The Phone Call Is Dead... almost

Times they are a changin'... 

I don't have a home phone anymore. I have my iPhone, Google Voice, Skype and recently bought a Magic Jack.  All work great and I just send everything through my Google Voice to screen and direct incoming calls.  I text and communicate via Twitter, LinkedIn and even HeyTell.   

The phone may not be dead quite yet but it certainly is experiencing entropy.  I have definitely changed the ways I communicate over the past few years and so have you. Email is next to go... Skype me when it's over.   

The Phone Call Is Dead
TECHCRUNCH | NOVEMBER 14, 2010

By Alexia Tsotsis

photo © 2008 mike | more info(via: Wylio)In the tech industry saying that something is dead actually means “It’s on the decline.” And yes, the phone call is on an inexorable decline.

My original title for this post was “The Phone Call Will Be Dead In __ Years” but as consumer inertia is somehow still keeping our parent company Aol in the dialup business,  I thought it might be prudent not to include an ETA on the death of the call.

Less obsolete but more annoying than a handwritten letter, the phone call is fading as a mode of communication even if the nostalgic will be singing its praises for awhile. We reached a breaking point in 2008 when text messaging topped mobile phone calling in usage, and we’ve been living in a world dominated by text based communication ever since (Thanks Twitter).

If old media has taught us anything, it’s that it takes most industries at least a generation to be completely disrupted, especially something as powerful as Big Telco.

But we are definitely on our way there. According to Nielsen data, voice usage has been dropping in every age group except for those past the of age of 54. Text is just easier.

“Now, 78 percent of teens recognize the functionality and convenience of SMS, considering it easier (22 percent) and faster (20 percent) than voice calls (though still fun). Voice activity has decreased 14 percent among teens, who average 646 minutes talking on the phone per month.”

Read the full article here: http://pulsene.ws/jiLh

"Does It Matter?" A perspective on the BCS and the ridiculousness of the current system

Let’s be honest, the BCS is a joke.  In competition, the only true way to determine who is the better team is to play the game.  Think of the incredible upsets that have happened just in the past few years… Boise St. over Oklahoma, Appalachian State over Michigan, Texas A&M over… well, anyone :)

There needs to be a playoff system and I believe eventually there will be.  This year is a prime example.  I would bet we end up with four unbeaten teams and another four that have one loss.  Putting these teams into a three-week playoff would determine the true national champion.  But this year, like most recent years, we will end up wondering what could have been.

Does It Matter? 

Austin Murphy, Dan Wetzel
 

Refresh our memory, BCS acolytes: Why must college football never have a playoff?  Oh, yes, that's right. Because a postseason tournament would devalue the sport's singularly meaningful regular season.

But if regular-season wins and losses mean so much, how did Boise State drop two places in the AP poll after eviscerating Hawaii 42--7 last Saturday? How do the Broncos fall from No. 2 to No. 4 after outgaining the Rainbows 737 yards to 196?

So please spare Boise the platitudes about the sanctity of college football's regular season. And spare us Talking Point No. 2: "We believe the bowl system wouldn't survive a playoff," predicts BCS executive director Bill Hancock.

According to interviews with numerous bowl executives, television deal makers, athletic directors and conference commissioners, all the bowls—the major BCS ones, the mid-tier ones and the newbies you've never heard of—wouldsurvive, albeit in the shadow of the playoff.

But for a playoff to exist, it would mean that those now presiding over the bowl system—some (not all) of the BCS conference commissioners; some (not all) of the ADs and university presidents at whose pleasure Hancock serves—would have to release their grip on the sport's levers of power. And that, quite frankly, isn't going to happen, short of a successful antitrust action by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Until that glad day arrives—and it may be on the way—we are stuck with an inexact, capricious, widely despised system that is propped up and defended, in the main, by the people who profit from it. College football could have an opera, a Shakespearean drama, a season that builds to a stunning (and wildly remunerative) climax. Instead, it has a soap opera.

Read full article here >>>  

Starbucks to Offer Beer and Wine

Starbucks patrons could soon be riding an entirely new kind of buzz.  

In an effort to attract more evening customers--reportedly, Starbucks gets 70% of its business before 2 p.m.--the coffee franchise is looking to offer regional beers and wines.

A location in Seattle is the first to offer alcohol in its newly revamped store. Kris Engskov, a region vice president for Starbucks, said, "What we've done is we've tried to create a variety of options that you might find in more of a restaurant at night."

If the Seattle location does well, it likely will only be a matter of time before other locations start offering beer and wine, as well as a wider variety of food. And don't worry about feeling out of place in a traditional Starbucks with a glass of cabernet in your hand--the stores are reportedly being remodeled for a decidedly un-Starbucks look.

So could there be any new-Starbucks drawbacks (or drawbucks, as NewsFeed likes to think of them)?  Definitely. It's largely thanks to Starbucks that paying $5 for a cup of coffee became normal--who knows what could happen to the cost of a pint. (via USA Today)

Ask.com Officially Not A Search Engine, Maybe The Return Of Jeeves?

Ask.com has been fighting an uphill battle for some time.  While other IAC assets have grown (ie. Match.com...), Ask has been struggling.  The algorithm game is over... in fact, you can argue that no one is going to "out Google Google".

Ask.com will become a meta search engine and work to monetize traffic using other unique products including Q&A.  For years now there have been three levels of quality traffic sources:

Tier 1:  Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft

Tier 2: Ask.com, Looksmart, Lycos, ChaCha and others

Tier 3:  Everyone else

The winners in the space will figure out how to acquire traffic, develop a unique set of relevant products and services and build buzz around them.  Wrap this approach with traffic quality control (ie. Click Forensics) and a solid monetization platform and you can build a company.  Trying to stay in the algoritm game is a losing proposition.  Don't believe me?  Ask the butler...

From Search Engine Roundtable:

Ask.com announced very sad news yesterday, they are letting go 130 hard workers due to a change in their strategy. That change is they will no longer index the web and will focus on being a question and answer engine. They are closing down the Edison, N.J. and Hangzhou, China offices, where their web search teams are based.

Yes, over a hundred people are losing their jobs and it is also sad to see another player fall in the search space - but ultimately, I agree, this is the right move for Ask.com.

Doug at Ask.com wrote a pretty honest post at the Ask blog about this. I think it is worth a read and I appreciate his honesty.

To me, I am not surprised - I am sad, sad to see so many good people lose their jobs and sad to see a potentially good Google competitor go. But it is the right move. The story headlines found on Techmeme range from IAC's Barry Diller Surrenders to Google, Ends Ask.com's Search Effort and Ask.com Gives Up On Search, Hangs Its Hopes On Q&A. But Danny's title was much more soft, Ask.com To Focus On Q&A Search, End Web Crawling.

The only good thing I can see from this is that Jeeves might come back to the US? As you know, he has been back in the UK for a while now. So maybe he will return to the US, since the Ask.com strategy is no longer search. I hope so.

I am sad, but like I said, I felt Ask.com was dead for a long long time now. So it is good for them to move on and focus on things they can do right

Rocketman Does Double Loop In Winged JetPack

I'll be honest with you... I want a Jetpack!  I mean, who doesn't??  

Yves Rossy is a Swiss adventurer slash dare-devil, known for flying across the English Channel in nothing but office clothes and a winged jetpack.

Office lies aside, sporting a new version of his jet-pack and the right kind of flight attire, on Friday he managed to pull of two aerial loops, presumably consecutive.

The new model is aerodynamic, and Rossy tested it by jumping from a hot-air balloon at a 2,400 meter altitude, and 18 minutes of flight and a parachute landing later, he’s probably the first man to perform two loops in a winged jet-pack.

The new model has a 6.6 ft wingspan, 1.6 ft smaller than the first one, has no detachable parts, and is both more aerodynamic and more stable. There had been a plan by Rossy to fly a complete circle around the balloon, but despite the safety improvements.

Consequences? Are you talking about consequences? Sheesh...

I have been a Cowboys fan my entire life.  (So much so I drove to Dallas in 1989 for the Tom Landry Day Parade!)  Now the Cowboys have hit an all-time low.  What an embarrassing season.  Firing Wade Phillips will only mask the problems.  This is arguably one of the most talented teams Dallas has had in years... and yet, we stink :-/

Jones called the loss to Green Bay a "setback".  A setback is when you lose your keys and can't go to the gym, or when you spill coffee on your pants before a meeting or even when you fumble the ball in the snow and MIami recovers and scores a touchdown.  Let's call this what it really is... a stinking DISASTER!  

Jerry Jones: 'Consequences' will follow 1-7 Cowboys' latest loss

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones vowed changes on Sunday night after his team fell to 1-7 following a 45-7 loss in Green Bay.

Jones, who has consistently expressed shock each week recently as his team has fallen further out of the playoff hunt, did not indicate that anyone would be safe.

"There are a lot of people here who are certainly going to suffer and suffer consequences," Jones said, via ESPN. "I'm talking about within the team -- players, coaches who have got careers. This is certainly a setback."  The Cowboys entered the season as a team many analysts saw as a Super Bowl contender. And Jones admitted those aspirations have made the fall to 1-7 especially sour.

The owner, who said as recently as Friday that coach Wade Phillips would remain in place all season, held off specifically targeting Phillips' job after the loss to the Packers.  "We have so many things that we need to correct and address, as this game so vividly exposed and previous games have," Jones said. "I've got a lot of work to do, got a lot of decisions to make.  "And it's not just one, two, three or four. There are several decisions. I think everybody in this country would agree that there's a lot wrong with this team that we've got to address, and I'm certainly the one to address it."

Phillips didn't speculate on whether he could be fired. The Cowboys have in-house candidates -- such as offensive coordinator Jason Garrett or and secondary coach Dave Campo, the team's former head coach -- they could turn to if Jones fires Phillips. -- Sean Leahy

Seize the Persuasive Moment after "Thank You"

First of all, I want to thank you for taking your valuable time to read this post!  Persuasion is a fascinating topic.  It is used (and misused) in business and life everyday.  HBR had a very interesting article on the subject of reciprocation.  It reminded me of Michael Scott (from The Office) describing reverse psychology... but in this case, it is both real and effective!  I noticed the instance below that describes my "gift" of $5 to save the planet by reusing my towels when traveling recently.  I realized that this also saved the hotel more than the lame $5 credit but thought about how clever that approach was!  Enjoy the article, and keep your eyes open for new ways to affect behavior in business.  Let me know what you find... now you owe me one :)

You are more likely to invite a neighbor to the party you're hosting this weekend if they have previously invited you to one of theirs. You can be persuaded to leave the waiter a bigger tip if he places a piece of candy on the table along with your check. Fundraisers can increase the chances that you will make a contribution if they accompany their request itself with a small gift.

The principle is reciprocation: the psychological phenomenon in which we feel drawn to repay what another has provided for us first. An obvious idea, but understanding its nuances can enhance your ability to build stronger networks, create more trusting relationships, encourage long term collaboration and become more influential over others.

What is particularly fascinating about the way reciprocation works is the order of the exchange. Unlike a traditional "if you help me then I will help you" transaction, reciprocation requires us to take the lead and be the first to give in the hope that the recipient will play by the rule and respond accordingly. This isn't as naïve as it sounds; numerous studies have in fact shown that if we give first, those we invest in will very often live up to their obligations — often even more than when we demand the initial move.

A series of studies conducted by my Yes! co-authors Robert Cialdini and Noah Goldstein show how this played out in a business setting, looking, for example, at how hotels asked customers to reuse their linens. The study showed that when guests were informed that the hotel had already made a donation to an environmental organization, those guests were 45% more likely to reuse their towels and linens. This was compared to a standard approach in which guests were told that the hotel would make a donation only if they reused their towels first. Compared to this standard incentive-based message, the"give-first" strategy resulted in a more desirable change in guests' behavior, more environmentally protective outcomes, and increased cost savings for the hotel.

The same holds for other situations that require an element of persuasion. In another series of studies, researchers sought to persuade business executives to complete health and safety questionnaires about their organisation. They found that the inclusion of a $5 gift doubled the response rate compared to the promise of a reward of $50. Not only did the gift trump the reward in terms of response, success came at a tenth of the price.

However, the key to the reciprocity approach lies in your response to the message of thanks for the initial favor. How you phrase your "you're welcome" can determine your footing for your own request down the road.

Don't worry, I'm not suggesting that "Yes I did help you out and now you owe me" is the right way to go; of course you'll just be branded as someone whose help is best avoided in the future! But the much more common response —"Hey, it's no problem, I was happy to help." — isn't quite right either, because it fails to take advantage of the very moment when you are at your most persuasive: the moment immediately after someone has thanked you.

Instead, you should highlight the help and assistance you have given in a specific way that will increase the likelihood that it will be reciprocated fully in the future. For an individual, that means "Happy to help — I know how valuable it would be to get your help if I ever need it." Or, "No problem — I know that if the situation were ever reversed, you'd help me."

And in a more formal business setting, if you're looking to secure future business opportunities from your currently satisfied customers, it's: "You're most welcome. It's what we at XYZ Corp. do for our important customers" or "I am glad that we were able to resolve this issue. It's the sort of thing you can be assured of when you deal with ABC Inc."

The key to optimising the principle of reciprocation, then, is a two step approach: give help or assistance first and then be sure to position your help as part of a natural and equitable process of give and take.

And by the way, if you found this article helpful, please let me say: "I am delighted that you found it so useful. It's the sort of thing you should expect from the blogs on HBR.org."

Steve Martin CMCT is co-author of the New York Times Bestseller Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive and Director of INFLUENCE AT WORK UK.

What’s the Value in a Brand Name?

What are your favorite brands?  For me the list includes Starbucks, Snapple, Nike and Nordstrom.  One can argue the quality of the product is better but at the same time, you know you pay more.  The key question is determining the value of a brand is, "Do you have the power to charge a higher price for the same product?".  These companies, and the ones described in the article below have leveraged solid brands into higher margins.  The article concludes with four insights into branding that I found insightful...

 Via Mashable by Erica Swallow

Companies invest a lot of resources, including time, talent and capital, in an effort to procure a positive status in the minds of potential customers. But how much value do companies really derive from cultivating brand names?

According to Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, a brand’s value is simply about the extent to which it can sell its goods and services at a premium price.

 Damodaran presented on valuating brands at Friday’s L2 Innovation Forum. He noted that many marketers mistakenly attribute product quality, styling, service and reliability to a brand name’s value, when all brand value ultimately comes down to is pricing power.

“If you as a company tell me that you have a brand name, I’m going to ask you a question: ‘Do you have the power to charge a higher price for the same product?’” Damodaran said, “If your answer is no, I don’t think you have a brand. You may think you do, but I don’t think your brand has any value.”

To prove the value of brand names, Damodaran compared two companies making similar products: Coca-Cola and Cott, makers of RC Cola. “Soda is water with a bunch of sugar and a lot of crap thrown in. You can put whatever you want on the outside of the can, but there is really no difference between a cola and another cola. You may say that Coca-Cola tastes different — that’s what 100 years of playing with your mind does to you,” he stated. The cola business, then, is all about branding, not the product, he stated.

Damodaran valued Coca-Cola’s business at $79.6 billion, while the value of Cott was limited to $15.4 billion. To figure out the pricing premium, he simply subtracted Cott’s value from Coca-Cola’s value, arriving at a $64.2 billion total worth for Coke’s brand alone. That’s about 80% of the company’s value. Damodaran noted that the key number driving the valuation is the companies’ operating margins — Coca-Cola’s margin is 15.57%, while Cott’s is 5.28%. The typical company has an operating margin of 5-7%, so Coca-Cola’s margin is phenomenal. The bottom line: If Coca-Cola suddenly lost its brand name tomorrow, its operating margins would drop to around 5.28%, and it would lose $64.2 billion of value.

Wouldn’t we all love to have brand names as strong as Coke’s? Of course. The problem is getting there. Damodaran provided four insights into the core of branding that every marketer should keep in mind when pursuing a valuable brand name.

Read the list here >>

---

Cleveland, maybe you should tell LeBron what you really think :)

Well played

The Dawn of the Social Consumer

One more article worth reading if you (like me) are following the evolution of social shopping.

BY Fast Company EXPERT BLOGGER BRIAN SOLIS

What may sound like buzz words or mere hype, is actually the beginning of the end of business as usual. Welcome to the rise of the social consumer and a new era of social commerce. Look at the picture above and think about how physical and online stores can integrate the social graph into the shopping experience right now. The possibilities are limitless and we can introduce everything today.  Read the complete article here >>

Facebook Deals combines Places, bargains (via @USAToday)

Last week I mentioned the powerful combination that is created when location based services are added to consumer deals and wrapped with social.  Facebook's latest initiative is exactly that.  The key to success with this will be privacy.  It would be pretty easy to use the technology to "follow" people and present deals based on their location or interests.  It would be just as easy to freak people out by doing this!  Currently, less than 1% of adults use any location based service... but hang on, this is in the early stages.

Facebook is going Places with retailers.

Barely two months after it dove into the fledgling location-based services market, the social-media giant has made the mobile "check-in" application available to major merchants and thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses in the USA.

Facebook Deals, available today, is designed to connect users of Facebook Places to deals and specials from the likes of 24 Hour Fitness, Gap and Palms Casino Resort. Deals is available as part of a new update in Facebook's iPhone application or for smartphone users via the site, http://touch.facebook.com.

"Millions of people are living their lives (through Places), and merchants wanted to get involved," says Emily White, director of local at Facebook.

Read the full article here

For startups, there's more than just hits and misses

For startups, there's more than just hits and misses

By Fred Wilson, contributor FORTUNE
(Fred Wilson has been a venture capitalist since 1996, and currently serves as managing partner of Union Square Ventures. He blogs regularly at AVC.)

There are a lot of "falsisms" being bandied about in startup land these days. And one that really bothers me is the idea that returns on startup investing are "bimodal."

For those who don't speak geek, bimodal means there are one of two possible outcomes. And in this case, those two outcomes are a total bust or a huge, Google-style win.

If you buy into that logic, then you want to be in every deal because if you are going to take a massive number of hits, you need to absolutely be in that Google-style win or you are toast.

But startup returns are not bimodal. They exhibit more of a power law curve. There certainly will be one or two venture deals every year that generate 100x or more. And there certainly will be quite a few total busts. But there are a lot of outcomes in the middle of those two. And you can make a great return investing in startups without being in the 100x deal.

Here is the distribution of current returns in our 2004 fund. To be confidential, I am not listing company names and have "fudged" the top returning deal number so nobody plays a guessing game with that one.

A couple things about these returns. First, many of these returns are unrealized and carried at valuations forced upon us by our auditors under the auspices of "FAS 157." If we were working under a different accounting paradigm, we would be carrying many of these investments at much lower values. Second, this fund is only six years old. And so we are still carrying one third of our portfolio at cost. When this fund is fully realized, I am pretty sure there won't be a single investment that is worth exactly its cost.

So don't get too caught up in the total numbers here. The point is that startup returns are not bimodal in any way. They exhibit a power law curve. And you can make great returns playing in the middle of the curve.

I've spent my entire career playing the middle ground of this curve. With the exception of Geocities, which my partner Jerry led at Flatiron, I have never seen a 100x return. I suspect our first Union Square Ventures fund will change that. But from 1990 to 2005, a span of fifteen years, I built an excellent personal track record that helped me and Brad raise our first fund working exclusively in the middle of the return distribution curve.

And the way you do it is you keep your "busts" to less than a third of all of your deals and make sure you don't put a ton of capital into a bad investment. And you work the middle third to make sure you make a decent return on them. And you follow on aggressively in your winners. You do that and you can post gross returns in the range of 50% annual returns gross before fees and carry.

The thing you most want to avoid is "doing every deal". You need to select good deals and avoid bad ones. That's what bothers me most about this "bimodal" argument. It suggests that you need to be in every deal so you can catch the one big winner. That's a bad strategy for everyone but the one person who can actually get into every deal. Because there is a good chance that you can't get into every deal. And there is also a good chance that the one deal you can't get into is the one that is going to be the home run.

So pick your deals carefully. Accept that you may not get into the next Google. Work the middle part of the return distribution curve. Recognize your bad decisions quickly. Work your deals hard. And follow your winners. And you'll do just fine.

Dear Entrepreneur: Think Cash, Not Ideas

Timely advice from HBR contributor Anthony Tjan.  It's pretty easy to get lost in an idea and forget to focus on the basics of business.  I was told once that "cash is king"... true then, true now.

Dear Entrepreneur: Think Cash, Not Ideas

Last week NBA legend-turned-entrepreneur Magic Johnson sold his Starbucks franchises back to the corporation for a reported $75 million. Rumor has it, he's freeing up some cash to invest in a professional sports team (he also sold his stake in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team).

About 12 years ago, Magic Johnson formed a joint venture franchise program with Starbucks (Urban Coffee Opportunities) to open coffee shops in developing urban areas such as Harlem. The goal was to reinvigorate under served neighborhoods with jobs. It was a a successful partnership. Under the Urban Coffee Opportunities, more than 100 Starbucks operate in under served urban neighborhoods across the country, including Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit ,Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.

Starbucks' purchase of Magic's 50 percent share of the joint venture is an important endorsement of the power behind small businesses with real cash flow models. It's also a counter-intuitive lesson to leaders about how good businesses and good partnerships can work in under served areas. Doing things where others don't — or won't — inspires me and my colleagues in our daily work.

Our venture firm, Cue Ball, considers franchise opportunities. We're selective, but we like the simplicity of their business models. The attractiveness of most retailing and restaurant franchise opportunities comes down to the unit economics: how much money is required to open a unit, and how long will it take to get the payback? If the concept is good, there should be a healthy on-going cash flow stream. Let's say you build a Starbucks for X dollars. The profits pay back that money in Y years, and you calculate the on-going cash flow minus requirements for ongoing maintenance and improvement. This can quickly give you a "back of the envelope" sense of how much money you can make, and you can quickly assess a concept's economic potential.

In the "sophisticated" business circles of MBAs, tech entrepreneurs, and private investors franchise restaurants, retail and other consumer service startups produce a negative, knee jerk reaction. The cocktail conversation dismissal of these investments usually starts with the assertion that the vast majority of restaurants fail, and that such concepts require a lot of capital and time. Plus, they're not Big Ideas. They're not cool.

It's true that most restaurants fail. Then again, most technology start-ups fail, too. And yes, you need capital and time to get them going. Of course, biotech companies spend a decade and billions of dollars just to bring a single idea to market. Still, tech investors will argue, in the "capital efficient" VC world we live in today, you can start and test the viability of digital media and social networking enterprises with very little capital before committing larger follow-on investments. But do they know that most restaurant and retail concepts have long used a similar stage-gating pattern for investing? To see if a restaurant chain concept can work, you start with one, and if you have unit economic success in that first unit, you replicate or improve on that success with subsequent units. At that point, risks have been significantly mitigated and there is an argument to be made that the subsequent capital required has relatively low risk relative to the return potential. Indeed, once the first few Starbucks in under served neighborhoods demonstrated success, the opportunity to repeat a cash-generating concept was quite high. Compare that to, say, a social media startup where risks persist and are constant as tech is a much more volatile and changing business than coffee service.

So why are tech and pharma and other sexy ideas VC darlings while coffee shops aren't?

It is easy to get lost in the excitement of starting or investing in innovative start-ups and focus on big ideas and big markets, all the while forgetting that the most important business criterion besides the team is a cash flow model that works. The real focus in any investment should be on risk-adjusted returns and not on what investors consider cool. From an investing perspective, people and business models should always trump the idea and market. The "little guys" who have the simple idea but real cash flow models may have as much of a chance to create value as the "big thinking guys" who have the big idea without the cash flow model.

Magic Johnson knew this. In 10 seasons with the Lakers, estimates put his earnings (not including endorsements) at about $18M. Let's round that up to $20M, or even $25M.

Over roughly the same number of years after his NBA career, Johnson's Starbucks venture earned him more than three times that amount. Not bad for the kind of investment many VCs would dismiss before even finishing their cocktail.

Anthony Tjan is CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball. An entrepreneur, investor, and senior advisor, Tjan has become a recognized business builder.

Anthony Tjan

Click Fraud Climbs With Mobile Gear

By ALEX MINDLIN

Published: October 31, 2010

Over the last year, the rate of click fraud has risen drastically, reaching the highest rate since measurement began in 2006, according to Click Forensics, a firm that analyzes traffic on behalf of advertisers and ad networks.

Enlarge This Image

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Click fraud is the practice of creating dummy Web sites to host online ads, peppering those ads with computer generated-clicks, and then collecting money from unwitting advertisers for those clicks. The clicking is often carried out by “botnets,” or networks of hijacked personal computers, harnessed together by a virus.

Paul Pellman, the chief executive of Click Forensics, said that the firm had begun seeing fraudulent clicks routed through mobile devices, like wireless Internet cards. Such clicks are harder to detect than those coming from wired computers because the wireless card effectively disguises the origin, lumping them in with legitimate mobile users under a single originating address.

“The mobile traffic is getting to be large enough that they can hide within that traffic,” Mr. Pellman said. 

"Firesheep," "Idiocy" Reveal Gaping Privacy Holes in Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, More

It continues to amaze me that many people have no idea about the privacy threats posted by social media.  Don't get me wrong, I love social media including Facebook and Twitter.  But it's really important that these are used with eyes open.  This excellent article by Gina Trapani highlights some recently exposed threats...

From FastCompany

Many websites you use every day--like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Foursquare--have a big honking security problem that lets a determined snooper on your Wi-Fi hotspot log into your account as you. This week, security experts put pressure on these companies to close up this gaping hole by releasing tools that make it very easy for anyone to exploit them.

Firesheep

First, developer Eric Butler released Firesheep, a Firefox extension that makes it frighteningly simple for someone sitting across the coffee shop from you to log into your Facebook account.

Here's how it works, in simplest terms: when you sign into a web application like Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr, your password gets transmitted over a secure connection that makes it impossible for someone listening on your Wi-Fi network to decrypt. However, to keep your session going, the site uses a browser cookie to identify you are as you browse the web site. In many major webapps, that cookie information is NOT encrypted, and that's where Firesheep comes in. Firesheep listens for cookie information being sent in the clear over the local network, and uses it to make Facebook et al think that you have legitimately logged in as someone else.

Firesheep works with many major webapps; here's what it looks like running in Firefox on a computer connected to an open Wi-Fi network, where others are logged into their Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and Google accounts.

This session cookie exploit has been known for a long time now, but it used to be the domain of determined hackers with advanced tools most civilians would never know about. Firesheep is a one-click install for Firefox, and its graphical user interface is very easy to use. Butler created it not for evildoers to hack accounts, but to put pressure on companies to encrypt session cookies so that it can't be done.

Idiocy

A follow-up tool, called Idiocy, hijacks your Twitter session using the same unencrypted cookie hijacking technique and auto-tweets "I browsed twitter insecurely on a public network and all I got was this lousy tweet", with a link to a the Idiocy page, as shown above. The linked page explains what happened:

You just got your twitter session automatically hijacked by a piece of software, the intention is to warn you that your account can be modified without your permission. [...] To prevent this occurring in the future, make sure you ALWAYS visit twitter securely. You can do this by going to https://twitter.com, rather than http://twitter.com. It's the same as internet banking - look for the lock!

Idiocy is a bit more difficult to run than Firesheep, but its auto-tweet functionality gets the message across more effectively.

The Solution

Ultimately Firesheep, Idiocy and its ilk are a call to companies like Facebook and Twitter demanding that they encrypt all cookies, like Google's Gmail does. Until encrypted cookies become standard security practice--and hopefully the attention these tools brought to the issue will force these web companies' hands--you can protect yourself.

First and foremost, avoid open Wi-Fi networks where it's even possible for others on the network to sniff the traffic your computer's sending and receiving to various sites. When you must hop onto open Wi-Fi, use an https connection for every site you possibly can. The Force TLS Firefox extension tells your browser to use https by default.

Reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson tells Fast Company: "We have been making progress testing SSL access across Facebook and hope to provide it as an option in the coming months. As always, we advise people to use caution when sending or receiving information over unsecured Wi-Fi networks.  This tip and others can be found on the Facebook Security Page." The spokesperson added, "Be careful about the information you access or send from a public wireless network. To be on the safe side, you may want to assume that other people can access any information you see or send over a public wireless network. Unless you can verify that a hot spot has effective security measures in place, it may be best to avoid sending or receiving sensitive information over that network."

The FTC's OnGuardOnline site also offers a warning.

Twitter promised Fast Company a response later today. Other services did not respond to requests for comment in time for this post. When they do, we'll update it.

While there will most certainly be collateral damage due to the release of Firesheep and Idiocy, if the long-term effect is that all web companies use SSL for cookies, it will be worth it. Now, webapp makers, go forth and secure your cookies!

Gina Trapani is changing her passwords and resetting her browser cookies just in case. Follow @ginatrapani on Twitter 

http://www.fastcompany.com/1698627/firesheep-idiocy-privacy-facebook-twitter-google-foursquare-eric-butler-wifi

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The Future of Local Commerce = Facebook + Foursquare + Yelp + Groupon

I tend to believe that local advertising will follow the description outlined in this article.  The combination of these socially empowered, locally focused, geo-targeted and cost efficient mediums to connect consumers with advertisers is unique.  More than that, it could be game changing.  I've been following this trend closely and it is worth watching... the future is closer than you might think.

From TechCrunch

There’s been much hype, crazy valuations, and overall market excitement about businesses that promise to unleash the power of the social graph, location, recommendations and group buying. Facebook’s latest valuation according to SecondMarket is now about $30 billion, Foursquare raised$20 million at a post-money valuation of $115 million while still at a pre-revenue stage, Yelp, short of selling for $550 million to Google, raised over $25 million at an undisclosed but very high valuation, and finally Groupon raised $135 million at a whopping $1.35 billion valuation. So besides their huge success with the investment community, and their users, what do these companies have in common, and what does all this have to do with disrupting Local Commerce?

In an August TechCrunch guest post, Alex Rampell, describes how Online2Offline commerce is a potential trillion dollar opportunity. The gist of it is that we spend most of our disposable income offline, in local stores, restaurants, and shopping malls. But companies like Groupon, Gilt, and other group buying and private sale startups are changing the money flow. People buy online, and redeem offline. But this is just the beginning of a perfect storm brewing that will change the way we discover, shop, and pay for things. Let’s focus on the main function each of these different startups provide to understand how bringing them together will ultimately disrupt multiple trillion dollar industries:

• Facebook: provides the Social Graph, which is fast becoming a utility. Through its open platform, and APIs, we share more about our lives and our interactions online and on mobile every day.
• Foursquare and Gowalla: provide location services and check-ins, along with game mechanics that motivate users to unlock badges, earn mayorships, and get discounts at local stores in the process.
• Yelp: provides crowdsourced reviews of local businesses. Now also provides check-ins, and offers.
• Groupon: provides discounted offers against a promise to increase sales and bring in brand new customers to local businesses.

The interesting thing here is that there’s a lot of overlap between the features offered by these companies. Recently, Facebook launched Places, a mobile geo-location service that mimics Foursquare local check-ins. Yelp also added check-ins, and recently rolled out Yelp Deals, a Groupon clone.

Considering that Local Commerce will be mostly mobile, one of these companies still must bring all of these features together, along with one-click payments (IMHO), to truly tap into the potential of all these disruptive technologies. In my mind, the ultimate product combines all these features in a mobile app. A user would launche the app, see what special deals are in her area (location + group buying), whom of her friends already bought the coupon/item (social graph), local reviews from friends (social graph + reviews), and then she could then buy the desired coupon in one click on her handset. She could walk into the local business with a discount code, barcode, or maybe at some point in the future, an enabled RFID tag, and redeem what she just bought.

All of these companies, with the exception of Yelp, are at an early stage of their product development in this space. Facebook Places is lacking the gaming mechanics of Foursquare, the reviews of Yelp, and the local deals of Groupon. Foursquare is missing scale in its discounted offers. Yelp is missing the reach of the social graph, and the embedded payments. Groupon is lacking core social graph features that would give it better relevance through social shopping.

So which one of these companies will succeed in unleashing the power of Local Commerce by combining the right set of features with the appropriate on-the-ground salesforce? My bet is on Facebook to be first. They have a large advertising sales organization that could reach out to local businesses, already are supposedly testing offers on Places, they have de-facto more distribution and social graph access than any of the other companies, and finally they are building a true payments platform.

Groupon and Yelp also have a decent shot at it, but it will be tough to compete with Facebook’s distribution capabilities and ubiquity. In order to remain relevant, they will have to innovate and come up with original features. Foursquare’s future is probably going to be more challenging with more players entering their space, but it it could end up being bought (once again for founder Dennis Crowley) by Google, which is preparing to aggressively go after the local commerce opportunity.

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Techcrunch Editor’s note: The preceding guest post is by David Marcus, founder and CEO of Zong, a mobile payment provider for Facebook Credits, AT&T and hundreds of leading destination websites and mobile applications

Allen Iverson: Officially Bound for Turkey

Seems strangely appropriate...

Allen Iverson To Turkish Media: 'Uygulama? Uygulama? Biz Uygulama Bahsediyoruz!'

The word from the A.I. camp is out, and they’ve officially declared that they’re on their way to Istanbul. Larry Brown expresses the sadness that all Iverson feel today. From the Philly Daily News: “A media advisory sent last night said the former 76ers star agreed in principle to a 2-year, $4 million contract with Besiktas, a professional team in Turkey. He is expected to sign his contract this weekend and begin his overseas career the week of Nov. 8. Iverson is expected to attend a news conference at 2 p.m. today at the St. Regis Hotel in New York … ‘It’s sad, having him have to go to Turkey to finish his career,’ Larry Brown, his former Sixers coach, said the other day. ‘I wish there were some way I was in a position to help. You don’t want to see him end his career this way.’”

How To Make Innovative Ideas Happen

Steve Jobs said, "Innovation distinguishes a leader from a follower."  Clearly, innovation drives intellectual, economic and technological growth.  The article below from Smashing Magazine outlines a process to foster innovative thinking from conception to reality.  I enjoyed reading it and hope you find it useful as well...

Anyone can come up with an amazing idea but how you execute the idea will determine your success. 

Read the full article here

Dear LeBron, It's not the critic who counts...

Dear LeBron,

I saw your commercial... 

Let me share some advice that a wise president once said... words I live by, 

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."  Theodore Roosevelt 

Now, go play ball.

Sincerely,

Tom

From Russia, With (Search) Love

 поиск хорошего, найти лучше!
 
by Bill Hunt Search Engine Land

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to learn more about the current digital market and advertising opportunities in Russia from Person Carey who is heading up Yandex’s new business opportunities outside of Russia. While China often gets the attention for its growth and opportunity, Preston showed me that Russia can also offer opportunities for companies looking to expand their international reach.

Read the full article here