Danger
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5941907/that-pretty-new-facebook-friend-probably-taliban
In the good ol’ days of spy vs. spy, the honeypot was a tried and true method espionage technique, laced with danger, intrigue, and sex. These days—as Australian soldiers have found out the hard way—all it takes to seduce your way to state secrets is a Facebook friend request and a Google image search for “hot chicks.”
As Australian news site News.com.au reports, a recent Aussie government look at the unhealthy intermingling of social media and the military, several of its soldiers have fallen victim to the oldest trick in the Facebook; someone pretending to be an attractive, flirtatious girl when in reality they’re not. Except instead of spammers, they get enemies of the state:
The review warns troops to beware of “fake profiles – media personnel and enemies create fake profiles to gather information. For example, the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers.”
Why is that a problem, other than terrorists having access to your karaoke pics? Because soldier status updates can often include the kind of seemingly innocuous information that ends up giving away locations, statuses, and other sensitive details that could get people killed.
The report goes on to say that soldiers have been too trusting of Facebook’s default privacy settings, something which we’ve all fallen victim to at one point or another. Its just that the stakes for us normals aren’t anywhere near as high. But what’s the solution? Either to ban social media for troops altogether—as some have argued in favor of—or to insist on stricter guidelines and, especially, enforcement. Let’s hope the latter proves effective. It’s hard enough serving your country in a far-flung land without feeling even more cut off from the world than geography dictates. [News.com.au via Danger Room]
WPP Says Growth In America Is Now WORSE Than Europe (WPPGY)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/wpp-says-growth-in-america-has-completely-collapsed-2012-8
WPP Group, the world’s largest ad agency holding company, reported its Q2 2012 results and the revenue breakdown shows a complete reversal of fortunes for North America: When previously growth was strong in the U.S. and Canada, now it is contracting; and where growth in Europe was anemic, now it is robust.
Here’s WPP’s chart:
The key metric is “LFL,” or like-for-like” revenues. Note that North America declined 0.6% in Q2 while Europe grew between 0.8% – 3.5%.
The U.S. ad economy is now doing worse than Belgium, Italy and Japan:
As usual, ad agency revenue growth has continued its strong correlation with U.S. GDP as a whole. As the U.S. economic growth slowed, ad revenues matched the retraction, step for step:
Ad agency revenues hinted at the retraction back in Q1, also. Ad agency revenues are—arguably—a good proxy for economic growth as a whole because they come from a wide variety of consumer-facing companies who often adjust their spending as a percentage of total sales.
Related:
Please follow Advertising on http://t witter.com/BI_Advertising”>Twitter and Facebook.
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Facebook Will Prove You’re Alive During the Next Disaster
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5889455/facebook-will-prove-youre-alive-during-the-next-disaster
When an earthquake ravaged Fukushima and terrified all of Japan, the entire country had one reaction: is everyone OK? And if you knew someone in an afflicted area, you might’ve been thinking, is my husband okay? Now Facebook will tell you.
Facebook’s new Disaster (currently in trial for Japan only) feature is so simple and could be so very useful: if you’re in an area hit by a natural disaster (or terrorist attack, I presume), you’ll have the option to flag yourself as safe with all the ease of clicking “Like.” Or, if you’ve managed to get in touch with someone you know in a danger area, you can flag their profile as safe for them. Either way, Facebook will become a go-to source for peace of mind. It’s the kind of tool you hope you’ll never have to use, but one we might be glad to have. And one that’ll rack up ad views for Facebook the next time a crisis hits. Click! [YokosoNews via NewScientist]
Not 1, Not 2, Not 3, But 4 Display Ads Per Pageview – Shame on You Facebook
Updated May 12, 2012. Freddy Nager, Prof of Integrated Marketing at UCLA sent me a screen shot showing 9 display ads per page. The unscupulosity of Facebook is at an all time high – right up to their IPO.
THANKS Freddy Nager @AtomicTango, Prof of Integrated Marketing, UCLA for the screen grab of 9 and 10 ads per page.
http://atomictango.com/2012/04/20/myspace-facebook-continued/
Updated February 3, 2012. This is how Facebook is growing ad revenues – SEVEN DISPLAY ADS PER PAGE – EVIL!
But despite this kind of “cheating” their revenues are decelerating. And there is the “danger” of advertisers getting smart and changing from paying on a CPM basis to paying only on a CPC basis — paying only when they get the click. That would mean Facebook’s revenue could drop off a cliff.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-facebook-revenues-are-decelerating-2012-2
Updated: FIVE (count ’em) 5 ads per page – SHAME on you Facebook – the highway robbery gets worse. Advertisers, quick, go to CPC (don’t pay CPMs any more).
Multiple ads on the same page run up the impression numbers, but artificially depress click-throughs because even if they wanted to, users can only click on one ad at a time. Shame on your Facebook for overtly and systematically robbing advertisers who pay on a CPM basis.
But then again shame on you advertisers who still pay CPMs when you can easily click a radio button to select CPC — Facebook even suggests a range for you automatically (see inset below).
What is the advantage of paying by CPC (cost per click) instead of CPM (cost per thousand impressions)? Well, remember the old ad industry joke “I know I am wasting half my ad dollars, I just don’t know which half” — well, now you know. In fact, you now know you are wasting 99% of your ad dollars to wasted impressions that get no action/clicks from users AND you know which 99%. See infographic below. So stop paying CPMs and start paying CPCs TODAY. Your ad budget will thank you!
Just how DISMAL are Facebook advertising metrics and benchmarks (click to see )?
According to data from comScore, in Q3 2010, Facebook served 297 billion display ad impressions giving it 23% of the U.S. market for display ads. In digital channels, since there is no longer the physical limitation of time (airtime on TV) or space (area to put ads on dead-tree pulp) companies can create “inventory” out of thin air and magically increase revenue on the backs of advertisers still willing to pay for impressions. I guess it really is caveat emptor.
More Kin Dirt Surfaces
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5581704/more-kin-dirt-surfaces
If people had talked this much about Kin while it was still alive, it might have stood a chance. Oh well! The battle continues to rage over who gets the write the final chapter in Kin’s history.
Mini-Microsoft has been a prime staging ground for these kinds of comments, with accusations aplenty being flung back and forth by current and former Microsoft employees. A sampling from today’s batch shows that Andy Lees is again a popular target:
All I can say as a former Windows Mobile employee who is now working for a competitor in the phone space is that this is good news for the rest of us. […] Personally I quit because of the frustrating management and autocratic decision style of Terry Myerson and Andrew Lees. The only exec in the team myself and other folks respcted was Tom Gibbons who is now sidelined. Lees and Myerson don’t know consumer products or phones. Gibbons at least knows consumer product development. We often talk about how Andrew Lees still has a job but Microsoft’s loss is a gain for the rest of us.
And that the folks at Danger, acquired by Microsoft to help bring Kin to life, were confounded by the sudden perceived incompetence around them:
You are correct, the remaining Danger team was not professional nor did we show off the amazing stuff we had that made Danger such a great place. But the reason for that was our collective disbelief that we were working in such a screwed up place. Yes, we took long lunches and we sat in conference rooms and went on coffee breaks and the conversations always went something like this…”Can you believe that want us to do this?” Or “Did you hear that IM was cut, YouTube was cut? The App store was cut?” “Can you believe how mismanaged this place is?” “Why is this place to dysfunctional??”
Please understand that we went from being a high functioning, extremely passionate and driven organization to a dysfunctional organization where decisions were made by politics rather than logic.
So: we get it. All is not right with Microsoft’s corporate culture, which may spell trouble for Windows Phone 7. But in the meantime, can’t we just let sleeping Kins lie? [Mini Microsoft]
Is Android fragmented or is this the new rate of innovation?
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/22/entelligence-is-android-fragmented-or-is-this-the-new-rate-of-i/
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
A few weeks ago I sat down with the father of Android, Andy Rubin. Andy’s a super smart person, having done stints at Apple, General Magic, WebTV and Danger before starting the Android project. We talked about a lot of things, and we particularly spent time discussing Android fragmentation. I’ve written in the past about my concern that the Android platform is fragmenting much like desktop Linux has over the years, and the potential for the platform to turn into a patchwork of devices and vendor specific modifications that bear little relationship with each other. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my conversation with Andy, and I’ve rewritten this column more than a few times as a result.
Today, there are at least five different versions of Android on the market. Many of them are highly customized to allow for new features and device differentiation, but that same customization also makes it harder for vendors to update them to the latest versions. New releases and versions of Android are often outdated by newer versions in the span of just a few weeks. For example, the Nexus One when released was capable of running apps like Google Earth that devices such as the Droid could not, because it ran Android 2.0, not 2.1.Tablet vendors complain their Android offerings lack features such as Android Market because Google forbids them to install the marketplace app, forcing them to create proprietary alternatives. It would appear Android is indeed fragmenting — but perhaps there are other forces at work.
When I spoke with Andy, he pointed out there are several classical symptoms of platform fragmentation. First, older APIs no longer work and break in new releases. Second, multiple application marketplaces offer different applications that lack uniformity across platforms. Both of these are true when you look at desktop Linux. Neither are true of Android.
Continue reading Entelligence: Is Android fragmented or is this the new rate of innovation?
Entelligence: Is Android fragmented or is this the new rate of innovation? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 May 2010 20:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Your Data’s Probably Gone Forever [Outages]
T-Mobile Sidekick users have been holding out hope that their data might be recovered after T-Mo issued an optimistic message of hope. But the carrier just updated users and admitted the truth: Your shit’s gone. Sorry, guys.
It’s been more than two weeks without data for Sidekick users, and T-Mobile finally bit the bullet and announced that it probably isn’t coming back. The quote:
Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.
This is pretty crappy of T-Mobile and Danger, and while it’s probably unfair to make this connection, doesn’t give us any new confidence in Project Pink, developed by the remnants of Danger after Microsoft acquired it. (After all, Microsoft bought Danger specifically because of their software services. And now, it just goes kablooey?) Renowned Sidekick user and a-hole Perez Hilton, while normally hysteric about just about everything, has the right tone here:
To add insult to injury, the ONLY thing T-Mobile is offering their customers, whom they obviously don’t value or respect, is one month of free data service.
That’s shit!
One month of free data service (which is not the same thing as one month of free phone use) for SEVEN DAYS of heartache and no access to contacts????
That’s fucked!!!!
Really, that’s kind of putting it lightly. [T-Mobile via Boy Genius Report]
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