Facebook Could Jumpstar...

Facebook’s late-comer HTML5 mobile app platform lags way behind the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace. Yesterday I spotted Facebook’s latest effort to catch up — a test showing bookmarks for third-party applications at the top of the mobile news feed. Currently, Facebook buries HTML5 app bookmarks at the bottom of its mobile site’s pull-out navigation menu, and only shows them in the iOS or Android Facebook app’s search bar. Placing them much more prominently atop the mobile home page could increase engagement — the first step in attracting developers to the platform and earning money on in-app purchases. The Facebook mobile app platform launched in October to help the social network start monetizing mobile through in-app payments on which it collects a 30% tax. Apps run through an internal web browser within its iOS and Android apps, allowing it to circumvent Apple and Google’s tax. However, the platform hasn’t gained serious traction with developers or users, and that’s a serious risk  the company noted in its S-1 filing to go pulbic. Some developers don’t want to re-fork production to support HTML5 in addition to iOS and the various Android versions, at least not until Facebook’s platform is a proven money maker. HTML5 also needs time to mature before it can handle the most advanced native apps. With limited choice, and no ads to promote third-party apps within Facebook’s own mobile apps and HTML5 site, users aren’t installing them in the first place. Since bookmarks for the HTML5 apps are only found at the bottom of the Facebook mobile site’s nav menu, and have to be located through the search bar in the Facebook iOS and and Android apps, users aren’t reengaging with HTML5 apps either. But Facebook has been pulling its punches. It has hundreds of millions of daily active mobile users who first see the news feed where these bookmarks are being tested. Facebook says similarly styled bookmarks on the web interface’s games canvas page have been proven  to drive traffic. The small percentage of m.facebook.com and Facebook for iPhone users in the test could click bookmark and after some confusing lag an internal browser would launch Words With Friends, The Washington Post Social Reader, CityVille Express, Warimals, or another game or app. The test may have run on the Facebook for Android app as well. Facebook is likely testing to see if users click these bookmarks, and if their presence decreases news feed engagement or session length. If Facebook can get more eyeballs on third-party app bookmarks without degrading the user experience, it may have found a way to leverage its natural assets to begin the steep uphill battle against Apple and Google’s mobile platforms.

The Future of Peer Revi...

This guest post was written by Richard Price, founder and CEO of Academia.edu — a site that serves as a platform for academics to share their research papers and to interact with each other. Instant distribution Many academics are excited about the future of instant distribution of research. Right now the time lag between finishing a paper, and the relevant worldwide research community seeing it, is between 6 months and 2 years. This is because during that time, the paper is being peer reviewed, and peer review takes an incredibly long time. 2 years is roughly how long it used to take to send a letter abroad 300 years ago. Many platforms are springing up which enable research distribution to be instant, so that the time lag between finishing a paper, and everyone in the relevant research community worldwide seeing it, is measured in hours and days, rather than months and years. Some of the strong platforms are Academia.edu , arXiv , Mendeley , ResearchGate and SSRN . What about peer review? One question many academics have is: in a future where research is distributed instantly, what happens to peer review? Will this be a world where junk gets out, and there is no way to distinguish between good and bad research? Content discovery on the web Instant distribution is a characteristic of web content, and the web has thrived without a system of formal peer review in place. No-one thinks that the web would be enhanced by a panel of formal peer reviewers who verify each piece of content before it was allowed to be posted on the web. The web has thrived because powerful discovery systems have sprung up that separate the wheat from the chaff for users. The main two systems that people use to discover content on the web are: Search engines (Google, Bing) Social platforms (mainly sites like Facebook and Twitter, but also generic communication platforms like email, IM etc) Both search engines and social platforms are peer review systems in different ways. One can think of these two systems as “Crowd Review” and “Social Review” respectively: Crowd Review: Google’s PageRank algorithm looks at the link structure of the entire web, and extracts a number (PageRank) that represents how positively the web thinks about a particular website. Social Review : Twitter and Facebook show you links that have been shared explicitly by your friends, and people you follow. One can think of the peer review system in the journal industry as “two person review”: Two Person review: Two people are selected to review the paper on behalf of the entire possible audience for that paper. The drawbacks of the Two Person review process are that it is: expensive: $8 billion a year is spent on subscriptions to journals, which is money that could be spent on more research. slow: the Two Person review process takes about 6 months to 2 years to complete, sometimes more.  of questionable quality : the two people who are selected as peer reviewers may be biased against the paper, or unqualified, or just in a bad mood, when reviewing it.   unchanging : the judgement is fixed, and doesn’t change as the impact of the paper changes  a lot of work for the reviewers : it takes a lot of time to review a paper, and the review is not published, so reviewer doesn’t receive credit for their work. More and more, academics are discovering research papers nowadays via the web, and in particular, via search engines and social platforms: Search engines: Google, Google Scholar, Pubmed Social platforms : Academia.edu, arXiv, Mendeley, ResearchGate, blogs, conversations with colleagues over email or IM, Facebook and Twitter. As research distribution has moved to the web mostly, so the discovery engines for research content are the same as those for general web content. The peer review mechanism is evolving from The Two Person review process to the Crowd Review process, and the Social Review process. But has the research been done to a high standard? People often say that the formal peer review process helps ensure that all the accessible research is above a certain minimum quality. The fear is that if this quality floor was removed, things would start falling apart: an academic would be reading a paper, and would have no idea whether to trust it or not. The experience of the web is that this fear is over-blown. There is no quality floor for content on the web. There is bad content on the web, and there is great content. The job of search engines and social platforms is to ensure that the content that you discover, either via Google or Facebook, is of the good kind. The success of the web shows that the discovery engines do a good job generally. Discovery and credit systems are powered by the same metrics Peer review in the journal industry has historically played another interesting role, other than powering research discovery. It has helped an academic build up academic credit, which is required to get grants, and get jobs. People on hiring and grant committees have historically focused on how many peer reviewed publications an academic has in order to get a sense of the academic’s level of achievement, and in order to see how deserving the academic is of the grant or job in question. The peer review system has historically played this dual role, in powering both the discovery system and the credit system, because ultimately research discovery and research credit are about the same issue: which is the good research? Whichever systems are good at answering that question will drive both the discovery system and the credit system. One new metric of academic credit that has emerged over the last few years is the citation count. Google Scholar makes citation counts public for papers, and so now everyone can see them easily. Citations between papers are like links between websites, and citation counts are an instance of the Crowd Review process. Legend has it that Larry Page came up with the idea of PageRank after reflecting on the analogy between citations and links. Citation counts nowadays play the dual role of driving discovery on Google Scholar, as they determine the ordering of the search results, and help to determine academic credit. Academic credit from social platforms In the case of social platforms, the metric that drives discovery is how much interaction there is with your content on the social platform in question. Examples of such interaction include: numbers of followers you have the number of times your content is shared, liked, commented on, viewed. These metrics show how much interest there is in your papers, and how widely they are read right now, and thus provide a sense of their level of impact. One drawback of citation counts as a metric of academic credit is that they are a lagging indicator, in that they take a while to build up. If you publish a paper now, it is going to take several years for a body of papers to emerge that cite your paper. This leads to academics experiencing a credit gap, where papers they have published in the last 3-4 years hardly impact their academic credit. The advantage of the kinds of metrics that social platforms like Academia.edu, Mendeley, and SSRN provide is that they are real time, and they fill this credit gap. Academics are increasingly including these real time metrics in their applications for jobs and for grants. The competition for jobs, and grants is intense, and having more data that speaks to the impact of your work helps. Funding bodies are also eager to see more data about the impact of research, as it helps them make better decisions. Instant Distribution and Peer Review The prospect of instant distribution of research is tremendously exciting. If you can tap the global brain of your research community in effectively close to real time, as opposed to waiting 6 months to 24 months to distribute your ideas, there could be a wonderful acceleration in the rate of idea generation. The web has shown that you can take out this 6 month to 24 month distribution delay, which occurs when research is undergoing the Two Person peer review process, and see high quality filtering of content done by new peer review mechanisms, Crowd Review and Social Review, which are faster, cheaper, and more personalized. The web is also an incredible place for new ideas to be invented and to take hold. No doubt new peer review mechanisms will emerge in the future that will advance beyond Crowd Review and Social Review.

Android Can No Longer B...

While sitting at the Crunchies last night something became quite apparent: almost all the big guys — even the ones who were stubborn about it — are currently available on Android. And what do you know? They won at the Crunchies! Interestingly enough former Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a bold comment about the future of Android apps just a month ago at LeWeb, stating that the platform would be preferred among developers in the next six months. Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working so hard to distribute Android phones globally. Whether you like ICS or not, and again I like it a great deal, you will want to develop for that platform, and perhaps even first. Think of it as a transition over the next 6 months. To say that developers will launch on Android first is still a bit of a leap. Developers tend to prefer building for iOS (likely since iOS apps generate more revenue) and if we look at the most popular apps available today, almost all of them launched on iOS before Android. Now, the Crunchies doesn’t necessarily determine the success or lack thereof at a company, but that’s not to say it isn’t a great indicator. I mean, it’s you guys, the users, who vote for the winners and who else to tell the tech world what works and what doesn’t. Three mobile apps that have made quite a splash are still holding out on Android: Instagram, Flipboard, and Square. Square is likely resistant due to security concerns. The app is all about payments with credit cards, and iOS with its closed structure tends to be a tad more secure. Flipboard and Instagram, on the other hand, seem concerned with presenting a unified UI experience across platforms. Since both apps focus so much on the UI experience, a migration to Android would be difficult if both companies want to maintain their high-quality status in the UI department. I hate to say it, but let’s face it, Android apps are uglier than iOS apps. The point is that these three apps — exclusively available on the iOS platform — came in second in their respective categories. Meanwhile, apps like Google+ stole the crown from Instagram for best social app, Evernote stole the top spot from Flipboard for best mobile app, and Dropbox took the Crunchie home for best overall app, closing out Square. Google+ beating out Instagram speaks volumes, mainly because Instagram’s marketing strategy that integrates Facebook and Twitter is killer. Even though Google+ is a Google property, the search giant still saw fit to put the application on the iOS platform. Meanwhile, Instagram taunts Android users through Facebook and Twitter, showing off awesome pictures easily shared, and then offering nothing for them after a search through the Android Market. Dropbox was loved by many well before it hit Android. In fact, it launched on the iPhone in 2009 and didn’t make the transition over to Android until May of 2010 . In January, just months before the Android app went live, Dropbox boasted over 4 million users coming off of a 2009 Crunchies win for best internet application. After a little over a year on the new platform, the company reported it had reached 25 million users . More users means more voters. Evernote had around 2 million users at the time it launched an Android app, in December of 2009. By May 2010, the company had extended that to 3 million, then to 4 million in August, and jumped to 5 million users in November. By June 6 in 2011, the company boasted over 10 million users . Flipboard, runner up for the best mobile application category, still isn’t on the Android platform and reported 5 million+ users in December 2011. Granted, Evernote took a bullish approach entering the mobile space launching on as many platforms as possible, not just iOS and Android. But Flipboard did the exact opposite, and has forced people to either buy an Apple device or use Google Currents. Just from the results of last night’s Crunchies awards, it’s clear that Eric Schmidt was right. With 700,000 activations daily , Android simply can’t be ignored any longer.

Twitter’s Dick Costolo:...

Does Twitter need Google or does Google need Twitter? It’s a question complicated by recent events, such as the two companies not coming to an agreement to extend their previous partnership through which Google showed Tweets in search results. That deal wasn’t renewed,and then Google decided to promote its own Google+ results in search, which didn’t go over well with Twitter at all. Asked about this at by Peter Kafka at the D: Dive Into Media conference this evening, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo responded: “All of us look to Google as the shining light on the hill, a mission-driven company. We think when people are searching for things like a hashtag on a billboard, people will go to Google to look for them and we think Google should return the results they are looking for.” Costolo was visibly fuming. (Or maybe that was just his regular intense demeanor). But then asked whether Twitter can be successful without Google and all that lost search traffic, Costolo insisted: “We’re growing faster than we have ever grown before, irrespective of whatever Google or Facebook is doing. All of these services can co-exist.” Later on during the conversation, Costolo reported that Twitter’s advertising business is growing and engagement rates on Proomted Tweets, trends, and profiles is high. “We’ve figured out the business,” he says. “The advertising model is working, we just have to scale it.” Costolo wouldn’t discuss whether or not the company could turn a profit this year or other financials. He did mention a few stats, however. The company now has “about 900 people,” some advertisers such as Volkswagon and Barclays are seeing better than 50 percent engagement rates on Twitter ads, and “40% of our active users don’t tweet” (meaning that they just consume other people’s tweets and don’t tweet themselves). In terms of politics, he predicted: “2012 is going to be the Twitter election.” Campaigns will be forced to respond in realtime. “Candidates who don’t participate on Twitter while the debates are going on will be left behind because the next morning is too late to respond.” Asked to comment about his role in board changes last year in which VCs and borad observers lost their seats , he says: “People like to ascribe this palace intrigue to tactical changes in the organization. It is just not that compelling. It just so happens we had new people coming in . . . we were able to create a leaner board with more independent directors. It is nice to say that I did some kind of crazy ninja move. The reality is much more boring than that.”

BlueGlass Interactive A...

Internet marketing agency  BlueGlass Interactive  has just acquired Voltier Digital, a digital agency specializing in content marketing, infographic creation and data visualization. Voltier, whose clients include eBay, CEO.com, Fanhattan, WellHome, COLOURlovers.com, Greatist, and others, will be relocating its entire six person team to BlueGlass’s Tampa offices immediately. In addition, Voltier’s three founders, Dan Tynski, Nicholas Santillo and Chris Tynski, will hold senior roles on BlueGlass’ production and marketing teams. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition represents a strategic move for BlueGlass, which currently offers search engine optimization and social media marketing services. Now the company will expand into new areas, including data visualization, infographic production, and kinetic typography, thanks to Voltier. Although you may not have heard the name Voltier before, you’ve likely come across the company’s work without knowing it. The firm has produced dozens of infographics , which have been posted to numerous tech blogs in the recents months. Subjects have included everything from energy pricing to comic books and more. BlueGlass was formed in summer 2010 from four companies, 10e20, Search and Social, Brent Csutoras and Second Step Search. Following its October 2010 acquisition of 3 Dog Media , the company claimed it then had five of the top fifteen social media experts in the field. Explains BlueGlass Co-founder Chris Winfield, content marketing is one of these new “buzzwords,” but the idea has been around forever. “It’s one of those things where now everyone’s interested in it – and these guys [Voltier] have the best systems and the best technology around it out there,” he says. And it’s one of the biggest areas for growth for firms like his, he adds. “Companies are now caring about putting out content that people want to read, rather than just creating things like ‘brochureware,’ and things like that,” Winfield explains. “Instead of just investing in their blog and blogging strategies, they’re investing in content people will actually want to share. Even if it’s not directly related to selling something, it’s still branding.” (For example, all those darned infographics!) Self-funded BlueGlass is headquartered in Tampa, Florida with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Australia.