Uber’s Real Challenge: Leveraging the Network Effect

Uber’s Real Challenge: Leveraging the Network Effect

JUNE 13, 2014

Neil Irwin

Most of the headlines about Uber, the rapidly growing transportation service, involve its battles to do business in more cities around the world. Not surprisingly, cabdrivers who have enjoyed being part of tightly regulated cartels in cities like Madrid, Miami, London and Los Angeles do not much care for the San Francisco-based upstart that brings them new competition. Read more of this post

What Tesla Knows That Other Patent-Holders Don’t

What Tesla Knows That Other Patent-Holders Don’t

by Walter Frick  |   5:15 PM June 12, 2014

Tesla made a seemingly unusual move today: it invited competitors to use its patents, for free. In apost on the company’s blog, CEO Elon Musk declared that Tesla’s “true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.” Read more of this post

Priceline flies into the restaurant business with $2.6 billion OpenTable deal

Priceline flies into the restaurant business with $2.6 billion OpenTable deal

Laura Lorenzetti

@FortuneMagazine

JUNE 13, 2014, 8:13 AM EDT

Acquisition expands the traditionally travel-only booking site’s services.

Priceline is snapping up restaurant-reservation platform OpenTable for $2.6 billion in cash, expanding the traditionally travel-only booking site’s services. Read more of this post

Elon Musk’s gigafactory: Assault on batteries; Better power-packs will open the road for electric vehicles

Elon Musk’s gigafactory: Assault on batteries; Better power-packs will open the road for electric vehicles

Jun 14th 2014 | From the print edition

THE author of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, E.L. James, has mused at length about a billionaire inflicting punishment in her bondage-based bestseller. As the recipient of one of the first right-hand-drive versions of the Tesla Model S to hit Britain’s roads, personally handed to her at an event in London last week by Elon Musk, the carmaker’s wealthy boss, she is clearly attuned to billionaires dishing out pleasure too. The “range anxiety” that afflicts other electric-car owners has been minimised in the Model S by packing it with lots of batteries; the agony-inducing cost of filling up at the petrol station need never bother Ms James again. Read more of this post

What Happened Inside Twitter That Led To The COO Leaving The Company

What Happened Inside Twitter That Led To The COO Leaving The Company

JAY YAROW TECH  JUN. 13, 2014, 8:44 AM

Twitter COO Ali Rowghani is out of the company in something of a surprise.

Although Kara Swisher at Re/code reported Rowghani could be out last night, there wasn’t much chatter about it before then.

According to a person familiar with the situation, Rowghani leaving the company is “really about product, and the speed of the product.”  Read more of this post

Tesla Motors opens door to electric vehicles’ technology secrets

Last updated: June 12, 2014 6:43 pm

Tesla Motors opens door to electric vehicles’ technology secrets

By Henry Foy, Motor Industry CorrespondentAuthor alerts

Electric carmaker Tesla Motors has taken the unprecedented step of opening its technology secrets to its rivals as chief executive Elon Musk attempts to boost interest in the low-emission vehicles.

Tesla, which has defied larger carmakers by making money out of its luxury electric vehicles, will allow competitors to use its patents in a gamble that it hopes will bring down industry costs and open new business opportunities. Read more of this post

GoDaddy pre-IPO financial metrics flatter; Domain-registration group uses measures that turn heads

June 12, 2014 6:45 pm

GoDaddy financial metrics flatter ahead of IPO

By Richard Waters in San FranciscoAuthor alerts

GoDaddy, the US web services company best known for its TV adverts featuring scantily clad women, has found a new way to turn heads on Wall Street: customised financial metrics that show off its business performance in a flattering light.

The lossmaking domain name registration company, which filed for an initial public offering earlier this week, has added back a number of costs, including fees paid to the private equity firms that are among its biggest investors, to the earnings measure it wants to be judged on. Read more of this post

Software flags potential riots or fights; Making sense of vast data with technology

Software flags potential riots or fights

Wednesday, June 11, 2014 – 06:30

Lim Yan Liang

The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – The group comprising Airbus Defence and Space and IT firm NCS produced a system which automatically zooms in on a face for analysis without the need for an operator.

This is done by attaching a second camera with face-recognition software to existing CCTV cameras installed by the police or other agencies, said NCS vice-president of communications engineering Wong Soon Nam. Read more of this post

Taxi drivers are only angry at Uber because it’s ending their gravy train; If taxicabs want to compete against Uber, they should stop protesting and beat it at its own game

Taxi drivers are only angry at Uber because it’s ending their gravy train

If taxicabs want to compete against Uber, they should stop protesting and beat it at its own game

By Katherine Rushton

4:34PM BST 12 Jun 2014

The United States may be the spiritual home of capitalism, but its endemic thirst for money does not always reward innovation.

Sometimes, it does quite the opposite. Read more of this post

‘Selfies With Purpose’: The Latest Big E-Commerce Idea; Fitbay aims to be the “Facebook of social shopping”

‘Selfies With Purpose’: The Latest Big E-Commerce Idea

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN

JUNE 12, 2014 8:21 AM Comment

The above headline may sound like pie-in-the-sky thinking, but it is actually part of the business plan (and purpose) of a new e-commerce social network called Fitbay, which just raised $2 million in seed funding from Steadfast Venture Capital of New York and Creandum, a Nordic venture capitalist company and Spotify investor. Fitbay aims to be the “Facebook of social shopping” according to Christian Wylonis, its founder and chief executive. Read more of this post

It’s an Amazon.com economy, now; More and more of the economy’s actively hiring employers are in retailing or in the business of getting goods to stores or your home

It’s an Amazon.com economy, now

Stephen Gandel, senior editor

@FortuneMagazine

JUNE 12, 2014, 5:00 AM EDT

More and more of the economy’s actively hiring employers are in retailing or in the business of getting goods to stores or your home.

We may all work for Amazon.com someday.

On Monday, Reuters reported that the the giant online retailer plans to launch an online marketplace for local services where people can find everything from haircuts to handymen. It will be modeled after Amazon Fresh, the grocery delivery service that Amazon has been slowly rolling out. And Amazon also looks like it’s set to launch a streaming music service as well. Read more of this post

Why Apple wants the cloud to disappear; “Apple is moving innovation down the stack into hardware/software integration, where it’s hard for Google to follow. And Google is moving innovation up the stack into cloud-based AI and machine learning services

Why Apple wants the cloud to disappear

Philip Elmer-DeWitt

JUNE 12, 2014, 4:57 PM EDT

You don’t need a plumbers license to use the faucet.

If “vapor” wasn’t already a computer industry term of art,  it would a good word for what’s happened to “the cloud” — a buzzword stretched so thin it’s all but lost its meaning. Read more of this post

Is Tony Fadell the next Steve Jobs or … the next Larry Page? At Apple he masterminded the iPod. Now the founder of Nest–which he recently sold to Google for $3.2 billion–is leading the search giant’s effort to disrupt your home

Is Tony Fadell the next Steve Jobs or … the next Larry Page?

Adam Lashinsky

JUNE 12, 2014, 7:29 AM EDT

At Apple he masterminded the iPod and was once seen as a potential CEO. Now the founder of Nest–which he recently sold to Google for $3.2 billion–is leading the search giant’s effort to disrupt your home. Read more of this post

Startup launches ‘first wearable health record’ for Google Glass

Updated: Friday June 13, 2014 MYT 9:56:28 AM

Startup launches ‘first wearable health record’ for Google Glass

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc’s futuristic eyeglasses are finding their way into hospitals and clinics throughout the United States.
To meet the growing demand for Google Glass from physicians, Drchrono, a Mountain View, Calif., based electronic medical record company has developed a new application for the device it claims is the first “wearable health record.”
Doctors who register for the Drchrono app for Glass can use it to record a consultation or surgery with the patient’s permission. Videos, photos and notes are stored in the patient’s electronic medical record or in Box, a cloud-based storage and collaboration service and can be shared with the patient on request. Read more of this post

Keeping Big Data Small: Beware the temptation of open-ended projects

June 12, 2014

CFO.com | US

Keeping Big Data Small

Beware the temptation of open-ended projects.

Keith Button

In 1973, the British economist E.F. Schumacherpublished a popular book whose title became a rallying cry for those who thought the overuse of technology was destroying the earth’s resources:Small is Beautiful. With much of corporate America on the verge of plunging into projects involving “big data,” finance chiefs are being advised to take Schumacher’s dictum to heart. Read more of this post

How Big Data Brought Good Decisions to Life; A Big Data case study

June 12, 2014

CFO.com | US

How Big Data Brought Good Decisions to Life

A Big Data case study.

Keith Button

For Merchant Cash and Capital of New York, an alternative financing company for small merchants, the initial goals for its first Big Data project were pretty straightforward, says its CFO, Jeffrey Beckwith: lower the company’s underwriting cost per deal and improve the underwriting decisions. Read more of this post

Big Data: Where the Money Is; Free-standing Big Data businesses can evolve from the expansion of data gathering and analysis within a single company

June 12, 2014

CFO.com | US

Big Data: Where the Money Is

Free-standing Big Data businesses can evolve from the expansion of data gathering and analysis within a single company.

As Big Data grows bigger, more complicated, and more difficult to deal with, the choice of which data get retained and which discarded becomes pivotal. Read more of this post

Who Will Be the Data Keepers? As Big Data grows bigger, more complicated, and more difficult to deal with, the choice of which data get retained and which discarded becomes pivotal

June 12, 2014

CFO.com | US

Who Will Be the Data Keepers?

As Big Data grows bigger, more complicated, and more difficult to deal with, the choice of which data get retained and which discarded becomes pivotal.

John Parkinson

Free-standing Big Data businesses can evolve from the expansion of data gathering and analysis within a single company. Read more of this post

Twitter Isn’t Getting Fitter

Twitter Isn’t Getting Fitter

MIRIAM GOTTFRIED

June 12, 2014 4:31 p.m. ET

It hasn’t gotten much easier to be a Twitter TWTR +3.52% user. The same is true for Twitter investors.

The micromessaging service’s struggle to jump-start user growth was thrown into the spotlight again on Thursday with the resignation of Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani. It is unclear whether Mr. Rowghani’s departure resulted from anything more than internal politics. But the fact that he was in charge of Twitter’s product team, tasked with making the platform more appealing to new users, highlights the company’s ongoing problems.

Desktop users were reminded about the clunkiness and complexity of Twitter’s Web platform when they were forced onto it Wednesday during a temporary outage of its TweetDeck application. The shutdown, enforced while the company dealt with a security bug, also underlined the service’s reputation for being prone to glitches.

Granted, Twitter is primarily a mobile-focused company, with 78% of its monthly average users and 80% of advertising revenue coming from that platform in the first quarter. But its mobile application also could use some tweaks, including the ability to view customized lists of people followed, as is possible on TweetDeck.

These details matter because Twitter’s rich valuation rests on its ability to grow its user base. The company failed to satisfy lofty expectations in the first quarter, reporting sequential user growth of 6%—only slightly better than the prior quarter’s 4%. Read more of this post

Enabling Big Data: Building the Capabilities That Really Matter

Enabling Big Data: Building the Capabilities That Really Matter

by Rashi Agarwal, Elias Baltassis, Jon Brock, and James Platt

MAY 13, 2014

Overview

It’s no secret that big data offers enormous potential for businesses. Every C-suite on the planet understands the promise. Less understood—and much less put into practice—are the steps that companies must take in order to realize that potential. For all their justifiable enthusiasm about big data, too many businesses risk leaving its vast potential on the table—or, worse, ceding it to competitors.

(https://www.bcgperspectives.com/big_data_and_beyond)Big data has brought game-changing shifts to the way data is acquired, analyzed, stored, and used. Solutions can be more flexible, more scalable, and more cost-effective than ever before. Instead of building one-off systems designed to address specific problems for specific business units, companies can create a common platform leveraged in different ways by different parts of the business. And all kinds of data—structured and unstructured, internal and external—can be incorporated. Read more of this post

SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud): The Next Big Thing

SMAC: The Next Big Thing

Tyler Durden on 06/11/2014 21:58 -0400

If you don’t know SMAC, then you don’t know jack. SMAC – Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud – is the ubiquitous term that every startup pre-IPO entrepreneur must use (no matter how awkwardly) in order to garner triple digit P/E valuations. Clearly not as superfluous as Pets.com, Goldman describes the powerful theme in enterprise software, enabling businesses to realign go-to market models with faster and informed decision-making driving an enhanced user experience. Read more of this post

Why Amazon Loves Local — and Why It Absolutely Shouldn’t

Why Amazon Loves Local — and Why It Absolutely Shouldn’t

Renee Ann Butler

06/12/14 – 06:00 AM EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Amazon (AMZN) is set to launch a local marketplace specifically for services later this year, according to Reuters. The online agora would expand Amazon’s existing third-party seller system to include local service providers. Amazon Local, the company’s existing Groupon (GRPN) lookalike, already offers some services; new service-oriented sellers, like carpenters and plumbers, will join them on this new marketplace. Read more of this post

Growth stalls in readers paying for online news in spite of experimenting with new ways of charging for content

June 12, 2014 12:02 am

Growth stalls in readers paying for online news

By Robert Cookson, Digital Media Correspondent

The media industry failed last year to persuade more customers to pay for its online news services, in spite of experimenting with new ways of charging for content, new research has found.

According to a survey of 19,000 people in 10 countries, conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, only one internet user in 10 was willing to pay for digital news last year – exactly the same proportion as in 2012. Read more of this post