Posts tagged socialmedia
Middle East is Going Off. Twitter & Facebook’s Role? Debatable…..
Watching all this stuff (Tunisia, Egypt, rioting, internet being turned off, etc) reminded me of a piece by the ever-popular Malcom Gladwell this summer. Basically, his argument is that Facebook, Twitter, an dother social media are/will be bit players at best in large scale social protest and change.
Enjoy w/your lunch. Excerpt below, full story at the link. http://nyr.kr/9Y92DZ
SMALL CHANGE
Social media can’t provide what social change has always required. At four-thirty in the afternoon on Monday, February 1, 1960, four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. They were freshmen at North Carolina A. & T., a black college a mile or so away. “I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress. “We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied. The Woolworth’s lunch counter was a long L-shaped bar that could seat sixty-six people, with a standup snack bar at one end. The seats were for whites. The snack bar was for blacks. Another employee, a black woman who worked at the steam table, approached the students and tried to warn them away. “You’re acting stupid, ignorant!” she said. They didn’t move. Around five-thirty, the front doors to the store were locked. The four still didn’t move. Finally, they left by a side door. Outside, a small crowd had gathered, including a photographer from the Greensboro Record. “I’ll be back tomorrow with A. & T. College,” one of the students said. By next morning, the protest had grown to twenty-seven men and four women, most from the same dormitory as the original four. The men were dressed in suits and ties. The students had brought their schoolwork, and studied as they sat at the counter. On Wednesday, students from Greensboro’s “Negro” secondary school, Dudley High, joined in, and the number of protesters swelled to eighty. By Thursday, the protesters numbered three hundred, including three white women, from the Greensboro campus of the University of North Carolina. By Saturday, the sit-in had reached six hundred. People spilled out onto the street. White teen-agers waved Confederate flags. Someone threw a firecracker. At noon, the A. & T. football team arrived. “Here comes the wrecking crew,” one of the white students shouted. By the following Monday, sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five miles away, and Durham, fifty miles away. The day after that, students at Fayetteville State Teachers College and at Johnson C. Smith College, in Charlotte, joined in, followed on Wednesday by students at St. Augustine’s College and Shaw University, in Raleigh. On Thursday and Friday, the protest crossed state lines, surfacing in Hampton and Portsmouth, Virginia, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and in Chattanooga, Tennessee. By the end of the month, there were sit-ins throughout the South, as far west as Texas. “I asked every student I met what the first day of the sitdowns had been like on his campus,” the political theorist Michael Walzer wrote in Dissent. “The answer was always the same: ‘It was like a fever. Everyone wanted to go.’ ” Some seventy thousand students eventually took part. Thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized. These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.Why the revolution will not be tweeted.
by Malcolm GladwellOCTOBER 4, 2010
……..
Venture Capital Investing Up 34 Percent To $6.5 Billion In Q2
I’m loving these sector breakdowns by TC. Enjoy.
Funding at its highest levels since Q308. Hmmmm……
Venture capitalists invested $6.5 billion in 906 deals in the second quarter of 2010, according to a MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association, based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. Quarterly investment activity increased 34 percent in terms of dollars and 22 percent in number of deals compared to the first quarter of 2010 when $4.9 billion was invested in 740 deals.
In the first half of 2010, VC investments totaled $11.4 billion in 1,646 deals, a 49 percent increase in dollars and a 23 percent increase in deals from the first half of 2009, in the mist of the recession, when $7.7 billion was invested in 1,340 deals.
The Software industry had the most deals completed in Q2 with 229 rounds, representing a jump of 43 percent from the 160 rounds completed in the first quarter. In terms of dollars invested, the Software sector was in third place, increasing 43 percent from the prior quarter to $1 billion in the second quarter of 2010.
Internet-specific companies received $879 million going into 212 deals in the second quarter, flat in terms of dollars and a 25 percent increase in deals over the first quarter of 2010 when $891 million went into 169 deals. ‘Internet-Specific’ is a discrete classification assigned to a company with a business model that is fundamentally dependent on the Internet, regardless of the company’s primary industry category.
Investments in the clean tech sector doubled in the second quarter compared to Q1 of 2010. The sector saw a 107 percent increase in dollars over the first quarter to $1.5 billion in 71 deals compared with 70 deals in the first quarter. The life sciences sector jumped 52 percent in dollars and 36 percent in deals from the prior quarter to $2.1 billion going into 234 deals. Biotechnology again received the highest level of funding, rising 59 percent in dollars and 34 percent in deal volume in the second quarter with $1.3 billion going into 139 deals. Medical device investing also increased 40 percent in both dollars and deals over the first quarter with $755 million going into 95 deals in Q2.
The Industrial/Energy industry received the second highest level of funding in the quarter with $1.3 billion going into 61 deals, representing a 95 percent increase in dollars but a 13 percent decrease in deals compared to the first quarter when $658 million went into 70 deals. In all, 11 of the 17 sectors experienced dollar increases in the second quarter, including Computers and Peripherals (48 percent increase), Consumer Products and Services (44 percent), and IT Services (28 percent). Sectors which saw decreases in dollars included Semiconductors (40 percent decrease), Financial Services (22 percent) and Telecommunications (27 percent).
Seed and early stage deals also increased in Q2 from prior quarters, rising 54 percent in dollar value to $2.3 billion. The actual number of Seed and Early stage deals increased 32 percent to 429 from the prior quarter. Seed/Early stage deals accounted for 47 percent of total deal volume in the second quarter, compared to the first quarter when it accounted for 44 percent of all deals. The average Seed deal in the second quarter was $7.1 million, up from $5.1 million in the first quarter. The average Early stage deal was $4.7 million in Q2, up from $4.4 million in the prior quarter.
Expansion stage dollars increased 48 percent in the second quarter, with $2.7 billion going into 277 deals. Overall, Expansion stage deals accounted for 31 percent of venture deals in the second quarter, down slightly from 32 percent in the first quarter of 2010. The average Expansion stage deal was $9.7 million, up from $7.6 million in the first quarter of 2010.
These numbers create an optimistic view of the venture capital sector that is not reflected in another recent National Venture Capital Association study that showed that most U.S. venture capitalists expect their market to contract. And while, fundraising is on the rise, long terms returns are hurting.
![NYTMag Preview. It drops sunday, read it here now.
DIGITAL DIPLOMACY
Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two young members of the State Department, are hoping to nudge diplomacy into the 21st century, one Twitter post at a time.
On Twitter, Cohen, who is 28, and Ross, who is 38, are among the most followed of anyone working for the U.S. government, coming in third and fourth after Barack Obama and John McCain. This didn’t happen by chance. Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors. Ross and Cohen’s style of engagement — perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana — reflects the hybrid nature of this approach. Two of Cohen’s recent posts were, in order: “Guinea holds first free election since 1958” and “Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!” This offhand mix of pop and politics has on occasion raised eyebrows and a few hackles (writing about a frappucino during a rare diplomatic mission to Syria; a trip with Ashton Kutcher to Russia in February), yet, together, Ross and Cohen have formed an unlikely and unprecedented team in the State Department. They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft.
To hear Ross and Cohen tell it, even last year, in this age of rampant peer-to-peer connectivity, the State Department was still boxed into the world of communiqués, diplomatic cables and slow government-to-government negotiations, what Ross likes to call “white guys with white shirts and red ties talking to other white guys with white shirts and red ties, with flags in the background, determining the relationships.” And then Hillary Clinton arrived. “The secretary is the one who unleashed us,” Ross says. “She’s the godmother of 21st-century statecraft.”
Traditional forms of diplomacy still dominate, but 21st-century statecraft is not mere corporate rebranding — swapping tweets for broadcasts. It represents a shift in form and in strategy — a way to amplify traditional diplomatic efforts, develop tech-based policy solutions and encourage cyberactivism. Diplomacy may now include such open-ended efforts as the short-message-service (S.M.S.) social-networking program the State Department set up in Pakistan last fall. “A lot of the 21st-century dynamics are less about, Do you comport politically along traditional liberal-conservative ideological lines?” Ross says. “Today it is — at least in the spaces we engage in — Is it open or is it closed?”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l5nq0lDPOR1qbx855o1_400.jpg)
NYTMag Preview. It drops sunday, read it here now.
DIGITAL DIPLOMACY
Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two young members of the State Department, are hoping to nudge diplomacy into the 21st century, one Twitter post at a time.
On Twitter, Cohen, who is 28, and Ross, who is 38, are among the most followed of anyone working for the U.S. government, coming in third and fourth after Barack Obama and John McCain. This didn’t happen by chance. Their Twitter posts have become an integral part of a new State Department effort to bring diplomacy into the digital age, by using widely available technologies to reach out to citizens, companies and other nonstate actors. Ross and Cohen’s style of engagement — perhaps best described as a cross between social-networking culture and foreign-policy arcana — reflects the hybrid nature of this approach. Two of Cohen’s recent posts were, in order: “Guinea holds first free election since 1958” and “Yes, the season premier [sic] of Entourage is tonight, soooo excited!” This offhand mix of pop and politics has on occasion raised eyebrows and a few hackles (writing about a frappucino during a rare diplomatic mission to Syria; a trip with Ashton Kutcher to Russia in February), yet, together, Ross and Cohen have formed an unlikely and unprecedented team in the State Department. They are the public face of a cause with an important-sounding name: 21st-century statecraft.
To hear Ross and Cohen tell it, even last year, in this age of rampant peer-to-peer connectivity, the State Department was still boxed into the world of communiqués, diplomatic cables and slow government-to-government negotiations, what Ross likes to call “white guys with white shirts and red ties talking to other white guys with white shirts and red ties, with flags in the background, determining the relationships.” And then Hillary Clinton arrived. “The secretary is the one who unleashed us,” Ross says. “She’s the godmother of 21st-century statecraft.”
Traditional forms of diplomacy still dominate, but 21st-century statecraft is not mere corporate rebranding — swapping tweets for broadcasts. It represents a shift in form and in strategy — a way to amplify traditional diplomatic efforts, develop tech-based policy solutions and encourage cyberactivism. Diplomacy may now include such open-ended efforts as the short-message-service (S.M.S.) social-networking program the State Department set up in Pakistan last fall. “A lot of the 21st-century dynamics are less about, Do you comport politically along traditional liberal-conservative ideological lines?” Ross says. “Today it is — at least in the spaces we engage in — Is it open or is it closed?”
The Scrambler is on Twitter
@scramblerblog.
That’s right people- The Scrambler is on Twitter.
You may have noticed the little birdie in the left hand corner. We’re auto-publishing all the content that you see on the site.
But even better, we’re gonna work to highlight extra content. We actually look at a TON of stuff everyday, and not all of it makes the cut (ie, we’re too busy to post/write). Twitter is perfect for that. So check us out. The handle is @scramblerblog. Follow us, retweet, etc.
Stay @thirsty my friends.
![From an interview in WSJ the other week…
Q: How did you start up and grow so quickly?
Huffington: The site was created in the middle of a perfect storm. We had news. We leveraged social media and the power of community and began to attract a loyal readership. Some of my close friends [were early investors]. We had a distinguished group of bloggers and news aggregation, which was drawing traffic. The third element was moving into original reporting. Then, we raised $25 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. At the time, many people were skeptical, saying our growth would plummet after the election, but exactly the opposite happened.
Sound familiar?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l30461jmCT1qbx855o1_400.jpg)
From an interview in WSJ the other week…
Q: How did you start up and grow so quickly?
Huffington: The site was created in the middle of a perfect storm. We had news. We leveraged social media and the power of community and began to attract a loyal readership. Some of my close friends [were early investors]. We had a distinguished group of bloggers and news aggregation, which was drawing traffic. The third element was moving into original reporting. Then, we raised $25 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. At the time, many people were skeptical, saying our growth would plummet after the election, but exactly the opposite happened.
Sound familiar?
History of Social Games
A Handy How-To: Lock Up Your Fb Profile Under New System
A nice tutorial. It still takes 13 steps (before the changes last week, it took over 30!)
NY Lunchtime Read: Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You?
This is a crucial moment for Facebook, and a delicate one, because We, the users, are what Facebook is selling. “Facebook is walking a fine line of keeping the trust of its members, and wanting to exploit them for profit,” says Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch. “It’s having a tough time balancing the two.” In 2007, the company was valued at $15 billion, after Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake for $240 million, but profit has been elusive. If they can solve this problem, come up with a viable business model—one might note that if they charged $1 a month for the service and even half its users stuck around, it would take in $100 million each month—it could go public and even become the first big IPO to reinvigorate the market; if Facebook doesn’t, Zuckerberg & Co. will struggle to resist a takeover by a very rich tech company (well, Microsoft) for a fire-sale price of a billion or two. After CFO Gideon Yu announced his exit last week, the company claimed that it was looking for a replacement with public-company experience, but the way forward is far from clear. The history of social networks is an absurd one of missed opportunities, from Tripod to Geocities to AOL, though Facebook thus far has avoided their pitfalls. It’s been unaffected by Friendster’s technical glitches and its taint of uncoolness; Facebook’s antiseptic design clears away the lascivious, spam-ified, knife-wielding clutter of MySpace, a site that was double Facebook’s size in the U.S. eight months ago but whose technological innovation has been stymied by News Corp until recently.
Hang in There KT, EP, OG, JW and others. The champagne will probably resume flowing shortly (if it ever stopped).
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