Posted in Facebook on Friday, February 03, 2012, 10:35
Facebook has had many valuations recently including a value of up to $100 billion. In reality though, is this more down to the brand awareness and hype rather than based around the business model.
The company has seen a quick turnaround in recent years from running at a lossof $56 million in 2008 to a profit of $229 million in 2009 with a revenue increase of $272 million to $777 million. The previous year. Since then of course, advertising revenue has increased substantially to the region of $3.7 Billion in 2011. Profits after Tax were at $1 Billion which is likely to be an eightieth of the likely more realistic value of $75-$80 billion. So why such a high valuation? Well for one, 845 million active users have signed up to facebook of which 57% of them come back to the site on a daily basis. That is somewhat of a marketing dream to potential advertisers. Also, all members have passed on all sorts of valuable information to target relevant advertising towards its users so it is still just the beginning as a business model.
The Facebook flotation is expected to raise about $5 billion on the stock market and with mobile phone advertising not even in the picture yet, who knows where it can go. Mark Zuckerberg knows that there is an increase of users predominantly accessing Facebook from their mobile phones which do not carry any advertising at the moment. Imagine all those accidental touch phone clicks when targeted ads start appearing between users news feeds! As advertising revenue accounts for 85% of Facebook’s current revenue, there is a huge potential for future growth. The other 15% comes from partnerships through companies such as Zynga.
It is vital though that this revenue is generated through cost effective placements for its customers though. An analyst recently quoted that “many large companies have been initially disappointed with the results of Facebook advertising”. With this in mind and Facebook now on the edge of competing with the giants of the internet, can they really overcome the mighty Google who have dominated for such a long time. Given the success of Google+, this could be a possibility. Google+ generated a lot of interest and is expected to generate 100 million sign ups. The only thing is not many appear to be going back and using it on a daily basis which gives facebook a huge edge over its nearest competitor.
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Posted in Apple on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 06:55
While most of the tech world has already assumed that Apple will hold an iPad 3 event in March, Japanese Apple news site, Macotakara, has also reported that a second event will be held in February.
The site says that Apple will be holding a ‘strange’ (or ‘out of the ordinary’ depending on translation) event in February which will not be product orientated, ruling out the iPad 3 announcement.
Apple has already made an Education announcement this year and it’s far too early for any iPhone 5 news so any reports on the events context are simply guesses at this point.
On the other hand, it’s looking like March is a set date for the iPad 3, whether it be an announcement or the actual release. Macotakara even suggests that the two could both happen within the month.
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Posted in Web Hosting on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 06:17
Every month, at the Web Host Directory, we compile a list of the Top 25 Most Popular Web Hosting Companies based on the amount of unique visitors each profile receives.
Here’s our Top 25 Most Popular Web Hosting Companies for January:
January’s Most Popular US Web Hosting Companies
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Just Host
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FatCow
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iPage
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Scala Hosting
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Innerplanet
To see the full list of this month’s most popular companies take a peek here: www.webhostdir.com/awards/
January’s Most Popular UK Web Hosting Companies
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Kualo Limited
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Strato Hosting
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eHosting
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UK2.NET
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Compila
To see the full list of this month’s most popular UK companies take a peek here: www.webhostdir.co.uk/awards/
Think you deserve to be in our most popular list? Get signed up to the Web Hosting Directory with a Free Listing and encourage your happy customers to visit your profile.
Already have an account? You can log in at www.serchen.com to access your profile.
About Serchen Interactive
Established in 1997, Serchen Interactive is the World’s largest hosted services marketplace. Serchen matches hundreds of thousands of buyers and sellers each month across a network of category leading websites. Operating across 6 continents the Serchen network is able to work closely with clients from around the globe in marketing their services to their target audience. www.serchen.com
Contact the team here
Get all the news about your favourite Web Hosting companies @webhostdir
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Posted in Google on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 05:08
Google announced last week that it will soon be releasing some new Google+ badges that will be fully customisable to fit with varying website designs.
The Webmaster Central blog says:
“We're adding more options for integrating the Google+ badge into your website. You can configure a badge with a width that fits your site design and choose a version that works better on darker sites. You'll also see that Google+ badges now include the unified +1 and circle count that we added to Pages last month.”
Until any bugs are found and worked out the new badges will be available in developer preview only.
To encourage users to add the Google+ badge to their website, Lucy Hadden, Software Engineer for Google+ said that after recently looking at some of the top Google+ Pages using a badge, Google found that “on average, the badge accounted for an additional 38% of followers”.
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Posted in Web Hosting on Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 10:48
Popular file sharing site, Megaupload, was seized by FBI last week following copyright infringement allegations and “conspiracy to commit racketeering.”
A few days on and although Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is currently in custody, things are also looking pretty bad for Megaupload users who simply used the site for storage rather than illegal file sharing it is known for.
Users have been unable to access their information since the site was seized and it’s still uncertain whether they will ever get their files back. One of Megaupload’s web hosts, Carpathia Hosting has denied having access to the files, saying in a public statement:
"Carpathia Hosting does not have, and has never had, access to the content on Megaupload servers and has no mechanism for returning any content residing on such servers to Megaupload's customers.”
Rumours have circulated that the hosts (Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group) could start deleting information as early as Feb 2nd, to which Carpathia also replied:
"The reference to the 2 Feb 2012 date in the Department of Justice letter for the deletion of content is not based on any information provided by Carpathia to the US Government."
Cogent Communications Group has not yet publicly responded to the situation.
Kim Dotcom is currently being held in a New Zealand prison until his court hearing on February 22nd when his lawyers will argue he is innocent of piracy and racketeering.
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Posted in Web Hosting on Monday, January 30, 2012, 11:41
Last week, low cost hosting provider, DreamHost, admitted that its database containing FTP and shell passwords had been hacked, ordering an immediate password reset for all users involved.
Unfortunately for DreamHost the damage had already been done and the companies FTP and shared servers have now been down for over 24 hours.
The companies blog says “The apache (web), SSH, and ftp, and services on a subset of our VPS and dedicated servers are currently down. FTP services on some shared servers are also experiencing downtime. Our system administration and data center operation teams are currently on the case and we are attempting to restore services as soon as possible.”
Simon Anderson, the CEO of DreamHost has even left a personal message on the site apologising for the situation and offering a little more detail, which he claims has nothing to do with last week’s hack. He says that the issue is a result of a filed auto update;
“We run Debian OS and have used autoupdates to ensure security packages are installed as soon as they are available. We’ve had some breakage in the past from this approach, but nothing major. However last night’s autoupdate went badly wrong, removing essential packages from dedicated, VPS and some shared servers. Our monitoring and support team flagged the issue fast, and we scrambled our admin, dev and NOC teams to reinstall the packages that had been removed by autoupdate, reboot servers, fix package dependencies, and test that individual services were live.”
The timing seems a little too coincidental for it to simply be an update-gone-wrong. The initial security update that was released last week is down at the moment, however, you can access Google’s cached version here - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.dreamhost.com/2012/01/21/security-update/
Anderson says that no customer billing information or other personal information was accessed, but either way, DreamHost has some seriously pissed customers right now. At 4.37 pm GMT tweets are still flooding in about the outage - https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23dreamhost
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Posted in Google on Friday, January 27, 2012, 05:16
Google’s Bradley Horowitz announced on his Google+ profile yesterday that Google+ would be matching Facebook’s account registration age of 13 years old.
The decision seems to stem from Google’s want for more active users on the Google+ network. Horowitz says “Teens and young adults are the most active Internet users on the planet [1]. And surprise, surprise: they're also human beings who enjoy spending time with friends and family. Put these two things together and it's clear that teens will increasingly connect online.”
Anyone over the age of 13 can already sign up for a Google Account but the introduction of the ‘young adults’ to the social network means Google has had to step up its privacy policies.
Users under the ages of 18 will see slightly different notifications when they carry out social activities such as hangouts, share posts, or add people to circles. The new notifications look to emphasise the importance or privacy on the network and encourage the young adults to give a quick thought to who will be seeing their posts before they’re shared.
Horowitz details the new privacy features on his Google+ post linked above.
So that the younger users get the most out of their Google+ experience and arent just thrown into a network of adults, a number of entertainers, celebrities and musicians are being welcomed to the network, including; +106 and Park +A THIN LINE +AKB48 +Ashley Tisdale +Big Time Rush +Cody Simpson +ESPN +GLEE +Greyson Chance +Google Science Fair +Harry Shum Jr +The Hunger Games +Lea Michele +Mindless Behavior +Nickelodeon +Scotty McCreery +Selena Gomez +Shay Mitchell +Teen Vogue +The Annoying Orange +Material Girl Collection +Victoria Justice +Y
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Posted in Apple on Thursday, January 26, 2012, 06:39
Apple CEO, Tim Cook, held an employee meeting yesterday in Town Hall at which he announced a few new incentives for the Apple staff.
Cook first sent an email to all staff congratulating them on the phenomenal revenue figures that Apple hit in Q1. He then asked staff to join him for the Town Hall meeting, which was broadcast to many other Apple sites.
He wrote:
“Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we’re off to a great start in 2012. Last week in New York we launched a groundbreaking initiative for education with iBooks textbooks, and today we reported the strongest quarter in Apple’s history. Please join me tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. in Town Hall. We’ll review our record-setting results and discuss some exciting new things going on at Apple. The meeting will be broadcast live to many sites in Cupertino and other Apple locations. Please check AppleWeb for details.”
At the meeting, Cook announced that, starting in June, Apple employees will be entitled to a $500 discount on Mac’s and a $250 discount on iPads every 3 years (providing they have been working for Apple for at least 90 days).
The only exception is the Mac Mini which is already pretty close to the $500 mark. There was no mention of the iPhone, probably for the same reason.
Apple staff already receives a 25% discount on all Apple products and its thought they will still be able to redeem this on top of the heavy discounts.
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Posted in Apple on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 09:50
Apple announced its first quarter earnings yesterday and despite a rocky year with the introduction of the Amazon Kindle Fire and the death of Steve Jobs, the company revealed record breaking numbers.
CEO Tim Cook announced Q1 revenues of $46.3 billion, Apple’s largest revenue for a single quarter in its history. In that quarter, Apple sold 37 million iPhone’s, 5.2 million Mac’s, 15.4 million iPads, and another 15.4 million iPods.
Despite reports suggesting that the iPad could see fierce competition in Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Cook said the Fire just doesn’t have the features to compete:
“We strongly believe in optimizing applications from day one to take advantage of the larger canvas. There are only a few hundred apps designed for the competition, versus more than 170,000 apps designed specifically for iPad. People who want an iPad won't settle for a limited function tablet.”
Other achievements for Apple in Q1 include:
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1.5 million iPads used in American schools
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85 million iCloud users
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140 million apps and content downloaded on December 25th alone
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iTunes revenue hit $1.7 billion
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$1.6 billion of revenue came from Apple retails stores
Apple now has $97.6 billion in cash on hand.
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Posted in Facebook on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, 04:58
A video has been circulating recently, supposedly posted by Anonymous, claiming that it is planning to shut down Facebook.com at 12am on January 28th.
While this is not the first time the collective would have targeted Facebook, Anonymous are actually denying responsibility for the post.
The Anonymous Twitter page, @anonops, has posted multiple times now saying that the video is a fake and was not posted by the group.
Although Mark Zuckerberg has publicly opposed SOPA and PIPA, the face Anonymous has chosen Facebook as a target for its own protests. The video says:
“An online War has begun between anonymous, the people, and the government of the United States. While SOPA and PIPA may be postponed from congress, this does not guarantee that our internet rights will be upheld.”
“Our first target... Facebook... While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers... It is still possible to bring it down... Anonymous needs the help of the people... The people who want to take a stand against the government... The people who want to make a difference... This is what we must do... But first... you must ask yourself, are you truly apart of the anonymous consciousness?”
The video links to a download of a Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) which can be used to locate and target Facebook’s IP addresses. It also gives detailed instructions on how and when to carry out the attack, although doesn’t give a reason as to why Facebook was chosen as the target.
Posted by the YouTube user AnonymousVoice777, it has only received 303 views so far which is another indicator that it’s not being pushed by the real Anonymous. With over 250,000 Twitter followers alone, an Anonymous video would certainly be on more views by now.
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