Five key differences between Zynga and Supercell

Five key differences between Zynga and Supercell

BY HAMISH MCKENZIE 
ON JUNE 5, 2013

Zynga is in the dumps. With its share price now hovering around $3, down from $10 at the time of its December 2011 initial public offering, and mass layoffsthat have cost it 18 percent of its workforce, it’s hard to imagine a grimmer scenario for the social gaming giant. Supercell, on the other hand, is going bananas. The small Finnish company, which so far has just two games in circulation, is Accel Partners’ fastest-growing company and is now pulling in $2.4 million a day (mind you, that figure is two months old – it could be even more now). Six-year old Zynga was built for the Facebook age. Two-and-a-half-year-old Supercell was built for the mobile age. The differences are telling. It’s easy to point to Supercell and say, “Zynga has it all wrong – it should be taking this approach.” That might turn out to be false. Supercell is young and has only two games to its name. Although it is off to a great start, it has yet to prove itself over the long term. However, it is at least interesting from an academic point of view to consider the key differences between the two companies – one tanking, the other ascendent – because it does at least give us an indication of just how much has changed in the world of gaming, and in Internet-based businesses in general. So, here we go. The five key differences between Zynga and Supercell are… Read more of this post

Google is the General Electric of the 21st century; The unnerving thing about Larry Page is that he studies history.

Last updated: June 5, 2013 6:57 pm

Google is the General Electric of the 21st century

By John Gapper

Larry Page has boundless ambition and the capacity to deliver unexpected products

Everywhere one looks, Google is doing remarkable things. It could soon overtake Apple in downloads of applications; it is developing self-driving cars; people wear its kooky augmented reality Glass spectacles; it is signing renewable power deals in South Africa and Sweden.

From being a one-product company that tapped a stream of wealth with paid internet search, Google is emerging as the dominant consumer technology company of the early 21st century, along with Amazon. Fred Wilson, a leading New York venture capitalist, accuses it of trying to control the internet, “like Microsoft tried with personal computing … Who will stop Google?” Read more of this post

Google’s X-way vision for the future

Google’s X-way vision for the future

BY CRAIG SHAMES 
ON JUNE 5, 2013

Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page wants to be more like Thomas Edison than Nikola Tesla. “If you invent something, that doesn’t necessarily help anybody,” he recently told Fortune. “You’ve got to actually get it into the world; you’ve got to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.” Edison did that with practical incandescent light, the phonograph, the movie camera, and hundreds of other inventions. Tesla had his grandiose successes, too, but a shrewd businessman he was not. “He couldn’t commercialize anything,” Page added. “He could barely fund his own research.”

With Google[x], Google’s secretive moon shot lab, Page doesn’t have to worry about that as he has the resources to bring fanciful, potentially world-changing ideas from germination to market. Some of these projects have already begun to bear fruit such as driverless cars and everyone’s favorite punching bag, Google Glass. But there’s a lot more in the development pipeline. According to reports, Google has a list of approximately 100 big ideas the company is pondering. They cover everything from levitation to even the very Tesla-like space elevator. While these ideas may seem random and far fetched they have one thing in common: the potential to help Google turn a profit either by creating ways for people to use their services or improving how the company operates. And, oh by the way, they just might change the world in the process. Read more of this post

If the giants learn how to dance, startups have less of an advantage and may stumble.

Google is hot; Apple is not. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve entered bizarro world

BY SARAH LACY 
ON JUNE 5, 2013

Okay, seriously, how the fuck did Larry Page pull this off?

Google should completely be sucking right now.

In the history of the Internet, the “hot” publicly traded consumer company has about four years or so on top. See: Netscape, eBay, Yahoo, etc. Amazon was always up and down, ditto Facebook so far. But somehow Google just won’t become irrelevant. It stubbornly refuses with its surging stock price and ambitious change-the-world gambits like Google Fiber and Google Glass that just can’t help getting everyone excited. Read more of this post

Amazon’s cloud is how big again? The number of websites hosted on these web-facing AWS workhorses soared 71 percent to 11.6 million in may from 6.8 million in September

Amazon’s cloud is how big again?

by Barb Darrow

1 DAY AGO

New numbers from Netcraft show that the number of Amazon Web Services servers has exploded over the past 9 months.

Trying to assess just how enormous Amazon Web Services is has become a sort of parlor game among techies. Counting servers is as good a way as any to get a grip on its size and the latest to take a stab at that is Netcraft, which pegs the numbers of AWS web-facing servers at 158,000, up from 118,000 such servers in September, 2012. (Hat tip to Data Center Knowledge for pointing out this interesting research.)

Netcraft also said the number of websites hosted on these web-facing AWS workhorses soared 71 percent to  11.6 million in may from 6.8 million in September. Gulp. Read more of this post

Saudi investors face hefty losses after king shuts telecoms start-up; SITC’s failure highlights the dominance of speculative retail traders in the Saudi market, who chase rising prices with little regard for fundamental valuations

Saudi investors sent reeling after king shuts telecoms start-up

3:24pm EDT

By Matt Smith

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi retail investors face hefty losses after a royal decree ordered the liquidation of Saudi Integrated Telecom Co (SITC), which floated its shares in an initial public offer (IPO) in 2011 but never started operations.

SITC’s failure highlights the dominance of speculative retail traders in the Saudi market, who chase rising prices with little regard for fundamental valuations.

“Investors are shocked,” said Mohammad Omran, a member of the Saudi Economic Association (SEA). “The CMA made a big mistake by allowing the IPO to go ahead.” Read more of this post

As Facebook grows up, grand ambitions get reality check

Analysis: As Facebook grows up, grand ambitions get reality check

2:58pm EDT

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook, which once seemed poised to take over the Internet, is showing its limitations: a host of newer services are gaining ground among trend-setting youth; a much-hyped smartphone app has received a tepid response; and grand ambitions such as taking on Google in the search business seem ever more fanciful.

In a volatile Internet industry where companies can rise and fall almost overnight, one might even say that the nine-year-old Facebook Inc is suffering a mid-life crisis.

Yet even if the social network falls short of its goal of becoming an all-encompassing Web destination that consumers turn to for everything from messaging to shopping, experts say Facebook has likely achieved enough scale and ubiquity to assure its staying power. Read more of this post

Adobe Acrobat at 20: Successes, Second Guesses and a Few Miscues; Software and apps, readers and viewers, will come and go, but PDF files are really going to last forever.

Adobe Acrobat at 20: Successes, Second Guesses and a Few Miscues

Published: June 05, 2013 in Knowledge@Wharton

Twenty years ago, on June 15, 1993, Adobe Systems officially introduced the Acrobat product suite and its underlying file format, the Portable Document Format (PDF).

It’s difficult now to recall how challenging it was to exchange electronic documents before then. Plain text files worked, but failed to capture the typography, graphics and design of printed documents. Sending someone a file from a specific software program — such as a Microsoft Word .doc file — required both parties to own the program and often, to make things work correctly, the same version of the program. Even then, the fonts could change, the text might reflow and the document would repaginate.

What was needed was a universal electronic document format. That sounds straightforward enough, but the problem was deceptively complex. The format would need to be able to represent any conceivable type of document content with various fonts, graphics, images and complex page layouts. It would need to be easily viewed on any computer platform: DOS, Windows, Macintosh, UNIX and, later, mobile devices from Palm, Compaq, Apple and others. And, perhaps most challenging, it would need to be easily created by a wide range of authoring tools — word processors, page layout programs, spreadsheets and architectural design software, to name a few. Read more of this post

On Wall Street, Netflix Is a Comeback Kid — But Can It Stay on Top?

On Wall Street, Netflix Is a Comeback Kid — But Can It Stay on Top?

Published: June 05, 2013 in Knowledge@Wharton

In the first quarter of 2013, Netflix emerged as the best-performing stock in the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

The streaming and DVD rental company was an unlikely Wall Street star, to say the least. Many observers had all but given the firm up for dead in 2011, when shares plummeted after an ill-timed and poorly received price hike in July that coincided with an announcement that Netflix would separate its streaming and DVD businesses. That plan was ultimately shelved, but the once-high-flying Netflix stock plunged as low as $53.80. Its all-time closing high was $298.73 and the record intra-day high was $304.79, both reached on July13, 2011. At the time, critics accused Netflix management of being insensitive, even arrogant. Company leadership appeared determined to squeeze every penny out of a rabidly loyal customer base that was struggling through a debilitating national recession.

Netflix was on the verge of becoming a cautionary tale. Instead, it became corporate America’s version of the comeback kid. The story of Netflix’s turnaround underscores the basic precepts of a well-run company, experts from Wharton and elsewhere say. Netflix showed patience. It learned from its mistakes, stuck to its strategy and didn’t listen to the naysayers. It didn’t give in to Wall Street’s demands that it manage for the next three-month quarter. It didn’t shift in midstream to enjoy a short-term gain at the expense of a potentially larger payoff down the road. Above all, Netflix did the most important thing that any company can ever do, at any time: Serve its customers. Read more of this post

A secretive world moves from cloak and dagger to the smartphone: Israel’s high-tech and military capabilities have nurtured a cybersecurity industry

June 5, 2013 4:19 pm

A secretive world moves from cloak and dagger to the smartphone

By John Reed

Tech threat: security start-ups have been designing tools to tackle a new era of cybercrime

In the history of the tools of warfare, from the stone age slingshot to the drones and guided weapons of today, the 21st century has produced one of the most effective: the “silent” smartphone.

Terrorists, drug barons or insurgents can pick up a networked mobile phone almost anywhere. If they avoid voice calls – which can be intercepted – and use them just for computing and instant messaging services, they can transact nefarious business with little fear of detection. Read more of this post

Tech start-ups aim to collar US $50bn pets products market

June 5, 2013 7:21 pm

Tech start-ups aim to collar US pets market

By April Dembosky and Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco and Louise Lucas in London

Thirteen years on from the collapse of Pets.com, the company that became synonymous with the bursting of the dotcom bubble, and Silicon Valley is ready to try again. A new crop of tech start-ups is reaching for a piece of the $50bn market for pet products.

Venture capitalists have invested $6m into Whistle, a San Francisco start-up that on Wednesday launched its wireless fitness tracker for dogs. Read more of this post

Countries Seek Entrepreneurs From Silicon Valley

June 5, 2013

Countries Seek Entrepreneurs From Silicon Valley

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

SAN FRANCISCO — A bold new billboard looms over U.S. 101, the highway that runs through the heart of the global technology industry. “H-1b problems?” it reads. “Pivot to Canada.”

That sassy invitation is directed at the thousands of foreigners having trouble getting temporary visas, known as H-1b’s, to work in the United States. Canada’s new so-called start-up visa offers them the prospect of permanent residency and with it, the country’s relatively low business taxes and public health insurance.

Canada is not alone in reaching out to foreign entrepreneurs. In a bid to create their own versions of Silicon Valley, Britain and Australia have dangled start-up visas like this too. Chile is even offering seed money to lure foreigners to come to Santiago and get their start-ups off the ground. Read more of this post