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BlackBerry CEO Hints Research In Motion May Be Up For Sale

Research In Motion is a company in transition. It is going from a global powerhouse smartphone maker to a struggling equipment manufacturer with too much company bloat, an aging operating system and declining user base. In a letter to investors today, CEO Thorsten Heins acknowledged that RIM had contacted bankers from J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets to assist RIM in reviewing its financial stability and goals. In essence, Heins said that RIM, or at least parts of it, may be up for sale. 

Heins took over RIM in a bad spot but, unlike chief executives from Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard, he's making the best of a bad situation. He is candid and funny and, most importantly, very honest. Heins presents a “go team” type of spirit that is encouraging for RIM after all the bad news the company has seen since the beginning of 2011. Sometimes a large company’s CEO just needs to be its biggest cheerleader. 

That cheerleading spirit and honesty was on display in Heins’s letter to investors ahead of its first quarter earnings to come out next week. He touted the attendance at the company’s BlackBerry Jam earlier this month, the excitement around BlackBerry 10, the developer ecosystem (BlackBerry App World is now up to 80,000 apps) and the RIM’s global user base (78 million). We know RIM is not doing well, but it still has $2.1 billion in the bank and a little runway in which to smooth things out.

At the end of Heins’s letter, he acknowledged RIM’s talks with banks about its financial position.

“To further enhance our commitment to successfully completing our transformation, after the release of our year-end financial results, we engaged J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and RBC Capital Markets to assist the Company and our Board of Directors in reviewing RIM’s business and financial performance.  These advisors have been tasked to help us with the strategic review we referenced on our year-end financial results conference call and to evaluate the relative merits and feasibility of various financial strategies, including opportunities to leverage the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives,” Heins said. 

This may come as no surprise to industry watchers, but BlackBerry is looking to do whatever it takes to remain solvent. But, what exactly are, “partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives?” 

Companies do not go seeking the help of J.P Morgan on a whim. Essentially, what Heins was saying is that RIM approached the banks to test the waters for a sale. If not a sale, per se, then the ability to license the actually manufacturing of BlackBerry smartphones to a different equipment manufacturer or to partner with companies to make equipment for them. For instance (and purely theoretical), a Facebook Phone built by BlackBerry. 

Strategic business model alternatives could mean just about anything. That includes getting out of the manufacturing business entirely and becoming a pure software platform provider. RIM has assets to pull that off in the areas of communications (through BlackBerry Messenger), security (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) and application development. If RIM were to choose that road, it would be a painful transition for the company and thousands of employees. 

In the letter, Heins said that RIM would be becoming a leaner machine in the near future. That means layoffs and probably a lot of them. The company has already lost a significant portion of its top executives but many of the average jobs at the company will likely go in the not-so-distant future. 

“We will also continue to review RIM's organizational structure and clearly define accountabilities for all key businesses and business processes with a goal of eliminating fragmentation, duplication and inefficiencies.  While there will be significant spending reductions and headcount reductions in some areas throughout the remainder of the fiscal year, we will continue to spend and hire in key areas such as those associated with the launch of BlackBerry 10, and those tied to the growth of our application developer community,” Heins said. 

Essentially, RIM is cutting itself back to core competencies. BlackBerry 10, which will have to be the company’s saving grace (or it will have to sell for sure), will be getting the lion’s share of resources in the near term. International sales and BlackBerry Messenger are two of RIM’s remaining strengths and will likely get a boost too. Marketing will see a bump as well, especially as BlackBerry 10 comes to off the assembly line. Anything else outside of those areas will be ripe to be sold, lose employees or outright shut down. 

All the hopes for RIM rest with BlackBerry 10. Until that is released, RIM will be hurting and shedding money. Heins’s job until that point is to keep the company afloat and explore all options, including a sale of all or part of the business. 

New Chromebook & Chromebox Are Good Enough to Grab Minds & Market Share

Google unveils two new computers today: the latest Chromebook and a new desktop machine, the Chromebox, both from Samsung. Google says they're just the first of many new Chrome devices to come out this year from various manufacturers. Chromebooks have received lukewarm reviews so far, but these machines - and Chrome OS itself - are ready for action. There's suddenly a real, new option in desktop computers.

What's New?

We were underwhelmed with the previous Chromebooks because Chrome OS didn't feel ready to replace other PCs yet, and the cheap hardware didn't help. But Chrome OS improves over time. That's the whole point. Since Google is your system administrator, Chrome OS gets better with age. When Google speeds up its own Web services, your computer gets faster.

That works up to a point. The machine still needs to perform capably. The models released today will live up to the standards of any light-to-moderate user.

VP of Engineering Linus Upson points to four areas in which Google wanted to improve Chrome OS devices from the last generation. The first was speed, which means improving JavaScript and WebKit performance - the OS is a Web browser, remember - and taking full advantage of the hardware's graphics capabilities. "Our goal was to build a delightful product where no one ever said, 'This isn't fast enough,'" Upson says.

The second improvement had to be the touchpad. Unresponsive trackpads cause instant frustration, and the last generation of hardware wasn't good enough to be enjoyable to use. Upson believes the new one is "as good or better than any other one out there." In practice, it's still not as responsive as a MacBook, but it's definitely good enough for this laptop's price point.

Third was more filetypes, and this is a particularly interesting update. Chrome OS can now work on Microsoft Office files natively. You don't have to convert them to Google Docs. It's also better at handling photos, slideshows and offline media, including music, movies and books. As of today, the OS still relies on the "file drawer" for local storage, but in "about six weeks," the new Chrome OS build will use Google Drive as its main file system, with the local disk serving simply as a cache for files you need for offline access.

Finally, Chrome OS needed multitasking. It's no longer a full-screen browser. It's a windowed operating system that feels like any other, but it's actually easier to multitask because all windows are in the same application. For a lifelong user of another desktop operating system, this was the biggest pain point in Chrome OS, and it's solved now.

The Hardware

The Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 is a little gray laptop, which makes you think of Apple for a second. It has a 12.1-inch, 1280x800 display, which puts it right in between the two MacBook Air sizes. It's heavier, though, at 3.3 lbs., and the case is much bigger, but the design has a little bit of a swoop to make it seem smaller. Instead of brushed aluminum, it's plastic. It feels less precious than an Apple device.

It has black chiclet keys, but they don't look or feel like an Apple keyboard. The keys aren't as smooth, and they're slightly bigger. The trackpad is also rougher and smaller. It's not as responsive as an Apple trackpad, but it's not bad at all. I found the Chromebook's hardware to be totally comfortable for a full day's work.

Google's specs give it six hours of battery life under continuous usage. It lasted about four and a half hours in my normal usage tests. It has speedy 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, but it also has a gigabit Ethernet port, and you can step up to a 3G modem, too. It has a much nicer (or at least more Google+ Hangout-optimized) HD webcam than the MacBook Air, two USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 memory card slot and a widely compatible display port. The Wi-Fi version is $449, and the 3G version is $549.

The Samsung Chromebox Series 3 (there is no Series 1 or 2) is a similar computer in a small, black desktop package. It has two versatile display ports compatible with HDMI, DVI and VGA. With a little adapter, the Chromebox drove my 27-inch Apple Cinema Display, no problem. It has Wi-Fi, Ethernet and six USB 2.0 ports, and it's Bluetooth 3.0 compatible. It even has a DVI single link output, so you can use it as a media box for your TV. The price is right: It's $329.

Both computers have 4GB of RAM and an Intel Core processor, but Google won't say exactly how fast. The Chromebook is 2.5x faster than the last generation according to Google's own tests, and the Chromebox is 3.5x faster. I thought about clocking it somehow, but I decided not to bother. Who cares? If the computer works, it works. We know this isn't a machine for professional video editors. If it works for its intended audience, the specs don't matter.

Here are the two new Chrome computers next to an iPad for size comparison.

The Experience

Chrome OS works just fine as a standalone system, but it works best if your account is set to sync your Chrome settings. That way, everything about Chrome will be the same for you on any computer, as long as you're logged in. It easily handles multiple accounts, too. If you want your new Chromebook to launch with your entire desktop browser already loaded, make sure you turn on sync in your Chrome settings first.

I had never used Chrome OS before testing these devices. I had used Chrome, though. Chrome is the most popular browser in the world at this point, which secretly gives the new Chrome OS devices a huge install base. Getting started was absurdly easy. I basically entered my Wi-Fi password and Google ID, hit 'Enter,' and I was done. All my bookmarks, passwords, extensions and history filled in before my eyes. I wasn't even logged out of anything.

The default Chrome OS desktop:

Even if they don't use Chrome, there are hundreds of millions of Gmail and Google Docs users whose first Chrome OS experience will be mostly complete from Day One. And it's no big deal to start fresh with a new Google account. Honestly - and this is coming from a lifelong, unwavering Apple-only person - I set my Gmail-using grandma up with a new iPad a couple weeks ago, and this Chromebook would have been easier.

The biggest difference between Chrome OS and the desktop you're used to is that it uses browser-based apps instead of native apps. But frankly, only geeks would care about the difference, and they might not even notice. "The distinction between a Web app and a native app for most people is very blurry if it exists at all," says Caesar Sengupta, director of Chrome OS. I wouldn't go that far, especially on mobile, but in my tests of Chrome OS for the desktop, he's mostly right. The Chrome Web Store even has a section dedicated to apps that work offline now.

The biggest difference between Chrome OS and other desktops is actually an advantage: When I launched Chrome on my Mac after testing the Chromebook, all my new apps were already there.

I use Chrome for work, and my major test case was to see if I could log a day's work for ReadWriteWeb using nothing but the Chromebook. The only thing missing was Skype, although there are at least browser-based apps for Skype IM. Otherwise, I didn't feel the least bit restricted. In fact, the constraints were kind of nice.

Blogging is a good test case for most kinds of text-based office or school work, so if most of what you do on your computer involves typing and making documents, you'll have no problem at all. It's impossible to overstate how much more user-friendly Google Docs is than Microsoft Office, and the best part is that you can now merrily edit your colleagues' Office docs without them ever knowing the difference.

When I needed a clean plain text editor to write my posts in Markdown, I found Just Write in the Chrome Web Store. When I needed to crop and convert images for my posts, I used Aviary. They worked great. I barely even had to learn how to use them, and they both floated right to the top of my simple Chrome Web Store searches for what I needed. They appear in your browser as usual and can be launched from the new tab page, but the icons also show up in the Chrome OS launcher screen.

There are quick-launch icons for the Web, Gmail, Docs and so on in a strip along the bottom of the screen, and there's also a grid view identical to the new Launchpad in Mac OS X. But they're all just different shortcuts to get you to the same places.

Outside of work, there are HTML5-built Chrome apps for light video editing, audio recording and even casual 3D adventure games like Bastion. On the Chromebox, these can run on huge displays without a hiccup. Let's be clear: The software and hardware are not as powerful as on a Mac or many Windows PCs, but these things will smoke your typical netbook.

If you're a hardcore gamer or professional musician, this won't be your main machine. But if your computer use is mostly casual, Chrome OS doesn't lack anything.

The Verdict: Look Out, Windows

Chrome OS is dead simple. It's simpler than a Mac. It's arguably as simple as iOS if not simpler, but it has the true multitasking of a desktop. As intuitive as iOS is, a new user still has a lot to learn. Ask my grandma. But someone who uses Chrome or even just Gmail on the desktop hardly has to learn to use a new Chromebook at all.

The price cuts right across the iPad market. For people who were hesitant to buy an iPad because they thought they might need desktop capabilities, this new Chromebook is right there waiting. It won't replace a Mac, unless you really feel that your Mac is too much computer, but it might convert some first-time buyers. It seems like a lifesaver for students.

For consumers, the Chromebox is pretty strongly positioned as well. It's $150 cheaper than a Mac Mini, and it's faster than many compact Windows PCs in the same price range (although without the spacious internal storage). A Chromebox might make sense as a home PC for people who use Chrome elsewhere.

For enterprises who are tired of fighting with their Windows IT environment, the Chromebox is awfully tempting. You'll read more about that in Joe Brockmeier's review on ReadWriteCloud.

The manufacturers of cheap netbooks should be worried unless they have Chromebooks coming out. Upson says that the goal of Chrome OS is explicitly to "get rid of the annoying bits of Windows." Since Google manages the OS for you, you don't have to fight anymore.

"We've spent so much of our lives fighting with computers," Upson says, "and there are five billion more people coming online. We don't want them wasting their lives fighting with computers."

There will be more big Chrome news this year, too. As far as the OS itself, Upson says "you're going to see improvements every six weeks, and we're far from done." The first six-week update will make Google Drive the primary place to store files in Chrome OS, so that will be a big one to watch for.

But there are more devices on their way, too. Upson says there are more OEM partners coming in this year, as well as "a number of different form factors." We know that tablet-ready versions of Chrome OS have been in the works for years, but let's not get carried away. The point is, Chrome OS is ready for the market.

10 Secrets of Successful Crowdfunding - From Scott Steinberg

With the recent passage of the JOBS Act, crowdfunding is about to get even hotter. Serial tech entrepreneur, speaker and consultant Scott Steinberg, author of The Crowdfunding Bible, explains how to make crowdfunding work for your startup.

Steinberg, CEO of TechSavvy Global, answered ReadWriteWeb’s most pressing questions with these 10 insights into successful crowdsourcing:

ReadWriteWeb: Are particular types of tech startups better suited for crowdfunding than others, and why is that so?

Scott Steinberg: It’s best for [startups] with a strong consumer focus that can easily communicate their value proposition. Crowdfunding works for creative projects - apps, consumer products, software - that resonate with average, everyday people.

What crowdfunding is not typically best for is something very technological in nature or B-to-B oriented. The biggest successes have been galvanized around consumer-facing products like [the Pebble smartwatch] or the [Double Fine] Adventure game… something there’s tremendous demand for. Ultimately, you’re trying to reach either as broad an audience as possible, or a very loyal and passionate [niche] audience of fans.

RWW: How do you know whether crowdfunding is a better approach for your startup than seeking traditional forms of financing?

SS: You have to be strategic because there’s no stealth mode. If you fail with a crowdfunding campaign, your brand and reputation will take a hit and you’re going to have a hell of a time going back to investors after that to convince them there’s a market for your service or product.

[Crowdfunding works best] if you’re not looking for a tremendous amount of capital, and that’s relative to your industry. $200K or $300K may be peanuts for an app or game maker. It’s good for projects that can be done affordably, that need to be done nimbly and for which it’s important that you retain creative control.

Often you only have a few seconds to clearly communicate your value proposition, so if you’re selling innovative tablet PCs or a revolutionary app, crowdfunding might work. If you’re selling a revolutionary inventory management system - well, that’s a hell of a lot drier. It comes down to a sales pitch. [Crowdfunding] investors are not as sophisticated as professional venture and angel investors. A product that can be easily and clearly communicated to a consumer stands a better chance.

RWW: What makes for a good crowdfunding pitch?

SS: You’re getting backers to buy into the vision that what you’re doing is part of a larger movement. For example, with Double Fine Adventure, which raised $300K, the pitch wasn’t, “Hey, we’re making an adventure game.” The pitch was, “Adventure games are not dead. We’ve got legendary game designer Tim Schafer to create one. Let’s give the publishers a kick in the ass and show them the genre is alive and well.” For the cost of a latte, people could buy into a historic movement.

That sense of participation is what you’re looking to convey. Convince people there’s a reason your project deserves to be birthed into the world, what the benefits to them are, why the time to act is now or never, and how by doing so, they’ll directly play a part in making the world a better place.

RWW: What are the most common misconceptions startup entrepreneurs have about crowdfunding?

SS: One is, “Hey, I’ll launch [the crowdfunding campaign] and that’s when the work stops.” Time and time again, I’ve seen campaigns launch to great fanfare and then fall off a cliff 48 hours later. It’s imperative prior to hitting the launch button that you’ve done your research, you’ve plotted a marketing campaign, you’ve got your social media tools lined up, you know who your audience is and how to reach them, and you have a working promotional plan for the entire duration of the campaign.

Brian Fargo, who created Wasteland 2 and [crowdfunded] nearly $3 million, said, “Our software development company all but stopped for three weeks so we could get our ducks in a row.” That’s what you’re competing with.

Do your homework and plan for as many eventualities as you can upfront. Study campaigns that have succeeded and campaigns that have failed. Know what resources you’re going to activate, and when and how you’re going to activate them. This could be video testimonials from noted industry personalities, or other brands, creators or influencers you can get a shout-out from on social media. Budget carefully and leave a 30% cushion. Set your funding goals carefully - ask for just what you need, because the more realistic the funding goal, the more attainable it seems to everyday users and the more likely they are to contribute.

Crowdfunding is a marathon, not a sprint. Often [entrepreneurs] don’t understand the time commitment involved. Every day you’re going to be working the phones, working Twitter, doing outreach, talking to media. It’s incredibly taxing, but at the end it may be incredibly rewarding as well.

RWW: What’s the ideal time frame for a crowdfunding campaign?

SS: Thirty days seems to be the magic number. You need time to see what’s resonating and fix what’s broken. Maybe your rewards or your creative campaign aren’t resonating. You need to be able to adapt on a dime. You need a game plan, but you also need to realize that no good plan survives first contact with the enemy.

RWW: Let’s say you launch your campaign, and it falls flat. What should you do?

SS: Talk to your backers. Get their impressions. Nobody wants to see you succeed more than they do. Remember, you have the ability to change much of it on the fly. If your messaging doesn’t connect or your rewards don’t connect, you can always tweak it. If your video isn’t resonating or people keep asking questions about your pitch, post updates to answer the questions, or do outreach through email newsletters.

Think of your campaign as a series of battles in an ongoing war. It’s important to know upfront who you can call on for support, because you’re going to need to lean on your backers, partners, and friends and family.

RWW: What types of rewards work best to galvanize contributors?

SS: You need a combination of physical merchandise or preorders and personalized, one-of-a-kind rewards, such as advance access to a beta program. It’s important to offer value at every level. This isn’t a charity fundraiser; people expect something in return for their money. Start at the impulse buy level - $5 or so - and go up to high-end, exclusive prizes. Have reasonably spaced-out [reward] tiers - don’t jump from $5 to $500 - so everyone has a chance to contribute. Have a mix of rewards, some designed to draw attention to your campaign or attract the big fish, and some designed to monetize. It’s also a good idea to introduce new rewards throughout your campaign.

RWW: Once you’ve gotten your funds, the job isn’t over. What do entrepreneurs need to do at this stage?

SS: You need to thank [your contributors] profusely. These people are engaged customers and your most ardent supporters and brand evangelists. Embrace them and stay in constant contact. Not only are they likely to help you spread the word, but many times they’ll also offer to contribute [to your business in other ways].

The beauty of crowdfunding is it allows you to connect with your target audience from Day One, better engage them and create empathy. In many ways this is the holy grail of marketing - [customers are] emotionally invested in the outcome, personally interested and want to see you succeed. So half your branding and awareness battle has already been fought.

RWW: How do you think the JOBS Act will affect crowdfunding?

SS: I think it’s going to catalyze even more interest, and we’ll see more small and midsized businesses in the traditional space turning to crowdfunding as a viable alternative.

On sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and RocketHub, not everything is designed to be a money-making enterprise. [Thanks to the JOBS Act, crowdfunding will attract] sophisticated startups looking to pitch more viable business strategies. And everyday individuals, instead of putting their money in the stock market, will be looking for [startups] that will deliver sustainable business models and maximum ROI.

RWW: What are some of your favorite examples of tech startups using crowdfunding creatively?

SS: gTar is a new and novel startup with an iPhone-powered digital guitar. [It shows] how effective crowdfunding can be when you have an eye-catching, unique offering that makes an impression very quickly.

But by far the best crowdfunding campaign I’ve seen so far is not a tech startup. Amanda Palmer is a musician who wanted to raise $100K for a new CD, tour and book. She has a three-minute video where she doesn’t say a word, just holds up poster board with writing on it, smiles and waves and utterly charms you. She’s already raised $800K.

Facebook's Instagram Acquisition Not Only Makes Sense, It's Smart

It has been fashionable lately to do some head scratching over Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, which we now know came just weeks before the social network released a camera app of its own that looked a lot like, well, Instagram. But there's an argument to be made that Facebook owes no apologies to its shareholders. Maybe CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s move to buy Instagram was borderline brilliant.

Writing for TheStreet.com, Rocco Pendola compares the acquisition to a strategy once favored by big radio station owners like Clear Channel and Citadel.

“Imagine a major city with just one FM station targeting 18-to-34-year-old men with alternative music. It does well in the market, which suggests there might be room for another FM music station of the same, or similar, format that goes after the same demographic,” Pendola wrote. “Instead of sitting around to wait for a competitor to flip the switch on the same type of station, the owner of the existing station changes format on another one of its properties, introducing a new station that goes after the same 18-to-34-year-old male audience.”

In other words, Facebook is probably expecting that Instagram will cannibalize some users from its new phone app and vice versa. But it no longer matters: All of the revenue stays with Facebook, and it no longer has to figure out how to convert the 40 million people who already use and like Instagram. Meanwhile, any app maker thinking to enter the market may reconsider, as the market may be close to saturation.

“I'm surprised nobody - at least that I know of - has made this logical connection,” Pendola wrote. “It's probably because they've been too busy jumping on the now cosmopolitan bandwagon of Facebook hate.”

Indeed, while the tech press is still by-and-large embracing Facebook, the financial press has quickly tied Facebook to the whipping post. The release of Facebook Camera was seen as proof positive that Zuckerberg et al were capable of building a world-changing social network but not capable of running a publicly traded company.

“Someone please explain to me why this makes sense,” Anthony DeRosa of Reuters wrote about the Facebook Camera launch. “Producing an inferior product must have cost money and certainly must have taken time to develop. Even if the app were developed before Facebook bought Instagram, it would have been less damaging for Facebook to pretend that it had never existed than to confuse the marketplace by introducing two competing products from the same company.”

Facebook is not commenting on the acquisition, as the Instagram deal has not closed. The Wall Street Journal noted that with the ongoing slump in Facebook’s share prices, the deal is now worth less than $1 billion.

Internet Society: There's Room for Compromise on Net Neutrality

The group of caretakers of Internet standards and practices has been on record supporting fundamental principles linked with net neutrality. But in Part 3 of ReadWriteWeb's interview with Sally Wentworth, the Internet Society's public policy spokesperson says that enabling a service provider to engineer a competitive advantage for itself may also be considered fair.

If you go back and read every major story on the topic of net neutrality, you may still come away asking the basic question: What is it, really? 

Net Neutrality is one of those strange political topics that you think you understand until you begin studying it. From one side of the aisle, you'll be told it's about one price for one tier of bandwidth; from the other, it's all about deregulation. If you deregulate a market, you don't get one price.

The Internet Society (ISOC) - the coalition of caretakers of Internet standards and practices, including the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) - is on record as supporting equal access to the Internet for all the world's citizens. That support has been trumpeted under headlines stating it supports net neutrality.  But it's presumptions like this that can get a global consortium into trouble, especially with member countries and other stakeholders who think the Society has just endorsed their particular interpretation of Net Neutrality.

In this third and final part of our interview with ISOC Senior Public Policy Manager Sally Wentworth, we talked about how difficult it is to navigate a path that has a dozen different maps.

Scott Fulton, ReadWriteWeb: When I ask Internet companies what’s the number one policy issue they face, four out of five say it's “net neutrality.” Their definitions vary because net neutrality means different things to different people. But one thing they can agree upon is the notion that bandwidth should be like tofu: plain, homogenized and one level - not stratified. It should be available for all companies at the same, essentially fair, rates. So how does that get regulated and by whom? Is this something we must leave to individual countries to sort out, or do we need to start negotiating an international regulatory framework that countries can follow for their own best interests?

Sally Wentworth, Senior Public Policy Manager, The Internet Society: My first view would be that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to something like this, because different countries really do have different economic models with respect to their communications markets. The competition levels in the United States are different from what we’ve seen in Europe, and certainly different from what you might find in emerging markets, for example. So it’s difficult to provide a single regulatory solution that’s going to be applicable or successful [for all countries].

Having said that, I think there are some basic principles that apply. That’s been our view, because we had a similar experience to you. We said, “Okay, we should say something about net neutrality,” and [the responses we got sounded like], “What is it you want me to comment on?” “Net neutrality” seems to be a buzzword that means lots of different things to lots of different people. So if we step back from that and say, “What are the basic principles that should apply?” we have said that we believe that people should have access to the legal content of their choosing. They should have competition among carriers. And there should be transparency between the user, the consumer and the provider as to what network management means, and how it’s been implemented for their service. We do recognize that networks are managed, but they should not be managed in ways that are anti-competitive or discriminatory.

When you step back from that, different countries may have different tools or require different policy measures to fulfill those principles. Maybe the solution in some country is to really focus on promoting competition in the marketplace. Other countries might say that’s less of an issue; [they may say], “We have plenty of last-mile competition,” but there’s an issue with transparency and making sure customers know what the terms of service really mean. Like I said, I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all [solution]. But in the end, if you think of having an Internet experience - you go online, and [as far as you can tell], This Is The Internet - then those are the principles that should apply.

RWW: Comcast has a system in place right now where subscribers can get access to first-run, on-demand movies that are delivered via Internet, without that service applying to the customer’s download caps. Subscribers can’t do the same thing with their Netflix service even if they subscribe to Netflix over Comcast. A lot of people are claiming that’s not competitive. Comcast says it can offer the service like this because it’s going through content delivery networks like Akamai, they are the networks of Comcast’s choosing, and it makes delivery [of this service] cost-effective.

You talked about fairness and about preserving competition. In a lot of people’s minds, those two are joined at the hip. And there are some who would make the case that, if you’re going to promote competitiveness, then part of being competitive is engineering an advantage for yourself and not necessarily giving that advantage to your competitor. Don’t you think it’s important that innovation, with respect to competitiveness, should enable the innovators to have some type of competitive advantage, even if it’s for a limited period of time?

SW: Yes, I suppose I probably would. There is, and always has been, in the Internet space, new and innovative business models. Some of those business models have survived, and some of them haven’t. In the cases where they haven’t, then oftentimes either somebody’s come up with a better idea or a better application, or the application itself didn’t meet the expectations of the end user. Yeah, I think it’s fair to say we will see innovation on the technical side; we’ll also see innovation in the business models and business cases. And that’s probably a good thing. 

Stock photo by Shutterstock.

The Cloud's Killer App? SAP's Bid to Own the Enterprise Social Space

If you measure the social activity inside enterprise-class networks, it may look like LinkedIn has a lock on the market. But if you study how employees actually connect with each other every day, Facebook is almost always the platform of choice. But because it's not really geared for businesses, it may be vulnerable to services that address needs tied specifically to the workplace. And SAP - of all companies - feels it may have the keys to the enterprise social space, including a supremely fast database and a way for employees to maintain a social profile based on her or his talents.

"The cloud is the ultimate fabric where all the data resides," says Dinesh Sharma, SAP's vice president for cloud marketing, speaking with ReadWriteWeb, "whether it's data we own, or aggregations of data from other places that all come together through Web APIs - that drives a volume of data. You have access to it, and because applications are so easy to consume, it's a perfect fit for the real-time insights that HANA can produce."

Sharma is outlining a strategy based on the success (which has yet to be proven, of course) of two key factors. One is HANA, which utilizes surprisingly ordinary database management schemes, but whose tables and schemas are arranged in large pools of memory rather than storage devices. That relocation of the proverbial operation table can, statistics indeed show, accelerate certain aspects of database applications by six orders of magnitude.

That's at the cloud end of the SAP strategy spectrum. At the other end - the part that faces the user directly - is SuccessFactors, the human capital management service that SAP acquired last December. If you think of Facebook as the caretaker of people's personal social affairs, consider SuccessFactors (along with competitors like talent management service Taleo, recently acquired by Oracle) as competing to be the caretaker of their personal business portfolios, their online curriculum vitae. 

Now that Monster.com's development appears to have calcified, LinkedIn has pointed the way toward the need for people to not only build but demonstrate their skills, using tools that go way beyond resumes. SuccessFactors is designed to be mined by talent scouts, looking not just for folks whose work history contains key phrases, but for opportunities to build the skill sets of interested and interesting people into the perfect fit for key positions long-term. (By "long-term," I mean longer than six months.)

Picture if you will a talent management worker in the human resources department of a major enterprise. On her tablet is a tool that would let her search for multiple people throughout the workforce who would be best suited to work together as a team on a collective project, sorted in order by their estimated availability and proximity to the place of business. The tool would have to judge these workers' interest and attitudes based on such factors as what they tweet, what products they've liked on Facebook and what tech news stories they've commented on. Even with the best database management schemes in the world, it would be quite a considerable query, consuming tremendous resources and time.

It's the sort of job that could use being accelerated by six orders of magnitude. And there you see the connection.

SAP's Sharma points out that the common usage model for applications preferred by folks in college or emerging from it today is tremendously different from the usage model of 2000 - the key difference being the social component. Any new functionality delivered to that customer - the ones entering the workforce with the skills that talent managers want most - must be geared toward interoperability and shareability. It cannot sit on a hard drive.

"If you're a major company, you probably run your infrastructure on SAP already today. We're providing these applications with these capabilities, and then also giving a level of openness so that you add them at a time and pace of your choosing," says Sharma. "It's not monolithic... Monolithic applications, even those in the cloud, start to morph toward a collection of thousands of services, that are pulled together on an as-needed basis to solve one problem, but then combine in a different way to solve a different problem.  It's an intriguing option."

Photo of Syracuse University campus by Scott Fulton

Read/Write Daily: An Army of Robot Fish

Today's theme is R&D. Even in seemingly calamitous times, there's still mind-boggling technological progress rolling out. It hasn't saved the world yet, but some pieces are falling into place.

Look at these new inventions and imagine the possibilities.

Fox News (sorry) reports on a new scientific ghost town, the Center for Innovation, being built in New Mexico to test the next generation of everyday technologies.

Here's the press release from Pegasus Global Holdings, which is financing the project, to get a sense of the ambitions.

Many of our next decade's inventions will be made out of superstrong, light materials like graphene. To make things out of graphene with precision, it looks like we'll have to use microscopic robots!

We'll also need renewable power supplies for our inventions, and new kinds of solar cells are showing some promising efficiency ratings.

Our future technologies will have to be much cleaner than our present ones. Researchers are building artificially intelligent robotic fish (!!!) to help with the clean-up.

Speaking of artificial intelligence, here's a great essay about why human intelligence is overrated.

Image via Shutterstock

Past entries from Read/Write Daily

SnipSnap: How a Newspaper Vet Aims to Remake Paper Coupons For the Mobile Era

It all started with a pack of diapers. Ted Mann, then a regional digital director for Gannett and a new dad, was waiting in line to pay for diapers when he realized he hadn't brought the coupons. Like so many coupons clipped from the local paper, they sat in what Mann refers to as the "bowl of shame" - that repository of unclaimed discounts that so many households know all too well. Mann knew there had to be a digital solution to this classic, analog problem.

He started by using his iPhone's camera app to take pictures of coupons he and his wife found in the paper. As crude as it was, this approach worked. When other customers started asking what app he was using, Mann knew he was onto something.

In August 2011, he quit his day job managing digital operations for six newspapers in southern New Jersey to launch SnipSnap, a mobile app that helps consumers drag paper-based coupons into the 21st century by scanning and organizing them. 

Just how widely used are paper coupons? With print media in decline and the rapid rise of mobile commerce, you'd think that traditional coupons would be headed toward extinction. But they're not. 

Last year, about 3.5 billion coupons were redeemed by consumers, according to research conducted by collaborative commerce firm Inmar. After a few years of declining, the number of overall coupon redemptions starting increasing again in 2006. It has climbed 34.6% since then. 

From Print to Pixels: Coupons Evolve into the 21st Century 

It was in his role at Gannett that Mann first became interested in coupons and how they could be adapted for our new, digital world. 

"I wasn’t all that thrilled with the existing apps," Mann says. "One day I started to wonder: What if I could just take a picture of one of the printed coupons I have?"

That's precisely what SnipSnap does, but with some handy bells and whistles tacked on. It doesn't just take a photo of each coupon, but rather picks out and properly digitizes pertinent details, such as the face value, expiration date, barcode and name of the store. The app notifies you when a coupon is about to expire and reminds you about it when you're near the store.

Mann enlisted iOS developer Kostas Nasis as the company's CTO and mobile designer Kyle Martin as VP of Product. The trio were brought on by DreamIt Ventures startup accelerator program and then went on to Project Liberty, a startup incubator launched early this year by the parent company of the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

After a successful soft launch that included a stint as one of Apple's featured apps, SnipSnap was demonstrated at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York last week. 

The app's user base has continued to blow up. "We have phenomenal amounts of structured coupon data, redemption data, coupon clipping data and location data," says Mann. "We’re now focused on putting all that data to work."

Other plans for the immediate future include reponding to feature requests and building in more social features, so users can more easily share coupons with friends and family. They're also beginning to forge a business model by selling paid coupon placements to big-name brands. The first such arrangement, with clothing retailer Aeropostale, just went live during the weekend.

SnipSnap is currently available for iOS, but an Android version is in the works for later this summer. 

Lead photo by MissMessie.

Heroku Chief Opens the Door to More Processes, Bigger Ecosystem, Less Amazon

In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, the man who led the Heroku PaaS platform to prominence - and who continues to lead it as Executive Vice President of Salesforce - says that as his platform expands, it could certainly penetrate old barriers. One such barrier could be the ribbon, if you will, in front of a "Heroku apps store." Another is the perimeter of the cloud that has supported it to date, Amazon EC2.

"Amazon works great as a platform for Heroku and for its customers. Every day we are expanding how much we run on Amazon, because our services are expanding so quickly," says Salesforce's Byron Sebastian. He's referring to Heroku's expansion earlier this month of its Postgres database services, with two new, smaller tiers at $50 (Crane) and $100 (Kappa) per month, as well as an entirely new process model called Cedar - rolled out Wednesday - that adds the ability to run "one-off" processes against any application being run on the platform.  That's a huge expansion in capacity requirements in just one month's time, and if any cloud infrastructure service in the world is capable of meeting those requirements, it's Amazon.

A Bridge to Heroku's Parent's Cloud

But the pending need for such requirements led to open speculation about whether Heroku may add the option at some point for certain customers, perhaps in particular locales, to use parent company Salesforce's infrastructure instead - maybe for a discount. In our discussion with Sebastian, he made certain we understood he's only strengthening his commitments with Amazon. But he didn't bat down the possibility of a home-grown alternative.

"We do hear from customers, especially as Heroku sees increased traction over the last 12 to 18 months, that large enterprises often have very specific requirements about what they want to see in the overall infrastructure," he says. "They want to have flexibility and choice in terms of the characteristics of where they're running their applications. So directionally, we see Heroku being able to offer customers like that the choice of different cloud infrastructures based on different operational requirements they might have. In some cases, it might be locale; in some, it might be low-latency connectivity, [such as] with the Singapore Stock Exchange; in some cases, it's how much visibility they have into the audit trails within data centers; in some cases, it might be related to data residency, and wanting to keep data within a certain country."

There are a number of market forces at work here. One is the equal and opposite reaction, you could say, from the so-called "consumerization of IT:" Think of it as the industrialization of service. Earlier this week, we saw a potentially game-changing breakthrough from Box.net, as it opened up service tiers to price and terms negotiation for enterprises for the first time. It's an indication that metered service doesn't work for everyone, especially large enterprises. Another, which Sebastian also referred to above, is the need for certain countries (especially in Europe) to keep their data within their own home territories, to avoid inspection by foreign countries' law enforcement bodies.

"Directionally, we see giving these high-end customers more and more choice about the infrastructure that they're running. And our long-term strategy ultimately includes continuing to expand [Heroku] to do more and more with Amazon," Sebastian says. "Since we were acquired, we did anticipate at some point running in Salesforce [data centers]...  Heroku is very much about choice, about openness and about giving customers control and the ability to make decisions about how they want their applications and infrastructure to be run."

An Expanded Process Model

The XVP's comments come amid this week's rollout by Heroku of what is hoped to be a greatly enhanced process model - the system with which the platform runs applications. Called Cedar, the new system continues to support Ruby (including work with the Rails framework), Java (including work with the Spring or Play frameworks), Python (including work with the Django framework), Clojure, Node.js, Scala and Facebook Platform. What Cedar adds is the capability to scale applications much more granularly, including manual scaling of the number of dynos (Heroku's virtual units of work) and spinning off "one-off" processes from the command line.

Sebastian tells RWW that Cedar will continue to follow Heroku's architecture of enabling different components of an application to be developed using any of the languages it supports.  "Cedar gives the developer tight control over the processes - how many processes are running, what types and so on. That, we strongly believe, is the key building block to building platform-as-a-service," he says.

He reaffirmed a long-held belief that developers don't particularly want to manage servers, especially since today, virtualization has rendered them artificial constructs anyway. "If you're a developer, what matters to you if you're thinking about computational power is the processes that are running in your processor. By creating a process model that gives developers a lot of power over how those processes are used, how they're delegated, how they're assigned, and so on, we're able to give a huge amount of control back to the developer, and at the same time remove a lot of the overhead, because they don't have to deal with these concepts of servers - which are an artificial concept that gets in the way of the developer."

Polyglot with a Caveat

Recently, Heroku has been facing new challenges from cloud platforms including Apprenda (a .NET platform competing with Windows Azure), some of which are making the case that having too much language choice - what Sebastian calls a "polyglot cloud" - ends up confusing developers rather than assisting them. When we brought up that topic with Sebastian, he surprised us by saying that while Heroku has this broad portfolio, it has more focus than some may realize.

"Our Cedar stack enables multiple languages to be run on Heroku. But in doing that, we decided very carefully that the goal was not going to be to support every language under the sun as a value proposition. We decided it was very important that, just as people had really come to see us as the best platform for running Ruby apps in the cloud, for the other languages we introduced, we achieve a similar level of developer productivity and operational agility. There are certain specific languages that we really focus on, to be the best platform for developers to run their apps on... Focus is really important. The underlying value of the cloud platform can be applied to a number of different languages. We realized we could scale out to support additional languages, but do it properly, in a way that's friendly to developers, providing the tools and frameworks they expect."

An Heroku Storefront?

There are a growing number of Heroku apps available on the iTunes App Store (especially for, of all things, managing one's own Heroku apps), as well as new customer-facing apps on the Shopify store. Does this give Heroku any ideas about pulling off its own version of, say, Salesforce's AppExchange? While declining to give specifics, Byron Sebastian gave us substantial reason to believe there could be much more to say on that subject during Salesforce's annual DreamForce conference this September.

"It's very clear that, with the move toward social enterprises at Salesforce, part of becoming a social enterprise is giving [customers] the experience of being able to very quickly try, experiment, and review applications and new technologies, [and] make it very easy to purchase those applications in that marketplace... Everybody's getting into that business, and we definitely see that part of being a social enterprise is providing marketplaces with very easy on-ramps, in order to try out applications. In the case of Heroku, we already do that with our add-ons for infrastructure for developers, but that's a key direction for the future, and it's part of being 'cloud.' "

Researchers Wrestle with Social Media Suicide Questions

Since the first documented Internet suicide pact in Japan in 2000, public health officials have struggled to understand what role the Web plays in suicidal behavior. A new study suggests that social media is only making it more difficult to find answers to those questions.

Social media sites have increased both the rate of suicide and efforts to prevent suicide, according to a study published this month in the American Journal of Public Health. Online forums, including mainstream social networks such as Facebook and YouTube and more dedicated, pro-suicide chat rooms and message boards, are raising concerns. But at the same time, researchers see opportunities to use social media to identify people at risk for suicide and intervene.

The study by David D. Luxton, Jennifer D. June and Jonathan M. Fairall for the National Center for Telehealth and Technology comes in response to several high-profile cases of cyberbullying that lead to suicide. It follows up on similar studies that have made preliminary findings in the field and started debate in public health and policy circles.

The report also raises issues about how difficult it is to study the subject. 

Suicide has a low base rate of about 300,000 per year in the U.S. and 1 million worldwide, which makes it difficult to study, regardless of the context. Add in the complexities of variable use patterns of social media, and it gets even more difficult to understand what role social media plays in suicidal behavior and whether it can effectively predict risk factors, the authors said. 

Increased Access to Suicide Information Can Have Consequences

Among the ways social media may be helping to encourage suicidal behavior:

• In preliminary studies, increased Internet use in a country has been tied to increased suicide rates (Japan, for example, recorded 34 suicides in 2003 and 91 suicides in 2005).
• Cyberbullying has been tied, both anecdotally and empirically, to increased suicide risks, particularly among adolescents.
• Social media may help people form suicide pacts. “Traditional suicide pacts have typically developed among individuals who know each other, such as a couple or friends,” the study noted. “A primary characteristic that differentiates cybersuicide pacts from traditional suicide pacts is that these pacts are usually formed among complete strangers.”
• The Internet gives people access to “how-to” methods for committing suicide. One recent study found that “of 719 individuals aged 14 to 24 years, 79% reported being exposed to suicide-related content through family, friends, and traditional news media such as newspapers, and 59% found such content through Internet sources.”
• Video sites, including YouTube, are increasingly playing a role in exposing people to “pro-suicide” and self-harm content.

“In sum, evidence is growing that social media can influence pro-suicide behavior,” according to the study's researchers. “Because the Internet eliminates geographic barriers to communication between people, the emergence of pro-suicide social media sites may present a new risk to vulnerable people who might otherwise not have been exposed to these potential hazards.”

Social Media Offers Signs of Hope

The study did, however, offer some reason for optimism and laid out a framework for further study. It pointed to efforts by Facebook to make it easier for users to report people they were worried about who may be using the social network to share suicide warning signs. The report also mentioned efforts by the U.S. military to use social media as a suicide prevention tool.

Other sites, such as YouTube and dedicated websites, have been used to share content to raise awareness about the problem and direct people to help.

“Those administering suicide prevention and outreach public health campaigns must also stay current with social media trends and user preferences, as well as pertinent legal issues,” the report concluded. “Ultimately, proactively using social media to increase public awareness of and education on mental health issues is a logical modern public health approach that can potentially save lives.”

Why All the Facebook Rumors? Company's Slumping Share Price Could Have Something to Do With It

It’s not surprising that Facebook is developing a phone, as reported last week by The New York Times. What is surprising is how the story has been covered with a sense of awe, and no one has bothered to question how news of the Facebook phone - as well as a rumored acquisition of Opera - leaked during Facebook’s first full week as a public company.

Both moves would make sense for Facebook as the company tries to grow revenues, further integrate its services across the Web and show that it can succeed in mobile. But the timing of the leaks - at least a year before Facebook would be able to release a smartphone - is suspect. Would we be hearing about these new initiatives if Facebook shares weren’t slumping or if the company weren’t facing potential lawsuits from investors?

The fact that Facebook is developing a smartphone is nothing new; these rumors are becoming an annual rite. TechCrunch covered the first round of rumors in 2010, and they were repeated again last year when AllThingsD reported that Facebook had entered a partnership with HTC to create a smartphone. That project, codenamed Buffy, is presumably still in the works.

Officially, Facebook is keeping mum on the subject, simply referring reporters to the same statement it gave AllThingsD last year: ““We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers.”

The company is saying even less about the rumored Opera acquisition, but such a move also makes sense. Just look to Google’s success with Chrome, which further integrates Web browsing into the overall Google experience. Buying an existing browser maker like Opera would give Facebook a head start on developing the product and may help Facebook alleviate some of the inevitable privacy concerns that critics will raise.

What should be surprising is the number of Facebook partners, employees and ex-employees who are willing to talk about the initiatives. These are the same partners, employees and ex-employees who almost uniformly heeded the company’s quiet period and coordinated public relations push leading up to the IPO. 

Yet, with shares slumping, Pocket-lint, which initially reported the Opera rumor, is quoting a “man in the know,” and dozens of outlets have been able to get comment on the specifics of the smartphone development, including the number of ex-Apple employees now working for Facebook and details of conversations that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had with engineers about the telephone project.

Keep in mind that this is a company that rather famously releases products first and asks questions later. Both a Facebook smartphone and a Facebook browser have seemed inevitable for quite some time; it was always just a matter of when. But the leaks are something new, and could be one of the first noticeable differences in the pre- and post-IPO version of Facebook.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Cutting all the Cords: The Feasibility of a 100% Mobile Lifestyle

The cord-cutting revolution is growing. People are ditching their cables boxes in favor of streaming videos through their smartphones, tablets and services such as Roku and Apple TV. In reality though, these are not real cord cutters. They still pay bills to the cable companies that deliver broadband Internet access to their homes. That broadband is delivered… by cords. Is it truly possible to live an Internet-connected lifestyle and cut all of the cords?

I consider myself a cord cutter. I stopped paying for cable service and live my life through my Roku box, iPad and Android smartphone. The Roku delivers Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon video on demand and MLB.TV to my television. I can access most of those services through my iPad and Android, as well. Yet the Roku is powered through a Wi-Fi router that is delivered from a broadband connection from Comcast. The iPad is almost always on Wi-Fi when in the apartment. While I think of myself as a cord cutter, the cable company is still getting nearly $60 a month from me.

And Comcast still sends me these lovely fliers about once a month. 

To be honest, it is enticing. For about $25 or so extra dollars a month, I can have cable and faster Internet, video on demand and I'd finally be able to watch Game Of Thrones on HBO. The cable company wants me back on cable, and I might be inclined to give in. 

But what if I chose the alternate route and completely cut Comcast out of the equation? Like it or not, I still have to choose a service provider. Right now, I pay Comcast for my home Internet, Verizon for the data connection on my iPad and AT&T for my smartphone plan. To really cut all the cords, I am throwing myself straight into the arms of AT&T, Verizon and maybe even Sprint. Is this a move that I would be willing to make?

Here is how it would theoretically look.

In April, I used 140 GB of broadband data through Comcast. That is up from March (115 GB) and down from February (164 GB). Let’s say that on an average month, I am using about 120 GB of broadband data. That includes streaming video through the Roku, running music through Spotify for about eight hours a day through the iPad and my normal activities as a writer at ReadWriteWeb (running multiple browser tabs, uploading pictures, etc., as I work from home). In addition to the 120 GB of broadband data, I use between 500 MB and 1 GB of Verizon 3G data through my iPad and about 2.5 GB of AT&T LTE through my Android. So, for all my devices, let us call it about 125 GB of data used per month.

While 120 GB of broadband data might seem like a lot, for a cord cutter that does not watch any video media on cable, it is fairly reasonable. Comcast currently sets its data cap at 250 GB and soon may be going to a usage-based system and says that 99% of its users stay well under that cap. 

But here is where the biggest problem is posed. For Comcast, delivering that 120 GB of data is simple. It has big, fat pipes and a sophisticated network to deliver Internet to the T1 connection to people’s homes (also known as “the last mile.”) To replace that data through pure wireless solutions will take creativity... and it will not be cheap.

The first thing to look at is turning my smartphone or tablet into a wireless hotspot. That way I could replace the Wi-Fi router without having to buy any extra equipment. While this would be the simplest option, it would also become problematic to run several data-driven devices at full speed at once. The answer then might be to get a separate wireless hotspot, such as a MiFi router that turns cellular data into a broadband connection over 3G or 4G. 

If I am looking to completely replace that 120 GB of broadband data by this route, it becomes cost prohibitive very quickly. A look at the hotspot plans for the top three U.S. carriers:

• AT&T: 5 GB per month: $50 ($10 per GB overage charges)
• Cost to replace 120 GB: $1,200
• Verizon: 10 GB per month: $80 ($10 per GB overage charges)
• Cost to replace 120 GB: $1,180
• Sprint: 12 GB per month: $79.99 ($0.05 per MB overage or $51.20 per GB)
• Cost to replace 120 GB: $5,609.59

That is only half of the equation, though. The other half is performance. Wi-Fi is a great technology because it provides reliable speeds and can be split among several devices. Comcast delivers speeds in tiers, with about 15 Mbps running about $57. At this point, LTE devices can deliver faster performances in real-world conditions on a device-by-device basis. Realistic speeds of anywhere from 15 Mbps to 40 Mbps can be seen, depending on what region you are in and how many people are using the same LTE network. As more people start using LTE, those real-world speeds will start coming down as the network becomes more congested. The question will be how well will your devices perform through an LTE MiFi device or mobile hotspot from a tablet or a smartphone? When you rely on your laptop or desktop for work purposes, you are going to end up frustrated with your data connection more often than not. 

How Much Does Mobile Displace the PC and TV?

Well, there is a very simple answer to all of this: Cut the cord entirely, stop streaming entertainment to your device, find Wi-Fi hotspots in public and only use data on your smartphone for basic purposes including Web browsing, search and social media. This is not hard to envision, millions of people do not have cable and hardly use their cellphones at all. The easiest way to cut the cord is to just not live by the rules of the cord. Same goes for the wireless carriers. 

This brings us into an interesting discussion on “mobile-only” existences. The idea of mobile-only has been percolating for the past several years as people look to cut the cable cord and smartphone and tablet use has skyrocketed. Within the past several months, mobile-only has been a topic pushed to the forefront as people analyzed Facebook’s S-1 document the company filed for its initial public offering. 

Facebook has a problem. It does not make any money off of mobile. At the same time, many of its users interact with the social platform primarily through mobile devices. It is not inconceivable that many or most of Facebook’s new users going forward will be mobile-only consumers. Much of that growth will be international in countries that do not have robust cable infrastructures, but it will also happen in the U.S. and Europe as people that do not need to work from laptops or desktops only use tablets and smartphones to interact with the Web. 

Internet billionaire investor Mark Cuban poses these pertinent questions in a blog post breaking down Facebook’s IPO and the challenges the company faces with mobile-only consumers going forward:

“Which leads to a much broader question. Just what percentage of PC Online usage will mobile displace? Is it feasible that people will “cut the broadband cord” and live exclusively off of their mobile internet access? Why not use your mobile as an in home hotspot rather than paying for 2 internet connections? If you avoid streaming video and downloads its easy to stay within your caps. Do you know anyone that has cut their broadband access to go exclusively mobile internet?” Cuban wrote. 

This, of course, is not just a question about Facebook. Mobile-first and mobile-only approaches by consumers are going to affect the entire technology industry going forward. Companies such as Comcast have to worry about people not just cutting their cable cords, but cutting broadband out of their lives entirely. Forget about replacing 120 GB of broadband data, Comcast might need to learn how to compete in the mobile space where high-end plans are between 5 GB and 10 GB. 

The reality though, in the short term, is that most users in developed countries (especially the U.S.) are not going to be mobile-only. As it stands now, cord cutting represents one step in a digital lifestyle where classic cable gets cut out of the picture in favor of other alternatives. Moving down the spectrum is where we find the mobile-only users and right now those people are few and far between. 

Have you gone mobile only? What have been your experiences? Do you miss the ability to stream mass amounts of media? Do you miss cable? If you have taken this plunge, let us know in the comments.  

College Grads Shun Startup Jobs - and How to Hire Them Anyway

Join a cutting-edge new company, spend your days with an office full of hip people and your nights at rockin’ rooftop parties. Sounds like the perfect life for a newly minted college graduate, right? Maybe not.

The startup mix of an exciting lifestyle and the potential to strike it rich if the company hits it big would seem to be a big draw for young workers - especially as the overall economy continues to struggle adding new jobs. But the opportunitiy has yet to register with the class of 2012. And that could make it surprisingly difficult for startups to attract top talent.

A recent study of graduating job-seekers by job-search engine SimplyHired.com, suggests that this year’s college graduates are not particularly interested in going to work at a startup. In the survey, a measly 4% listed a startup as their ideal place of employment.

“When you see the hiring taking place in Silicon Valley, there really is a boom going on here,” says SimplyHired CEO Gautam Godhwani. “So to see a lack of enthusiasm for startups from new grads is not something we expected.”

Potential vs. security?

Apparently, what college graduates want most is job security. Some 33% listed that as their top priority, above salary (23%) and benefits (23%).

The popular wisdom holds that young people today are more entrepreneurial. But keep in mind that the class of 2012 entered college just as the recession hit - and they have been scared away from risky ventures. Economics 101 seems to have had a bigger impact on their career goals than “The Social Network.”

Perks like free sodas and a company kickball game sound cool, but today’s college graduates are more interested in their long-term future.

“While startups offer a culture that new graduates might enjoy, such as flexible hours and casual dress, this graduating class is looking for stability over perks,” says Godhwani. “And it’s no mystery why. Over the last four years, while they’ve been working on their bachelor’s degree, they’ve watched their friends and family struggle in the job market. The economy has been tough and the class of 2012 had a front-row-seat to witness it all happen.”

How to hire recent grads

So what can startups do to attract employees? Get funded.

“Employers need to understand why a lot of new grads are not interested in working for a startup,” Godhwani says. “And when you look at the numbers on success for venture-backed companies, it is significantly higher. When a new grad becomes convinced that a startup is well-funded and growing and stable - and they will have a job for the next several years - that alleviates a lot of concerns.”

SimplyHired.com offers a list of 10 Tips for Hiring New College Graduates (get PDF here), but it’s unclear how well many of them will apply to startups.

A couple that do make sense for brand new companies include demonstrating how your company makes a difference and choosing employees for their passion instead of their experience.

It can be hard for large multinational firms to show how they’re changing the world instead of maintaining the status quo, but many startups are laser-focused on filling needs and creative disruption. That’s an opening startups need to exploit.

As for hiring for passion, remember that passion doesn’t have to be for your company. At least not at first. The report gives this example of hiring for passion:

“A recruiter at a popular technology startup described a recent successful hire that was a new college graduate with little work experience. The thing that stood out? His leadership of his college comedy improv group, and several comedy training workshops he had attended each summer. The recruiter recognized the candidate’s longtime commitment to a passion and desire to learn and grow within the specialization, which proved successful for the employee now in a client services position.”

WWDC Rumor Roundup: What Will Apple Reveal Next Month?

Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference is still a few weeks away, but such a detail has never stopped rumors and speculation from flowing. 

 What will Apple unveil at the sold-out event? Some things are more certain than others, and anybody expecting major hardware announcements will probably be disappointed. The focus this year will be on operating systems, but there are a few other suprises Apple could sneak in. 

Mac OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6

The WWDC will almost certainly feature appearances by the next version of Apple's major operating systems. Both OS X and iOS are due for upgrades, as they both gradually evolve toward one another.

We already got a detailed look at OS X Mountain Lion, which has been available as a developer preview for three months. The new desktop operating system borrows heavily from iOS and continues the tradition started with Mountain Lion of making OS X start to look and feel more like Apple's mobile OS. 

The next version of iOS is also due in 2012. It was a year ago at the WWDC that Steve Jobs debuted iOS 5 and iCloud. It's yet to be seen what iOS 6 will feature, but rumors include an overhauled, non-Google maps application, enhancements to Siri and some changes to the look and feel of the OS. Since iCloud has only been in the public's hands since October, we can reasonably expect some updates there. 

New MacBook Pros: Thinner With a Retina Display

It's been awhile since the MacBook Pro line got a significant overhaul. There's no reason not to believe speculation that that may finally happen next month. 

In particular, 9to5 Mac says we should expect a thinner design, USB 3.0 ports and the sort of high-resolution "retina" display that has grown so popular among iPad and iPhone users.

iPhone 5? Don't Count on It. 

As fervently as many Apple-watchers pray for this one, it probably won't happen. The company used to unviel new smartphones at its annual developers' conference, but they broke that tradition in October with the launch of iPhone 4S. Like the 4S, the iPhone 5 will likely be released around the same time as the next version of iOS, which of course will only be announced at the WWDC. Just like last year. 

Some are still clinging to hopes that Apple could drop a major surprise by giving us a sneak peak at the iPhone 5. We're still skeptical. 

The iPhone 4S, which just started shipping in October of last year, has been a phenomenal success. It broke early sales records and helped propel Apple to one of the most successful quarters in any company's history. The more likely scenario is that they'll make iOS 6 available to developers, allow them to kick the tires and then launch both iOS 6 and the iPhone 5 in the fall. 

What about the long-rumored 7" iPad? The outlook doesn't look overwhelmingly strong for this one, but it's gotta a better shot than the iPhone 5 of showing up next month.  

94% of U.S. Wineries Are On Facebook, 73% on Twitter

94% of American wineries surveyed by ABLE Social Media Marketing are on Facebook and 73% are on Twitter. The study, done in December 2011, shows that American wineries are active in social media and that it's producing results. 47% of US wineries said that Facebook helps them generate sales (72% sell wine on their website). While this study focuses on wineries only, companies in other industries should take note of these results.

The study by ABLE covered both American and French wineries, but the French statistics aren't as impressive. For example only 53% of French wineries surveyed are on Facebook, compared to 94% of US wineries.

Facebook and/or Twitter?

Drilling down into the Facebook statistics some more, 50% of American wineries (but only 18% of French wineries) have more than 500 fans on Facebook. ABLE identified two reasons for the success of American wineries on Facebook:

• 49% of American wineries (19% of French) have a dedicated marketing manager who creates and publishes content on social networks.
• 30% of American wineries have been using Facebook ads to promote their winery (only 7.6% of French wineries).

Aside: 3.8% of American wineries listed "my children" as their Facebook managers. Goes to show that family ties in SMB's is still important!

It's interesting to see the wine industry using Facebook and Twitter for different reasons. According to the study, Facebook is the superior social media platform for generating sales (48% for Facebook vs. 28% for Twitter). But Twitter is seen as better at capturing media attention (53% for Twitter vs. 32% for Facebook). That kind of statistic is good news for Facebook's IPO investors, who've been spooked by the media into thinking that Facebook will have trouble growing revenue.

72% of American wineries and 69% of French wineries say they will be increasing their activity on Facebook in 2012. Twitter isn't seen as so important, with 61% of American wineries and 45% of French wineries saying they will increase their activity on Twitter in 2012.

Other Social Networks

Another interesting statistic is which wine-focused social networks US wineries use. Snooth is the most popular, with 33% of respondents on there.

Note that nearly 53% aren't on any niche wine network. I'm somewhat surprised by that, because I'm a user of a couple of wine apps - Snooth and Drync - and I'd like to think that wineries are active on them. They should be updating their data on the popular apps and trying to woo the most passionate wine consumers (because connoisseurs are more likely to be using these niche apps than other people).

As for other types of social networks, nearly 54% of American wineries have claimed or created a profile on Yelp, 40% on Google Places and 30% on Foursquare.

285 American wineries and 243 French ones participated in the study. The full report is embedded below.