Great Visualization of Wall Street Compensation
via Chart Porn by Dustin on 1/17/10
A very nice treemap presentation — you can drill down by year and company level. Clicking on a company box will bring up their own comments on compensation policies. Well done WSJ!
Another Solid Review for Swype - Install on Android
via A VC by Fred on 1/17/10
I am typing this post on my Android phone with an add on to android called Swype. Swype lets you drag your thumb across the keyboard instead of typing. Its really quite easy to use. Ive never used it before doing this post and yet it took me no more than a couple tries to get used to it.
I have to thank the readers of this blog for tipping me off to Swype. I knew it existed but did not know there is a test version for the android. You can get it here: http://www.androidcentral.com/download-beta-version-swype-android
I did this post in less than five minutes. I could not have done that with the on screen keyboard. Thanks everyone.Related articles by Zemanta
- Leaked: Swype For Android Beta Unofficially Available For Motorola Droid (mobilecrunch.com)
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The Amazing Power of the Twitter Ecosystem - API Based Services are the Future
via A VC by Fred on 1/18/10
John Borthwick, co-founder of Betaworks, parent company to bit.ly, twitterfeed, tweetdeck, chartbeat, and many other interesting web services, posted yesterday on "Ongoing tracking of the real time web …"
Through these various Betaworks companies, John and the team have access to a tremendous amount of data and if you are interested in this subject, you really should read John's post.
I develop many of my theses based on what I see happening on this blog. And I've been seeing something on this blog that has gotten my attention.
Traffic is way up to this blog in the first half of January. This blog has seen as many visits in the first half of January as a normal month.
So I went to Google Analytics to find out why. And I didn't see anything particularly new and different in the first half of this month.
But that direct number bugs me so I sent John an email to see what I could learn. The first thing I learned is that he was planning a post (link above) on this exact topic. And he sent me some data on the clicks to avc.com from bit.ly in the first half of January. Here's a snapshot from John's email to me:
Now, where would google analytics be capturing those 35,147 clicks? Well Twitter.com for sure. But that's only 7,567. Could the other ~28,000 clicks be in the "direct" number? I am absolutely positive that a bunch of them are.
But think about this for a second. Of the 35,000 clicks I got from bit.ly in the first half of January, only 20% of them came from Twitter.com. So exactly how big is Twitter.com vs the Twitter ecoystem?
Well, let's go back to John's post and pull my favorite chart out of it:
John's chart estimates that Twitter.com is about 20mm uvs a month in the US (comScore has it at 60mm uvs worldwide) and the Twitter ecosystem at about 60mm uvs in the US.
That says that across all web services, not just AVC, the Twitter ecosystem is about 3x Twitter.com. And on this blog, whose audience is certainly power users, that ratio is 5x.
Just to double check, because this is a seriously big deal, I checked all the links I bit.ly "ized" this past 30 days. Here's where they were clicked on:
So the links I put out into Twitter in the past 30 days generated almost 39,000 clicks. Nice. But only 10,000 of those clicks happened on Twitter.com. The rest happened elsewhere in the Twitter ecosystem, including Facebook which is part of the Twitter ecosystem when they showcase a post that is generated on Twitter, as all of mine are.
So that's a 4x ratio. That's a good double check. Whether its 3x (John's post), 4x (my links), or 5x (incoming traffic to AVC), it is clear that there's a big difference between the two.
My point is this. You can talk about Twitter.com and then you can talk about the Twitter ecosystem. One is a web site. The other is a fundamental part of the Internet infrastructure. And the latter is 3-5x bigger than the former and that delta is likely to grow even larger.
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This mobile app "checking-in" biz play is a trend I find questionable.
via TechCrunch by MG Siegler on 1/15/10
When you think of the idea of “checking-in” at a venue in a mobile app, you likely think of Foursquare or Gowalla right now. The two gained significant momentum, funding, and users in the location space in 2009. But even with the growth, both services are still relatively small, neither much bigger than 200,000 users. That’s why much larger social networks like Facebook are perceived to be a potential risk to them. And one of those bigger networks has just entered the fray: Yelp.
With the latest version of its iPhone app (version 4) which will be released today in the App Store, Yelp is introducing a bunch of new features. But none is bigger than the new ability to check-in to venues. Considering there are some 1.25 million users of the Yelp iPhone app, with this update, Yelp will already become the largest network offering this functionality by far. And it’s not just check-ins. Yelp is also adding rewards for users who frequent certain venues, and a leaderboard. Yes, they’re also getting into the gaming element of location.
So does this spell doom for Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and the others? Maybe, but maybe not. No one is quite sure how well the concept of checking-in will work when tacked on to an existing social network. Yelp is a great one to try it though since it’s already based around venues. But the social connections on Yelp aren’t like more traditional social networks, so it will be interesting to see if with this feature, users start transferring their more traditional social graphs over to Yelp. From Yelp’s perspective, this is just another way to allow people to contribute to the service without having to write reviews or upload pictures, Yelp mobile product manager Eric Singley tells us. It also adds a new layer of credibility to those who do write reviews because other users can now potentially see that these users have been to the place they are reviewing numerous times.
And yes, the idea is to eventually allow Yelp users that check-in places to see certain deals offered up by the venues. Yelp already has this concept in place with their Sales and Special Offers program that’s about a year old. Already there are over 200,000 of these offers that businesses are serving up, I’m told. Yelp could easily turn this on for the new check-in feature as well, which Singley envisions happening. Perhaps most significantly, Singley doesn’t foresee Yelp using such a feature to augment their business model. While he wouldn’t entirely rule it out in the future, he noted that Yelp had no plans to change the idea of letting venues offer deals for free. This could potentially threaten the Foursquare and Gowalla business models. Right now, neither have paid arrangements with venues for the deals they offer, but eventually they were hoping to turn that on. If Yelp offers venues the ability to give customers coupons for free, it could get interesting.
Just as with Foursquare and Gowalla, Yelp users will be able to get Push Notifications when friends check-in somewhere. There will also be a check-in stream to show you where all your friends are. And as I alluded to, users who go to certain venues a lot will be rewarded with badges. At first, this is limited to a “Regular” badge, which you will get if you check-in somewhere twice in a 60 day span (though Singley notes this algorithm could be tweaked as needed). And this badge will appear next to your reviews on Yelp to let others know that you go there a lot. Singley also left open the possibility of other badges eventually. And while this is iPhone-only for now, the check-in data should be coming to the website in a couple of weeks, and then to the other mobile apps as well, I’m told.
But how the check-in battle will play out remains to be seen. First, we’ll have to see if the concept catches on with Yelp users. And that shouldn’t distract current the users from the wide range of other new features in the latest version of the iPhone app. In fact, “this is the biggest iPhone update we’ve ever done,” Singley says. So what else is new besides check-ins?
Yelp has finally added profiles to the app. You can now see and edit your Yelp profile just as you would on the website. This is an extension of the signing-in ability Yelp added in its last update. Also new is the ability to more easily find friends you may know. The Yelp app can use your iPhone’s address book, or your Facebook contacts if you’re hooked up with Facebook Connect.
Speaking of Facebook, you’ll now be able to share things more easily on that network, as well as on Twitter. This includes Quick Tips and the new check-ins. This could potentially help the Yelp app grow even bigger.
Finally, Yelp has updated the Monocle functionality. As you may recall, this is the augmented reality view of Yelp, and now it allows you to lay your phone horizontally to bring up a map overlay that will work with the iPhone’s compass. And with the new check-ins, you’ll also have an option to view where your friends are in this augmented reality view.
Overall, the look of the Yelp app has been updated too. And you can see in the screen shot at the top of this post, the main page now looks more like the Facebook app. It seems that a lot of apps are borrowing this design these days; LinkedIn did recently as well.
Just as it has always done, Yelp plans to test all of these new features on the iPhone first, then roll them out to the other mobile platforms. Of those, not surprisingly, Singley seems most excited about the Android platform.
With Yelp now in the check-in location game, maybe Google will be kicking itself for not scooping them up when they had the chance. After all, I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot of movement in terms of acquisitions in that field this year.
When the new Yelp app goes live (which should be shortly), you can find it here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
LAWeekly Web Awards Winners
Excited that LA is finally getting a tech scene.via lalawag by Laurie Percival on 1/15/10
LAWeekly announced the winners of their first annual web awards today. We want to send out a big congratulations to those of you who were picked, and send a special thanks out to all of our readers. Thanks to your support, and your votes, we took home the award for Best Tech Blog. Thank You!!
Check out the full list of winners:
LA’s Best Twitterer
@XeniJardin
LA’s Best Flickr Pool
LA Addict
LA’s Best Flamer (i.e. best shit talker)
Buddyhead
LA’s Best Food Blog
Eater LA
LA’s Best Music Blog
Aquarium Drunkard
LA’s Best Police Blog
Witness LA
LA’s Best Tech Blog
Lalawag
LA’s Best Politics Blog
Top of the Ticket, LA Times
LA’s Best Drinking Blog
Caroline on Crack
LA’s Best Low Brow Art Blog
The Streets are Calling
LA’s Best High Brow Art Blog
Bldg Blog
LA’s Best Business Twitterer
@kogibbq
LA’s Best Local Activism Site
LA Streets Blog
LA’s Best Gamer Site
G4 TV
LA’s Best MySpace Music Page
Slash
LA’s Best iPhone App
Textplus
LA’s Best Most Shameless Self Promoter
Alana Joy
Best Twitpic
Paid to be Nice
LA’s Best News Blog
LAist
LA’s Best Counterculture Blog
LA Taco
LA’s Sexiest Site
Suicide Girls
LA’s Best Online Video
SecretSauce TV, “Where The Dirty Hipsters Are (Wild Things Spoof)”
LA’s Best Home Page
GOOD Los Angeles
LA’s Best Designed Site Aesthetic
Coilhouse
LA’s Best Personal Blog
Wil Wheaton
LA’s Best Celebrity Fan Site
Her Name is Jane Lynch
LA’s Best Government Site
METRO
LA’s Best Restaurant Site
Eat at Street
LA’s Best Retail Site
Sorting with Style
LA’s Best Humor Site
Cracked
LA’s Best 12 Seconds Account
Mike FX
LA’s Best Commenter
Sarah J. Gim, The Delicious Life
LA’s Best Tweet of the Year
Roger Avary’s tweet from jail:
@avary : “#34 is ‘rolled up’ to a higher security facility for exercising his first amendment rights. The truth he has discovered is too dangerous.”
LA’s Best Blog Post of the Year
“100 Things to try in LA Before You Die,” Caroline on Crack
LA’s Best Online Photo of the Year
“Walkabout,” by Mathieu Young, GOOD Los Angeles
LA’s Best Comment Thread of the Year
“Nike Confuses USC With that School Near Diddy Riese,” Lost Angeles Blog
LAWeekly will be hosting an invite only awards ceremony on January 21st at Bardot to present the winners with their award. I really hope it is some kind of funky statue that we can proudly place on our mantel.
Keep checking with LAWeekly.com, and follow them on Twitter @LAWeekly, for information on how you can win a spot on the guest list for their private party. Hope to see you there!
(Photo from LAWeekly.com)
