily deals, we saw an opportunity to help...by curating meaningful offers," Josh Silverman, AmEx president of U.S. consumer services, said in a statement.

Through the company's mobile app, cardholders will have access to a dashboard of offers that will look familiar to AmEx users who have already synced their cards with Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter. Deals can be added to one's card with a single click, and redeemed without friction. For example, if you spend $10 at Dunkin Donuts, you could get $5 back through a statement credit.

But what could really separate AmEx's offers is the data it has to make relevant recommendations. Spending history provides incredibly valuable data--everything from first-time purchases to geo-location to repeat transactions--and AmEx has fed this data into its engine. The company has created "similarity scores" for merchants on the network to boost relevancy.

"Trillions of comparisons have been made," says Luke Gebb, VP of global network marketing. "As an example, think about a town where there are two restaurants right next to each other. One restaurant attracts customers from far and wide because it's renowned; the other restaurant is a local diner. These two restaurants will not be considered very similar in similarity score: That local diner may actually look more similar to a hardware store that mostly serves the local population, whereas even if you live 10 miles away from the town, that restaurant that attracts people from where you live is going to be much higher ranked."

In the same way that Seamless learns what types of food and meals you most enjoy, AmEx will be able to learn from your transactions and the offers you most often redeem. It will also be able to pull data from the offers you found through its social partners--Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter--which will make the service especially powerful going forward.

To keep up with the data, however, AmEx will need more merchant offers to keep recommendations relevant and fresh. Baskin Robbins and FedEx are some of the national brands signed up for the program, but "we're now going into the local markets now," says Ed Gilligan, vice chairman of AmEx. Nearly a dozen offers from local bars and restaurants in New York and Los Angeles will be available at launch.

"You can look at our app now and see all the offers you have regardless of where you've synced your card," Gilligan adds. "That not only makes it simple for cardmembers to know what offers they have, but makes it easy for merchants to come to one place and let us help do their digital marketing for them."

[Image: Flickr user Kamshots]

How Green Dot Charter Turned Around L.A.'s Worst Schools

Gregory Ferenstein — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:16:28 EST

At L.A.'s worst high schools, gangs controlled the bathrooms and students regularly set hanging artwork on fire. Today, Green Dot Public Schools have dramatically increased graduation rates and college preparedness at a fraction of the cost. Here's how they did it.

"We treat each principal like the CEO of the school," says Marco Petruzzi, CEO of Green Dot Public Schools, which has undertaken the ambitious task of turning around Los Angeles's worst schools, all while keeping a unionized teaching force and spending roughly a fourth as much on each college-ready graduate as the city did before.

Rather than centrally manage every school, each Green Dot charter is run like a startup: The staff is given broad discretionary powers over finance, faculty are given the reins to innovate with a new curriculum, and the union contract is performance-based rather than a guarantee of minimum work requirements. To maintain its unusual level of collaboration, a Green Dot overhaul physically splits schools into autonomous units of around 500 students (in some cases, by using chicken wire for temporary walls).

A UCLA-Gates Foundation study released today shows that Green Dot's prescription is paying off, with 25% higher graduation rates (80% vs. 55%) and 35% higher college readiness (48% vs. 13%). Green Dot even managed to bring sanity to one of L.A.'s worst schools, Locke, where rival gangs maintained control over bathrooms and students regularly set hanging artwork on fire.

Green Dot's example has impressed educators. "I would love the culture where it's the fear not to do it better, as opposed to the fear to try it differently," says John Deasy, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is trying to instill Green Dot's sense of urgent innovation into the culture of the nation's second-largest school district.

Collaborative Everything

"Trustful relationships with adults is ultimately everything that matters," argues Petruzzi, who caught up with Fast Company at the Summit Series annual conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif. Teachers, students, staff, and parents are given unusually broad authority to collaborate on the master curriculum and the entire school budget. For the former non-Green Dot teachers we spoke with, the unexpected empowerment was a pleasant change.

"There was a situation that came up where there was a bunch of science money that needed to get spent ASAP, otherwise it was going to go away," recalls Ánimo Pat Brown science teacher Alexis Hanson. "Somebody had just gone an ordered whatever, spent all the money...it wasn't necessarily what you wanted." In contrast, at Green Dot, she rummages through the scientific catalog and deliberates with teachers and students about the trade-offs of big purchases.

Each one of the four teachers we interviewed said that while, technically, their former schools encourage collaboration, the promises never bore out. "The principal would avoid our meetings, and not show up," says math teacher Marla Mata.

On the curriculum, one of the first decisions the faculty made was to inject writing instruction in every single course, even math. "In most schools, writing is for English; at our school, everyone does writing," says Mata. Green Dot has its eye on universal college enrollment, and solid writing skills have long been critical to surviving the college transition (when I taught college writing, it was commonly assumed that most incoming students didn't come prepared). Because of its whole-school outlook, Green Dot's faculty can make interdepartmental decisions that would elude a less collaborative school.

Budget trade-offs also become simpler. For instance, teachers in extraordinarily expensive classes for the gifted or disadvantaged can ask their colleagues to sacrifice their own budgets to serve these high-need students. As a result, Pat Brown allocated thousands for digital reading software for special needs students and a robotics class for their burgeoning engineers. "It's not like one department is trying to edge out the other," says physics and robotics teacher Andrew Osterhaus, who argues that he'd never lobby for a luxurious science field trip at the cost of other departments. "Why would we do that to Read 180?...We're working together, not against each other."

Students, too, get in on the planning action. Pat Brown's school newspaper informs students about upcoming budgetary decisions, and surveys the more civically active students to weigh in on priorities. One such article reads:

The schools budget for next year will be $4.2 million. All of the decisions to how the money will be spent will be decided by the School Advisory Council (SAC)...Students on the SAC such as Junior Karla Hernandez and Senior Enrique Garcia have helped make sure our interests are also met. Due to some cutting of the funds for APB’s staff retreat and certain conferences, $1548 was left over and students suggested that the money be used to buy new graphing calculators.

As a result of the collaboration, Green Dot has been able to achieve (preliminary) impressive results, while spending about a quarter of what LAUSD typically spends on educating a college-ready graduate (calculation based on approximation from Petruzzi). Where does the savings come from? While Petruzzi says that sifting through LAUSD's balance sheet is as difficult as searching for specific pins in stack of pins, well-run schools squeeze more efficiency out of each position. During Locke's Mad Max artwork-on-fire days, there were two full-time janitors painting over graffiti. Now that the graffiti is mostly gone, Green Dot can allocate more money toward education.

A New Union Contract Embraces "Unless"

Unlike many charter schools, which live like independent renegades off the grid, Green Dot's path to mainstream adoption would come on union-paved roads. Instead of shunning them, Green Dot simply threw out what it considered to be the most self-destructive elements, such as tenure and inflexibility in class size.

For instance, while the phone-book-size LAUSD union contract stipulates hiring mandates for class size down to the exact number of students, Green Dot's contract, at 1/10th the length, simply asks teachers talk through any decisions beyond 33 students per class:

If any individual class exceeds thirty three (33) students, there will be a conference between the affected teacher and the principal. Through this dialogue options will be discussed to offer ameliatory measures, e.g., lower class sizes in other sections, instructional aide support, limited adjunct supervisorial duties, additional curricular support materials, and other ideas which may come into the discussion.

"I chose to take 35 students in my anatomy and physiology class, because there were that many kids who wanted to take it," says Hanson, with a chuckle of humility, "and, I didn't want to deprive them of the experience."

Before Green Dot, when Mata and Osterhaus wanted to extend Locke's school day to teach a study skills course, "everyone turned on us, including the union," Mata says. Volunteering more hours was expressly prohibited. "I was making people look bad, was what I was told" echos special needs English teacher, Catherine Perez, saying she was also privately reprimanded for unauthorized teaching at her old school, beyond that stipulated in the union contract. (The major LAUSD union, UTLA, declined our offer to respond to criticisms.)

The cost of autonomy, explains Superintendent Deasy, is greater accountability. At Green Dot, this means no tenure. But, the teachers we spoke with didn't seem to mind life without a safety net. "If we're not doing a good job, we probably shouldn't be here," argues Osterhaus.

Green Dot's alternative union structure is part and parcel of a larger aim: Change the face of public education. Unlike other charters, Green Dot is using LAUSD's existing rules, resources, and students--just organizing them in a radically different way.

The strategy seems to be making waves. Deasy says Green Dot helped inspire a new union contract that gives broader autonomy to schools and more flexibility in union work rules. If UCLA's new study is any indication, Green Dot could be well on its way to making a sizable and positive dent in America's troubled education system.

Follow Greg Ferenstein on Twitter or subscribe to him on Facebook. Also, follow Fast Company on Twitter.

[Images: Top image courtesy Green Dot; rotator image via Flickr user England]

For Toyota, JPMorgan, And State Farm, Arizona Is The Silicon Valley Of Data Security

Shane Snow — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:24:09 EST

In the Phoenix metro area, sprawling data centers and fraud-prevention companies bloom like the cacti and agaves of a growing tech ecosphere.

UNITED STATES OF INNOVATION New Ideas, New Markets, New Insights

All around the country, Americans are dreaming big. Their boldest ideas are changing their communities--and having a ripple effect throughout the world.

CLICK HERE to read about pockets of innovation in other U.S. cities.

In the desert, only the hardiest plants and animals survive. They develop spines and foul smells to ward off water thieves, and poisons to cut down competition. They hunker down, specialize, and waste nothing.

You could say the same about startups in Arizona. Here, thanks to some auspicious geography, sprawling data centers and fraud-prevention companies bloom like the cacti and agaves of a growing tech ecosphere.

Phoenix’s tech scene in particular is beginning to coalesce. Household names like LifeLock, Go Daddy, and iCrossing (all Arizona-born) employ thousands of programmers and product managers, some of whom are now spinning off or joining startups of their own. The Arizona Commerce Authority is distributing $3 million in state-sponsored “innovation grants” to startup companies, according to AZCentral, and incubators are starting to spring up.

This reflects a broader trend in top-10-population cities in the U.S. The Internet and other technology have made the costs of starting a company plummet, and movements like The Lean Startup in addition to tech incubators are spreading entrepreneurial culture to nearly every corner of the country.

But Phoenix and the surrounding region stand out for a reason that has nothing to do with technology. Landlocked and flat, they lack the natural disasters that beset other large cities. For that reason, major companies like JPMorgan Chase, Toyota, and State Farm Insurance keep gigantic data centers near Phoenix. Local entrepreneurs have found opportunities in this concentration.

“With many of the top financial institutions having risk operations in town, it may be part of the reason why several startups are security- and fraud-focused,” says Ori Eisen, founder and chief innovation officer of fraud detection startup 41st Parameter. “We are working to help make Phoenix/Scottsdale a center for this kind of work. Perhaps we should name it something like ‘Secure Valley.’”

Identity theft prevention juggernaut LifeLock employs 475 people at its headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. The company processes financial data to identify and prevent consumer fraud, like a home alarm system for identity. With 2.2 million customers, LifeLock has attracted $200 million in venture capital to Arizona.

“Typically when VCs like an idea, they look in their backyards,” says LifeLock CEO Todd Davis. “But to be able to show them that right in plain site out here there is a depth of technology talent… I believe has opened up the VC community [to Arizona],” Davis says.

And while hiring technical talent seems to be the bane of startups everywhere, big fish like LifeLock see hiring as an advantage for Arizona companies. “By far the best is the hiring pool and the talent we have access to, with, bluntly, less competition,” Davis says. “By being in Arizona we're able to attract much of the talent that at some point lived in California, but because of the economy relocated here.”

Still, some say Phoenix needs an extra push to attract investor dollars and grow a “real” tech scene akin to Austin, Boulder, or even Silicon Valley.

“Stuff doesn’t get funded mostly because it is shit,” blogs Derek Neighbors, founder of Chandler, Arizona-based coworking collective Gangplank. “Sure, you see lots of this everywhere, but we don’t make up for it in volume like San Francisco and New York do.”

Innovation scenes are built on momentum. The more startup successes, the more startup interest. But before an oasis forms, the first few desert plants must fight the odds to grow. Says tech investor Howard Lindzon, who lived in Phoenix for 20 years before moving to California: “It really takes a strong mentoring system and lots of money focused on the startup scene, time, intensity and some more wins in general.”

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #USInnovation.

[Image: Nelson Sirlin via Shutterstock]

Hipmunk Took The Agony Out Of Flying Then Pivoted To Hotel Booking

Adam L. Penenberg — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:54:16 EST

A pivot doesn't have to be a change in business model. That's the case with Hipmunk, a flight search aggregator that turned to hotel listings when the airlines began cutting commissions.

About This Series

The speed of today's well-funded startups is brutal.

But it does allow for change in direction. This series explores those destiny-altering decisions made by companies that have gone on to great success. Read more about their course corrections--and alternate endings--here.

To take the "suckage" out of planning trips Adam Goldstein and Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman created Hipmunk, a combination airline ticket search service and aggregator. Instead of the staid old Orbitz approach, Hipmunk lists flights in a timeline, collected on one long page, and sorted by schedule, price, and "agony"--a combination of the number of stops/duration and price (although not the relative hostility of the flight attendants onboard, unfortunately). Soon after launching in 2010, however, they found that airlines were cutting commissions, so they pivoted to hotels--you can search based on price, quality, distance, and "ecstasy," a combination of price, reviews, and amenities. They'll even throw in Airbnb results--as you'll see in the video below.

[twistage f7c3488a686a1]

What's a Hipmunk? Goldstein searched far and wide for a company name that would be a.) memorable and b.) available as a domain. He even went so far as to register BouncePounce.com and Trot.me. Finally, his girlfriend suggested he think of a cute mammal to base his brand on, and Hipmunk was born.

Predicting Summer Box Office Hits With Social Media And People, Algorithms Be Damned

David Zax — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:02:32 EST

Could Twitter have foreseen the tsunami that was the Avengers opening weekend? Fizziology uses social media to make predictions about box office success--and is doing as well or better as traditional industry predictions.

With summer movie blockbuster season upon us, it’s time for a favorite seasonal pastime: box office revenue predictions. For years, the film industry has relied on phone surveys and focus groups to project a film’s likely success. But in the age of social media, is there a new way?

Ben Carlson, the cofounder of Fizziology, thinks so. Treating Twitter, Facebook, and blogs as the world’s largest focus group, Fizziology delivers insights about a film’s buzz (or lack thereof) to big-name clients like Disney and Universal. The privately held company was profitable only after its second full year, and Carlson tells Fast Company the service has plans to roll out new products and an international service as soon as June. We spoke with Carlson to learn more about his growing company--and to find out which summer flick will be a surprisingly big winner at the box office.

FAST COMPANY: How does Fizziology work?

BEN CARLSON: Fizziology uses social media to find out what people are saying and thinking about media and entertainment.

How are you different from other “social intelligence” platforms, like Trendrr?

We consider ourselves a research company more than a technology company. We convert our findings into actionable business intelligence. That can be, before a movie starts, helping a studio figure out what actor might be right for the film. Or, after the first trailer comes out, helping them realize what lines, characters, or themes are breaking out, so they can highlight those in later campaigns. We turn the data into something that’s not just a curiosity for the social media manager, but something executives can actually make decisions from.

There’s a reason Twitter calls its massive amounts of data a “firehose.”

From a data perspective, my God, social media is tremendous. If you put people in a focus group and give that weight, why wouldn’t you put weight in the world’s biggest, fastest, most honest focus group?

Many social intelligence companies use automated sentiment analysis, which can lead to misfires, particularly when a tweet or comment is sarcastic. You do something different, though.

We do. We use “human sentiment analysis,” which is a fancy way of saying we use people, not algorithms. This is one thing my co-creator and I really believed in. Sometimes these algorithms are laughably off. You’ll read the thing rated positive, and it’s clear to any person that it’s negative. “This movie’s awesome! #sarcasm,” and it’s marked as positive. At any given point in time we have 8 to 15 analysts working long hours to score samples. They read feeds served up to them, score them negative, neutral, or mixed, and they’ll score for other things, like is this actually a meaningful tweet? If they see that a horror movie is called “sick,” that’s probably a good thing. But if it’s a comedy? “Oh my God, I will never watch that, it’s sick...” The ability to parse that difference really comes down to people.

What are some of your predictions for this summer blockbuster season?

Already The Avengers rewrote the book for openings. I know we’re going to have a lot of other big releases: The Dark Knight Rises is of course going to be a monster. One movie we see that’s really big in social media that not a lot of people are talking about in the mainstream press is Snow White and the Huntsman. That’s actually performing better in social media than some quote-unquote “big summer movies” like Men in Black 3. Teens and twentysomethings are not talking about that movie as much, except for the fact that Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga supposedly have cameos in it.

As aliens, presumably.

That’s what they’re saying...

Last year, industry estimates pegged Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, as opening at $110 million, while you predicted just $95 million. The actual opening was $90.15 million, making you a lot closer. But since your publicist sent me that data, I assume she chose one of your big successes. How do you match up to traditional predictions overall?

Looking at what’s reported in industry trade publications against what we say, we are as or more accurate, and have been since the beginning of the year.

And in previous years?

Last year I think we were as accurate. The year before that, we didn’t have enough data in the system, so we would miss wildly. We’re definitely growing more accurate over time. The more data we accumulate, the more accurate we get, and our formula gets smarter and smarter. Sometimes we have misses, and we get more out of our misses than hits, since we get to learn something. The Avengers is a great example. Its opening weekend made $207 million, beating the previous biggest opening weekend of all time by 40 million. Our formula didn’t even know a movie could open that big.

What's ahead for you?

We've doubled in size every year, and we see that actually accelerating. We're going to be turning on some new products, and starting our first international work soon. We have a lot of interest from people around the world, and get more calls and emails from outside the U.S. than inside. Everyone's hungry for this kind of stuff, and really for the first time it's possible to parse social conversation not just by language, but by region. That's gonna make it infinitely more powerful.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

For more from the Fast Talk interview series, click here. Know someone who'd make a good Fast Talk subject? Mention it to David Zax.

Follow Fast Company on Twitter.

[Image: Flickr user Bob Jagendorf]

Clayton Christensen On How To Find Work That You Love

Clayton M. Christensen — Mon, 14 May 2012 06:39:20 EST

When we find ourselves stuck in unhappy careers, it is often the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what truly motivates us, says Clayton Christensen, co-author of the new book "How Will You Measure Your Life?"

Back in 1976, two economists, Michael Jensen and William Meckling, published a paper looking at why managers don’t always behave in a way that is in the best interest of shareholders. The root cause, as Jensen and Meckling saw it, is that people work in accordance with how you pay them.

Many managers have come to believe this, too: you just need to pay people to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it.

The problem with thinking about incentives in this way is that there are powerful anomalies that it cannot explain. For example: some of the hardest working people on the planet are employed in charitable organizations. They work in the most difficult conditions imaginable; they earn a fraction of what they would if they were in the private sector. Yet it’s rare to hear of managers of nonprofits complaining about getting their staff motivated. The same goes for the military.

So how do we explain what is motivating them--if it’s not money?

Well, there is a second school of thought, which turns this thinking about incentives on its head. It acknowledges that although you can pay people to want what you want, incentives are not the same as motivation. True motivation is getting people to do something because they want to do it, in good times and in bad.

Frederick Herzberg, probably one of the most incisive writers on the topics of motivation, published a breakthrough article in the Harvard Business Review focusing on exactly this. Herzberg noted the common assumption that job satisfaction is one big continuous spectrum--starting with very happy on one end, and reaching all the way down to absolutely miserable on the other--is not actually the way our minds work. Instead, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are separate, independent measures.

This means that it’s possible, for example, to both love your job and hate it all at the same time.

This thinking on motivation distinguishes between two different types of factors: hygiene factors and motivation factors. On one side of the equation, there are the elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are the hygiene factors: status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. It matters, for example, that you don’t have a manager who manipulates you for his own purposes--or who doesn’t hold you accountable for things over which you don’t have responsibility. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction.

But even if you instantly improve the hygiene factors of your job, you’re not going to suddenly love it. At best, you just won’t hate it anymore. The opposite of job dissatisfaction isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction. They’re not the same thing at all.

The Balance of Motivators and Hygiene Factors

So, what are the factors that will cause us to love our jobs? These are what Herzberg’s research calls motivators. Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth. Motivation is much less about external prodding or stimulation, and much more about what’s inside of you and inside of your work.

The lens of Herzberg’s theory gave me insight into the career choices that my own classmates made. Some of them had chosen careers using hygiene factors as the primary criteria; income was often the most important of these. On the surface, they had lots of good reasons to do exactly that. They had given up years of their working lives and viewed their education as an investment; they wanted to see a good return on that investment.

Yet, many of those same classmates had written entrance essays on their hopes for using their education to tackle the world’s most vexing social problems or pursue their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. Periodically, as we were all considering our post-graduation plans, we’d try to keep ourselves honest: “What about doing something you really love?” “Don’t worry,” came back the answer. “This is just for a couple of years. I’ll pay off my loans, get myself in a good financial position. Then I’ll chase my real dreams.”

But somehow that early pledge to return to their real passion after a couple of years kept getting deferred. It wasn’t too long before some of them privately admitted that they had actually begun to resent the jobs they’d taken--for what they now realized were the wrong reasons. Worse still, they found themselves stuck. Their lifestyles had expanded to fit their incomes, and that’s a trap that can be very hard to find your way out of.

The point isn’t that money is the root cause of professional unhappiness. It’s not. The problems start occurring when it becomes the priority over all else, when you’ve satisfied the hygiene factors but the quest remains only to make more money. Herzberg’s theory of motivation suggests you need to ask yourself a different set of questions: Is this work meaningful to me? Will I have an opportunity for recognition and achievement? Am I going to learn new things?

Once you get this right, the more measureable aspects of your job will fade in importance. As the saying goes; find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Excerpted from How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon, to be published May 15, 2012 by Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Clayton M. Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth. James Allworth is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, and worked formerly at Apple Inc and Booz & Company. Karen Dillon was formerly the Editor of the Harvard Business Review and Deputy Editor of Inc Magazine. Their latest book, How Will You Measure Your Life? (HarperCollins, May 2012), aims to teach readers how to think--about life and purpose--by sharing powerful research theories about success and failure.

[Image: Flickr user Paloetic]