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. Direct site visitors and those who arrive via search also score highest for "hyper-engaged reader sessions"—which Outbrain defines as visits when readers consume five or more pages.
3 Major Reasons We are NOT in a Tech Bubble – with Top VC Ben Horowitz. Lately, everybody seems to be talking about a new technology bubble (NASDAQ:QQQ). Many very smart CEOs, VCs, reporters, and analysts can’t seem to stop worrying about the second coming of the dot com bust. Are the prognosticators correct? Will we head mercilessly into another crash? I don’t think so. A Comparison Between Today’s “Bubble” and the Last Tech Bubble Since so many distinguished people report a broad variety of qualitative bubble signs, let’s attempt to pattern match the quantitative data. 1. In the great bubble of 1998-2000, the boom in public valuations mirrored the boom in private valuations.
To find out whether or not today’s public technology companies have hit bubble valuations, let’s compare some companies that survived the great bubble with their bubble era valuations: Bubble vs Current Valuations The Enterprise Value-to-Revenue multiple — EV/Rev — and Price-to-Earnings multiple — PE — are commonly used metrics to tell the valuation:value story. 2. Conclusion. Google's CEO Discusses Q1 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript. 6 reasons to use Pearltrees. 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. Hopefully, you’ll not only get value in learning how the community uses Pearltrees, but also be inspired to find even more clever and creative ways to use our software yourself. (And if you do, we really hope you’ll share them with us. 3. The problem is that aside from searching your personal twitter stream to get back to the cool stuff you tweeted there’s no great way to keep those links at hand.
Oliver Starr is the Chief Evangelist for Pearltrees.com. 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. As students tapped away on their laptops (were they sending tweets?) , Dorsey, 34, answered questions about his commitment to his new gig as Twitter's product chief.
Dorsey laughed lightly and replied, "You know, we're just individuals. There's no shortage of drama at Twitter these days: Besides the CEO shuffles, there are secret board meetings, executive power struggles, a plethora of coaches and consultants, and disgruntled founders. One of Twitter's earliest and most avid users, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), confers with company co-founder Dorsey. Just two years ago Twitter was the hottest thing on the web. Twitter's rocky road to social-media stardom. Why I Have Begun to Hate the Term 'Social Media' IS THERE A NEW TECH BUBBLE? No. But There Are Other Things To Worry About...
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: [Click to download a PDF] And then there are board seats. Is this different from any other close-knit industry? 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. Consider the 2000 Nasdaq crash. And after the crash, Thiel insisted there hadn’t really been a crash: He argued the equity bubble had simply shifted onto the housing market. So Friday, as I sat with Thiel in his San Francisco home that he finally owns, I was curious what he thinks of the current Web frenzy. Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble.
Making matters worse was a 2005 President George W. Wanted: A Tax Code for the Digital Age. 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. Target's effective tax rate in 2010 was 35.1 percent, compared with Amazon's 23.5 percent. Amazon in 2010 owed $352 million in income taxes worldwide on income of $1.5 billion, according to its SEC filings, while Target owed $1.58 billion on income of $4.5 billion. These companies represent just one example of how the U.S. corporate tax code favors global companies over domestic ones, high-tech businesses over old-line manufacturers, and drugmakers over oil companies.