Just happened to read an older book which is surprisingly well hitting into today’s hot topic: privacy. Continue reading The Quantum Thief: online marketing, NSA and internet privacy – public and private memories exposed
Facebook moving advertising on mobile
88% (85% Q1) of Facebook’s revenue is coming from advertisements. 41% (30% Q1) of that is already coming from mobile advertisements. There are over 1 million active advertisers according to Facebook’s latest report. The growth is driven significantly by local businesses. Continue reading Facebook moving advertising on mobile
Impact of Alibaba’s IPO to Yahoo?
It will be interesting to see how Alibaba’s potential IPO will impact into Yahoo. Yahoo has 23% stake of Alibaba. Value estimates of Alibaba seem now been dropping from $100 billion into area of 70-80 billion. Even with that Yahoo’s stake would be worth 16-18 billion. Continue reading Impact of Alibaba’s IPO to Yahoo?
Social media, privacy, new user generation – does old medicin of Facebook still work?
Interesting report from Pew Internet & American Life research program how behaviour of younger generation is changing. Both idea what to share and where seem to in transit. Continue reading Social media, privacy, new user generation – does old medicin of Facebook still work?
49% of small businesses never update their listings online
Just found a survey made by ConstantContact among SMBs in february. They figured out that SMBs have challenges to handle even their basic online marketing. This is somehow understantable as they need to focus to their own business and they usually do not have knowledge or resources to tackle ever increasing complexity of online environment. Actually 70% of companies in this interview say that they do not have time to manage the listings. Continue reading 49% of small businesses never update their listings online
EU data protection regulation – right to be forgotten
70% of EU citizens are worried about misuse of their personal data according to EU justice department. One might think are the remainin 30% in groups of ignoranda and unaware. Naturally nobody wants misuse of personal data.
source: European Commission
One way to give control to indiciduals is the defined “right to be forgotten”- rule. Tricky part is how that can be implemented.
From individual point of view it is impossible to know where you have left some information about yourself while wondering through web. All systems are storing huge amounts of information in their logs. Picking and deleting few individuals out of that might prove to be tricky. Easy answer would be that no-one is allowed to store any logs, but that would be quite huge change effort for all systems running in web. For example my blog remembers you visiting here and staying on this page, which is basic functionality for all web based applications.
From company point of view this rule would have big impacts on need to invest renewal of systems so that unwated data can be deleted. It would impact also on business models: imagine what amazon would look like without any memory of your earlier visits.
On the other hand, if right to be forgotten would be limitted on registrations into services like Facebook and such, what would be the benefit? Your information will be collected into different web services which are crawling the content all the time and you do not know from whom you should request you information removal. Check out Way Back Machine, it shows nicely what i mean.
So nice attempt to increase individual control on personal privacy, but naturally there are some minor details to be considered while implementing it.
Speed of internet connection – good position for consumer to be is in middle on trends, but what is operators next move?
Living in area close to city, but too far for proper fixed line connection. All operators offer 8M/1M connection and the actual measured speed will remain at level of 4-5M.
I am watching TV through that connection and began to wonder, if I could achieve a bit better quality for movies. 1M stream is ok, but I would prefer to get 2M stream for bigger screen.
I took a mobile phone capable to 4G connection. Made it distribute WLAN network and measured the speed. For my supprise I got almost symmetrical connection 25M/24M!
Naturally this luxury will not last as my neighbours figure the same thing out and start to utilize 4G, but for time being I can enjoy speed. So in some cases it is usefull to be early adopter moving from fixed to mobile connection.
Other thing that might change the situation in future is new pricing models of mobile subscriptions, that operators are talking about. Data buckets and other pricing limitatios will make it too fuzzy for consumers. At the moment mobile subscriptions are charged on fixed monthly basis similarly to fixed line connections.
Interesting to see what happens. I naturally understand that operators have to earn they money, but i am worried how pricing change will affect end user behaviour. Hopefully they will find a balance and we will not fall back to stone age. Like earlier times of mobile usage in USA: people did not dare to answer their phones as they felt uncertain about the expenses and stick with fixed line phones.
Alibaba – Does it say “open sesame” for IPO treasure?
There is nice story about treasure behind name of this Chinese company.
Impressive is also the company carrying this name: their profit rose from US$1.02 billion to US$1.84 billion. Expected revenue level for 2016 is even more attractive: US$18 billion! The analysts are taking it from there adding nice 25x multiple with 20 per cent discount rate and thus reaching an entity worth US$98 billion today. So it seems as valuable as Facebook was during IPO.
It will be interesting to see what happens. I do not predict any specific fate for this “treasure box”, but rather pointing few things that make me wonder.
Alibaba’s market share: Alibaba is currently dominating huge share of Chinese online market. It seems difficult to maintain current position, if competition is opening up.
Alibaba’s market: Alibaba is focused in China. The growth expectations of that market seem to be slowing down from faster period of growth experienced earlier.
Analysts seem to be little undesided too with the valuation. The latest comment i found has already decreased estimate to $62 billion. Timing is cruicial in IPO as you can see from valuation changes. Intresting to see what happens. Merchandise is excellent, but what it is worth?
Another blog of my friends
Something to follow for those intrested in finnish literature. Check it out:
Net attitude – details change, but thinking out of the box remains important over time
A book from history: beginning of this century. I don’t know if this book is anymore available anywhere. I started to read it out of curiosity: how development and future of internet was seen by this book?
Writer had interesting edge into story as he started to think about internet and its opportunities already during 1993. At that time they were considering if it is possible to monetize this new technology. While considering how, they came to conclusion that they don’t know.
Basically book is pointing out the handicaps of thinking that was common during early 2000. Most of those examples seem amusing ten years after, but if you abstract those though a bit there might be some relevance for today’s business world too. When you try to move your old business model into new environment you are making mistake. You need rethink what you are doind seizing the opportunities created by new environment. Some things might have changed to be mandatory, even they were considered optional earlier. Those companies who figure out new rules fasted, will gain the benefits too.
I don’t know if i would recommend to read the whole book, but rather consider the main thought: think out of the box when entering the new arena with new rules and especially consider your timing. It seem that often first mover advantage is a myth or lucky strike. In many cases second wave hits into more mature market and picks the berries.