Week of April 11 2011
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
Social Traffic Worth Less to Publishers Than Search
There's no question that social media is becoming an increasingly important source of traffic for Web publishers, from articles and videos being shared among friends on Facebook to users following individual reporters on Twitter. But it turns out that social media referrals may be worth less to publishers than direct traffic or traffic from search. According to a new analysis conducted by Outbrain, a company which provides widgets to publishers designed to keep readers on their sites longer, two-thirds of traffic to sites still comes from either users directly visiting a content site or jumping from page to page within that site. Among the 33 percent of traffic that comes from outside sources, search accounts for 41 percent, versus 11 percent for social media—though that number is on the rise.Google's CEO Discusses Q1 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Google ( GOOG ) Q1 2011 Earnings Call April 14, 2011 4:30 PM ET Operator Good day, and welcome, everyone, to the Google Inc. First Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Jane Penner, Head of Investor Relations.
Pearltrees is the first and largest social curation community on the Internet. It’s a place to organize, discover and share all the cool content you find online. However, beyond this basic definition, a question remains: why would I want to use Pearltrees? Well, what I want to share with you are six major use cases (or reasons) we’ve identified as being most popular across our entire community of web curators. In addition, I’ll also share with you a couple of interesting ways in which I have put Pearltrees to use for myself.
6 reasons to use Pearltrees
Trouble @Twitter
Boardroom power plays, disgruntled founders, and CEO switcheroos are clipping the wings of this tech high flier. By Jessi Hempel, senior writer FORTUNE -- In March, shortly after Jack Dorsey went back to work for Twitter, the company he co-founded four years ago, he did a Q&A session with an entrepreneurship class at Columbia Business School.
My first SXSW experience was humbling and overwhelming. I was asked to do a panel based on my Ad Age post: " Has Facebook Jumped the Shark ?" from 2010. I was fortunate to be joined by industry heavyweights like Mark Rosner , CEO of Zedge , a mobile community 40 million strong; Kunur Patel , digital reporter for Advertising Age; Hank Wasiak , an award-winning ad industry veteran and partner at the Concept Farm; and Mark Sherwood , Saatchi's head of integrated planning. I was even also joined by colleagues Joy Dibenedetto and Donnetta Campbell of Hum News to help report on the session. Almost immediately, the audience "jumped" into the conversation and in real time someone tweeted: "luv it when a tussle breaks out…" The spirited conversation was centered on whether "social media" was a "great gift" as Hank Wasiak beautifully said or, as Kunur Patel and Mark Sherwood believed, a fundamental shift in how people connect led by Gen Y.
Why I Have Begun to Hate the Term 'Social Media'
Infographic of the Day: Silicon Valley's Nebulous Money Network | Co.Design
You can, if you want, see Mark Zuckerberg's social network on Facebook . Here is his profile . But while those might be the folks that Zuck hangs out with on weekends, what's potentially more important is are his work connections, the web of people who serve on boards and invest in the five major social web startups: Twitter , Zynga , Facebook, LinkedIn , and Groupon . These companies are creating so much stock value, whether real or imagined, and are becoming the major drivers in our economy (the city of San Francisco just gave Twitter an enormous tax break so the company won't move its headquarters). To help clarify where all the money and decisions in this corner of Silicon Valley is coming from, the New York Times Dealbook blog made this handy graph of the network of social tech companies . Think of it like Zuckerberg's LinkedIn connections:
Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.
Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you. I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious. Some people are contrarian for the sake of getting headlines or outsmarting the markets. For Thiel, it’s simply how he views the world. Of course a side benefit for the natural contrarian is it frequently leads to things like headlines and money.
Anyone who wants a Nintendo Wii console or the latest John Grisham novel can pick it up at the nearest Target ( TGT ) store or log on to Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and have it delivered. The similarities between the two retailers aren't as apparent when it comes to taxes. Amazon's effective rate—the total it pays in federal, state, local, and international income taxes after deductions, along with its sales and property levies—has been more than 10 percentage points lower than Target's for the past four years.