Why Zuckerberg's Lobby Is Collapsing Like A House Of Cards Outside Of DC
“Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location.” — Frank Underwood, House of Cards At this very moment, Mark Zuckerberg’s political lobby, FWD.us, is probably taken aback at how reviled it has become, both from the public and its own members. After all, there are countless political technology lobbies, including Facebook’s own Political Action Committee, which routinely offer Republican candidates campaign cash for quid pro quo political favor. So, why, after discovering FWD.us indirectly supporting the controversial Keystone Pipeline initiative, have would-be supporters flooded their Facebook page with scathing comments, and its A-list supporters, such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, ditched the group? Unlike other lobbies, FWD.us burst on to the scene with a very public op-ed from its celebrity founder, promising to galvanize the latent civic passions of Silicon Vally’s netizens in a noble crusade to advance the knowledge society. While one hand extended ...
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About 30% of Facebook's Advertising Revenue, Or $375M, Came From Mobile Platforms
Almost one-third of Facebook’s advertising revenue is now coming from mobile platforms, according to the company’s latest earnings release. About $375 million of Facebook’s $1.25 billion in advertising revenue came from products like the company’s new mobile app install ads. That’s up from last quarter, when Facebook said it made 23 percent, or $305.9 million, from mobile ads. So this is a nice 22.5 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in mobile advertising revenue. Because Facebook now sees about three quarters of a billion users per month on mobile devices, the company has to make a commensurate amount from these platforms. Analysts and investors are closely watching to see how well Facebook makes this leap from desktop-based ads to mobile ones. Unlike Apple and Google, Facebook doesn’t own its own smartphone OS or sell its own hardware. It doesn’t have a way to earn a cut of app sales or in-app purchases like it does with games and apps on the Facebook platform. Advertising ...
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Apple Sells 3.95M Macs In Q2 2013, Nearly Flat From Q2 2012 And Down 1.25% Sequentially
Apple's Mac sales continued to slide this quarter, as Apple sold only 3.95 million computers running OS X, down just over 1 percent from the 4.1 million they sold in Q1 2013, and pretty much flat compared to the 4 million they sold in the same quarter last year. That's no surprise: PC sales are sluggish in general, and while Macs aren't running wild, flat growth is better than a dip.
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Amazon Takes More Steps Toward Building A Mobile Ad Network With An API In Beta
Amazon is taking the first steps toward building a mobile ad network across its Kindle devices with a new advertising API in beta for developers. If you judge by the earnings of publicly traded mobile advertising companies like Millennial Media, which has had annual losses for the last five years, it’s a tough business with low margins. But Amazon has something that most other competing networks don’t: troves of data on the millions of consumers who buy goods off its site. That could help Amazon understand what kinds of ads actually result in purchases better than Google AdMob, Facebook or any of the independent networks like InMobi or Jumptap. It also means much more seamless calls-to-action embedded in ads that can get users immediately clicking through to buy products. Amazon is kicking off the network with advertisers like Duracell Powermat and Nature’s Bounty. For now, Amazon’s mobile ads API will only work with U.S. users and apps and games on the Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD ...
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There Was That Whole Internet Thing, Too
Anyone wanting to see the whole “history is written by the victors” thing in process should read Tim Wu and John Gruber battle it out over exactly why Apple has kicked the crap out of everyone else since the late 90s. Wu, who’s confused about what open v. closed systems really mean (he uses a variety of definitions), says that Apple has succeeded despite being a closed system. Gruber says open v. closed doesn’t matter, and says Apple succeeds because it produces great products fast (meaning first to market). Gruber’s argument can be condensed down to “Companies run by geniuses should generally do better than those which are not,” and I agree. Except. The internet. Talking about Apple v. Microsoft without mentioning the internet and the browser is like talking about WWII without talking about the nuke. Framing the conversation just in terms of open v. closed operating systems, the quality of the hardware or software or who the CEO was, is silly. Because without the internet ...
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