The goal of the “Nielsen Twitter TV Ranking” will be to measure the unique audience tweeting about individual programs. [Read more]
Nielsen to roll out Twitter ratings for TV shows on Monday
Chủ Nhật, 6 tháng 10, 2013
Nielsen to roll out Twitter ratings for TV shows on Monday
Nielsen to roll out Twitter ratings for TV shows on Monday
Google works to demote mug shot sites in search results
While legal, many Web sites charge fees to have removed the very images the sites posted themselves. [Read more]
Google works to demote mug shot sites in search results
LG's New Nexus Phone Gets Detailed In Leaked Service Manual
There has been no shortage of leaks that claim to show off Google’s next Nexus smartphone (including this not-so-subtle nod from Google itself) over the past weeks and months, but we may have just hit the mother lode this weekend. The folks at Android Police have gotten their hands on a hefty, near-final draft of a 281-page service manual for the forthcoming device, which still technically bears the LG D821 model number.
Really though, LG isn’t fooling anyone here. The document is chock full of diagrams and images (some of the device in various states of disassembly) that depict a very familiar-looking phone sporting some Nexus 7-like branding on its rear end. An earlier FCC filing already revealed some of the juicy details — the inclusion of a 4.95-inch 1080p IPS screen and a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 with 2GB of RAM — but this newly leaked manual manages to shine a little extra light (not to mention extra credibility) on those earlier reports.
The new Nexus will likely be available in 16 or 32GB variants, and will feature an LTE radio and an 8-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization (there’s no mention of that crazy Nikon tech, though). NFC, wireless charging, and that lovely little notification light are back, too, but don’t expect a huge boost in longevity — it’s going to pack a sealed 2,300mAh battery, up slightly from the 2100mAh cell that powered last year’s Nexus 4. That spec sheet should sound familiar to people who took notice of what happened with the Nexus 4. Just as that device was built from the foundation laid by the LG Optimus G, the Nexus 5 (or whatever it’s going to be called) seems like a mildly revamped version of LG’s G2.
At this point I’d usually urge you to approach such leaks with caution, but it hardly seems necessary now. As much as I love my mental image of a lone prankster toiling into the wee hours of the morning on a meticulously crafted forgery, the sheer complexity and granularity of the information contained in this document makes that scenario an unlikely one. And the icing on the cake? LG asked Android Police to pull the offending document and images earlier today — AP complied with the request, but there’s no way to get the cat back into its bag now.
It’s hard to argue with the timing, too. The first anniversary of the Nexus 4’s unveiling is fast approaching, and as solid as the device was, it found itself being outclassed by a more powerful breed of smartphone within a matter of months. The Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 4 made their official debuts in October 2011 and 2012 respectively, and now that we’ve got persistent rumors of a Google event scheduled for October 14 floating around, I’d wager all this cloak-and-dagger business should be dispensed with very shortly. Until then, feel free to dig around in the full document below for more technical tidbits — happy hunting!
LG's New Nexus Phone Gets Detailed In Leaked Service Manual
Seedrs Lets Armchair Investors Take A Punt On WebStart Bristol's First Incubator Cohort
If the premise of equity-based crowdfunding is to enable a greater range of individuals to take a punt on a startup, while oiling the wheels of investment overall, then a natural evolution of the model would be to enable would-be investors to place bets on a group of promising startups in one pool. In what it claims is a first for the equity-based crowdfunding industry, the UK’s Seedrs has done just that by offering investors the chance to take a stake in ten companies with a single investment via a partnership with WebStart, a soon-to-launch startup incubator based in Bristol, UK.
Interestingly, however, they won’t know who those ten startups are, since they’ve yet to be selected for participation in WebStart, which doesn’t open till January next year. Like similar incubator/accelerators, the programme will see the chosen companies put through a 10-week bootcamp involving mentoring in areas such as product development, finance and marketing, along with providing co-working space and other support, cumulating in a final demo day in front of potential further investors. In that sense, what Seedrs is offering is the chance to crowd invest into a “fund” unpinned by WebStart.
The fact that investors are essentially being asked to invest blind makes this an especially interesting development
In total, the fund is looking to raise £150,000 in return for ten percent of equity in each of the ten startups. At an average of £15,000 a pop, that works out pretty generously compared to other fundraising campaigns on Seedrs and isn’t a million miles away from most European accelerators who tend to offer the same sort of money per startup for around six to ten percent equity. The fact that investors are essentially being asked to invest blind, however, trusting the selection process of WebStart Bristol, makes this an especially interesting development — though, again, this doesn’t deviate from the usual accelerator play, aside from how the money is being raised.
It could, in fact, even be seen as diversifying the risk of backing idea/early-stage startups via equity-based crowdfunding, as Seedrs is claiming. In addition, Seedrs is keen to point out that investors in the WebStart Bristol fund will be able to access the UK Government’s Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) which gives tax-relief on investments.
Cue a statement from Jeff Lynn, CEO of Seedrs, who said: “We set out to be a new kind of financial services firm that makes investing in startups simple and rewarding. Setting up this fund complements that by making it much easier for people to diversify their investments and show their support for the thriving tech ecosystem that has emerged in Bristol over the last several years.” Lynn also says that WebStart is likely to be the first of a number of funds run by the equity-based crowdfunding site.
Finally, it’s good to see WebStart cropping up to support Bristol, as the centre of gravity in the UK continues to be drawn to London. Perhaps equity-based crowdfunding will in future offer another avenue for startup bootcamps to run outside the UK capital city or in other smaller tech hubs in Europe that don’t have the same draw as the major tech cities, especially as these more regional offerings have tended to rely quite heavily on state funding through various EU-funded regeneration schemes.
Seedrs Lets Armchair Investors Take A Punt On WebStart Bristol's First Incubator Cohort
The Already Abysmal NSA Surveillance Panel Is Now On Hold Due To The Government Shutdown
Under-promise, and then under-under-deliver is the name of this game. The panel to vet the NSA set up by the President, and nurtured by current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is now on hiatus, its funds being frozen as part of the larger governmental shutdown.
The panel, one of the President’s small promises that were given in the wake of sweeping leaks concerning the actions of America’s intelligence and surveillance apparatus, was to contain outsiders who could take a critical look at the actions of the NSA, investigating their legality and relationship to personal privacy.
Instead, the panel was a miasma of what I called “insiders, former insiders, and a previous colleague of the president’s.” For example, one member is Michael Morell. He was the CIA’s director until August. I’m sure he is bursting with enthusiasm for change.
Following the revelation that the makeup of the panel itself left it neutered out of the gate, it later became known that Mr. Clapper’s offices houses the group, and manages its public relations operation. The panel, at that moment, moved from potential laugh to utter farce.
And now it’s iced until Congress kicks off again. According to Politico, who broke the news of the panel’s shuttering, the funds in place to allow for travel to Washington for its members are now unavailable. Given that the participants, it points out, work for free, they can go on if they wish, but it’s effectively on hold for the time being.
What will the result of this be? That our impending disappointment at the panel’s future set of recommendations will disappoint us a bit later than expected. Oh, and don’t forget that whatever the panel does produce, the White House has to approve it for public distribution. So, we might get nothing at all, slightly later.
Progress!
Top Image Credit: ttarasiuk
The Already Abysmal NSA Surveillance Panel Is Now On Hold Due To The Government Shutdown
An appreciation for the Nexus 4, the little smartphone that could
The Nexus 4 proved that you could offer a great smartphone with a fantastic off-contract price. Will the Nexus 5 continue that welcome trend? [Read more]
An appreciation for the Nexus 4, the little smartphone that could
Airport Car Rental Service Silvercar Is Headed To LAX In November
Silvercar continues to expand its tech-focused airport car rental service into new markets, and in a few weeks will be making its biggest debut yet. According to an email sent to customers late last week, Silvercar said that on November 4 it will be launching at LAX, which will soon house its largest fleet of Audi A4s.
As we’ve written before, Silvercar hopes to revolutionize the airport car rental business, by simplifying the process of getting a car and paying through its mobile app. In doing so, it does away with all the usual issues that people run into when renting a car — the long lines, the constant upsell, having to worry about whether a car has GPS and whatnot.
Instead, Silvercar has one make and model of car available — the Audi A4 — so there’s no choosing between different classes of vehicles or worrying overly much about upgrades or features. All cars can be unlocked through the Silvercar mobile app and have GPS and in-car WiFi for getting around. So all a renter needs to do is show up and take the car out.
The launch at LAX is a big move for Silvercar, which has been gradually expanding since launching at Dallas/Fort Worth late last year. Since then, it’s launched in Austin, Houston, and Dallas Love Field before opening for business at SFO in August.
The Los Angeles airport will house the company’s largest fleet of vehicles, as it seeks to go after what is one of the largest airport car rental markets in the country. LAX not only does a huge volume of rentals — but it also is home to a number of tech-savvy business people who like to drive in style. So offering up an Audi A4 and a VIP, no-hassle experience to renters could be a huge win for the startup.
Believe it or not, customers have already begun booking rentals from LAX even though the service doesn’t launch for about three weeks, according to a representative for SilverCar. As for why Silvercar is waiting until November 4th before launch — the company is expecting huge demand for Austin City Limits, and will have a lot of its fleet in town for that, before moving several cars over to LAX.
Check out a screen grab of the email sent to customers below:
Airport Car Rental Service Silvercar Is Headed To LAX In November
Fly Or Die: iPhone 5s
What’s there to say? It’s the flagship iPhone 5s.
To say that it won’t be wildly successful would be silly. We already know that Apple sold 9 million units of the iPhone 5s, alongside the more colorful iPhone 5c, in the very first weekend of availability. That’s more than any previous generation.
So instead of asking ourselves whether this finger print-reading, awesome picture taking, gold-clad phone is a viable product or not, we should ask ourselves if it’s worth upgrading from the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 4S before it.
The three major upgrades on the phone are the TouchID sensor, letting you unlock your phone or submit purchases with a quick scan of your finger, as well as a major camera update and a processor bump.
Where the camera is concerned, I’ve played around with this TrueTone flash a lot ore after shooting this review, and I’m not as impressed as I’d like to be, though I still think it’s a fine improvement over the original, white-washing flash. I’m far more excited about the camera’s ability to zoom and remain more crisp than before, and slow-motion video functionality is also quite impressive.
In terms of processing speed, daily activities don’t yield a noticeable improvement, as you can see in this video. But I feel as thought the M7 motion coprocessor makes a big difference with the little things, like being constantly asked to join wifi networks.
Last, but certainly not least, the TouchID feature is the most surprising to me. After a couple weeks of using TouchID, something I didn’t expect to care about at all, it’s the one feature I’ve grown most attached to. It only shaves a second or two off of unlocking time, but it’s easy to be spoiled by it.
Not only that, but TouchID is clearly a building block toward a new way of computing. Combine a Siri google search with a quick TouchID unlock and you have answers right before your eyes, with nary a virtual key pressed.
Two flies.
Fly Or Die: iPhone 5s
Why Tech's Hottest Companies Want To Hire More Female Engineers
Judging by the job fair section at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of women in computing held this past week in Minneapolis, it was very clear that all the hottest companies in tech are working as hard as ever to hire more engineers — and if they happen to be female, all the better. After all, though women make up half the population, they are notoriously under-represented in science and engineering jobs.
So TechCrunch TV took a lap around the job fair at Hopper to talk to a number of the companies there about why they’d like to see more women in their engineering ranks. Their responses made it clear that it’s not that tech companies are looking to blindly fulfill some kind of gender quota — they’re simply looking to build the best products they can. Dropbox engineer Alicia Chen put it this way:
“When you create new products, having differences in background helps you surface more issues that your users might face, and just generally create better ideas. It’s really at the boundary of two spheres where the best ideas emerge. So just having people of different backgrounds working together means that we’re coming up with better material.”
Check out the video embedded above to see more.
Why Tech's Hottest Companies Want To Hire More Female Engineers
Student Tablet Hardware Melts, Districts Suspends $30 Million Amplify Program On Safety Concerns
An North Carolina school district has suspended the use of 15,000 tablets after reports of multiple hardware issues, including the device’s charger melting at home. Guilford County Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green has rounded up $30 million worth of errant tablets on safety concerns.
The recall is a major sting for NewsCorp’s Amplify, which released details of its digital-first education initiative back at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012. Directed by former New York City education chancellor, Joel Klein, there are high hopes that Amplify can help bring K-12 education into the 21st century. But, melting tablet accessories aren’t a good sign.
“We recognize that suspending the program on short notice is going to be disruptive to students, staff and parents,” Green Explained. “My decision was made out of an abundance of caution, and I decided to err on the side of safety.”
Apparently, that’s not the only problem. As reported by News & Record,
“Parent Linda Mozell said her daughter and other students at Southeast Middle School had repeated problems connecting to the Internet with their tablets. And even though her daughter got one of the “hard shell” protective cases, that caused its own set of problems, she said. The keyboard’s hard-shell case kept rubbing against the tablet screen in a way that could scar it, she said. In addition, the cord connecting the tablet and keyboard broke easily, the stylus was too big for easy use, and the equipment came home without a user’s manual.”
Amplify has given us a response (pasted in full below) and tells us that the breakage rate of screens is around 3%, which compares to Asus’s industry average, around 2.5%. An Amplify spokesperson says the melting charger is (so far) an isolated incident.
Amplify and Guilford county aren’t the only ones experiencing hiccups with tablet. Los Angeles Unified suspended it’s 1-for-1 iPad program after students hacked through the filters, granting them full-fledged access to the bountiful wonders of the Internet.
Presumably the next round of Amplify’s tablets will not pose a safety risk to children. Amplify’s response is below:
“This week our largest customer, Guilford County Schools, informed us that a tablet charger, which was manufactured by ASUS, was partially melted while charging a student’s tablet at home overnight.
We are working to determine whether the issue was caused by an electrical problem in the student’s home or because of a manufacturing defect.
While the problem occurred with only one of the more than 500,000 chargers of this kind that ASUS has manufactured and distributed across the world, one instance is too many in our opinion. Nothing comes before the safety of our students, teachers and their families.
Out of an abundance of caution, we are requesting that Amplify Tablet customers cease all further use of the ASUS charger until we can determine the cause of the single reported malfunction in Guilford County, North Carolina.”
Student Tablet Hardware Melts, Districts Suspends $30 Million Amplify Program On Safety Concerns
Samsung shrieks: Captain Kirk, Fred Flintstone talked to watches
A new ad trying to make the poorly reviewed Galaxy Gear somehow relevant, features Captain Kirk, and a host of other watch-talkers throughout entertainment history. [Read more]
Samsung shrieks: Captain Kirk, Fred Flintstone talked to watches
Dad sues Sprint, says son found porn on new phone
A Los Angeles man claims what he thought was a new phone in fact contained pornographic pictures and videos of store staff, which was viewed by his young son. [Read more]
Dad sues Sprint, says son found porn on new phone
Mental Exhaustion Before Exercise May Hinder Your Workout
We all have tight schedules, but a recent study found that if you do something mentally draining before exercising, your workout may be less effective—even if your muscles are well rested.
The study, performed at the University of Kent in England and the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, aimed to uncover how mental exhaustion affects physical exercise. After performing either a mentally draining or mentally relaxing task, participants performed a series of leg exercises, hooked up to a set of electrodes designed to measure muscle fatigue. They were also asked to report how tired they felt during the workout.
The New York Times explains the results:
As it turned out, mental fatigue significantly affected the men’s endurance. They tired about 13 percent faster after the computer test than after watching “Earth.” They also reported that the workout felt far more taxing.
But, interestingly, their maximum contractile force was about the same after each session. Their muscles responded just as robustly to orders from the brain and the attached electrode after the draining mental workout as after the quiet session, even though the brain-fogged volunteers felt as if their muscles were much more exhausted. . .
. . .In simpler terms, exercise simply feels harder when your brain is tired, so you quit earlier, although objectively, your muscles are still somewhat fresh.
It’s the first study to explore the subject, but it’s an interesting result that deserves a closer look. Check out the link below to read the full study, or check out the New York Times’ article about it here.
Prolonged Mental Exertion Does Not Alter Neuromuscular Function of the Knee Extensors | Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise via New York Times
Photo by John Millar.
Mental Exhaustion Before Exercise May Hinder Your Workout
Samsung's Galaxy Gear Ads Show A Dated Device, Not A Futuristic One
Even Samsung thinks its Galaxy Gear is anachronistic – at least if the commercials are to be believed. New ads for the new Samsung Galaxy Gear that popped up on the company’s official YouTube page this weekend are supposed to be an exercise in wish-fulfillment, but they end up showing off a company and design mentality that’s been stuck in the same gear for 20 or 30 years.
As you can see, Samsung is pulling out nostalgia strings in these new ads, counting down the best sci-fi wrist-mounted communication tech from Star Trek, Knight Rider, The Jetsons and Might Morphin’ Power Rangers to remind us that we’ve always secretly wanted to talk into our wrists and be heard and understood by others. Except that what comes across isn’t how Samsung has finally been able to deliver this space-aged tech to a populace that’s been waiting for it for ages; instead, we see how dated this concept is, and how hilarious and awkward it looks with cheesy sets, bad special effects and costumes that definitely don’t scream ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary.’
By all accounts, the Galaxy Gear is a first attempt that pretty clearly misses the mark for what a smartwatch ultimately should be, and consumers don’t seem all that energized by the concept, at least not based on local evidence here in London. Per CNET UK editor Jason Jenkins:
Samsung Galaxy Gear & Note 3 stand at Waterloo not exactly overwhelmed with people http://t.co/CYmb0gzWds—
Jason Jenkins (@jenkojenkins) October 03, 2013
And again later:
Still no love for the Galaxy Note 3/ Gear stand at Waterloo this morning http://t.co/tiVqBon9Tj—
Jason Jenkins (@jenkojenkins) October 04, 2013
These ads do a good job of taking those of us old enough to remember the shows in them on a trip through memory lane, but in no way does that make me want to strap something to my wrist and start talking to it. And call me crazy, but I can pretty much guarantee that each of those devices depicted in these fictional TV shows got more than a day’s worth of use on a full battery charge, too.
Samsung's Galaxy Gear Ads Show A Dated Device, Not A Futuristic One
The Future Of Mobile Taps And On-Demand Services
Editor’s Note: Semil Shah works on product for Swell, is a TechCrunch columnist, and an investor - as a disclaimer for this post, he is an investor in one of the companies mentioned here, Instacart. He blogs at Haywire, and you can follow him on Twitter at @semil.
One of the hottest trends in “mobile consumer tech” is the idea where one can simply just tap their phone and receive a range of services in the form of on-demand labor. While many services are in this crowded space, there is one which exemplifies the trend: Uber. As we all know by now, launch Uber, wait for it to grab your location, request a car, and you’re on your way, with the payment automatically charged. Consumers love the ease and simplicity of these check-out and delivery service flows, so it’s no surprise legions of entrepreneurs are riding on the back of the mobile wave and Uberizing other daily tasks.
This post will discuss some of these new apps — but it will not list all of them. The main point of this post isn’t to be a laundry list of apps in this space, but rather to consider what the future of these services could be. Here are some ideas I came up with:
App Discovery Within This Vertical: Uber and other transport companies like Lyft and Sidecar have already captured audience and brand attention, so they could be great channels for customer acquisition by the other startups in this category. Right now, new companies in the space are acquiring customers through a mix of public relations, Facebook mobile app installs, creative Twitter promotions, and targeting location and affinities on Facebook. But, if I use Lyft and Uber a few times a week, and I’m already predisposed to these types of services, maybe a potential revenue stream for them is to help adjacent businesses find similar customers and cross-promote and cross-target. An idea like this could really help outside the echo chambers of the Bay Area and lower Manhattan.
“Sign-in with Uber”: Assuming that a decent slice of Bay Area and NYC folks already have Uber on their phone and have a username and password associated with it. So, when I signed up for Postmates, Munchery, and the rest of them, it would be easier for me as a consumer just to sign-in with my Uber keys that contain my credit card information and social graph, where appropriate. As people who develop mobile apps know painfully well, there is so much user dropoff at the top of the funnel at sign-in, so creative one-touch options like this could lead to gains, though the future seems to eventually be in fingerprints for mobile identification.
Build Loyalty Among Consumers: Just like airlines fight over every available inch, the competition among startups in this space will only increase for a variety of structural economic reasons. Lately, I’ve ordered dinner from Munchery, or via DoorDash, and once had some food sent to me in SF via Postmates. Where is my loyalty at that time? It’s an obvious question and one I suspect these companies will introduce internally within their app at some point (maybe Munchery credits?) when they reach scale, though the real part that interests me is a cross-service rewards program, akin to what Starwood does with its suite of hotel brands. Loyalty creates a reason for users to keep coming back, extra reasons to communicate (push notifications!) with them, and affords more creativity in pricing plans by segmenting customers and creating incentives for them to reach certain milestones.
Twists On Pricing: Most of these apps charge customers on a per-transaction basis, tap and charge the card, but once a service gets more sticky, another form of loyalty hooks could come in the form of subscription-based revenue lines, such as monthly or yearly plans for premium levels of service. For example, Instacart recently introduced their version of Amazon Prime, called Instacart Express, where customers pay an annual fee of $99 in order to receive free deliveries for a year. Consumers are already comfortable with subscriptions so long as they’re priced reasonably and deliver value, and companies (and investors) love subscriptions because they all love the ability to model recurring revenues.
More Efficient Uses Of Labor: Many of these services — what TechCrunch’s Josh Constine has brilliantly dubbed “Convenience Tech,” apps which turn taps into instant gratification — are growing at a time of massive economic restructuring and (what I believe are) permanent changes to labor markets. Some of these services who use contractors have enough work to provide a full week’s worth of work, which is pretty incredible when you stop and think about it. Last night, I ordered DoorDash for takeout food delivery in a pinch, and the gentleman who came by mentioned to me he’s making almost 1.5x more with DoorDash than he did previously in construction, and there’s a lot of construction going on around here. I asked him if he’d like the option to fill slack time running deliveries around the area, and he said yes. Maybe he could do that for Shyp. So, what if these companies created agreements to share access to contractors? This is akin to what Uber does for town car drivers, who can fill in slack time by having Uber send them leads for rides.
The taps on mobile are powerful things. Users are addicted to the instant gratification. As Josh Elman pointed out last week, the up-and-coming generations are “Generation Touch,” accustomed to simply tapping buttons for what they want. Inputs like typing in credit cards and location and instructions present friction. At the same time, there is some inefficiency in using hyper-specific services for laundry versus dry-cleaning. While all of these industries have their own economics, the competition among startups in all of these spaces is good because it is a race to see which teams can figure out the best model, and then someone else will figure out the scale. And, whom might that be? I always come back to Uber here. It may sound crazy, and it’s a long way in the future, but I believe Uber has a terrific chance to be the one global brand that unifies all this disparate consumer demand activity on mobile. Tap Uber, pick what you want (like a Google search), and Uber will just deliver that service to you. This may take a decade or more to happen, if it does at all, and like all things these days, could get derailed by something that doesn’t even yet exist.
The Future Of Mobile Taps And On-Demand Services
Google wants to patent splitting the restaurant bill
It’s one of the great social difficulties of our time. Now Google would like to offer (and own) an allegedly equitable solution. [Read more]
Google wants to patent splitting the restaurant bill
Can MonoPrice's $84 five-speaker/subwoofer system outperform a sound bar?
The Audiophiliac pits this super-affordable 5.1 channel sub/sat system against a couple of sound bar/sub systems, and the winner is? [Read more]
Can MonoPrice's $84 five-speaker/subwoofer system outperform a sound bar?
My Response To @Dickc: Twitter Must Lead Silicon Valley On Diversity
Editor’s note: This post is a response to a Twitter exchange between Vivek Wadhwa and Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo. Vivek Wadhwa is a Fellow at Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford Law School and Director of Research at Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University. We have included the full exchange at the bottom of this post. You can also Follow him on Twitter @wadhwa.
Twitter has taken a lot of fire for having an all-male board, almost all-male management team, and all-male investor group. The root of this problem is arrogance and a “don’t-care” attitude. This was exemplified by a response by its CEO Dick Costolo to comments I made in a New York Times article—about Twitter’s gender imbalance. Instead of responding to the issue that was raised, he tweeted “Vivek Wadhwa is the Carrot Top of academic sources.” In follow-up conversations on Twitter, he continued to hit below the belt rather than address the problem.
@wadhwa you're not seeing my point. you give people an easy out by just checking a box. The issues are much bigger than checking any 1 box.
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
Costolo isn’t alone in the way he responds to criticism about sexism. Here is the harsh reality: Silicon Valley is a boys’ club — a fraternity of the worst kind. It stacks the deck against women. It leaves out blacks and Hispanics. And it provides unfair advantage to an elite few who happen to be connected. Yes, it is also one of the most diverse places on this planet, where anyone can strike it big. But that opportunity only comes of learning the Valley’s rules of engagement and mastering them. Very few can.
In its IPO filing, Twitter, for the first time, revealed detailed information about its investors and operations. This brought to light its severe gender imbalance. This is tolerable of companies in their infancy that can’t easily pick and choose whom they take money from and whom they place on the board. But the rules change once companies grow up and become public entities. They have a responsibility to the people they are taking money from: the public.
What Twitter should have done in preparation for being a public company is to have it resemble the people they are going to be taking a billion dollars from — the people who are going to be making its executives and investors rich. This includes women as well as men, and blacks as well as whites. This is not only the right thing to do from a social perspective; it provides the best return to shareholders: companies with the highest percentages of women board directors outperform those with the lowest by 53 percent. They have a 42 percent higher return on sales and 66 percent higher return on invested capital.
Getting beyond the IPO, Twitter is also doing itself — and its future owners — a big disservice by cutting itself off from the people who use its services and from which it derives all of its revenue. As the New York Times’s Clair Cain Miller noted in the article, “Having women executives matters not just for purposes of equality, business analysts say, but for product development and the bottom line. More women use social media than men, according to a study last month by the Pew Research Center; men and women use Twitter roughly equally. Twitter earns revenue from advertising and women are the chief consumers.”
What I had said to Miller was that elite arrogance of the Silicon Valley mafia, the Twitter mafia, is male chauvinistic thinking; how dare they think they could get away with this?
It isn’t that Twitter didn’t know that going public with such an imbalance would look bad for the company. I used the word “mafia” because there is an echo chamber in Silicon Valley that hears only itself and shows a disregard for the people whom it derives revenue and investment from.
It is time to change this. Twitter, and other technology companies in the echo chamber, must lead. It’s not enough for company executives to make donations or be advisers to groups such as Girls Who Code. They must take action and be the good example — just as Facebook did before its IPO. In addition to its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook added University of California San Francisco Chancellor Sue Desmond-Hellmann to its board.
Sandberg, with her book Lean In and the movement she has started, is also being proactive about fixing the gender gap and inspiring women to become engineers. She provides a good role model for the rest of the tech industry.
I am finalizing a crowd-created book, titled Innovating Women, that builds on Sandberg’s work. More than 500 women worked with journalist Farai Chideya and I on this project, which tells the stories of women who were excluded from the innovation economy but defied the odds and achieved success. Women share their lessons and provide motivation and inspiration for others. After researching the subject, I have realized that there is no shortage of great women who can lead organizations and be on boards. Women are at least as innovative as men are. They are more sensible. That is why I so vehemently argue that we should not leave them out — our economic growth depends on this.
What I learned while editing my upcoming co-authored book, Innovating Women, is that leaders must take a proactive stance in integrating diverse voices. Leaders can’t just wait for them to come across their desk in the failed hope that the best people will rise to the top. Dick, I know some great women who can help you build an even greater company. I would be glad to introduce you to them.
@rich1 Vivek Wadhwa is the Carrot Top of academic sources.
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
@anildash huh??? I was making fun of his propensity for silly hyperbole. I didn't say anything about the topic or even reference it!
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
@anildash and how do you favorite things so quickly? I hadn't even put my phone back down!
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
@anildash eh, not my point, no. I *think* I have an acute understanding of the topic & host of related issues. Of course, proof is in deeds
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
@anildash Well, that's exactly it. The whole thing has to be about more than checking a box & saying “we did it!”
& you DO concur. SO MUCH!
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
@wadhwa you're not seeing my point. you give people an easy out by just checking a box. The issues are much bigger than checking any 1 box.
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
.@dickc Dick, you are one of the most visible companies in tech. If you won't take the lead and fix the imbalance, who will?
—
Vivek Wadhwa (@wadhwa) October 05, 2013
@wadhwa ah, I think you do a disservice to the broader issues with the hyperbole. It's easy applause, sure, but gives everyone an easy out.
—
dick costolo (@dickc) October 05, 2013
My Response To @Dickc: Twitter Must Lead Silicon Valley On Diversity
Five Best Personal Project Management Tools
When your to-do list becomes a monster, and an item next to a checkbox will actually take a long time and multiple people to complete, you need more than a checklist to keep track of it. What you really have is a project, and you need a tool designed to manage them. This week, we’re going to look at five of the best personal project management tools, based on your nominations.
Earlier in the week, we asked you for the best personal project management tools to keep track of all of the moving parts in your home renovation, family reunion, birthday party, vacation plan, or other pet project you need to keep track of.
Speaking as someone who used to be a full-time project manager, the available tools for businesses are really robust and packed with features, but when you need to organize something on your own or for a small time, sometimes lighter and more specific is better (not to mention more affordable). We collected your nominations, and picked out the top five. Here’s what you said:
Asana
Asana is a hybrid task and project manager. We covered the service when it launched back in 2011, and since then it’s updated several times, spawned iOS and Android apps, and boosted its collaboration features for both individuals and organizations. Adding multiple projects is simple, and you can keep track of them from the left sidebar. You can structure your individual project goals and milestones as a simple checklist from start to finish, order them by date or when they need to be done, or make them dependencies so one thing can’t be complete until its sub-tasks are finished. You can add more detail to any task or item, like notes, links, tags, and comments, and if you’re working with others, you can see changes they’ve made as well. Upload attachments, set due dates—it’s all there. Plus, Asana packs tons of keyboard shortcuts that make using it fast.
Asana is free for most people (you only need to pay once you get up to 15 or more people working on the same projects), and it’s just as good a corporate project or task manager as it is a to-do manager for your own pet projects or ideas. Best of all, they don’t pare down features in the free tier—all of the functional features are the same, with paid users only getting things like priority support and “guest” users. Companies like Dropbox, Pinterest, and Uber use Asana to organize their projects, and—full disclosure—so do I. It’s worth checking out if you don’t have an account.
Trello
If you’re a fan of Personal Kanban, or you like to use cards or post-it notes arranged in categories to orgaanize your thoughts and your tasks, Trello will appeal to you. we covered it when it launched, too, and even shared a method to shoehorn it into GTD. Trello is fast, flexible, and even fun to use, and in minutes you’ll organize all of the components for your projects into columns and cards that are easy to drag around, add supporting details to, comment on, and assign from person to person on your team. You can create different boards for different projects, set due dates or times for each card or set of cards, and more. Trello is even available on iOS and Android, and its drag-and-drop interface (usually) works well on mobile devices.
Trello is free to use, but Trello Gold, the company’s premium plan, offers larger file attachments and some visual upgrades like emoji, stickers, and custom backgrounds. More importantly, Gold is a way to support Trello if you love it, but all of the features are available for free. Trello is the project management tool of choice by teams at The Verge, The New York Times, Tumblr, and others, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s free and simple to get started with.
Microsoft OneNote
OneNote is more than just a great note-taking tool (although it definitely excels at that). It can also be an excellent personal planner, and depending on how you use it, it can be a pretty solid personal project manager. We shared some of our favorite OneNote tips in our guide to being productive with what you have at the office. Among more than a few project management-focused designs to help you organize complex projects with lots of to-dos and moving parts. Using OneNote as a project management tool can be tricky, since it’s not especially good at giving you a quick, top-down view of everything that’s going on at once, but there’s no reason you can’t build that yourself using the tools available. Plus, once you power up OneNote with plugins like OneTastic, or keep your files in SkyDrive (where you can get to them and your projects using the OneNote apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android), you’ll find OneNote can be a remarkably powerful tool.
The only downside to OneNote is the price. It’s part of Microsoft Office, but you don’t have to buy it along with Office. A stand-alone version will set you back $70. If you do want it as part of Office, you’ll have to shell out some cash to get a licensed copy, either with a copy of Office for yourself, or a subscription to Microsoft’s cloud-based office suite, Office 365. How much depends on your situation. If you have access to it at work or through a student discount, take advantage of it.
Evernote
Evernote is another killer note-taking tool, but when it comes to the incredible things you can do with it, the sky’s the limit. We’ve shared some of our favorite uses for it and our thoughts on why it’s so popular, but its power is clear once you start using it. Adding simple notes is a snap, creating notebooks for multiple projects or parts of your life you want to organize is simple, and searching across everything you’ve entered is easy too. Don’t be afraid to create tons of notes and notebooks either—it may sound counterproductive to getting organized, but one of the best things about Evernote is that it can quickly make sense out of a lot of information and present it to you so you see what you need to see. You can even use Evernote to digitize your pen and paper notes, documents, and other files so you can toss them into the relevant project notebook you want to save them in. Evernote has a massive ecosystem of apps that feed into it and support it, not to mention its web clipper and its iOS and Android apps.
Evernote is free, but $5/mo or $45/yr will get you Evernote Premium, which offers compelling features like offline access to your notebooks, collaboration tools, more storage space, and improved search. Once you start using it, you’ll want to get premium pretty quickly. If you’re looking for a tool to organize your life, Evernote is a great one to look at, but it’s just as good at organizing your kitchen remodel (imagine a notebook with all of your ideas, receipts, links and clipped pages of fixtures or appliances you want to buy, contact information for contractors, bills, notes, and a project plan, neatly organized) or your family vacation (picture a notebook with clippings of the destinations you’re considering, your detailed travel budget, ticket and booking receipts, and more inside), too.
Azendoo
Azendoo is another hybrid task and project management tool, and while there’s a strong focus on teams and collaboration, it’s just as easy to use it to manage your own pet projects and personal workload. Plus, Azendoo plugs into other popular services, like Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box for storage. You do get some free storage with the service so you can upload files directly to your projects, and you can easily assign to-dos to other people, check on their status, make comments on individual tasks, track changes, and see how a project is going from a top-down view. Plus, it does it all in a simple interface that’s easy to get used to and simple to use. Azendoo is a webapp, but you can take your projects on the go thanks to its iOS and Android apps.
Azendoo is free, and while there are premium plans, the free version is likely enough for most people. It comes with 10GB of storage and the option to connect to all of Azendoo’s supported third-party apps. Azendoo is the project management tool of choice for teams at Evernote (ironically), Cisco, Toyota, Nike, and MIT to name a few. If you’ve tried some of the big names above and want something different, maybe a little simpler, give it a shot.
That’s all there is to it! Now it’s time to put the top five to a vote to determine the community favorite:
The honorable mention this week goes out to OmniFocus, which earned praise from many of you for it’s elegant interface, powerful tools, and useful views that let you focus on the tasks at hand, or forecast how well the project is going overall (and whether you’ll hit your target dates or not). Once you get under the hood, you’ll find that OmniFocus is extremely powerful, and can consume your time just organizing your tasks, events, due dates, and timelines. However, it’s designed exclusively for Apple users, and has individual iPhone, iPad, and OS X apps that you’ll have to buy individually (at $20, $40, and $80 each) in order to use them all.
These are just the tip of the iceberg though. We got so many suggestions this week that it’s really worth going back to the original post to check out some of the ones that didn’t make the top five. There’s likely a tool in there for everyone, even if it didn’t get enough votes to join the ones above.
Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn’t included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don’t just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.
The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it’s not because we hate it—it’s because it didn’t get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it’s a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com.
Title photo by FAKEGRIMLOCK.
Five Best Personal Project Management Tools
How the helicopters of the future are shaping up
The Pentagon is looking ahead several decades toward future fleets of rotorcraft — and working now to lay the plans for getting there. [Read more]
How the helicopters of the future are shaping up
PureVPN Hit With A Zero Day Exploit, But CEO Says Email Alleging Data Compromise Was Fake
PureVPN — one of the VPN tunnelling services that assign new IP addresses to a users’ connected devices, useful for those accessing the Internet in firewalled countries or those who want to use services that are usually geo-restricted at their current location — has been dealt a double blow by malicious hackers in the last several hours: a zero-day exploit via a third-party CRM service the company uses; and then a subsequent letter sent out to some users alleging account closure and a data compromise, which is fake.
PureVPN founder Uzair Gadit tells us that there is no issue with the service. “Our VPN service is functioning 100% fine and there is no interruption whatsoever,” he wrote in an email, adding that while the company is investigating the cause of the email, “we hereby confirm that, as we do not store any of our users’ credit card nor PayPal information in our on-site databases, there has been no compromise in our users’ personal billing information.”
The incident highlights how while VPN tunnelling services are often thought as more secure routes for those worried about data compromises, they are not immune from attacks themselves. Perception of these services can be especially precarious considering that they have not been immune to crack-downs from restrictive governments in the past, such as in this incident in China from December 2012.
The PureVPN story was brought to TechCrunch’s attention by one of PureVPN’s customers who is based in China. Several hours ago, he sent over the following letter, noting that his account was closed, and that his billing information was being handed over to authorities, who might be contacting him in future:
A couple of hours later, his first email was followed up with another, which noted that the earlier email was fake:
“We are sending this note as a clarification,” the note said. “We are NOT closing down nor do we have outstanding legal issues of any sort. We have neither been contacted by any authorities nor do we store our user’s personal data to share with anyone.” The company says that while the VPN service remains fully operational “secure to the highest possible levels of encryption,” it has disabled the billing portal and client area while it is investigating the issue. The company is also posting updates on its blog.
We reached out to PureVPN about the two emails, and Gadit gave us a bit more information about what has happened.
He says that the email appears to have hit only a subset of all of PureVPN’s users, but the fact that our tipster was in China is not an indication that it’s only users in that country who may have been affected, with email IDs and names being the only data that appears to have been accessed.
“I confirm that the subset is NOT limited to Chinese users,” he says. “The motive is yet unclear.” Gadit says that PureVPN has hundreds of thousands of users from over 100 countries worldwide.
“There is NO issue with the service, there has been a fake email sent to some of our users talking about legal issues and other misleading stuff. Our VPN service is functioning 100% fine and there is no interruption whatsoever,” he wrote. “While we are investigating the cause of the email we hereby confirm that, as we do not store any of our users credit card nor PayPal information in our on-site databases, there has been no compromise in our users personal billing information. Similarly, service troubleshoot logs (connection attempts, users IPs and location) are safe and intact as we do not store such logs on site. Furthermore as we vouch for privacy, security and anonymity on the internet we do not store actual VPN service usage logs so there is no point in users’ privacy or anonymity being breached.”
He says that initial reports “suggest that we [were] hit with a zero day exploit, found in WHMCS.” This is a third-party CRM service used by PureVPN on its site. WHMCS had to release a security patch on October 3. At the time, it noted that “the vulnerability allows an attacker, who has valid login to the installed product, to craft a SQL Injection Attack via a specific URL query parameter against any product page that updates database information.”
So far, this, combined with PureVPN’s growth itself, are Gadit’s two reasons for the breach. “Clearly we are getting more and more popular crossing new heights too fast,” he wrote. “Such attacks are not unexpected with popular services these days. Such incidents only add to our resolve to emerge as more securer and faster privacy and security VPN service.”
He said that PureVPN is working on posting a complete report when it has completed its investigation.
In the meantime, if you’re a PureVPN user, be extra vigilant in looking out for any emails that ask you to reconfirm any billing details that you use for the service — they may be related to data collected during the zero-day exploit. (That goes on top of being vigilant against the many other kinds of phishing emails you may get every day.)
PureVPN Hit With A Zero Day Exploit, But CEO Says Email Alleging Data Compromise Was Fake
Playing the market: When video games and stocks collide
Video games have mimicked real life for years. Not even trading stocks on Wall Street is safe from virtual attempts to cheat at getting rich. [Read more]
Playing the market: When video games and stocks collide
Cutting through the bull: Toyota Auris
Dave Ross takes us through why the Toyota Auris isn’t the Corolla it should be. [Read more]
Cutting through the bull: Toyota Auris
Thứ Bảy, 5 tháng 10, 2013
CrunchWeek: Twitter's S-1, The Silk Road Shutdown, And The Rumored Amazon Phone
So this is what CrunchWeek is like without adult supervision.
Leena Rao and Colleen Taylor, the show’s two regular hosts, were both out of town this week, but there was still plenty of news for TechCrunch writers — specifically Greg Kumparak, Alex Wilhelm, and me — to talk about. We weighed in on the anticipation around Twitter’s IPO filing (and what was revealed in its S-1 filing), the shutdown of anonymous Bitcoin marketplace Silk Road, and reports that Amazon is developing its own smartphones (one of them with a whopping four cameras).
By the way, apologies for the occasional bursts of random background noise. I blame the gremlins hiding in the TCTV studio.
CrunchWeek: Twitter's S-1, The Silk Road Shutdown, And The Rumored Amazon Phone
Give Chrome's App Launcher a Keyboard Shortcut for Instant Access
If you use a lot of webapps, Chrome’s new app launcher is a great addition to your taskbar. Weblog Google Operating System shares a tip for making it even more useful: give it a keyboard shortcut for Start-Menu-like quick launches.
Just right-click on the shortcut for Chrome’s app launcher, head to the Shortcut tab, and give it a Shortcut Key. This tip is nothing new, but it’s particularly useful for Chrome’s app launcher: now you can just invoke it with a shortcut, start typing the name of the webapp you want to launch, and open one up—just like you would with the Windows key and the Start menu. It’ll even show you suggestions form the Chrome Web Store, which is nice.
Add a Keyboard Shortcut for Chrome’s App Launcher | Google Operating System
Give Chrome's App Launcher a Keyboard Shortcut for Instant Access
Dear Apple, what's wrong with shenanigans?
This week, Apple’s Phil Schiller took to Twitter to sniff at Samsung’s alleged “shenanigans.” But, as a CNBC broadcast about JP Morgan underlined, shenaniganing is just part of businessing, isn’t it? [Read more]
Dear Apple, what's wrong with shenanigans?
This Massive Beer Chart Guides You to a Great Drink (and Glass For It)
We’ve featured a few tools that make it easier for you to find a great beer, but this massive chart puts most of them to shame. Organized by type and and specific sub-categories, it’ll help you find a great beer based on the ones you like, and also show you pick the perfect glass to enjoy it in.
The chart really is huge, so make sure to click “expand” on the image below to blow it up to full size. Worst case, open the image in a new tab to see it in its full glory. The chart starts out by breaking beer down into two basic categories: ales and lagers, and then takes off from there, going into German ales, American lagers, Pale ales, stouts and porters, and so on. Then it goes even deeper, to specific types of each of those, like Munich lagers (a subset of German lagers), or English porters and Russian Imperial stouts (as a subset of stouts and porters). You’ll see categories you’re probably familiar with if you’re a fan of craft beer, and if you’re not, there’s a whole world to explore.
Then, as you narrow down to specific beer names and labels, follow the thin orange lines to see what type of glass those beers are usually enjoyed in, from the old school mug-handled beer steins to standard pint glasses, all the way up to the beer boot and the good old 40oz.
If you really like the chart and want one in your at-home bar or on the wall in your kitchen, you can order a 60″ x 40″ wall map print for $90 (with free shipping) direct from Pop Chart Labs at the link below.
The Magnificent Multitude of Beer | Pop Chart Lab
This Massive Beer Chart Guides You to a Great Drink (and Glass For It)
Chrome Beta for Android Gets Better Application Shortcuts
Android: Chrome’s new beta version has a useful new feature: the ability to quickly add application shortcuts to your home screen.
You could always do this by adding a site to your bookmarks first, but this new method—available in Chrome’s menu—is much faster. However, it gets cooler: if that webapp is designed to be used on its own, launching it from your home screen, will open it up in its own window without tabs, buttons, or Chrome’s omnibox—essentially making it feel more like a regular app.
It doesn’t look like a ton of popular webapps have this feature just yet, but hopefully more will add it soon (especially those whose webapps are better than their actual apps). Hit the link below to read more, or check out the Chrome Beta here to see it for yourself..
Chrome 31 Beta: Android Application Shortcuts, requestAutocomplete(), and PNaCl | The Chromium Blog
Chrome Beta for Android Gets Better Application Shortcuts
Avoid Email Distractions with a Custom Auto-Reply Message
Most of us spend way too much time wading through email every day. Blogger and reader Doug Belshaw solved this problem by turning on his “out of office” email responder—for an entire month.
Instead of notifying his co-workers that he was out of the office, though, Belshaw used it as more of a reminder that he isn’t attached to email all day, and as peace of mind that he could keep working without anything urgent slipping away:
Hello!
Thanks for your email. I’ll get to it during my morning ‘internet ablutions’ (as William Gibson would put it).
If you need a quicker response than asynchronous communication can provide, please do consider one of the following (in order of preference):
…where he listed his IRC, Twitter, and Skype handles.
How well it works will depend on your workplace and colleagues, but Belshaw found that it worked surprisingly well. The few people that needed him urgently sought him out through other means, while the rest of his co-workers were very respectful of his work/life balance (and some even supported his commitment to avoiding email). Other issues just resolved themselves. Hit the link to read more.
What I Learned from Turning My “Out of Office” Auto-Replies On for a Month | Open Educational Thinkering
Photo by atomicjeep.
Avoid Email Distractions with a Custom Auto-Reply Message
Limping BlackBerry makes buyout overtures to Google, others -- report
The beleaguered smartphone maker is seeking “preliminary expressions of interest” for all or part of the company from Google, Samsung, LG, and others, according to news agency Reuters. [Read more]
Limping BlackBerry makes buyout overtures to Google, others -- report
Navigate Straight to an App's Settings with Siri in iOS 7
In iOS, most of your apps have their settings tucked away in the main Settings app—not very useful if you’re in the app itself and want to tweak something. In iOS 7, you can ask Siri to jump right to that app’s settings for you.
For example, say you’re in the Mail app and you want to change some of the Mail-specific settings. Instead of going back to your home screen, opening the Settings app, and heading to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” you can just open Siri and say “launch settings.” She’ll take you straight to the settings for the app you’re in—in this case, Mail. This works with third-party apps as well.
Check out the video above from AppAdvice for a demo. And, while you’re at it, check out the other new, secret features in iOS 7 as well as all the other stuff Siri can do.
How to Launch App Specific Settings with Siri in iOS 7 | AppAdvice
Navigate Straight to an App's Settings with Siri in iOS 7
New Nokia ad says Samsung wants to copy Lumia 1020?
A peculiar Nokia ad, presaging the launch of the Lumia 1020 in Abu Dhabi, features parachutists. It also has a weird Asian man at the end who seems to be up to no good. [Read more]
New Nokia ad says Samsung wants to copy Lumia 1020?
As MacBook Air ages, Apple rivals show the way to Retina
It’s time for Apple to update the Air and/or a thinner, lighter Pro with a Retina screen. It’s certainly doable. [Read more]
As MacBook Air ages, Apple rivals show the way to Retina
Security camera catches USPS worker's amazingly lazy delivery
It’s bad enough when FedEx or UPS throw your delivery onto your porch. But a home security camera catches a USPS truck driving across a front lawn so that it can get closer to the front door. [Read more]
Security camera catches USPS worker's amazingly lazy delivery
Twitter Quitters And The Unfiltered Feed Problem
At its heart, Twitter is a firehose. Everything you tweet shows up to every one of your followers. It’s what makes Twitter feel like the real-time pulse of the world. But it could also be preventing Twitter from growing. Follow too many people, and you lose track of those you love and stop following anyone new.
Imagine you’ve just joined Twitter. You follow some popular accounts of big publishers and celebrities you’re interested in, as well as some friends and acquaintances. The unfiltered feed works. You get up-to-the-minute news and stay aware of what people you know are up to. There aren’t so many tweets in your stream yet that you miss the ones from the people you care about most.
But then you follow a few more people, and then a few more. You find more distant acquaintances and colleagues on Twitter so you follow them. You subscribe to experts in the niche areas you geek out about. Friends retweet something funny and you follow the author. Or somebody random @ replies and follows you so you do the polite thing and follow back.
Gradually, your feed gets noisier and noisier. A few of the accounts you’ve followed post dozens of times a day and drown out everyone else (TechCrunch’s account is renowned for this). You find yourself missing great jokes, links, and insights from your closest friends who only tweet occasionally. When you visit Twitter, you find fewer interesting things in your feed than you used to.
And that’s where the problems for Twitter’s business start.
At Capacity
You put up with the mess but don’t enjoy your experience as much. If you’re a power user, you might create a Twitter List of your favorite people, but it takes a lot of effort. For everyone else who wants to trim the fat from follow lists, it’s tough to know where to start. Twitter keeps on recommending more people to follow, both organically, and in exchange for ad dollars, but doesn’t tell you who you never interact with and should unfollow. It takes multiple clicks to unfollow someone, making it a laborious chore to ditch 10 accounts, and you still have hundreds left.
Twitter is littered with the corpses of accounts that passed away too young or never truly lived
Your firehose is full, and it leads to two behaviors that are devastating to Twitter: You visit less and you stop following new people.
The first means you encounter fewer of Twitter’s ads. It only gets paid when people click its ads, and you can’t click if you don’t visit. You’re also not around to @ reply, favorite, and retweet other people. That means they see fewer notifications and return to the site less frequently, so they see fewer ads, too. Another active user disappears, and Twitter’s MAU stagnates.
The second means that the friends, acquaintances, publishers you would have followed end up with a smaller audience. No one wants to feel like they’re talking to a brick wall or shouting into a black hole. After a few days, weeks, or months of tweeting with no one listening, these people give up.
Twitter is littered with the corpses of accounts that passed away too young or never truly lived.
Quitter
Some reports, like one from Mike Isaac, peg Twitter at having more than 1 billion registered users, yet today, Twitter confirms that only 218 million are active. That’s a painful attrition rate that is hindering Twitter’s ability to grow large enough to become profitable.
Worse yet, people who quit Twitter or just hardly visit likely return to Facebook. It’s literally friendlier. People have a built-in audience of real-life chums who Like and comment on their posts. They don’t have to be ‘thought leaders’ battling to be heard. They accumulate friends just by living, and it’s not a contest to have the most connections.
Even if it were, Facebook’s filtered feed is built to adapt to however many friends you make or Pages you Like. Rather than show an unfiltered feed of everything posted by everyone in your social and interest graph, it just shows you the best posts — the ones with the most Likes and comments from the people you interact with most.
That doesn’t make it as good as Twitter at being a source of breaking real-time news, but Facebook does its best to make sure your feed is always interesting. It doesn’t always succeed, but the filtering happens automatically. And Facebook gives you direct control, allowing you to select how frequently you want certain people to appear in your feed or even what kind of stories (photos, games) you want to see. These controls are little-known and buried behind far too many clicks to be used efficiently, so it has room to improve.
Twitter’s not the only one with unfiltered feed problems. Instagram may eventually have to grapple with it. But for now it’s younger, has fewer users, and its casual feed of photos is less vulnerable to noise since it’s just pretty pictures.
Getting people to manage their own streams is an extraordinarily tough design problem. But Twitter’s role as the most popular unfiltered feed on the web means it needs to pioneer ways to make the format sustainable as it grows.
Fixing The Firehose
Twitter should not abandon its unfiltered feed. It’s the foundation of its whole user experience. Still, there are other ways to alleviate the overflowing firehose problem.
Twitter may want to forge as many connections in its “interest graph” as possible. Each follow tells it more about what kinds of ads to target to people. But the company should look to make it easier to unfollow people who clutter your feed.
First, making it quicker to unfollow someone by adding a button to expanded tweets would help. More forcefully, Twitter could analyze which people you never @ reply, retweet, favorite, expand the tweets of, or visit the profile of. Then it could suggest that you unfollow them either in the sidebar or with an immediately accessible button on their tweets in the stream.
Twitter could also provide a feed-cleaning tool. It could rank who you follow by your engagement with them, and make it easy to bulk unfollow people you don’t care about but who tweet a lot, or add to a List the people you interact with most. These tools will need to work from mobile, considering 75 percent of Twitter users access the service from their small screens.
If Twitter doesn’t address these issues, veteran users may tune out and new recruits might never see the magic of its global forum. There’s nothing like tweeting something and getting responses within seconds. It makes the whole world feel smaller. The challenge is whether Twitter can retain its intimate town square atmosphere for everyone as it grows to become a digital city…and a public company.
Twitter Quitters And The Unfiltered Feed Problem
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