Tuesday, August 30, 2011

MAN Marketing


Nike Vintage Running_Advertising by opolis design


An electronic promoting organization is often a small business specialized in your acceptance plus add-on of the marketing providers in several advertising motion. Presently frequently expanding technological way of life, you will need to delay along with 1 another on the advancement in the electronic digital more streamlined so that you can capably in addition to effectively operate a company. By simply drive a know-how of any electronic promoting organization, you possibly can make sure your own industry will be for the edge associated with innovative technological know-how, but additionally small fraction from the a digital revolt. Throughout putting, an electronic marketing business can help the sector to create vibrant brand name awareness enthusiastic for you to achievement plus segment the clientele.




With acquire that can assist you suitable precise advantage associated with the advantages of digital camera advertising, be sure you mass media rendering assists to produce people tuck build-up acceptable end user for you to people that pick out so that you can down load ones electronic digital choices. By means of considering the following pile-up, an electronic promoting firm can easily meliorate navigate your livelihood in the leasure activities that should copy writer properly turn up a person's individuals. This kind of build-up might purpose deployment solon qualified along with connected emails on your buyers thusly gripping cell phone calls to help litigate which will work to change your present advertising endeavours.




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Oracle Marketing has become the major marketing and advertising firms in britain. The organization accepts strong marketing and advertising since they recognize oahu is the solely approach that is definitely measurable and also scalable.




Oracles Marketing and advertising is aware that will to be able to lure potential customers lead marketing and advertising is best selection the way it makes certain greatest roi. The item will give you the flexibleness to get hold of your current customers along with clients plus encourage product or service within reduced finances. The organization normally requires an additional considered to program the approaches and also construct steer moment and also preparing to thrust products and solutions sold in the market.




Oracle Advertising's accomplishment relies upon the actual databases they've in addition to that they preserve their particular efforts consistent by simply routinely modernizing these in regards to the innovative offerings. The organization specializes in period as well as positions with lots of strategies to help achieve most effective success. The corporation considers the truly great product or service plus communications ought to obtain the location available in the market, plus its merely attainable in case you have the top involving options and also intending to thrust these within industry. Oracle is doing that more or less everything many years in addition to recovering reaction.




Clover Marketing and advertising provides inside a quick period come forth as being the major authorities within the one on one promotion industry which includes a clientele that will maintains growing each and every day. The corporation is incredibly wise in the occupation regarding boosting company attention along with giving you the buyers quantifiable final results consequently preserving all of them often happy. Like a enterprise in which generally is greater then the actual objectives of these purchasers, Clover Promoting prices the actual grin on the clients confronts significantly above all else in addition to therefore features aided in that case enjoy prosperous returns.




Clover Promoting provides continually caused your love as well as strength and this also into a good scope includes stored the corporation walking. Having customer care to get clientele to your maximum stage, the firm features were able to develop regarding by itself a brandname label and also a most respected situation inside the lead advertising and marketing arena in which not many bench craft companyproviders into their little league currently have obtained.




It is far from exclusively customers exactly who appreciate this company to its perseverance in addition to support service to these folks. The corporation is usually adored through their individual employees for that limitless prospects intended for increase which the business presents. Clover Advertising and marketing thinks around teaching passionate people to accomplish superb altitudes plus around rising in addition to these. People, that utilize the several alternatives, get the enterprise an acceptable method to sustenance his or her goals of an superb vocation.




The organization goes fantastic markers - extending to be able to brand new locations, acquiring break-through practices in addition to reaching your five-hundred pct advancement fee in barely more than few months. Immediate advertising will be before long starting to be one of the favorite modalities regarding promoting as well as as well as the item; Clover Promoting is starting to become one of the chosen one on one advertising business at the same time. Having professionalism and reliability, hard-work, tolerance plus excitement currently being the actual three added wheels of which generate the actual chariot from the business as well as group, Clover Promotion beyond doubt includes the distance to look.






The truth, more or less, is one cannot go without the other, because advertising online has also become vital for brick-and-mortar businesses to sell their wares. The question, however, should focus on how much money to allocate on each method of advertising. Furthermore, the effectiveness of both mediums should also merit an analysis.

If we start from how ads are found both online and offline, the kind of advertising search engines like Google uses needs to have a different name, because the nature of the ad changes when someone has to key in a search term in a form of keywords in the search boxes at anyone of the search engines. Which means the buyers know very well what they are looking for and all they are interested in is where to find them, with the kind of price and delivery arrangement that they can live with.

However, the other kind of ad is the one that people encounter haphazardly, and that will convince them to pay for what they are looking at, which could be a first encounter with what is offered, and it is the copy that will tell them why they will be benefited by availing themselves the service or the product. This kind of buying does not always have to be an impulse buying, especially if a targeted audience makes an in-depth research on what is offered and decide to part with their money at a latter time. However, what is possible to accomplish, even if there is no immediate sales closing is a brand-promoting and building campaign.

It is possible to place these kinds of ads both online and offline, and it was the online ads that were catching up with the offline ads, with an intent to outdo them. Because online ads were static at best not long ago when they were only text ads and that had changed when banners were introduced, which are much better than static ads as more message can be crammed into them. Yet, they still fall short when compared with TV video ads that could convey more message in a few seconds better than all the other methods of advertising methods.

Here, the fine line blurs because online ads, no matter how static they were, they can send a would be prospect to a Web site with a click of a button, where more profound information about the product or the service could be obtained. It is not only that, but it is possible to buy the product or the service in real-time, although possessing what is bought immediately might not be possible unless it is a digital product. There are efficient businesses that could deliver goods within two to three days time depending on how much the buyer wants to pay for the service and the distance involved.

What overturned the table was when it became possible to have video ads online that are becoming common place and the preferred way to do an ad campaign. But the highly touted search engines that are said to give a boost to online advertisement are still in the text era as far as their presentation is concerned, even if at the end they could lead to a Web site that could be loaded with text, banner, and video ads, yet they used to be only useful for those who know what they are looking for, for the most part. It is due to this fact that the search engines have become aware of the prevalent handicap and to correct it, they have come up with advertising systems like AdSense, where text ads pop up while surfers are doing totally different things, even if there had to be some relevance with what they are doing, and the ads that will pop up, because it is the common keywords and content that will trigger the ads.

Here also it is worth mentioning the popup banner ads that are flooding the Internet that are triggered when surfers use particular keywords, which is adding to the complication of online ads, something advertisers should take a note of when they start comparing their chance of being found, because it could get better if they use popup ads.

Stumbling upon ads that were not anticipated is possible while visiting Web sites, because most sites carry some kind of ads since ads are a source of income for most, or they could be inundated by banner popup ads for simply accessing a given site. Recently, what all the buzz about ads is that ads that are put online could be more effective than their offline counterparts, because they have developed various formats that cannot be applicable on offline advertising. Yet, it is not possible for advertisers to compete for eyeballs without forking out a good amount of money offline, whether it is print, radio, television, direct mail, and cold calling, maybe with very few exceptions.

In comparison, those who have money could advertise aggressively online too, yet it is not going to cost them arms and legs like the offline ads. Whereas those who are working with a shoestring budget can also compete for the same eyeballs without spending a fortune, in fact, free by simply implementing a search engine optimization strategy.

Hence, offline advertising in any form is very expensive, even if it still reaches a big number of people, and the pitching and the creativity aspect of the ads are slowly falling behind because online advertisement is taking huge strides by implementing technology. It is forcing advertisers to think twice when they plan their marketing campaign, where at least some of it will have to go to online ads not to be missing out from what is happening online. The situation currently is the other way around and it is offline ads that are striving to catch up with online ads that have availed real time buying for example and, sooner or later, TV advertising might catch up with that.

Nonetheless, the frequency of being found on the Internet is much less because of the nature of the medium and the high number of advertisers, which will bring us to the fact that using the Internet could also be fairly expensive from what could observed at the bidding war that is taking place that is coming close to offline advertising. The bidding war has nothing to do with being found randomly, because like it was mentioned earlier the searchers know what they are looking for. It is businesses that are bidding to be first on line to give the similar services hundreds of similar business are giving at a, more or less, similar level or to sell similar products that a big number of seller are selling online.

One of the major tools of being found randomly, banner ads, their effectiveness is said to be falling, and they are not anymore an effective source of prospects for businesses because the click through rates had been frozen between 0.3 and 0.6 percent for a while. What this means is there is between three to six click through from every one thousand views, and even these few click through might not buy, making it a far cry to do business on the Internet.

Consequently, the banner ads have become more useful to build brand-recognition, because the banners will be viewed repeatedly on various sites, on different occasions, and the end result could be exactly like it is anticipated. It could be prospects converted through these banner or text ads that have developed a following of a given brand that eventually could develop brand loyalty. Whenever they are looking for these products, they can cut through the chase by going directly to the Web sites to do their purchase or they might consult search engines if they want to make comparisons.

Here again the dual advantage of banner ads when compared with print, TV, and radio is they offer a real-time buying, which is good for the sellers, because that is where the impulse buying could be triggered, and people can buy the product immediately instead of making a plan that they might not follow through.

Another advantage of online marketing is highlighted through direct email marketing, which is proven to be much better than banners; even than traditional direct mail marketing, which has a response rate of between 1 and 3 percent, whereas direct email marketing has a response rate of 5 to 15 percent according to various sources. This has forced most businesses to integrate email marketing in their marketing strategy by allocating up to 5 percent of their advertising budget, even if it is not much.

At the same time, the cost of direct email marketing might be lower than catalog and telemarketing, which have a hefty price tag attached to them. There are ads that sell 1000 email list for as low as $10, although it is difficult to say whether they are good leads or not without trying them. There are also email lists that cost more per thousand and the reason might have to do with the satisfied customers they have had through the years who are willing to pay up to $100 or more for 1000 email list.

Opt-in email marketing is also an inexpensive way of bringing prospects to a site and could be done on a Web site by offering something interesting like a newsletter or any of the free services that are available on the net, like a free Web submitting service and the like. It could be very effective but much less expensive since it does not cost extra money other than having a Web site and running an ad campaign to convince visitors to become opt-ins.

When we make comparison between online and offline ads it is possible that any of the traditional offline marketing could cost up to $2 to $3 to get a prospect pay for a product or a service, whereas the same cost for TV or radio could go between $10 to $40 that is, to make one prospect pay for a product or a service.

What this shows is in order to do a successful business, today's businesses will have no other choice other than mixing both advertising methods to stay ahead of their competitors even if the cost of doing business is getting costly, and if there is something unsavory about the whole deal, at the end of the day all that cost will be passed on to the consumers.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Evaluating Granite and Marble Countertops: Which One particular Need to You Choose?

Granite and marble are the two stones which implies they can be both equally durable, heavy, and amazingly challenging. At the same time, due to the fact equally these stones can really previous a life time, they may be the two equally high-priced and extremely difficult to polish and set up. Since they are both equally stones, they are normally patterned, therefore, you could get granite or surface encounters marble which is not fairly comparable to the style through the catalog that you ordered so it could be ideal to really see the genuine solution when selecting the kind of style and pattern which you want as an alternative of relying only on images. Both equally are warmth resistant and so they don't scorch when placed even with a incredibly sizzling material such as iron pots and pans.



Nevertheless, granite is way more difficult than marble and it is far more resistant to scratches and major impacts compared to marble. Concurrently, granite is much more defiant to acids this sort of as vinegar, lemon juice, and tomato juice, together with other things with higher levels of acidity. To help you better fully grasp the strengths of the two stones, permit us just take a closer seem as to how they ended up shaped. Marble, and all its stone family members - onyx, travertine, and limestone on the onset were sediments made of shells, plant matter, animal skeletons, and silt which all settled in the bottom of bodies of drinking water and following many years of currently being soaked in water, they solidify and turn into stones/ Marble’s primary component is calcium and that's the reason why it has a tendency to react to acids such as vinegar as well as other beverages that include citrus. Granite, on the other hand, is created up of crystallized minerals formed in the earth’s mantle at high temperature. The consequence is a difficult, extremely resistant stone. Marble may be scratched and etched by acids since it is produced of calcium carbonate which can be a great deal like chalk however the only difference is surface encounters marble is compressed and in a very crystallized type. Inside the exact same method, marble has less patterns, in fact it really is a lot more frequently sold in its white shade so stains and mars may possibly stand out much more uncovered in marble. Granite includes a additional complex pattern that may cover the stains superior. With regards to styles nonetheless, marble contains a finer, much more elegant search than granite. The crystal formations in marble are much more satiny and finer in nature which makes it glimpse much more deluxe. Granite has more substantial, pea-sized crystals which are coarser towards the eye.



Ultimately, when it comes to durability, the granite countertop could be much more durable and much more resistant to stains and scratches although the looks are won by marble. Marble on the other hand is inexpensive than granite but it surely needs increased maintenance. So, all of it boils down to what you seriously want as being a countertop. Would you settle for the countertop that is extremely hard-wearing and though not as quite as the other one, or would you trade magnificence for durability and energy?

Monday, August 15, 2011

New Hire Criminal Track record Examine

It really is regular to wonder regarding other's background, along with a criminal search will be the perfect technique to uncover this kind of information. If you are questioning about another person's history, utilizing an web track record check will enable you to get the precise information you happen to be seeking. In this write-up we'll current to you probably the most efficient method to uncover track record info on anyone.

And naturally these kinds of searches are not only used by males and ladies who are curious, they are usually utilized for particular conditions.

Firms who will probably be thinking about employing somebody new will frequently wish to take a look at a candidate's history. Some people may wish to investigate the previous of another person they just began dating to uncover if the issues they have been told from the man or lady so far is reliable.

A couple of organizations have began online background check solutions online exactly where it is possible to perform a background research on an individual. The web pages that provide you record checks buy and compile public records. You can easily then appear via these databases and uncover details on anyone.

In the time you submit the name with the person you're performing study on, the info will be displayed right in your display display. It's truly exceptionally convenient . There are generally lots of files to look at, and you're supplied a login and password so that you are able to go back and have a look at them anytime in the future.

Photoshop Background Texture by ►CubaGallery


Such track record checks usually price approximately 20 bucks each, however it is feasible to shell out around forty 5 bucks which offers you unrestricted track record examine searches while you are a member.

If you're about to operate a background document check on a person, attempt the next trick to determine in the event you probably can get a maintain with the info at no price.

From time to time you will discover information about the man or lady just by operating a search in Google, even though of course it is not as thorough and you may just discover info about a various individual with the exact same precise name. There is no harm in running a research in a search engine. Whether or not or not it does not show you anything, it is entirely totally free of cost.

You can also put the person's name in to the research engine collectively with quotation marks around the name. This fairly frequently assists to retrieve much more centered information, even though bear in mind that there's likely not any track record info regarding the individual that's published on the web site.

The internet has made figuring out any kind of information a lot simpler and track record document checks are really a ideal instance. So when you are intrigued about someone's tale, try out an web background check.



Get rid of Credit score Card Debt Quick

More and much more loan companies, employers, landlords and insurance businesses are checking your FICO score as part of their process of approving your loan, landing a career, getting your own home to live, or good rates offered for just about any kind of insurance that you may have utilized for. To achieve all of those things which you are dreaming of accomplishing building a good free credit score online background is the first thing which you need to do if in situation you got 1 having a bad background.

Credit scores begin from a low 300 towards the cream with the crop 850. A normal customer has a credit range of 600 to 700 but some might have much more than this. A FICO score will be the basis of most loan companies and credit score bureaus of computing your creditworthiness. A great credit score score falls on an average of 720 and above. Where does one get the information on their respective credit score scores? By law this really is offered for free once a yr coming in the 3 major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Your scores and credit score background exhibits your present and closed accounts as well as your payment history.

Loan companies do usually have a appear on your online credit score history as the basis on whether or not they'll grant your mortgage at a great rate of interest or deny this altogether. If correct now you're interested on applying for a home loan that necessitates a substantial credit score then it could be best to apply for FICO score monitoring which generally provides you an update in your scores on the weekly foundation. Subscribing to this on-line support alerts you whenever you have reach your substantial score goal as long as you setup a threshold for it. Some would go so far as sending you an sms to inform you when your scores have alter for your much better or for your worst.

Steps to a 720 Credit Score and to improve my credit score at http://www.7stepsto720.com/ by bbrij873


To assist you develop a much better credit score and history here are some simple recommendations to follow:

Request a copy of your credit history as needed if not wait for it as soon as a year but do monitor your history for any mistakes. If you see discrepancies then you can dispute them by heading via your reports thoroughly.


Spend your expenses promptly. Add some more around the minimum quantity which you usually spend since this would cause your credit score to rise and would be noticeable for many lenders that you are a great borrower because you pay on time and is also sincere in settling your bills.Steer clear of maxing out in your credit restrict. This will certainly cause your credit scores to drop that quick. Cancel credit score cards which you are not using or don't need and spend promptly for your credit card bills.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Making Money Web


iSwifter, the company that can stream Flash-based Facebook games so they can be played on the iPad, said that users have downloaded the iSwifter app more than half a million times since the launch of version 3.0 in June and (updated) version 4.0 more recently.


That’s a strong start for a technology that circumvents Apple’s walled garden on the iPad, allowing Facebook and other Flash content to run properly on the tablet. Normally, Adobe Flash games (which are ubiquitous on the web) don’t run on Apple’s iPad, thanks to a technical dispute between the companies. But after a period of negotiation with Apple, iSwifter made it impossible possible with the launch of version 3.0 of its app, which comes with a subscription-based game browser.


iSwifter executes games on its own servers and then streams images to a user’s iPad in the form of a video. The execution is so quick, the user never knows the game is running in a server, not on the iPad itself.


Peter Relan, chairman of Youweb — the incubator that owns iSwifter — is making the announcement today at the GamesBeat 2011 conference in San Francisco. 500,000 people are playing nearly 2,000 Facebook games available on the iSwifter game browser. About 40 percent of all gaming time on iSwifter is spent on Zynga games. This shows that users are not waiting for Zynga and other Facebook game makers to adapt their games to run on the iPad.


That’s an interesting notion, Relan says, because the company charges a subscription fee for iSwifter. Zynga games, meanwhile, are free-to-play. That is, users play them for free and pay real money for virtual goods. But with iSwifter, Zynga players are actually willing to pay money so they can play Zynga games on the go on an iPad. About 20 percent of iSwifter users are willing to pay using in-app purchases to get access to a Facebook game on the iPad. And iSwifter users spent nearly 2 million minutes on Facebook games in the past few months (using earlier versions of iSwifter).


The most popular Facebook games on iSwifter are Zynga’s CityVille and Empires & Allies. Other top 10 games include FrontierVille, Dragons of Atlantis, Gardens of Tim, Backyard Monsters and SlotoMania.


iSwifter CEO Rajat Gupta said the company’s success shows that disruption is occurring in mobile games, where portals such as iSwifter, making it harder for social game publishers to lock their customers on certain platforms.


“While we hear the Facebook app for the iPad is coming soon, we know it won’t include the ability to play games,” said Gupta. “Almost all the big games on Facebook are built in Flash, which doesn’t run on iOS. But iSwifter has created a large following of paying users who love playing Facebook games on their iPads.”


With iSwifter’s game-browser app, iPad users can log into online games like World of Warcraft or play social games such as CityVille on their iPads, even though those games aren’t playable on Apple’s device in any other way.


Users can get the iSwifter app with a regular web browser that can play Flash videos and other web content on an iPad for a subscription of $4.99 a month a flat fee of $4.99 Both deliver Flash and game content — including any social games or massively multiplayer online games.


The first couple of versions of iSwifter let users to watch videos and play a limited number of Flash games on an iPad. But version 3.0 allows you to log into Facebook and play a variety of Flash-based games such as FarmVille, Gupta said in an interview.


Apple approved the previous versions of iSwifter without much interchange. But the 3.0 approval process was lengthier and tougher because iSwifter introduced a new monetization feature. Gupta said he wanted to launch a subscription service where a user would sign up once for iSwifter and the subscription would automatically renew at the end of each month. But Apple balked and required that iSwifter’s users approve the subscription at the end of every month. That way, users won’t get surprised by monthly bills. It isn’t exactly clear why Apple required this restriction for iSwifter, but Gupta said he had to go along. Now, to reduce confusion, iSwifter has eliminated the subscriptions in favor of a single download fee. With version 4.0, users can download it for free and play it for a half hour. If they like it, they can pay the flat fee.


When you load the app, you have two options. You can browse web sites or play games. With the web sites, you can choose from one of the featured links or just type in the web address to go to any web site. For games, there is one game that is available for free each week. The others are available as free-to-play games. After a couple of minutes of playing, the user is prompted to make an in-app purchase to continue playing. If there is a drawback to iSwifter, it is that it needs a constant Wi-Fi connection in order to run, as the video has to be streamed in near real-time to create a continuous and good experience for the user. Gupta says that the amount of bandwidth required to support the app isn’t huge.


Gupta says that iSwifter would be useful on Android systems as well, even though Flash is going to be available on those devices. That’s because all of the capabilities of Flash aren’t available on those devices. Right now, iSwifter runs on just the iPad.


It’s worth noting that many Flash web sites are written for PCs and need a mouse and keyboard. That means they won’t work well on a mobile device unless they are redone in a touchscreen-friendly way. But iSwifter has built software — an abstraction layer built into the cloud platform — that captures a user’s touch-based gestures and converts them into mouse and keyboard-style inputs that Flash games can understand. That conversion is done in real-time.


Developers who have free-to-play games may be particularly interested in making their games accessible via iSwifter 4.0. That’s because iSwifter can extend distribution for the web-based games to the Apple platform. If users buy virtual goods in those games, the developers can make money from the purchases. Apple still gets paid, meanwhile, because it gets 30 percent of the revenue from subscription fees generated by iSwifter, per Apple’s business rules.


The iSwifter browser competes with the Skyfire browser, which costs $4.99 on the iPad. But the Skyfire browser isn’t really built to handle games or Flash animations, particularly since it can’t convert finger touches into mouse clicks.




Next Story: Study: Mobile payments expected to be mainstream by 2013? Previous Story: RIM says 7 smartphones with new OS are coming soon







Editors Note: Guest contributor Semil Shah is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer Internet, and social networks. He is based in Palo Alto and you can follow him on Twitter @semilshah.


Reports are swirling that Twitter is in talks to raise $400 million, valuing the company close to $8 billion. It seems as if it was only yesterday that Twitter raised $200m from Kleiner Perkins. At the time of Kleiner’s investment, some pundits chuckled beneath their breath, claiming the old venture firm was paying up on price in order to claim a bit of equity in social networks, which they had been perceived to have missed.


Despite that laughter, it may be John Doerr, his partners, other Twitter investors, and their employees that share in the last laugh. In addition to the success of their niche funds, Doerr knew exactly the bet he was making when he hunted down this deal last December. In buying a piece of Twitter, one could connect the dots for the possibility that Doerr, with his deep knowledge of Google, knows something about a Twitter endgame that got his investment juices flowing. There have been countless blog posts trying to show that Google should buy Twitter. At the same time, other technology giants left hanging without any social data could perceive Twitter as an attractive acquisition target also, giving them a large network and helping circumnavigate many walled-garden sites filled with social, user-generated content. Can the company’s major shareholders help create competition for a Twitter deal in a very small market?


The roll call of Twitter’s investors is impressive, littered with the names of blue chip venture firms and consumer web celebrities, many of whom built their reputations largely through this one investment—and rightly so. With around 400 employees, half of whom are focused on engineering and product, Twitter doesn’t necessarily need almost half a billion dollars of additional financing to keep going. To date, it has been able to book some revenue based largely on the promoted tweet ad unit.


However, it has also been acquiring companies to help eliminate blind spots in its technology and product offering, to date spending more than $50M on purchases like Fluther, TweetDeck, and most recently, BackType. One could make the case that as the company continues to get the product back on track that a mix of housekeeping plus new acquisitions make sense to get the product to a point of stability. This seems to be what is happening especially under the product guidance of c0-founder Jack Dorsey, who came back but still is CEO of Square, and former Google AdSense guru Satya Patel.


That is, because right now, the Twitter product struggles just to be stable. For those that use Twitter’s native web site in the browser, it’s been considerably slower, possibly because the system is processing over 200m tweets per day. Sure, that’s a lot, but in those 200m items are a lot of loud, spammy, and inaudible (or inauthentic) accounts. For those trying to get a handle on direct messages (“DMs”), random old threads keep popping up when they finally load, which means they may be moving all DMs to a new server. @Replies are still not distinguishable from @Mentions, users haven’t been educated to make lists, and it’s very hard to search through favorites or old tweets. There are also more add-on options available per tweet via mobile than there is on the web, perhaps due to the fact that for those that use Twitter heavily, there are so many different clients from which to access the stream.


And therein lies the huge challenge but also Twitter’s massive opportunity. There has been much controversy about Twitter’s handling of its own developer community. For some, the lack of a clear roadmap has spooked people from investing in the space with time, money, and developer resources. For others, talk is cheap, and the reality that Twitter will have to eventually own every piece of the stack is obvious, so those that enter the fray must do so willingly.


Most recently, these tensions were brought to light when Twitter was seen to attack Uber Media and then subsequently acquired TweetDeck, or when Twitter decided to launch it’s own photo-sharing service in partnership with PhotoBucket (and thereby bypassing services like Twitpic and yfrog), or when it decided to get into the URL-shortening game, going so far as to re-shorten URLs that were already shortened by other services like bit.ly. As powerful and disruptive as Twitter can be in the real world, make no mistake that in its own ecosystem, similar forces are at work.


There has now been a good year of “bubble” saber-rattling in the technology world, and combined with today’s red-hot IPO market, Twitter needs to keep advancing its chess pieces forward. While the public demand for shares in Twitter may be huge, the reality is that the five-year old company not only doesn’t have the revenue acceleration needed to make this a viable option, but it’s product isn’t entirely set either. This latest $400m fundraising round may be an attempt to help fuel more product-enhancing acquisitions and, overall, to begin a consolidation of fragmented clients and services that currently survive solely on an oxygen supply from Twitter’s API. With each round raised and as its valuation goes up and up, the possible exit outcomes dwindle and the stakes get higher. The Twitter endgame transforms from chess into a dangerous game of roulette.


From my own personal viewpoint as a Twitter user, my sincere hope is that Twitter remains an independent, standalone company that eventually is publicly-traded. I will line up to buy shares. I view the Web through Twitter and spend more time on the service than any other, by a mile. And while I hope it will IPO, I have this sinking feeling that’s not realistic. This is not to suggest that Twitter is failing at finding and tuning all the best possible business models. They are doing an incredible job with only 400 people. It’s astonishing, really. Rather, it’s that the scope of all the potential opportunities is so massive, wide, and deep—from Internet, to television, to back-end analytics, search, location—that it may take a real partnership to transform these models into real revenue engines.


Who would be interested in Twitter should they continue to remain private and closely-held? Some make the case for companies like Apple, especially after its integration of Twitter into its iOS5 software. A company like Twitter could give cash-rich Apple a huge network to deploy its iAd advertisements on multiple devices, perhaps eventually even on television. Earlier this year, there was some chatter that Facebook may be interested, but they don’t (yet) have enough cash on hand to do this (though Facebook stock could do the trick). There’s always Microsoft, which certainly has cash on hand and an appetite to buy social communication services, recently demonstrated by its $8 billion acquisition of Skype.


This leaves one company, located in Mountain View, that many believe could be the perfect acquirer for Twitter, despite the fact it just launched its own social network, Google+, which is poised to launch brand pages, too. A possible Google-Twitter acquisition has been analyzed to death, so I won’t do that here, other than to say on paper, it makes a ton of sense. Because of all the bountiful seeds Twitter has planted around the world, the company best positioned to harvest those seeds (and turn a healthy buck while doing so) is Google, bar none.


But, as Twitter raises more money at higher valuations, and if an IPO is not likely in the near future, the number of possible outcomes dwindles. While an acquisition by one of the four companies listed above could be huge, both in terms of dollars and media attention, the real game would be to create enough competition among at least two of the four possible bidders to drive up the price and maximize shareholder returns. If Twitter uses the new funding to continue to fortify the product and also continue on a hunt for the best business models, it may give the potential acquirers information that leads them to think they may not be likely to extract profits from Twitter either.


By raising a whopping round, Twitter buys itself time but also elevates the stakes. Does Twitter putter along for the next few years and stumble upon a business model, enabling it to IPO? Does a giant like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, or Google snatch up the company, or better yet, engage in a chess match with each other for the right to buy it for close to $10b or more, minting money for the company shareholders? Or, does Twitter start to slowly fade away, unable to reel in enough cash to keep the twittering machine humming? With the first option being a longshot, we’re down to two numbers on the roulette wheel. My money and my hope is on black: an acquisition.


Photo credit: Håkan Dahlström





search reputation management

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Update #2 — Google News Archive has nothing for AptiQuant, and LexisNexis yields 26 hits, all from 7/29/2011 or later. This is additional evidence that AptiQuant is a hoax, though it doesn't tell us what kind of hoax it ...

Language Log » <b>News</b> Flash: BBC Admits Error

NASCAR - CUP: BREAKING <b>NEWS</b> – Keselowski Hurt

Brad Keselowski was injured today at Road Atlanta…

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<b>News</b> In Brief: Life - Science <b>News</b>

Flowery advertising, tempting toilets for shrews, bat beacons and more in this week's news.

<b>News</b> In Brief: Life - Science <b>News</b>

Monday, August 1, 2011

People Making Money Online


When we think of scientists, we often picture distinguished researchers in white coats, methodically conducting experiments in labs that run like well-oiled machines.


Unfortunately things are usually less glamorous. Science labs have a lot going on, and while they’re generally very focused on making sure safety protocols are followed and contamination is minimized, there are some things that are a little less organized. Like ordering supplies — oftentimes reagents are either ordered in excess (resulting in waste) or forgotten about until they’re needed (resulting in delays).


Quartzy, a startup that’s part of the most recent Y Combinator batch, is setting out to fix that problem. The company launched around 18 months ago and has 4,500 scientists worldwide using the service — and there are plenty more who could use help keeping their supplies in check, many of whom are spending thousands of dollars on supplies every year.


At first glance, the service seems a bit like a science social network. You sign in and create a profile, then link up with your coworkers and other colleagues. But founder Adam Regelmann explains that the site isn’t really about connecting with your colleagues in a social sense — rather, it’s about keeping track of which supplies your lab has in stock, and what needs to be ordered . He adds that it’s a problem he’s faced himself as a MD and PhD from Columbia, which is when he had the idea for the company.


Anyone in your lab can log in to see the current inventory status, which helps make sure that they don’t place order requests for things that they don’t need. The site also lists expiration dates, which is important for reagents that only last for a relatively brief amount of time (like some enzymes).


Inputting the inventory information into the system is something each lab will need to do themselves — there’s currently no direct integration with vendors, so your inventory won’t automatically be updated each time you order more supplies. Regelmann says this is partially because the industry is very fragmented, so labs are oftentimes ordering their supplies from many different vendors (some of which use arcane technology) which makes integrations difficult. Update: Regelmann adds that while the service doesn’t tie in directly with these vendors, Quartzy does allow labs to upload their existing inventory Excel spreadsheets to quickly get their labs up and running on the service. And Quartzy also includes online versions of each supplier catalog, so you can quickly add supplies to your database by keying in vendor names and catalog numbers — the system will automatically populate the rest of the information.


Quartzy does more than keep track of your lab supplies. It’s also building out a review database for supplies commonly used in laboratories (you can rate how effective a given enzyme was, for example). At this point the database is fairly small, with around 1,000 reviews, but it’s an idea that has potential.


Also very cool: Quartzy has a feature that’s the scientist equivalent of asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar. It’s quite common in scientific communities for researchers to ask friends and colleagues in other, nearby laboratories for a certain reagent that they only need a small amount of (Regelmann says he’d get five or so such requests per week during his research days).


Quartzy helps with this by letting users run a proximity-based query that lets them see if anyone in their city happens to have what they need. And it’s smart about doing this — any results you see will be anonymized. You can send a message to the anonymous researcher and ask if they can spare a dash of whatever you need (they’ll be able to see who you are), and if they’re interested they’ll respond.


So how does Quartzy make money? So far Regelmann says that the company is focused entirely on growth. Down the line it will let science supply vendors purchase advertising on the site, giving a very targeted channel directed toward a group of people who are typically hard to reach (he explains that many vendors often have time informing scientists about new products). And scientists will get exposed to new products they might not have otherwise known about, so it stands to be a win-win situation.


Quartzy’s team currently includes three programmers in addition to founders Regelmann and  Jayant Kulkarni.





The idea behind tapping into collective intelligence is simple: There’s bits of useful information distributed among the members of diverse crowds, so aggregating their judgments should yield a better answer — better even than experts’ — to a particular question.


But ARA is looking to do something just a little different from other crowdsourcing efforts. While many similar tools assign equal weight to participants’ inputs, ACES will be looking for the most accurate predictors over time and weighting their judgments more heavily than other users.


Tools that tap into the smarts of the crowd have shown promise on a host of challenges over the years. Researchers have used Twitter buzz about upcoming movies to make pretty accurate predictions about box office sales on opening weekends. Tools like Ushaidi, nonprofit software that lets users map incidents, resources or people in the midst of crises, has helped rescuers find and save victims of disasters like Haiti’s earthquake.


ACES is a crowdsourcing tool somewhat similar to an online poll. People who sign up for the website will be asked whether an event in the fields of politics, economics, science, society or security will take place and what probability they assign to it. Their answers are then aggregated to see if the group produces an accurate prediction. It’s not a prediction market like the famous InTrade, which lets users bet on just about anything you can think of. No money changes hands on ACES — only opinions.


For ACES to be successful, it needs to attract a diverse pool of users and keep them engaged. But the online world is home to a lot of crowdsourcing tools and prediction markets, posing stiff competition for the marginal predictor’s attention. In addition to sites like InTrade, there’s a slew of other options available. The University of Iowa’s Iowa Electronic Market has been around since 1988 letting users bet on presidential elections or Federal Reserve Policy. Cinephiles use the Hollywood Stock Exchange website to bet on opening weekend box office hauls and other movie-related events.


Warnaar says he’s hoping some of ACES’s features designed to research analytical skills for the intelligence community will also prove interesting to the average user. “We’re thinking that people will be interested in competing with others and maybe learning how to become better forecasters.”


To accomplish that, ARA is working on a tool intended to help forecasters better calibrate their estimates of a prediction’s probability. For example, let’s say ACES finds out that when you say there’s a 60 percent chance an event will happen, it turns out that over time your “60 percent” guesses actually end up having a probability of closer to 40 percent. The site will then clue you in to your serial over or under-confidence, giving you feedback on your forecasting ability and allowing you to adjust accordingly.


Other features planned for the site would allow a social dimension to the prediction process. There’s some evidence that indicates information sharing among participants may undermine the accuracy of the crowd, turning a wise crowd into a dull mob. Warnaar says the jury is still out on the effect of social influence. “It’s not clear, for example, whether or not collaboration between participants helps or hurts.” Either way, he plans to find out, as ACES will experiment with features that lets users work together on prediction challenges.


Just like with math problems, ACE wants you to show your work after making a prediction. ARA has yet to determine how exactly participants can elaborate and collaborate on predictions. But some approaches could involve having users write about their rank their reasons behind it and let others vote on them.


“We think there’s a way of doing it this way that would basically give us the arguments for [a particular event] and split the problem apart in such a way that people start thinking about this problem a little deeper than they otherwise would,” says Warnaar.


Turning to the crowd has proven pretty popular with security types. In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, recently began work on a prediction market aimed at forecasting computer security events. Darpa, the nerd cousin of Iarpa over at the Defense Department, tucked away some cash in its budget last year to farm intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data out to the crowd in search of better analysis. The Navy has even turned to crowdsourcing via online multiplayer games in order to hunt for better ideas against piracy.


So how would ACES be applied in the intelligence community? ARA’s press literature mentions National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) as an area of potential application. NIEs represent the top-level assessment of America’s various spook agencies and senior-most analysts on a particular topic. Right now, ACES is still in the research phase and any firm ideas on how or would just be speculative, but it’s not hard to imagine potential uses. A validated ACES tool that polls intelligence analysts could complement an NIE, letting intelligence consumers gain a more complete picture of the intelligence community’s views on an issue.


But that’s only possible if ACES turns out to be accurate, something that’s yet to be proven. It’ll be a long while before answers are forthcoming — the project won’t be completed for another four years.


Photo: Focus Features


See Also:



  • Challenge! Darpa Crowdsources New Military Vehicles

  • Jihad Forums Crowdsource Fantasy Assassination List

  • Military May Crowdsource Haiti Relief

  • NATO’s Newest Bombing Tool: Twitter

  • Paging Chris Anderson: Darpa Wants DIY Drones

  • Physicist: I Can Predict Insurgent Attacks, Thanks to The ‘Red …



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