Google Estimated To Surge Past 10 Million Users

It’s only been two weeks since the launch of Google+ , but already there are “millions” of users, according to chairman Eric Schmidt. Beyond that ballpark figure, Google has not disclosed any user or usage numbers.

But Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen has been publishing his own estimates of the growth of Google+. His latest estimate is that Google will surpass 10 million users on July 12, 2011. That estimate is up from 4.5 million on July 9, 2011 and 1.7 million on July 4, 2011.

Google Estimated To Surge Past 10 Million Users (Chart) | TechCrunch

Collaboration Myths

All those collaboration tools that have been developed over the years may not make your team more effective, Gartner argues. Gartner has said that collaboration initiatives often fail because people hold some basic misconceptions about the collaborative process.

Among the myths are the notion that "the right tools will make us collaborative." It really is not about tools. Tools help people do things they want to do. Some organizations might not really "want" to practice collaboration.

Another myth is that "collaboration is inherently good." That is true sometimes, but not always, Gartner argues. Without quantifiable goals, initiatives easily can fail.

Unmasking the collaboration myth

Disturbing Findings on Start-Up Job Creation

New businesses contribute a disproportionate share of new job creation in the United States. So it is disturbing that new research released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation suggests that the country faces a far more fundamental employment challenge that pre-dates the recession by many years.

Researchers call the problem a slow jobs "leak." Put simply, new businesses are adding workers at a lower rate than historically has been the case.

The report shows that since the middle of the last decade and perhaps longer, new businesses have been generating fewer and fewer new jobs. The cohort of new firms that started in 2009, for example, is on course to contribute one million fewer jobs in the next decade than historical averages would suggest.

Read more here.

"While the recession certainly deepened the jobs deficit, the U.S. economy stopped producing enough new jobs well before the downturn," said Robert Litan, Kauffman Foundation vice president of research and policy and study co-author. "Historically, startups are the key to long-term employment growth, and they have been hiring fewer people for the last several years. We won’t fix our core unemployment problem in the United States until young businesses get back on track."

Citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the study found that the number of new employer businesses has fallen 27 percent since 2006. When including new employer businesses and newly self-employed workers, the level of start-ups has held steady or even edged up since the recession, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.

But that encouraging sign is somewhat misleading because firms that support only the self-employed owner do not scale to generate the new jobs needed to support overall economic growth.

Historically, new firms in the United States have generated about three million new jobs every year, but that recent cohorts have performed much worse, creating only 2.3 million jobs in 2009.

At the level of individual businesses, one data series (BLS establishment data) showed that in the 1990s new establishments opened their doors with about 7.5 jobs on average, compared to 4.9 jobs today.

The study also found that as a group, recent cohorts of new businesses have been adding jobs at a slower pace than earlier cohorts even when they do well and grow, but that growth hasn't made up for lower employment levels at inception.

"Not only are these businesses starting out smaller than their predecessors, they are staying smaller," said E.J. Reedy, Kauffman Research Fellow and study co-author. Thus, falling contributions of jobs at new businesses will be felt in the U.S. economy for years."

The researchers said that rather than focusing on discrete events such as the opening of a new manufacturing plant or relocation of a large business to a local community, policymakers must recognize that the long-term jobs outlook will be driven by the collective decisions of young and small businesses whose changing employment patterns are hard to identify or influence.

They also warned against the false hope that growth in the number of self-employed workers can resolve the U.S. employment shortfall.

PayPal Has to be In Retail Payments

PayPal believes that by 2015, digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the United States, from local businesses to large chains. By "digital currency," PayPal means a viable currency alternative to credit cards, debit cards and cash. Already a leader in online payments, PayPal believes the next, and largest opportunity, is retail payments at physical locations.

Supporting Payments In The Physical World Is Critical For PayPal

Mapping Twitter and Flickr Geo-Location

Geolocation data for Flickr and Twitter posts. Flickr data is shown in orange and Twitter data is displayed in blue. Not every tweet or Flickr post has geo-location data attached, but it is becoming a more-common practice, it seems.

Mapping Twitter and Flickr Geo-Location

Windows Phone 7 OS Market Share Gains Still A Ways Off

A growing number of analysts may be forecasting that Windows Phone 7 could overtake every mobile platform except Android within a few years, but Microsoft is "managing expectations." CEO Steve Ballmer admitted to the firm's Worldwide Partner Conference that the new operating system has had limited impact so far. 'In a year, we've gone from very small to …. very small."

Many think the Nokia deal, replacing Symbian with Windows Phone 7, will change all that, and in dramatic fashion, giving the WP7 operating system a huge boost in sales volume. Pyramid Research even believes WP7 will overtake Android, on the strength of Nokia's sales volume.

Of course, Microsoft's coziness with Nokia is likely to lead other traditional licensees to back off a bit, as it appears Nokia will have unusual rights to modify the way WP7 operates, compared to other licensees.

Wisely, or fortuitously, Microsoft did not decide to strike the Nokia deal with Research in Motion, as many had been suggesting for years. RIM has been losing market share since 2008, in large part because of perceived weakness in the broader smart phone area, despite the historic strength in business-focused messaging devices.

WP7 is "very small", admits Ballmer - Rethink Wireless:

Australian Consumer Attitudes Show Mobile Payments Issues

A survey conducted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) confirms one fundamental element of the mobile payments business. People in developed countries do not think they have a compelling need for some convenient, trusted new way to pay for things online or in retail stores. That means mobile payments have to provide new value, rather than simply displacing payment systems that consumers find satisfactory.


It also is important, one might add, to demonstrate some compelling value for retailers who will have to invest in new equipment and software to support mobile payments. 


Australians surveyed by the ACMA are generally satisfied with the electronic payment systems that are currently available in Australia, including debit and credit cards, internet transfers and payment services including BPay and PayPal because they offer convenient, quick methods for making purchases in store and over the internet.


The study also suggests that Australian consumers associate mobile payments with ways to purchase digital content such as ringtones for their mobile phone, or a method of voting on TV shows or entering competitions.  


The research indicated that any new mobile payment service will need to offer some advantages over current payment methods. For example, mobile payment services will need to be easier, more convenient or quicker than current electronic payments. The technology will also need to be easy for people to adopt.  


Mobile payment services that are processed by banking institutions, as opposed to telcos or mobile payment services, are perceived as more trustworthy. Respondents did not believe that telcos or mobile payment service companies have the same level of guarantees in place to protect against fraud and misuse of personal data as banks do.  


The research findings showed that users were more likely to consider payment methods that only give access to limited funds. People felt more comfortable about payments that were linked to a pre-loaded account or that only allowed the user to spend funds they have, such as with a debit card. 


But there are some “early adopter” mobile payment scenarios that make sense to people. “On the go” transactions involving micro-payments are areas where respondents see value and convenience.


There is also an opportunity for mobile payments to offer transactions that are instant and can be completed anywhere. There was a positive response to the idea of buying tickets by text message.


Respondents also had strong concerns about adding payments directly to a mobile bill linked to a credit card. They also worried that mobile payment services would involve extra charges.
Read the report here.

$1 Billion to be Spent in 2011 on Mobile Ads

U.S. advertisers will spend more than $1 billion this year on mobile display and search ads to reach consumers who will make more than $8 billion in retail purchases on their mobile phones, according to Forrester Research.

Read more here.:

74% Happy with Fiber to Home Access

Overall satisfaction among fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers reached a new high in 2011, with 74 percent stating they are "very satisfied" in a new study conducted by the FTTH Council. This compares favorably to customer satisfaction for cable users at 54 percent and 51 percent for DSL. Perhaps the only surprise is that "only" 74 percent were "very satisfied." Read more here.

The study also indicates that 54 percent of cable modem subscribers are "very satisfied," while 51 percent of digital subscriber line customers are "very satisfied." Read more.

The study further estimates there are about 162,500 U.S. subscribers buying broadband access at 50 Mbps, and about 69,700 buying services at 100 Mbps. One would suspect that most of those users are "business" users rather than consumer users. One possible hint about that pattern is that 67 percent of users with 50 Mbps connections say they "ever work from home." About 30 percent of all FTTH users say they "ever work from home." 

One might guess that 67 percent of 50 Mbps users say they "work from home" because they use connections subsidized by their employers. Only about

22 percent of users of 50 Mbps services (or higher) say they have "home-based" businesses. About 12 percent of all FTTH subscribers say they operate a home-based business. The take-away is that most at-home 50 Mbps connections are not supporting a home-based business.

The survey of more than 2,000 broadband subscribers, drawn randomly from a nationally balanced panel of more than 3.2 million consumers by the market research firm RVA LLC also found that overall satisfaction among FTTH users continues to lead that of other broadband subscribers, with those answering "very satisfied" at 74 percent - up from 71 percent a year ago - compared to 54 percent for cable users and 51 percent for DSL.

As of April 2011, fiber to the home services were available to more than 18 percent of North American homes and were connected to more than seven million of them. RVA estimates that there are now 170,000 North American households receiving FTTH service with connection speeds of at least 100 megabits per second, and a total of 347,000 receiving 50 Mbps service. Both of these figures were more than double those from last year's survey report.

With regard to cost of service relative to download connection speed, the RVA survey results showed FTTH subscribers paying $2.91 a month per megabit of bandwidth, compared to $3.83 for cable subscribers, $16.40 for DSL, and $49.38 per megabit for fixed wireless services.

YouTube Launches "Cosmic Panda"

YouTube is launching a beta test of Cosmic Panda, a new format for displaying videos, managing playlists and channels. TestTube experiments: Cosmic Panda. To take this experiment for a test drive go to http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda and click “Try it out!”

YouTube Cosmic Panda

Google+ Fastest-Growing Social Network, Ever?

"I predict that Google will go from 0 to 100,000,000 users faster than any other service in history," says Bill Gross, founder and CEO of Technology Incubator Idealab.

Gross thinks Google+ already could be the fastest-growing social network, ever.

Bill Gross on Google+

Google+ for Business is Coming

Google recommends businesses hold off creating Google+ accounts now, as a business-focused version is coming.

Why Google Circles Will Succeed

Google's Google+ might succeed, in part, for reasons that have nothing to do with features. Google has created the opportunity for people to get a social network "do over."

Where on Facebook a user has to "de-friend" a contact, something people might be reluctant to do, Google+ handles such actions gracefully.

Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn, or most other social networks, there's no such thing as a "friend request," in one sense.  


Users can create groups of friends, called Circles, including both other Google+ users and nonusers who receive status updates by e-mail rather than from the site. But that's not the key feature.



As a Google+ user, you never are in the awkward situation of receiving a friend request from someone you don't really want to be Google+ friends with.

Nor will you have to face the awkward decision of whether or not to de-friend a former contact. Just remove them from your circles, which are never revealed to other users. Other than that, Google+ looks and behaves a lot like Facebook.

Read more.

Mobile Execs Move to Banks

Omar Khan, head of strategy and product management, is joining Citigroup. Khan, who was the head of products and technology for Samsung's U.S. mobile division, will help develop Citigroup's global mobile services.

In 2010, Dan Schulman, who previously ran Virgin Mobile, moved to run American Express' mobile business. If you wanted more evidence that the mobile business and banking are "converging" at an important level, both moves are illustrative data points.

Samsung loses key mobile executive to Citigroup

Why Tech Companies Don't Want to be Called "Media" Companies

Advertisers and other publishers have pointed out for years now that assembling audiences, and selling advertising against them, makes some significant "technology" companies media businesses. Google, for example, constantly says it is a technology company, not a media company, despite the fact that its revenue stream is overwhelmingly based on advertising revenue.

Some might suggest that hesitance to embrace the "media" appellation is more than a cultural issue. One might argue that engineers and software developers just prefer to think of themselves as technologists, not publishers. It might be more simple than that.

Valuations of media companies are not as rich as those of technology companies. That alone would be reason to emphasize "technology leadership," rather than media operations.

Why Silicon Valley Can't Sell | Adweek

Smart Phone Sensor Apps Will be Key for Marketing

Mobile phones are sensors. Today that is true mostly for location apps. In the future, there will be other ways to use the sensor functions, Forrester Research believes.

"When a phone knows where you are, what you're doing, your identity and history, and even potentially your attitudes, based on what you've done in the past year and the past five minutes, it can help predict and deliver what you want right now," says Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research analyst.  "This is the context that makes mobile devices more intimate and completely different from traditional Web experiences."

Google Launching Huge Data Exchange to Target Ads?

Google might be just weeks away from unveiling an advertising data exchange that would create a liquid market for the data used to target display advertising, Ad Age reports. Executives familiar with Google's plans have described the initiative as one of the most ambitious in Google's march to become a brand advertising giant.

Under the plan, publishers and third-party providers would be able to feed their data into the market and advertisers could dip in and buy audience segments, such as people shopping for refrigerators, planning a trip, or demographic or psychographic segments.

The scale of the initiative, and the fact that it will contain Google's own data, plus online and offline data from third parties will provide both unprecedented richness of targeting data and represent a competitive threat to other would-be providers of such services.

Online publishers using Google's DoubleClick would be able to sell data on their audiences in the exchange as easily as they might sell ad space.

Google might have chosen some other path, if it had more display inventory to sell. But, faced with a limited ability to sell avails on its own properties, Google apparently has decided it would fare better as a provider of targeting data.

One debate internally has been over whether to charge a percentage to use the service, as it does with Invite Media (which charges advertisers for services) and DoubleClick (which charges publishers), or make it free to use so Google would reap the benefits of more effective ad campaigns, and presumably, more spending.

Read more here.

NFC Apps for Google+ on Androids

Google+ apparently supports use of near field communications, and it appears that some applications using the feature are under development. "Google Check-ins" is a feature of the "Stream" feature of Google+, for example.

Users then might  be able to "check in" using NFC, creating an automatic post directly to their stream on Google+, also limiting its visibility by Circle category (groups). A user might want "friends" to see the check in, but not business associates or other family members or more-casual acquaintances. Read more here.

Business pages, the Google equivalent to Facebook Pages, have also been promised in Google Plus, says Mike Blumenthal, Google VP of Local and Commerce. It also might make sense to use NFC support for Business pages as well, essentially replacing the function of a quick response code, for example. Retailers will have to think about this, though.

It means putting NFC access points at the entrances to stores, or at other locations. The check in function could be handled at an NFC point of sale terminal as the customer leaves, but that doesn't create value while the customer is in the store, still shopping.

There are at least two different ways to look at NFC-supported social apps, from a retailer point of view. There is the indirect value of a check in as well as the direct value of stimulating incremental purchases while the customer is on the premises. There also is the possible value of an NFC-based payment capability, though even there, many of us would argue that the greater upside is the marketing platform created by NFC, not the actual payment.

How Google+ Affected Social Sharing

After analyzing data from the "Technorati Top 100" websites and their RSS feeds, plus the 20 most-recent blog posts (both before and after Google+ was announced), it appears market share has changed.

Across the board, more of the top sites are using Google +1 buttons (similar to the Facebook "Like" button).

The amount of shared content on Facebook has fallen, since Google+ was launched, the analysis suggests. There also is less use of Facebook sources after Google+ launched. One might suggest the data shows people are sharing on Google+ and using Google +1 more than they did before the Google+ launch.

How Google Affected Social Shares and +1 Adoption Rates

Mobile Broadband Will be Dominant by 2015

More people will getting access to the Internet using mobile devices than desktop devices by 2014 or 2015. And there is a bigger implication than simply the difference between fixed and mobile or un-tethered access.

The mobile Web user increasingly is using the "social" part of the Web, and social applications, compared to desktop access and applications. Increasingly, mobile will mean "social."