Looks like there won’t be any big new challengers for iOS and Android this year, after Japan’s NTT DoCoMo shelved plans for a Tizen launch and Canonical conceded that no big manufacturers will release Ubuntu phones this year.
Major setbacks for two new smartphone OSs, Tizen and Ubuntu Touch
Just ask Yahoo, which paid $5.7 billion for broadcast.com and $3.6 billion for GeoCities in the last Internet bubble more than a decade ago. It drove off a crazy round of overvalued acquisitions culminating in America Online’s $165 billion deal with Time Warner in which funny money bought an old-line media business. It was fun for a while, but when these businesses didn’t produce, it all fell apart. Mojo can’t sustain itself.
Let’s hope this is not what we are seeing again, but it’s hard not to be worried. Silicon Valley has no incentive to stop the valuation madness.
Search for the ‘Next Big Thing’ Yields Soaring Valuations via The New York Times
I know that these stories all begin to sound like some hysterical “the valuations are too damn high” meme. But I was there for the first dot com boom and fizzle. Something has to sustain the market as it grows, and once the valuations get to a certain level, it requires the scale of the public markets to exit these investments. Unfortunately, the exuberance of the equity markets can only be sustained for so long.
(via marksbirch)
According to psychologist Barbara L. Fredrickson, it takes three positive emotions to outweigh every negative one. Based on this, the Google design team set up two jars of marble to examine the costs and benefits. For every positive emotion that the design makes, they put a marble in the good emotion jar. However, if the design causes a negative emotion, they’ll put 3 marbles in the bad emotion jar. Their goal is to get an empty negative jar and a full positive jar.
“Google Android’s 3 UX Design Principles and 2 Jars of Marbles” via Keira Bui on Medium
Very cool of Google to share these. I like the approach of thinking about positive/negative experiences as it can be a simple but powerful way to create emotionally engaging experiences. This is definitely true for apps like Contactive as we focus on improving productivity for our users.
Just don’t expect it to last forever. They’re not “building addicts” for nothing.
“HBO Doesn’t Care If You Share Your HBO Go Account… For Now.” via TechCrunch
“Is there anything wrong, or evil, with this strategy? Not really. In fact, it’s pretty damned smart. It’s like an indefinitely long free trial in disguise. With HBO currently set-up to be sold only as a premium add-on to a cable bill that’s generally already pretty massive, convincing someone to get their their own account is a pretty huge hurdle. If the alternative is people pirating HBO’s shows, HBO might as well get those people comfortable with the convenience of going through the official channels.”
To put that another way, a 10-month-old startup just purchased a 93-year-old business for $100 million.
“10-Month-Old Startup Buys 93-Year-Old Business for $100 Million” via Mashable
I was literally about to sign up for Dollar Shave Club when I heard about Harry’s, then read this story today. I love the way they leveraged their initial product into being able to make this giant strategic investment.
Make way for another startup in the area of cybersecurity: Aorato, which has developed a behavior-monitoring firewall for the Microsoft Active Directory..
A very interesting enterprise startup, using behavioral patterns to improve security and being started by former Israeli cybersecurity experts.
Cybersecurity Startup Aorato Exits Stealth With A ‘Behavior Firewall’, $10M In Funding | TechCrunch
“Gartner said it expects global mobile advertising spending to reach $18 billion this year, up from the estimated $13.1 billion in 2013. By 2017 it’s projecting the market will have sized up to be worth $41.9 billion.”
Key points:
Mobile Ad Market Spending To Hit $18BN In 2014, Rising To ~$42BN By 2017, Says Gartner | TechCrunch
If this seems like an odd arena for T-Mobile to step into when it clearly has important things on the wireless side to tend to, you’re not alone. From the standpoint of building brand recognition with folks who are cost-sensitive, this certainly makes sense, and we’re sure a good number of people will actually take advantage of this. But how much does this distract away from T-Mobile’s objectives as a carrier? Only time can tell how this one will play out.
“The Uncarrier wants to be the Unbank of prepaid debit cards” via TechCrunch
As a small startup we are constantly wrestling with “wow, that new direction looks like shiny, let’s go after it.” Yet focus and clarity is important for our products and ultimately for our customers.
I’m curious how T-Mobile will fare as they start to act like a bank, taking on the likes of Simple and potentially distracting from their goals as a telco.
Cold and blustery. #nyc #polarvortex2 (at SoHo Square Park)
Binil Antony is the co-founder and CMO of Dexetra, the startup behind the Friday app – a contextual personal search application for Android. Friday is a featured app in the …
“Next, take a look at the app’s zero state again. If the app has to do some processing before it starts surfacing content, then ensure that your zero states can keep the user interested with feature introductions, tips or dummy content.”
We think about this a lot with Contactive since we need to “supercharge” your address book, and that can take a bit of time.
#neato 