- Facebook valued at $15 Billion
Microsoft has made a bid for a small stake in the Facebook platform. – Article
The two companies said on Wednesday that Microsoft would invest $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. The investment values the three-year-old Facebook, which will bring in about $150 million in revenue this year, at $15 billion.
…an interesting take on their offering.
The high valuation also represents a belief that Facebook is creating an important new operating system — one that exists on the Web instead of on personal computers. In May, it opened its platform, inviting other companies and third party developers to create tools for the site and share in the advertising revenues.
Jerimiah has some interesting thoughts on his web strategist site.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- How many hits do I get?
If you live in the Colorado front range you have undoubtedly been following the hysteria regarding the sale world series tickets, or more aptly the lack there of. It’s a literal panic out there for tickets and having participated in my fair share of high pressure, high bandwidth launches I must say the Rockies and Paciolan (MLB’s ticket vendor) have botched this one good.
It’s funny because just today, The Times ran an article on just how unreliable web traffic figures seem to be. It’s a complicated problem. Just for this little site I have Stat Press, Google Analytics, Google Ads and a couple log parsing offerings from my hosting provider all giving me slightly different data, derived in slightly different ways. From the best I can tell I average around 20 hits a day, but my spikes are sporadic and quite significant. Predicting traffic is more complicated but there are plenty of tools out there to help so these guys have no excuse. A shout out to the Sponsor Keynote for providing a great third party load testing solution for just this problem.
I’ll be sure to let you know if I get any tickets
Popularity: 6% [?]
- The Footprint Chronicles
Patagonia’s new feature The Footprint Chronicles is not only aesthetically pleasing and informative it’s setting a new benchmark for manufacturing accountability and transparency. It’s worth a look even if you’re not into $80 fleeces.
Popularity: 7% [?]
- Democracy 2.0?
Another great Wired Article today on the disappointment in the web community regarding the presidential debates. Fortunately the site 10 Questions is bringing the debate format into the 21st century. Check out this excerpt from wired on the logic behind it:
In the CNN-YouTube debate in July, it was CNN producers who chose the online-video questions to present to candidates. Similarly, in the ongoing MySpace and MTV forums, journalists serve as filters between voters and candidates. TechPresident’s goal is to provide U.S. voters the leading role in controlling the much-touted national dialogue with the presidential candidates.
The project’s organizers are hoping to do that with social software designed to enable “the crowd” to speak responsibly with a collaborative voice. They plan to keep their online voting system simple, and audit the tallied votes.
The point, says Sifry, is to create a large-scale online forum with the same rhetorical attributes that characterize physical town-hall meetings, instead of tweaking a commercial broadcast medium that provides candidates with 30 seconds to advertise their personalities and positions.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- A Gossip Culture
New York times has an interesting article on the power of Gossip today, and how gossip stacks up against facts when it comes to making a decision. Here’s a quick excerpt.
If the first player refused to give the money, he’d save 1.25 Euros, but if others found out about his miserliness they might later withhold money from him. As the game progressed, with the players changing partners frequently and alternating between the donor and recipient roles, the players were given information about their partners’ past decisions.
Sometimes the donor was shown a record of what the partner had done previously while playing the donor role. The more generous this partner had earlier been toward other players, the more likely the donor was to give him something.
Sometimes the donor was shown gossip about the partner from another player. When the partner was paid a compliment like “spendabler spieler!” — generous player! — the donor was more likely to give money. But the donor turned stingy when he saw gossip like “übler geizkragen” — nasty miser.
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But here’s the disconcerting news from the experiment. In a couple of rounds, each donor was given both hard facts and gossip. He was given a record of how his partner had behaved previously as well as some gossip — positive gossip in one round, negative in another.The donor was told that the source of the gossip didn’t have any extra information beyond what the donor could already see for himself. Yet the gossip, whether positive or negative, still had a big influence on the donors’ decisions, and it didn’t even matter if the source of the gossip had a good reputation himself. On average, cooperation increased by about 20 percent if the gossip was good, and fell by 20 percent if the gossip was negative.
This is an interesting concept in the age where Gossip has gone digital, and social computing is emerging as a valid form of exchanging such tid-bits. I find my actions are consistent with the study. I look at news and data all day, but I really pay attention to personal recommendations or warnings.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Bike Hackers
It’s time to truly start blogging. I have everything set up now, so there really is no excuse. Here goes a true blog type of post. Check out Wired article on bike hacks. The led and portable projector are especially interesting.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Ajax
I have been working on a lecture for an upcoming AJAX class. It’s still pretty rough and not yet spell checked but I like what I have. Good thing too because the class is coming up next week!
Popularity: 3% [?]
