Finance Geek

Despite recent commentary to the contrary it seems very clear to me that both Google+ and Facebook are making great progress.  (For negative commentary see Google+ … ‘Worse than a ghost town’ on MediaShift and At last, we’re logging back on to the real world from our old friends at the Daily Mail.)

The case for Facebook is made crystal clear by the chart below.  Even in their most mature market, the US, they are still showing great growth as measured by market share of time spent online.  Note this is a different (and better) measure than number of subscribers or active users as it also takes time on site into account.  In countries like the US Facebook must be pretty close to saturation in terms of user numbers, so their growth going forward will come from increasing the utility of the service to drive up frequency of logins and length of session.  Most (if not all) of the features announced at f8 last week will improve both these metrics.  Personally, I’m using Facebook much more to now that I have curated lists of people to follow, and I’m checking the top right hand box in my profile to see what people are listening to on Spotify so often that I’m thinking about turning it off

Google+ is earlier in it’s evolution, and the jury is still out on the long term viability of the service, but I bet they are pleased with the progress so far.  Growth has been staggering in the last couple of weeks, with traffic up 1,269% in the last seven days, and 50m users now on the service.  To put that in context Google+ has been live for 88 days, whilst it took Facebook and Twitter over three years to reach that milestone.  Moreover, Google will increasingly use Google+ profiles in its search engine results page, encouraging people to populate their profiles and post their content to Google+.  I updated my Google+ profile this morning after discovering it is the fourth result if you search on ‘brisbourne’, and I’m still thinking about whether I should syndicate my blog there.

For me though Facebook is still far the better service, both for reading and publishing content.

Big picture, it is great that these two companies are fighting each other on the basis of innovation, but the way these juggernauts use their existing reach to drive new features means that new startups need to find ways to partner with them and live within their ecosystems.  All out competition to Facebook and Google from socially oriented startups is getting harder and harder.  The speed with which Google got to 50m users and the fact they got there via home page promotion is evidence of this point in spades. 

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Just a few short weeks ago, precious metals were the trade of the day as the debt crises in the U.S. and abroad made stocks, bonds and cash less attractive for investors. But gold, often cited at the ultimate safe haven, has taken a shellacking in recent days, along with silver and copper. After hitting [...]

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Microsoft will spend $150 million dollars building a second data center alongside its $499 million facility already under construction in southern Virginia ? a move that underlines the software giant’s efforts to create a set of “cloud computing” services that compete with the likes of Google and Amazon.

As the company expands construction in?Boydton, Virginia ? …

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Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S II, has had a tremendously successful run with consumers since landing on U.S. shores, a prime example of Android’s continued success in the smartphone market at large. Sales of the Samsung Galaxy S II have reached 10 million worldwide, doubling from 5 million sales in only eight weeks.

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We first started to get interested in 3D printing a year or so back, and at that I played with a number of the services on the market, but the experience wasn’t easy, and 3D printers in the home still seemed some way off.

Both those things are now changing fast.

The usability challenge was that the modelling tools were difficult to use and the integration with 3D printing services was difficult.  In just 20 minutes earlier today I modelled the design below on 3dtin and then exported it to i.materialise where I was able to send it off to be 3D printed.  Hopefully it will arrive in a couple of days.

3dtin was incredibly easy to use, so much so that I could see my seven year old daughter modelling stuff as part of her schoolwork or to play with at home.  The ‘so easy a child could use it’ also struck the folks at Origo, who are planning to make a 3D printer for children (prototype picture below).  I want one of those. 

3D officionados amongst you will have noted that Makerbot recently raised $10m to grow their home assembly 3D printer kit business, so we have affordable 3D printers in the home already, although their product is best for early adopters who are good with a screwdriver.

I believe that 3D printing will be more revolutionary than 2D printing.  The possibilities are almost limitless, and it now feels like the timing for the market is almost on us.  A friend of mine (David Brown, founder of buy.at) recently bought a Makerbot and he emailed me saying he was coding for it in the dark with his headphones on, and that it felt like 1993 all over again.

(For those that are wondering Man, is my wife’s maiden name and the F is short for Fiona.  I went for Man rather than Brisbourne because it is shorter.  Considerably so…)

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook here! Apple has cut Q4 iPad orders from its Asian supply-chain partners by 25%, JP Morgan analysts say (via Bloomberg). The analysts say “several” of Apple’s supply-chain partners have reported this cut, which has come in the last two weeks. It is the first such cut that JP Morgan [...]

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook here! Calling Europe “the most serious risk now confronting the world economy,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made an urgent plea to EU policymakers this weekend: “The threat of cascading default, bank runs, and catastrophic risk must be taken off the table, as otherwise it will undermine all other efforts, [...]

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It’s pretty obvious times are tough for America’s working class. The combination of a prolonged period of stagnant wages, high unemployment and shaky economy - including a decade of little or no returns (if you’re lucky) on assets like stocks and real estate - make it harder to pay the bills. (See: As America’s Middle [...]

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“We are back in a danger zone,” says a top economist at the International Monetary Fund. Though an understatement, it captures the central paradox of this year’s annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank. Everyone is alarmed at the swift deterioration of the economic outlook, but there is no leadership - no consensus on what to do or, even when crude agreement exists, little conviction that practical politics will permit action. There is a hazardous vacuum of ideas and power.
Actually, what needs to be done is not obscure. Europe is now the flash point of global concern. Most of…

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Earlier this week the Federal Reserve ignited a firestorm in the global markets by admitting that the U.S. economy is facing downside risks. Although it continues to sugar coat the unpleasant reality, never has such a stunningly obvious statement resulted is so much turmoil.
Once again we are seeing the knee-jerk market reaction to seek refuge in the perceived safety of the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries. However I expect investors will soon discover that such assets are firmly in the eye of the storm. As the tempest moves on, those enjoying the dollar’s current stability may soon find…

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A new security measure introduced with Windows 8 requiring so-called secure boot keys could make it more difficult for consumers to load other operating systems including Linux on OEM Microsoft-certified machines pre-loaded with the software. Depending on whom you talk to, this is a massive violation of consumer freedom that might (or should) draw anti-trust scrutiny from authorities such as the EU — or it is a desirable defense against malware that just so happens to coincidentally inconvenience a small, if vocal, group of power users.

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These are tough times for Keynesians — or just about anyone hoping for governments to act boldly to address the globe’s myriad financial woes. In the U.S., a political divide has brought the government to a near-standstill yet again, while European policymakers continue to fiddle while the EU burns. Against that backdrop, “it’s hard to [...]

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Financial markets tumbled this week amid disappointment the Fed didn’t do more and general disgust with the lack of action from European policymakers. Which brings us to another installment of Taken to Task. For all the talk about how traders love the free market and believe in the principles of unfettered capitalism, the folks on [...]

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Facebook will soon allow its users to integrate all of their music, media, and lifestyle actions and interactions with their profiles, Mark Zuckerberg announced at Facebook’s f8 conference yesterday. Connecting profiles to services like Spotify will allow users to fill out their own curated “Timeline,” so friends can see each others’ media activities both as …

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If you have been anywhere near the internet over the last week or two you will have noticed the big changes coming out of Facebook. First they had smart lists, and then over the last couple of days at their f8 conference they have announced a slew of other initiatives, including deep integration with media players like Spotify and Netflix, richer and more varied share/like buttons, a revamped news feed, and user timelines. 

These developments are the latest in a long list of bold moves from the worlds largest website, some of which have been successful (newsfeed, Facebook platform, Facebook credits, Facebook Connect) and some less so, most notably the failed advertising initiative Beacon.

Overall though there has been many more successes than failures and several of these new developments took Facebook to a whole new level.  The introduction of the newsfeed changed gave social networks a vibrancy and immediacy that they had previously lacked, the Facebook platform brought a plethora of new apps and use cases and spawned the multi-billion dollar social games market, whilst Facebook Connect and the Like Button have boosted the size and power of the interest graph in ways that we are only just starting to understand, but which are undoubtedly hugely powerful.

Oh, and in the meantime they have grown revenues to an estimated $3.1bn this year with a very respectable 30% profit margin.

It is too early to know whether these new initiatives will work or not.  There are some who are complaining that Facebook is getting too complicated (I had some problems myself populating Facebook lists, and sorry to those of you who got an email suggesting I thought you worked at DFJ…), but my gut is that these issues will be ironed out and people will learn to use and love most of the new features.  In particular I think more fine grained control over sharing from smart lists will bring huge usability benefits and deep integration with news, music and video services will bring huge discovery benefits.

Most of all though, I’m impressed that Zuckerberg et al have continued their record of bold innovation.  Most companies start feeling that they have got too much to lose when their turnover gets to $50-100m and choosing the safe options.

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