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Monday, June 20, 2011
Is SaaS the key to cloud revenues?
IDC today released the results of a report finding that the cloud services market by $72.9 billion by 2015, drive almost entirely by Software as a Service. This suggests -- likely accurately -- that SaaS is the key to cloud computing ubiquity.
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Skype Adds More Facebook Features
Skype‘s beta version 5.5 of its desktop software for Windows adds even more Facebook extras to its already deep integration with the socia…
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Meet The First Indie Publisher To Sell A Million Kindle Books
Amazon is touting its self-publishing platform today with the announcement that John Locke has become the first independently published author to become a member of the ?Kindle Million club," selling over 1 million Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing. Locke, who has published nine works including "Vegas Moon,? "Wish List,? "A Girl Like You,? "Follow the Stone,? "Don't Poke the Bear!" and "Saving Rachel." joins Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly in the Kindle Million Club. Taking a look at Locke's works (i.e. Now & Then, which pictures a half-naked woman on the cover), it looks like he may not be in line for a Pulitzer, but the milestone is impressive for an independent author. 
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McKinsey Report: The U.S. Job Market Won?t Rebound Until 2018
When will the U.S. economy return to full employment? No sooner than 2018, according to a new report from McKinsey — oh, and that’s the best-case scenario. Worst case, the economy produces a measly 9-10 million jobs over the rest of the decade, far short of the 21 million jobs the consulting firm estimates we need to bring unemployment down to around 5 percent by 2020.
Here’s how that more pessimistic prognosis would show up in the U.S. labor market, McKinsey says:
It would mean further contraction in manufacturing employment, a continued wave of automation and offshoring in administrative and back-office positions and a new wave of automation in retail (for instance, more widespread adoption of self-checkout).
In short, if the economy doesn’t snap back into place, it would look a lot in nine years like it does now, only more so. Over the next five years, companies think the biggest change in their workforce will be an accelerating shift toward part-time, temporary or contract workers. (In which case, arrivederci, middle class America — it was nice while it lasted.) Other expected changes include more telecommuting, additional offshoring and outsourcing, and a greater reliance on older employees.
The problem goes deeper than the recession, according to McKinsey. Although employment losses following the financial crisis were twice as severe as in previous major postwar downturns, job creation was flagging even before the housing crash.
Between 2000 and 2007, the U.S. economy produced only 9.2 million jobs, less than half the rate of increase in previous decades. Worse, more than 1 million of those positions were in financial services, construction and other sectors that overexpanded during the bubble years.
Simply waiting for the recession to recede and a more normal business cycle to resume won’t bring jobs back to previous levels, McKinsey says. Rather, creating new jobs must become a “national priority.” The question is whether the U.S. can resurrect the buoyant labor market that characterized previous eras of strong growth or whether this latest jobless recovery represents the “new normal.”
The firm — a longtime cheerleader for unfettered globalization and a motor for the very economic forces it describes as raking the U.S. economy, it’s worth noting — offers another word of warning:
Despite the recent financial crisis, the global economy is booming, and for the most part American companies have adapted and thrived. However, the same cannot be said for American workers. The United States needs to ensure that its workers — not just its companies — win “share” in the global marketplace.
Good advice.
This post originally appeared at BNET.
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Three Ways To Get Rid Of Bad Online Content About Your Business
Think back to 1940′s. Television came out at the World’s Fair in 1939, radio was popular but the world of mass communication was only just starting up. Things were still pretty slow compared to today.
Today, news travels fast. Anthony Weiner can Tweet something on Friday at 8:00pm and by 9:00pm it can be on the main stream news and by 8:11 on the front pages of the Drudge Report).
If someone writes something “bad” about your business the ramifications of the online communication can last a long time and have lasting damage. Every time someone Bing’s or Google’s your business name – that “bad” thing will crop up.
What to do:
1. Do everything you can to NOT have bad communication written about your business. I’m not referring to the “errant” negative comment, but I mean a fire storm of bad publicity because a low level (or high level) bone head in the company didn’t do the right ting.
2. Ensure you are proactively engaging with customers and if a negative comment comes out – ensure you smother it with positive customer and other user generated comments.
3. Hire a firm to do their best to purge the Internet. It’s not easy and is expensive writes the New York Times:
?I used to say until about two to three years ago that there are a lot of things you can do to solve these problems yourself,? Mr. Fertik said. ?I stopped saying that. It?s become so technically complicated to solve this.?
Technology companies are not the only resource for cleaning up a reputation. Security and investigative firms can also help.
Christopher Falkenberg, president of Insite Security, said his firm had resorted to face-to-face meetings with people who posted damaging information as well as the search engine companies that linked to it.
Sometimes, of course, the damaging information is true, or the site refuses to remove the information. Then, firms like Reputation.com and security consultants resort to burying the information as best they can. ?You hope people won?t go to the third or fourth page,? Mr. Falkenberg said.
Read the full NY Times article here.
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How To Set Up a Brand Page on Facebook Without Needing a Personal Profile
Although the total number of Facebook users continues to climb, many people simply don't want to have a profile on the site, whether because of concerns over privacy, information overload or their marriage-crippling Farmville addiction.
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For brands, however, not maintaining a presence on Facebook can be damaging, if not downright suicidal. Some businesses may prefer that staffers avoid logging into their distraction-filled personal account to manage the brand's Facebook presence. Fortunately, there is a way to set up a page for your brand without needing a personal profile.
1) Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php2) Click "Local Business or Place"
3) Choose the category that best fits your business. Enter its name, location and phone number.
4) Check off "I agree to Facebook Pages Terms" and then click "Get Started"
5) On the next screen, select "I do not have a Facebook account" and enter your email address (which is hopefully not already associated with a Facebook account). Pick a password, enter your date of birth and squint trying to figure out the captcha. Then click "Sign Up Now!"
6) You'll have to confirm your email address via an email Facebook sends to you. Do that. You now have a Facebook account with no personal profile.
7) Set up your brand's page and be sure to optimize it for search engines.
NOTE: If you're passing admin rights off to this account from another account (like your personal one), there are a few more steps. You should remove the old account from the page's admin list, and then add the new account. You can set up a dummy business in steps 1-6 if the page already exists and you're just transferring ownership. Just be sure to delete your fake business when you're done.
To transfer ownership to the new account, first log out of it and into the old one. Go into the settings of the page you administer and go to "Manage Admins." Enter the email address of the account you just set up and hit return, which will add the new account as an admin.
Once your new, profile-less account is set up as an admin for your brand's page, you'll be able to remove any unwanted admins. This also makes it easier to manage employee turnover moving forward.
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Nancy Pelosi & Colleagues Tweet Support for Saudi Women2Drive Campaign
A number of female U.S. House of Representatives members have expressed their support for the women who drove their cars on the streets of Saudi…
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Sunday, June 19, 2011
Nimbuzz says it has 50 million users
Nimbuzz, a Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Internet telephony company says it has signed up 50 million registered users across the globe. That's minuscule when compared to Skype, but it's still significant milestone for the upstart company which signs up 100,000 new users a day.
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ReadWriteWeb's 2WAY Summit: A Summary
Now that the dust has settled, we'd like to offer you a chance to revisit the event or, if you were unable to attend, benefit from it anyway by reading and watching our coverage of the speakers and ideas that powered the gathering.
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Speed geeking at the RWW 2WAY Summit
Fred Wilson on "Content Shifting": How Our Multiple Devices & Platforms Change Our Media Consumption
Earlier this year, investor Fred Wilson observed this phenomenon that he called "content shifting," the desire and (sometimes) the ability to shift content across a variety of Internet platforms to a variety of connected devices. At ReadWriteWeb's 2Way Summit, Wilson gave a keynote on content shifting and how this is changing the way in which we consume media.
Wilson believes that content shifting will provide major opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs as it's currently "still too hard to do this kind of thing."
Andy Carvin Tweets the World: Building Networks and the Future of Journalism
The fundamental methods journalists use to find stories and engage with sources is changing. On the cusp of the media revolution is National Public Radio senior strategist Andy Carvin and his use of social media and crowd sourcing to tell the story of turmoil in the Middle East ... from 5000 miles away.
Carvin used Twitter to build a network that now keeps him on top of the news that comes out of the Middle East and in doing so has shown the media industry a new way to be a reporter. The question becomes: is the future of the news industry tied to the technology or is technology an enabler to creating human networks that spread information?
Jason Calacanis: "Blogging Is Dead" & Why "Stupid People Shouldn't Write"
"Blogging is largely dead."
"There are a lot of stupid people out there ... and stupid people shouldn't write."
"There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people."
Serial entrepreneur and publisher Jason Calacanis has never been opposed to saying what is on his mind. In fact, it is the characteristic that has helped him rise to the top of the Internet publishing world. He sat down with our managing editor Abraham Hyatt onstage at the ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit on Monday and dished on his thoughts about the state of publishing, what Google's Panda initiative is doing to websites and what Web 3.0 will be about.
Exploiting Social Media with The Onion's Baratunde Thurston
Social media is supposed to empower users, giving them a platform to communicate more broadly. But as The Onion's Baratunde Thurston points out, social media also provides an opportunity for some great humor and pranking.
From live hate-tweeting the premier of the Twilight movies to creating rallies in support of Foursquare mayorships, Thurston addressed some of the "case studies of ridiculousness" that plague - or bless - us online.
Chris Dixon: Hunch, Taste Graphs & the Link Between Lettuce & Politics
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, John McCain accused Barack Obama of being "the guy who worries about the price of arugula," a suggestion that Obama was an elitist. Many scoffed at the remark, but according to Hunch CEO and co-founder Chris Dixon, liberals do prefer arugula while conservatives opt for iceberg lettuce. The connection between lettuce preferences and political orientation is something that Hunch has uncovered through its taste graph and recommendation engine, something that Dixon describes as "the most sophisticated system ever built for predicting human preferences."
Dixon sat down with our own Marshall Kirkpatrick to talk about how Hunch has built its taste graph and how this sort of recommendation engine may shape the future of a more personalized Web.
Foursquare's Next Project: Surface More Mobile Location Data
In March, 16.7 million used location check-ins with services like Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla, with 75% coming via mobile phones. In the next year, Foursquare is going to focus on mobile innovation and how to use all the capabilities of the smartphone to surface data to give users more utility with location services.
Foursquare Head of Product Alex Rainert spoke with Dan Patterson from ABC News on the main stage at the ReadWriteWeb 2Way Summit and we live-streamed it. We'll have the video of this event and others up on the site soon.
Flipboard Will Develop for the iPhone Next, No Android App in Sight
What is next for Flipboard? The startup is rapidly growing, hiring new employees and forging new partnerships with publishers to create dynamic new content platforms.
The next step is to make a jump off the iPad and start monetizing the company. These are easier goals to say than to do, but CEO Mike McCue and does not want to jump too far too fast. As such, do not expect to see an Android version anytime soon as the iPhone is the next platform in store for Flipboard. He spoke about these and other issues at the summit.
W3C Launches Community Groups to Help Create Web Standards
"We think of our stakeholders as everybody who uses the Web, which is a pretty big set," W3C's Jeff Jaffe told attendees at the 2Way Summit. "What it means to get started is that they get a little bit of infrastructure, some connectivity and so forth. We also give a little bit of coaching which leads them to the path of creating a standard."
The consortium wants to eliminate groups creating their own individual standards that are incompatible with each other. The idea of community groups is to bring all stakeholders under one umbrella during the process of creating a standards.
Angry Birds Coming Soon Everywhere (Literally)
Just when you thought Angry Birds had spread to every possible platform - iOS, Android, Facebook, Chrome - the game-maker Rovio is took the stage at the summit to make a new announcement, one that will take Angry Birds to a whole new place. In fact, Angry Birds will soon be everywhere. Quite literally.
With this new aspect, Angry Birds Magic, which will be rolling out in the coming weeks, the wildly successful puzzle game will become connected to the physical world.
Speed Geeking at the ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit
The RWW 2WAY Summit was not a pitch event, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a great opportunity for tech companies to showcase their products. So we invited a group of startups and established companies to present at our conference, a continuation of what's become a tradition at ReadWriteWeb's tech events: Speed Geeking.
Rather than taking turns on stage going through slides and talking about a product, speed geeking has startups presenting simultaneously. Audience members circulated from table to table, watching demos - not PowerPoints. The tech companies had five minutes to give their presentations and answer questions, and then a whistle was blown (or in this case, our own Marshall Kirkpatrick shouted "Time's up") and people migrated to another table. It was an interesting way for participants to see demos in a more casual (yet very high energy) situation. And it was a chance for companies to answer questions and get feedback from a wide range of tech enthusiasts.
As News Goes From Print to Pixels, The Onion Thrives
As many print media outlets continue to struggle to find their place in an increasingly digital ecosystem, the satirical newspaper The Onion has managed to not only make the most the Web and social media, but also continue to expand into new markets and new media.
A team of Onion staffers walked summit attendees through the publication's history, from its fictitious beginnings in 1756 all the way to its modern experimentation with social media and its expansion into broadcast.
What I Learned From Our 2WAY Summit (Parts One and Two)
Our new Business Channels Editor David Strom, and a presenter on real-time communications at the summit, reflected on what he'd learned there of value to enterprise.
"One thing is pretty clear to me," he noted. "Running a modern corporate Web site isn't getting any easier. It isn't just keeping up with the latest HTML5 tags and what features Microsoft and Mozilla are adding to their latest browsers (although both are worth tracking) - it is maintaining a complex ecosystem of a myriad of software tools, updating your corporate policies as new technologies take over the marketplace, finding people with the right skill mix and personalities to leverage new social media. Oh, and also understanding how the Web has infiltrated just about everything that we do these days."
Miscellaneous
Take a gander at our Managing Editor Abraham Hyatt's photogallery of the summit.
Speakers and attendees also took a host of photos during their time at the summit.
Here's a link to the #rww2way Twitter stream.
Stay tuned for more coverage of the ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit. We have yet to sift through the tremendous amount of conversation, ideas, revelations and warnings we heard from our guests, panelists and participants.
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