dimanche 6 mai 2012
How Instagram Took America by Storm [INFOGRAPHIC]
The flaming hot mobile app and recent $1 billion Facebook acquisition now has more than 40 million users.
This Online Colleges infographic shares some impressive stats behind the viral mobile photography app. Instagram gains one new user every second. One billion photos have been taken with the app — that’s roughly 58 photos uploaded each second.
Instagram’s on track to hit 100 million users — joining the ranks of LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook — two years after its initial iOS launch in October 2010.
The infographic, created by an online university database, focuses on college students’ adoption of the app. It suggests professors and campus professionals use Instagram to foster community through photo contests. It also recommends that students follow professors to learn about their interests outside of the classroom.
How have you seen colleges use Instagram? Do you think students and professors should interact on social networks?
10:24 0
What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised
Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).
Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.
The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.
“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”
As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.
Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.
With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.
“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.
“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”
Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.
10:09 0
What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised
Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).
Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.
The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.
“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”
As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.
Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.
With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.
“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.
“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”
Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.
09:45 0
mercredi 2 mai 2012
8 Ways to Cultivate Serendipity in Business and Life
Thor Muller and Lane Becker, co-founders of Get Satisfaction, the community platform that lets companies participate in an ongoing online conversation with their customers, saw it as not just dumb luck, but rather a series of strategic moves on the part of Instagram leadership that led to the historic acquisition.
Muller and Becker have published a new book called Get Lucky, which outlines the skills and elements we need to begin cultivating luck.
"Luck is a fundamental part of how the world works," according to Muller and Becker. "Open any history book and you’ll find stories of curious people looking for one thing and finding another."
The Search for Luck
When asked about the secret of Google’s meteoric rise, company co-founder Sergey Brin replied that "The number-one factor that contributed to our success was luck." Muller and Becker maintain that Brin wasn’t saying this to dismiss his accomplishments. Instead he was arguing that it requires more to happen than any one person can fully take credit for in order for something to succeed with the scale and speed that Google did.
"What Brin can take credit for," they say, "is being open to serendipity, and being willing to use it to his advantage." They add that Brin combined a passion for his work, a commitment to his organization’s purpose and a willingness to do whatever it takes to find the best way to put those qualities to work in the world.
Planned Serendipity Explained
Those qualities are all part of the skills of what Muller and Becker term "planned serendipity." Muller and Becker believe that planned serendipity is the only way to succeed in our fast-changing world, where so many things are out of our control.
"Accidents happen," they say. "There’s nothing mystical about them—but it’s our practical ability to take advantage of the best accidents that transforms these from forgettable moments into incredible opportunities. This is the essence of planned serendipity, the kind of luck you make for yourself."
That's good news, since most of us have at one time or another envied a competitor who seems to win by sheer good fortune while we keep working tirelessly without ever realizing that sudden overnight success.
The real question is, how can we introduce serendipity into business and life and put it to work? Muller and Becker offer these eight suggestions:
- Motion. Maximize physical and conceptual movement in your workspace.
- Preparation. Focus on breeding and feeding obsessive curiosity.
- Divergence. Minimize fixed plans and goals to allow for changing circumstances.
- Commitment. Choose from all your options the right ones to focus on.
- Activation. Create new activities to open up your awareness of all the possibilities.
- Connection. Optimize the number and quality of connections with others.
- Permeability. Replace the rigid walls most organizations put up to keep themselves separate from other people and organizations with an open exchange of information.
- Attraction. Project your purpose out into the world to draw the best and most valuable events, people, ideas and opportunities toward you.
But how do you begin creating a life and workspace open to serendipity?
"Break out of your routine!" they implore. "Routine is the enemy of serendipity."
Muller and Becker add that to take advantage of unexpected surprises, you have to put yourself in a position to encounter the unexpected. This is what they call "the essence of motion," putting yourself in unfamiliar situations, but within familiar environments, to engage with previously unfamiliar people and ideas that are connected to your job, your projects or your interests.
As a practical example of how anyone working away at a job might do this, the authors offer the following advice.
"Visit a different department inside your company. Attend a conference in an area related to your job, or even pick a different place to sit for lunch in the cafeteria each day."
"Here’s a little secret," they add. "No one succeeds without an assist from the unexpected. But every successful person on this planet employs the skills of planned serendipity."
How do you change up your routine? Have you had a stroke of good luck happen lately?
12:43 0
RIM CEO: We’re Not Leaving the Consumer Business
Heins said what he meant was the company needed to eliminate some services the company was doing in-house, and instead achieve those consumer-based goals with partnerships rather than going it alone. While enterprise is still RIM’s core strength, Heins said the company would continue to market and sell devices and services to the consumer segment.
Heins also unequivocally contradicted reports that RIM was abandoning physical keyboards on phones, a traditional RIM strength. Saying BlackBerrys had the best physical keyboards on the planet, Heins 100% confirmed there will be a BlackBerry 10 device with a keyboard when the new platform debuts this fall.
He wouldn’t say whether or not there would be a new tablet when BlackBerry 10 devices arrive, but he did say that if RIM creates a new tablet, it would be marketed to enterprise customers first, with a consumer play later, if at all. Broadly, Heins sees tablets as an “on-ramp” to mobile computing.
Heins also spoke about his philosophies and RIM’s approach to the market.
“We spend a lot of time on who are we mostly talking to, who is the target customer,” he said. “The common denominator with all our customers is that they are striving to succeed.”
Heins said “success” didn’t necessarily mean in business. It could also be personal, but the main challenge that they all have is managing their relationships.
“What do I need to succeed?” Heins said RIM’s customers are asking. “How do I manage all these connections and communications channels? I’m creating them with relationships, but i’m now subject to them as well.”
To Heins, the answer to those questions is BlackBerry 10. Heins emphasized the benefits and abilities the new OS, which has “real-time” multitasking, with apps that don’t stop or pause when they’re in the background.
Between now and then, though, Heins provided little guidance for customers. He said RIM would continue to develop and support BlackBerry 7 (the OS on current RIM devices, except the PlayBook tablet), but he was unspecific when asked about what sort of upgrade path there might be for BB7 customers.
What do you think of Heins’s comments? Is it the right strategy, or does it need adjustment? Have your say in the comments.
12:37 0
Bing Takes on Google With Simple New Design
Microsoft’s search engine Bing
has done some heavy spring cleaning as a part of an effort to
de-clutter its search result pages — and the new design looks a lot like
Google.
Bing rolled out a new look that is designed to help users get results faster than ever. But the seamless design bears a striking resemblance to Google Search’s simple layout. See below.
“Over the past few months, we’ve run dozens of experiments to
determine how you read our pages to deliver the link you’re looking
for,” Sally Salas, principal group program manager at Bing, said on its official blog.
“Based on that feedback, we’ve tuned the site to make the entire page
easier to scan, removing unnecessary distractions, and making the
overall experience more predictable and useful.”
In addition to faster page-load times and more relevant search results, Bing tightened the header and removed the “left rail” related-search section, making it easier to find the information and links you want.
It also enlarged the space between lines to increase readability and optimize the page for touch devices.
Bing said it is working on updating its search page even more in the future.
“We’re not finished, ” Salas wrote. “Today, we’re also testing out some new ideas for the homepage, including a larger version of the popular daily image. If you happen upon the homepage changes, please let us know what you think.”
What do you think of Bing’s new search results page? Do you think the site looks too much like Google? Let us know in the comments.
Bing rolled out a new look that is designed to help users get results faster than ever. But the seamless design bears a striking resemblance to Google Search’s simple layout. See below.
In addition to faster page-load times and more relevant search results, Bing tightened the header and removed the “left rail” related-search section, making it easier to find the information and links you want.
It also enlarged the space between lines to increase readability and optimize the page for touch devices.
Bing said it is working on updating its search page even more in the future.
“We’re not finished, ” Salas wrote. “Today, we’re also testing out some new ideas for the homepage, including a larger version of the popular daily image. If you happen upon the homepage changes, please let us know what you think.”
What do you think of Bing’s new search results page? Do you think the site looks too much like Google? Let us know in the comments.
12:28 1
mardi 1 mai 2012
RIM Demos BlackBerry 10, Offers Look Into Developer Hardware
RIM's Thorsten Heins took the stage at BlackBerry World to show the audience some of what BlackBerry 10 will have to offer. He highlighted a new virtual keyboard, which considering the relative absence of hardware keyboards on rumored BB10 devices, is going to be hugely important to the system's acceptance. The company's design is all about gestures, using finger-swipes to choose predicted words and shift between keyboard layouts. Other highlights of the operating system include a graphical multitasking interface, again looking to gestures to let you swipe aside the current app and peek at what's running underneath.
As for the BB10 developer hardware, some details continue to remain elusive, but the bigger picture is coming together. RIM's confirmed the handset has a 4.2-inch 720p display. Supposedly, there's also a gigabyte of RAM and 16GB of internal flash storage. We're still wondering just what processor RIM chose to employ.
09:33 0
Could Project Glass and a New CMOS Bring Real X-Ray Glasses?
The prototype we've seen is an unobtrusive, side-mounted display, but we can envision the technology being someday embedded into more traditional-looking glasses -- though the prototype doesn't look all that bad.
But all that is "old news" that you've heard about before. What you might not have heard of is a new CMOS sensor that's been developed in Texas.
In this context, a CMOS sensor is a Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor specifically designed for capturing light and converting it into a digital picture file. Pick your chin up off the floor! The technology isn't new, you've got one of these newfangled CMOS doohickies inside your phone right now -- maybe even two of them: it's your digital camera.
At the University of Texas in Dallas, Dr. Kenneth O, a chaired professor of electrical engineering, and his team have come up with a CMOS chip that utilizes a range of the electromagnetic spectrum that hasn't been used before. It can see "light" that exists somewhere between the infrared and microwave wavelengths, in the terahertz spectrum.
"We've created approaches that open a previously untapped portion of the electromagnetic spectrum for consumer use and life-saving medical applications. The terahertz range is full of unlimited potential that could benefit us all.
"CMOS is affordable and can be used to make lots of chips. The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and receiver on the back of a cellphone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects."
Yup, you read that correctly! Using this CMOS sensor you can see through stuff! Some examples of it's use include being able to inspect the insides of walls (plumbing, electrical, structural, etc.), identify counterfeit money, and even scan for tumors inside the human body.
Let's add an extra CMOS sensor to the Project Glass appliance (is that what we should call it?), and now you can wear your fancy new camera that can see through objects.
Wait a minute! Didn't I see an ad for this kind of glasses in the back of a magazine when I was a kid?
Yes, that's right! Using a terahertz-style CMOS sensor, one could
theoretically see through clothing, and into bathroom and changing-room
stalls. Since this technology exists in a CMOS sensor, saving the image
(whether in a still picture or a video file) wouldn't be difficult. The
technology exists today.
Before you grab your pitchforks and torches, it's not very likely that this technology will make its way into our phones, let alone a newfangled set of glasses. Not for a while anyway.
However, if it's done in the name of "security" you could very well see a pair of these glasses being worn by law enforcement officials trying to "keep us safe" by seeing who might be carrying "weapons". Then again, they might be checking out the bikini team that's getting on the subway, too.
Before you grab your pitchforks and torches, it's not very likely that this technology will make its way into our phones, let alone a newfangled set of glasses. Not for a while anyway.
However, if it's done in the name of "security" you could very well see a pair of these glasses being worn by law enforcement officials trying to "keep us safe" by seeing who might be carrying "weapons". Then again, they might be checking out the bikini team that's getting on the subway, too.
09:23 0
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