Facebook’s dodgy stats
Well, well. Facebook’s IPO Prospectus claims 845 million users, which is probably true. But it also claims that the number of “daily active users” is a whopping 483 million. Andrew Ross Sorkin of the...
View ArticleSo what exactly did Facebook buy for a billion dollars?
This morning’s Observer column. So Facebook has bought Instagram, a company with a single product – a photosharing app – for $1bn in cash and (FB) shares. Just to put that in context, Instagram has...
View ArticleThe hype marketers
Insightful Guardian column by Dean Baker. Of course, Facebook is unlikely to go out of business, but it is certainly possible that its business model is not sufficiently robust to justify a position...
View Article“Legacy”: the use and abuse of a term
The word “legacy” crops up a lot in discussions about innovation in cyberspace, so it was good to find thoughtful essay about it by Stephen Page, current CEO of Faber & Faber, the eminent...
View ArticleBig Data and the Hype Cycle
This morning’s Observer column. As the “big data” bandwagon gathers steam, it’s appropriate to ask where it currently sits on the hype cycle. The answer depends on which domain of application we’re...
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Book Review: ‘The People’s Platform’
My Observer review of Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform: And Other Digital Delusions. The launch of the Mosaic browser in 1993 transformed the internet into a mainstream medium and brought the...
View ArticleTech bubble: does it matter?
This morning’s Observer column. If one wanted to be critical, the most annoying thing about the current bubble is the way the visions and ambitions of startup founders seem to have narrowed. Many of...
View ArticleHow things change (and how corporate valuations are crazy)
Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of Amazon’s IPO. It’s market cap stands today at $459.5 billion. Walmart, meanwhile stands at $229.5 billion. So Amazon is apparently twice as valuable as Walmart....
View ArticleMachine translation: some way to go yet
Lovely example from Mark Liberman: I tried a chapter-opening from a roman policier that I was reading (Yasmina Khadra, Le Dingue au Bistouri): “Il y a quatre choses que je déteste. Un: qu’on boive dans...
View ArticleThe Unicorn bubble and its aftermath
This morning’s Observer column: Some unicorns have astonishing valuations, which are based on the price that new investors are willing to pay for a share. Uber, for example, currently has a valuation...
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