Having let the markets get pumped up with huge expectations for its upcoming mega IPO, e-commerce leader Alibaba now appears to be trying to temper some of those high hopes in the run-up to an offering that is likely to be the biggest ever for a Chinese Internet firm. The reason for the sudden change of tone? Apparently the company wants to avoid following in the footsteps of social networking giant Facebook, whose IPO was so overhyped by the time it finally occurred that it was almost bound to result in failure and major disappointment. More
Tag Index / Showing 1 - 10 of 42 results for “Facebook”
Capturing the Value of Technology—in Economic Terms
When you look at economic statistics like G.D.P. and productivity, what gets overlooked? According to a New York Times column by Eduardo Porter, these key measures fail to capture the value people get from digital technologies. But leading academics from the University of Chicago, Stanford, M.I.T., and the University of Michigan are developing metrics to assess the overall value of technology on our lives, trying to put numbers around key pieces of the puzzle, like the value of the Internet and the value of free online services. More
Why Zuckerberg Wants Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Washington appears best suited to screwing up good ideas, even when more or less everyone there agrees it's a good idea. Fiscal Times here examines the politics and details surrounding tech-oriented immigration reform, including increasing H-1B visas, letting immigrant PhDs in STEM subjects stay in the U.S., and exempting entrepreneurs who are creating jobs from deportation. Because these are such logical reforms, they can't be passed individually but must become part of a comprehensive package, because Congress typically weighs down no-brainer bills with stupid amendments. Thus, Zuckerberg's new pro-immigration lobbying group FWD.us wisely supports a comprehensive bill, though it's hard to achieve. More
Mining Big Data for Programming Talent
Finding and recruiting top programmers remains a huge challenge for fast-growth companies like Square, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Will Big Data come to their rescue? They’re willing to give it a try. These companies—along with other big names like Twitter and Walmart—are all customers of Gild, a startup that leverages information technology to find hidden talent. Gild was developed to tap self-motivated achievers—a cohort rife with what co-founder Dr. Vivienne Ming calls "wasted talent"—who are largely unknown compared to the smaller pool of much-wooed Ivy League graduates. More
Does Facebook Want to Make Us Closer or More Separate?
A thoughtful article at Wired.com by Evan Selinger asks the right questions about the TV ads for the new Facebook Home app for Android phones. How appropriate is the kind of self-absorbed distraction that the ads depict users of the software indulging in? Should we celebrate people who tune out those around them, opting instead for entertainment provided by their friends? While one ad shows a guy on a plane being greeted by a young relative, another depicts a young woman at a family dinner completely ignoring her relatives as she enjoys her friends' snowball fight, a ballet performance, and a loud drummer. More
Kirkpatrick: Facebook Wants to Be There When You Turn Your Phone On
Techonomy CEO David Kirkpatrick appeared on Bloomberg TV yesterday to comment on Facebook's ambitions to amplify its presence in the mobile market. Kirkpatrick dispelled rumors that Facebook intends to launch a new phone, but said the company has plans to release a layer of software that will appear on the home screens of specific HTC smartphones. According to Kirkpatrick, this represents "the beginning of a whole series of Facebook initiatives in mobile that will probably lead ultimately to a lot more people having a home Facebook screen when they turn on their phone all over the world." More
Who Says the Internet Isn’t Making Life Better?
A standard trope these days is that we in the middle class have been slogging through a couple of decades of woe. Wages are stagnant. Our standard of living isn’t improving. The grand forces of our time—the Internet and globalization—are failing to better our lives, and may be making things worse. The numbers prove it. But here’s the problem: the traditional numbers used by the government and economists measure the wrong stuff for the twenty-first century. More
Ford to Crowdsource Fuel-Efficiency App
As part of a campaign to help drivers learn more about how to optimize their fuel usage, Ford announced its Personalized Fuel-Efficiency App Challenge at last week's New York International Auto Show. The app will address what Ford officials say is the number one concern among drivers. By creating a platform designed to share information through social media, Ford believes it can empower drivers to improve their personal fuel efficiency. More
Welcome to Little Big Inc.
You’ve got a great idea. You’ve assembled a team of four or five people, all enthusiastic, all raring to go. That’s it. You’re ready to take on the giants. This is not the familiar story of online start-ups and one-app wonders, where the business model is a quick sell-out to Facebook, Google, or Apple. Instead it’s the story of companies like Jimdo, a small German business that makes it easy to build and run websites—whether you want to run a blog, create a personal site to show off your fly-fishing prowess, or create an online presence for your small business. Jimdo started as the side project of an online marketing team that didn’t like the software available at the time to build websites. So they built their own easy-to-use, browser-based tools. More
Techonomy 2010-12: Highlights
A who's who of Techonomy participants join Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick in a series of highlights from our 2010-12 conferences that address the growing impact of technology on business and society and why, increasingly, every company is a technology company. More
