"Mr. President, Obama, Sir. You don't suppose you could lift that 20-year probation the FTC just slapped on Facebook. I got you elected, dude."
(Reuters) - Facebook will be required to get user consent for certain changes to privacy settings as part of a settlement of federal charges that it deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended.
The settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission will also subject the company, which is reported to preparing a $10 billion initial public offering, to 20 years of independent audits.
Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a lengthy post on the company's official blog on Tuesday.
"I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes."
He said a few "high-profile" mistakes, such as changes to the service's privacy policy two years ago, "have often overshadowed much of the good work we've done."
To ensure that Facebook did a better job, Zuckerberg said the company had created two new corporate privacy officer positions to oversee Facebook products and policy.
In its complaint, the FTC said that Facebook had repeatedly violated laws against deceptive and unfair practices. For example, it said Facebook promised users that it would not share personal information with advertisers, but it did.
Also, the company had failed to warn users that it was changing its website in December 2009 so that certain information that users had designated as private, such as their "Friends List," would be made public, the FTC said.
Chris Conley, policy attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said
"The settlement makes it clear that companies can't simply change the rules without asking users' permission."
But he said that to keep pace with new technology, there was a need for new laws and tools.
Conley said.
"We shouldn't have to struggle with complicated and constantly shifting privacy settings just to keep control of our own personal information."
Facebook, which has more than 800 million users, has often been criticized for its privacy practices since its founding in a Harvard dorm room in 2004.
Earlier this year, the company came under fire for practices related to its use of facial recognition technology to automatically identify people appearing in the photos that are shared on the service.
ABILITY TO INNOVATE
On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, FTC officials said the settlement did not expressly cover the use of facial recognition technology.
They noted, however, that it was broadly crafted so that it would prevent Facebook from deceiving consumers going forward.
If Facebook is found to have violated any of the provisions of the settlement, the company is subject to fines of $16,000 per day for each violation, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said.
Said Leibowitz,
"Nothing in this order will restrict Facebook's ability to innovate. Facebook's innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy."
Under the settlement, which must be approved by an FTC administrative law judge, Facebook is barred from being deceptive about how it uses personal information, and is required to get permission before changing the visibility of the personal information users have posted.
The settlement follows a similar agreement in March between the FTC and Google Inc over the Web search leader's rollout of its own social network called Buzz.
In 2010, the FTC settled charges with Twitter and Google, after the agency alleged that the social networking service had failed to safeguard users' personal information.
Ray Valdes, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner, said he did not think the timing of the settlement was directly related to Facebook's IPO plans.
he said, but added:
"I don't think it's directly tied to the IPO. The IPO is still off in the distance. There's some connection. I'd make more of a direct link if this was happening in January."
COMMENTARY: In a blog article dated November 11, 2011, I alerted you to the coming settlement between Facebook and the FTC. I am glad to finally see this happen, and that the FTC didn't back down.
Zuck has been very cavaliar about user privacy, thinking he can get away with just about anything. It seems everytime Facebook makes a new change, users need to provide more information about themselves. That's been the pattern.
Social game providers like Zynga have also committed some atrocious privacy violations, sharing information they collected from their gameplayers, and supplying it to their advertisers, and perhaps even to Facebook.
The whole social networking ecosystem is rampant with privacy violatioins. Smartphones are being used to track us, and hundreds of apps have been found to capture information, including our photos, names, addresses and even phone numbers, and using that information without the users consent.
I love the fact that there is a sizable fine of $16,000 for every new violation per day. Same thing goes for Google and Twitter.
Join the privacy violator club Zuck.
Courtesy of an article dated November 29, 2011 appearing in Reuters
When marketing executives Michael Migliozzi II and Brian Flatow decided they wanted to buy Pabst Blue Ribbon, a private beer company, they created BuyaBeerCompany.com to ask the public for financial help. The idea was quickly shot down by the SEC, prompting the recent discussion on where “crowdfunding” fits into the scheme of private businesses.
Crowdfunding, the practice of private companies soliciting the public for investments, has been made popular by websites such as Kickstarter, IndieGoGo,ProFounder and others. These are great for individuals and small groups looking for a leg up, but when it comes to private businesses using these as an investment tactic in exchange for shares in the company, the SEC wants everything to be nice and documented. Thus, the commission created a crowdfunding bill to officially allow private companies legal access to crowdfunding.
Currently, the SEC only allows a company to have 499 shareholders total in a private company. This makes crowdfunding difficult, as at its nature, crowdfunding is provided in small amounts by a lot more people than a regular venture or angel investment. The proposed bill, however, will allow any number of individuals to invest, but are capped by $10,000 or ten percent of their income, whichever comes first, and can only accept up to $5 million.
Check out the inforgraphic below for more details on the bill and the state of crowdfunding today:
Click Image To Enlarge
COMMENTARY: On November 4, the federal crowdfunding bill, Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act – H.R. 2930, was passed by a nearly unanimous House of Representatives (430-17) in one of the few non-partisan acts of the current Congress. Referred to as ‘the most important financial reform of the decade.” the legislation promises great change. If the bill becomes law, it will transform how businesses raise small dollars.
The concept of ‘crowdfunding’ was originally included within President Obama’s jobs bill. While the job’s bill was encountering fierce opposition by the Republican Party, the concept of stripping the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of some of its regulatory oversight met with positive reactions. Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry introduced the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act in the House.
As passed, the House version of the crowdfunding includes the following requirements and limitations on crowdfunding:
"The [issuer] may only raise a maximum of $1 million, or $2 million if the [issuer] provides potential investors with audited financial statements.
Each investor is limited to investing an amount equal to the lesser of (i) $10,000 or (ii) 10% of his or her annual income.
The issuer or the intermediary, if applicable, must take a number of steps to limit the risk to investors, including (i) warning them of the speculative nature of the investment and the limitations on resale, (ii) requiring them to answer questions demonstrating their understanding of the risks, and (iii) providing notice to the SEC of the offering, including certain prescribed information.”
This is going to drive angel investors and venture capital firms, which are at the forefront of seed stage and very early venture capital rounds, up the walls. That limit of $10,000 is a deal killer for them.
Do I need to remind everybody just how cheesy many of today's startups are? Even the high visibility ones, the ones you read about in my blog all the time, have issues with their management, business models, barriers to entry, etc.
Thankfully, the House of Representatives placed a maximum cap on the crowdfunding raise of $2 million and saw the wisdom of requiring audited financial statements, and placed a cap of $10,000 per investor.
The Senate is now debating the crowdfunding bill, let's hope that they see similar wisdom and don't just let the fox into the chicken coop.
Angels have dominated the seed stage, and many of them pool together to invest $250,000 to several millions for a promising startup. How will they be able to assess the degree of risk without some financials, and I doubt many of them are going to want to have hundreds of small investors invest on a crowdfunding deal. Who is going to be on the board of directors to look after their interests? You know what they say, "two's company, three's a crowd."
The new legislation is going to divert a lot of startups away from angels, and make it easier to raise capital from large groups of smaller investors, which is good for the investors because the risk is widely spread, and it makes it a whole lot easier for the founders.
On the other hand, inexperienced entrepreneurs know very little about valuation, and will probably want to raise as much as possible, without very little accountability or understanding of the repurcussions that can occur later down the road.
This new Congressional bill still raises so many questions.
Courtesy of an article dated November 19, 2011 appearing in Entrepreneur Corner
But what stuck out to us in the story–besides the timing, offering size and possible $100 billion valuation–is that Facebook has already drawn up the IPO docs without the help of bankers and lawyers who typically drool all over an offering of this magnitude. According to WSJ’s Shayndi Raice:
Facebook has gone so far as to craft its own prospectus, said the people familiar with the matter. A prospectus document—which is filed with the SEC outlining the company’s business—is typically prepared by bankers and lawyers hired by a company.
Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman has been leading the company’s talks with Silicon Valley bankers about an IPO, said people familiar with the matter.
Bankers are aggressively pursuing the company, but Facebook remains elusive about a commitment to specific banks, even though an IPO looms. Mr. Ebersman told some bankers that he is skeptical over what contribution investment banks could make to a Facebook IPO, since the company is so highly sought after by major investors, said people familiar with the matter.
So Facebook executives may go the unusual route of telling the Wall Street establishment to buzz off, kind of like what Google did in its IPO when it rankled bankers with a Dutch auction that cut out a chunk of the banker fees.
Bankers typically split about 6% to 7% of the offering size in underwriting fees. The Google IPO fees were just 2.8%, or $46 million of the $1.66 billion offering.
At a $10 billion offering size, we’re talking about $600 million to $700 million at stake.
COMMENTARY: I just love it. Sure looks to me like Zuck will do his own IPO like Google did back in 2004. It will be an auction-style at a fixed price is my guess. The 10% float will allow Facebook to create some scarcity and maintain a higher price. Zuck is cutting out those evil investment bankers, who only look out for themselves by offering the initial shares to large hedge funds, money market funds, and wealthy investors. The strategy is to give the stock a boost, before they offer shares to the general public, sometimes at prices that have been bumped so high,. that they immediately drop, leaving a lot of little people holding the bag.
I bet Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs is fuming that he could be cutout of acting as lead underwriter for the Facebook IPO. Blankfein has invested $1.5 million into Facebook, and was hoping to control his own destiny and making a killing. He still stands to make a huge windfall, but being cutout of those underwriting fees has to sting.
Courtesy of an article dated November 28, 2o11 appearing in The Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch
Worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 440.5 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 5.6 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Non-smartphone devices performed well, driven by demand in emerging markets for low-cost devices from white-box manufacturers, and for dual-subscriber identity module (SIM) devices.
Sales into the channel reached 460 million units. Gartner analysts said this increase was because of inventory build-up in the channel partly because of the shipping of new devices late in the quarter but mostly to prepare the channel for the holiday season. Gartner expects most of the build-up to be sold by the first quarter of 2012.
Annette Zimmermann, principal analyst at Gartner based in Munich said.
"Our forecast for the end of the year remains broadly in line at a worldwide level as regions such as Asia/Pacific and the Middle East and Africa make up for weaker performance in the Western European market."
Here are a few of the Q3 smartphone sales highlights:
Smartphone sales to end users reached 115 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 42 percent from the third quarter of 2010.
Sequentially, smartphone sales slowed to 7 percent growth from the second quarter of 2011 to the third quarter of 2011.
Smartphone sales accounted for 26 percent of all mobile phone sales, growing only marginally from 25 percent in the previous quarter.
Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner said.
"Strong smartphone growth in China and Russia helped increase overall volumes in the quarter, but demand for smartphones stalled in advanced markets such as Western Europe and the U.S. as many users waited for new flagship devices featuring new versions of the key operating systems. Slowdowns also occurred in Latin America and the Middle East and Africa."
Ms Cozza said.
"Some consumers held off upgrading in the third quarter because they were waiting for promotions on other new high-end models that were launched in the run-up to the fourth quarter holiday season. Other consumers were waiting for a rumored new iPhone and associated price cuts on older iPhone models; this affected U.S. sales particularly."
Despite a drop in market share, Nokia continued to be the worldwide leader in mobile device sales as it accounted for 23.9 percent of global sales (see Table 1). The second quarter of 2011 was the low point for Nokia, and the third quarter brought signs of improvement. Dual-SIM phones in particular, and feature phones generally, maintained Nokia's momentum in emerging markets. Heavy marketing from both Nokia and Microsoft to push the new Lumia devices should bring more improvement in the fourth quarter of 2011. However, a true turnaround won't take place until the second half of 2012.
Table 1 Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Vendor in 3Q11 (Thousands of Units)
Vendor
3Q11
Units
3Q11 Market Share (%)
3Q10
Units
3Q10 Market Share (%)
Nokia
105,353.5
23.9
117,461.0
28.2
Samsung
78,612.2
17.8
71,671.8
17.2
LG Electronics
21,014.6
4.8
27,478.7
6.6
Apple
17,295.3
3.9
13,484.4
3.2
ZTE
14,107.8
3.2
7,817.2
1.9
Research In Motion
12,701.1
2.9
12,508.3
3.0
HTC
12,099.9
2.7
6,494.3
1.6
Motorola
11,182.7
2.5
8,961.4
2.1
Huawei Device
10,668.2
2.4
5,478.1
1.3
Sony Ericsson
8,475.9
1.9
10,346.5
2.5
Others
148,990.9
33.8
135,384.1
32.5
Total
440,502.2
100
417,085.7
100
Source: Gartner (November 2011)
Samsung
Samsung became the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer worldwide as sales to end users tripled year over year to reach 24 million; sell in was high as the channel built inventory. Samsung was the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer for the first time, ahead of Nokia in Western Europe and Asia. Gartner attributes this to the strong performance of Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, which now cover a broad range of prices, and a weaker competitive market. Analysts expect more competition in the fourth quarter of 2011, not least because sales of the iPhone 4S, 4 and 3GS will capture share from Android manufacturers.
Apple
Apple shipped 17 million iPhones, an annual increase of 21 percent, but down nearly 3 million units from the second quarter of 2011 because of Apple's iPhone 4S announcement in October. Gartner believes Apple will bounce back in the fourth quarter because of its strongest ever preorders for the iPhone 4S in the first weekend after its announcement. Markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China are becoming more important to Apple, representing 16 percent of overall sales and showing that the iPhone has a place in emerging markets, especially now that the 3GS and 4 have received price cuts.
Android Phones
The Android OS accounted for 52.5 percent of smartphone sales to end users in the third quarter of 2011 (see Table 2), more than doubling its market share from the third quarter of 2010.
Ms Cozza said.
"Android benefited from more mass-market offerings, a weaker competitive environment and the lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems such as Windows Phone 7 and RIM. Apple's iOS market share suffered from delayed purchases as consumers waited for the new iPhone. Continued pressure is impacting RIM's performance, and its smartphone share reached its lowest point so far in the U.S. market, where it dropped to 10 percent."
Table 2 Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q11 (Thousands of Units)
Operating System
3Q11
Units
3Q11 Market Share (%)
3Q10
Units
3Q10 Market Share (%)
Android
60,490.4
52.5
20,544.0
25.3
Symbian
19,500.1
16.9
29,480.1
36.3
iOS
17,295.3
15.0
13,484.4
16.6
Research In Motion
12,701.1
11.0
12,508.3
15.4
Bada
2,478.5
2.2
920.6
1.1
Microsoft
1,701.9
1.5
2,203.9
2.7
Others
1,018.1
0.9
1,991.3
2.5
Total
115,185.4
100
81,132.6
100
Source: Gartner (November 2011)
More information is available in the Gartner report "Market Share: Mobile Communication Devices by Region and Country, 3Q11," which is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1847315.
COMMENTARY: Wow, Android OS phones are kicking ass. Bye, bye iPhone. RIM BlackBerry is having a shitty quarter dropping from a market share of 15.4% in Q3 2010 to 11.0% in Q3 2011.
If there was ever any doubt that the Android OS has won the smartphone war, all you have to do is look at the numbers. Even if Apple had launched the Apple 4S in Q3, I doubt it would've made tht much of a difference.
Apple thought that by controlling everything: hardware, operating system, app ecosystem, digital music, and sales distribution channels that you can win. Apple still has a slight lead in iPhone apps, but Android is closing that gap---FAST. You can bet that the next round of smartphones will come equipped with a SIRI-knockoff, hopefully even better. It was only a matter of time before Android caught and then passed the iPhone.
So what can Apple do about it?
China represents a huge new market for the iPhone and the rest of the Apple mobile device lineup, so I do expect iPhone unit sales to jump, but so will Androids.
Apple can remain a closed system of devices and do nothing, counting on its reputation for quality and innovation, brand loyalty and legions of Apple evangelists, in which case they will continue to grow methodically, but eventually dwindling into insignificance, by sharing the highend segment of the smartphone market, but abandoning the midrange and lowend of the market to other smartphone brands, of which many of them will be Android.
Solution?
At some point, Apple may need to open up its closed ecosystem to Android developers. I know that this sounds almost impossible to even imagine, but Steve Jobs is no longer running the company, Tim Cook is, and he may see Apple's share of the smartphone market dwindle or even remain static at some point in the not too distant future. Besides, I have one hell of an imagination, and if somebody tells me "Go that way, because it's shorter," I sometimes ignore that advice and take the longer way because I love the view.
FACT; Smartphones are quickly becoming a commodity. Apple was even forced to conduct a Black Friday Sale of all things, so that they could move their product. With the exception of Apple, smartphones are not really a huge moneymaker for the majority of mobile phone manufacturers. It has become a price-driven market. There is not that much product differentiation. Most of the smartphone producers have matched or emulated the iPhone. There really isn't much of a difference anymore, although the iPhone UI is friendlier, apps are no longer an issue, and you can view Adobe Flash websites, something the iPhone does not. So, I do expect that Apple will open up the iPhone to outside developers and running either "on top" of iOS or with the innerds capable of running Android OS. Wild prediction, but I have been right more than wrong.
Courtesy of a press release dated November 15, 2011 appearing in Gartner Research
A first look at an audacious new product from BERG which aims to reinvent personalized publishing, with printed news from Foursquare, Facebook, and The Guardian.
BERG bills itself as a design consultancy, but according to CEO Matt Webb, it's really a product company. And today the London-based innovators (who've made invisible-ink comics, augmented reality toys, holographic iPad light paintings, and a visual volume knob for Twitter) are announcing a product--in the works for a year--that shows just how committed to building the future of interfaces, media, and digital connectivity they really are.
And it's a printer. (A "Little Printer," to be exact.) This is the future?
BERG is betting on it. When Webb gave Co.Design an exclusive preview of Little Printer last week, Webb said in a Skype conversation from London.
"You're, like, the thirteenth person on earth to see this. We're sick of not telling everyone about this, so we've just decided to tell everyone."
He explained grinning that Little Printer is exactly that: a palm-sized, cube-shaped, cloud-powered thermal printer with an adorable pair of feet and a cute face.
And what does it print?
A personalized mini-newspaper--with content curated from partners like The Guardian, social media like Foursquare and Facebook, as well as stuff created by BERG itself--and output on a receipt-like paper strip no longer than 10 inches. Web tells Co.Design.
"Each information source we think of as a personalised 'publication' that you subscribe to from a kind of 'app store for paper,' collated into a delivery that arrives at a chosen time. You "feed" Little Printer by selecting content via a remote-control-esque smartphone app, and then get your mini-newspaper delivered "once or twice a day."
Think of it like Flipboard, but without the screen.
"Little Printer can bring you paper deliveries, regularly, quietly and happily, without competing for attention with the bright flickering screens in your life."
Click Image To Enlarge
But why paper? Isn't that so 20th century?
Webb disagrees--in fact, he thinks that paper is an ideal interface for social media. But not the kind of "social media" that pings you with meaningless updates about people you're not sure you even care about; Webb's talking about social interactions between small groups of real people in the physical world, like families. He explains.
"We love physical stuff. What's great about paper is that it's made for sharing. You can scribble on a puzzle and give it to a friend, or stick birthday reminders up on the fridge for your family to see. Paper is basically a technology tailor-made for a home full of people."
My first knee-jerk reaction to Little Printer was bemused bewilderment--really? this?--but it's hard to deny Webb's point. He cited Bret Victor's recent rant against the "pictures under glass" interaction paradigm, in which all our media is sequestered beyond our reach, divorced from the physical world that we actually live in. Little Printer may seem like a throwback at first, but it's actually a disruptive, weird, but undeniably innovative way to liberate digital content from its screen-based prison. It's about making "the cloud" tangible and intimate again, by bringing it into the home in a physical way. Web writes.
"Little Printer is more like a family member or a colleague than a tool. But, at the same time, paper is like a screen that never turns off. You can stick to the fridge or tuck it in your wallet. You can scribble on it or tear it and give it to a friend."
And Little Printer isn't just a dumb pipe, mindlessly spooling out Twitter updates and RSS headlines. An early prototype did act like this, Webb says:
"It was incredibly annoying."
Powered by another new product called BERG Cloud, Little Printer condenses and curates its content, treating that 10-inch strip like the precious real estate it is.Web says.
"The act of printing--committing to paper--makes a statement, so you want to be sure that what you print is important. What we concentrate on now is density of information or delight. Great publications are ones you would consult a lot over the day or want to carry with you, so it makes sense to print them. Or exceptional information that prints a large alert when something drastic happens, so you can see it from across the room. Or beautiful images: We've been working will old woodcuts and pen and inks, which look tremendous on the thermal printer. I'll tell you my favorite publication: It's the Daily Puzzle. You get to choose easy, medium, or hard, and I like to ramp it up. That's neat, that personalisation--I always get a sense that it's for me when the puzzle gets delivered."
Click Image To Enlarge
Little Printer will be available in 2012, but Webb says it's just the first of many screenless, physical, web-connected products that the studio hopes to roll out. He writes in the product announcement.
"We think of BERG Cloud as the nervous system for connected products. It's built to run at scale, and could as easily operate the Web-enabled signage of a city block, as the playful home electronics of the future."
But in the near term, will receipt-like paper strips (which BERG has already experimented with) really become a viable delivery medium for digital content? It's interesting to note that Webb and company aren't the only ones working on this: Jack Dorsey recently announced that his electronic payment concern, Square, is actually a "publishing" company with paper receipts as its futuristic medium of choice.
I'm reserving judgment on the user experience and physical appeal of Little Printer until I can actually get my hands on one. But after the initial shock wore off, I couldn't get BERG's odd little product out of my mind. I imagined setting it on my nightstand next to my alarm clock, tearing off my little "mini-newspaper" in the morning--a much more physically satisfying interaction, perhaps, than rotely grabbing my smartphone and pecking at Twitter. Maybe that's the most innovative, disruptive thing about Little Printer: It may not be the future, but it's a future that's actually thought-provoking. Which is no small feat.
Click Image To Enlarge
COMMENTARY: Little Printer is portable enough to serve as a mobile printer for your laptop, tablet or iPhone or Android phone, which is slick in a real practical way. It's also cute, with those two little legs. And even if it's a lousey printer, it makes an interesting conversation piece just sitting on a bookshelf or on top of your fireplace mantle piece. Come to think of it, Little Printer would be great for printing research articles that I often print on regular 8.5 x 11 paper. I end up throwing them away after I have read, added scribbles, circled pertinent data, etc. Those thermal paper printouts are a whole lot smaller and you can crumple them up and throw them away after use. You could also use them as hard copy printers for your favorite text messenger service as a paper trail.
Courtesy of an article dated November 29, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design
A new possible planet has been found by NASA right here in our own solar system. The possible planet Tyche (pronounced “tie-key”) is believed to be a gas giant located some 1.35 trillion miles from the Sun. If this planet is in fact a planet could it possibly be the infamous planet X otherwise known as Nibiru?
Below is a simulation based on research of brown dwarf stars spawned by a heavy interest in a possible galactic body closer to us than we might ever imagine. If this is Tyche a.ka. Planet X or Nibiru, or whatever it is if it ever discovered, it will be closer to us than proxima centauri and on a friendly orbit.
Astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette study comet movements and were the first to find the planet by noticing the unusual patterns of comets in the area that seemed to be affected by a large mass swaying them in different directions. This really isn’t a brand new discovery as Matese and Whitmire have been trying to come up with the evidence of the possible Planet X since 1999 so after ten years of compiled evidence they think they may have enough to convince the rest of the scientific community.
Click Image To Enlarge
Tyche is believed to be the size of four Jupiters, comprised of helium and hydrogen, and orbits our sun at a distance of 15,000AU (one AU, or Astronomical Unit, is the distance from the Earth to the Sun (93 million miles), 15,000AU is roughly 1/4th of a light year). This orbit puts it well within the boundaries of the Oort Cloud — a cloud of debris orbiting our sun with a radius of one light year — where long-term comets (those with an orbit greater than 200 years) originate.
NASA scientists believe that Tyche aka Nibiru is an enormous rogue gas giant planet that is 1.3 trillion miles from the Sun and crosses the Oort Cloud an area where billions of comets originate.
NASA’s WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, which scans the sky in infrared has been scanning the sky’s mapping out hundreds of millions of objects producing millions of images might soon be pointed in that direction to see if it can pick up the distant planet. If found it will make Tyche our 9th planet.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, will scan the entire sky in infrared light, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images.
The real question here is, is this the ancient planet Nibiru our planet X? Scientists say that if the planet does exist it’s probably not originally from our solar system but probably broke out of it’s original one and somehow got caught up in our suns gravitational pull. Making it “alien” to our own solar system. Could this planet once have harbored intelligent life? When it broke off did they have to leave the planet before everyone froze to death and they are the one’s visiting Earth on a regular basis?
It could be years before we find out if Tyche is even a planet at all and probably many, many more before we can determine if life had ever existed on the planet. The next thing to figure out is the orbit of the planet. Nibiru is said to come in and out coming close to Earth. Could this really be that planet?
COMMENTARY: I have a feeling that Tyche will be discovered soon with all the deep space orbitors we have launched into space. If Tyche turns out to be a brown dwarf star, it might not even be very visible, but appear as a very small "white speck" in an infrared image by NASA’s WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer).
Tyche has already been the subject of numerous conspiracy theorists who claim that it is a "rogue star" that will wipeout the Earth's protective magnetic layer that protects us from solar flares and solar radiation, tilt the Earth's axis or shift the magnetic poles, and cause the end of the world in 2012 as predicted in the Mayan Calender.
Even I had some fun with some of those conspiracy theories with some gangbuster blog posts, when I announced in a blog post dated September 26, 2011, that there would be an extinction-level event because Earth would be hit by comet Elenin. In another blog post dated August 9, 2o11, I asked the question: "Is Comet Elenin on a collision course with Earth? Separating Fact From Fiction."
In a blog post dated November 8, 2011, I fictioinalized what might have happened to Earth if asteroid 2005 YU55, which passed right by Earth at a distance of only 201,000 miles on November 8, 2011, had actually hit Earth. Asteroid 2005 YU55 returns for a second time in 2025, and it will pass even closer (watch out), and then for a third time on April 13, 2036. That's the date that has scientists very worried, because it might actually hit us. (Oh, shit)
On September 29, 2011, NASA conducted a panel discussion by NASA's Neowise Team that operates the WISE deep space observer, and because of its infra-red telescope, has discovered and tracked several near-Earth objects or asteroids that might present a danger to our planet. Included in the video is a discussion from a caller inquiring about Planet X or Nibiru. Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE Principal Investigator for JPL/NASA, and if I may say so a bonafide NASA babe, tells a caller asking about Planet X:
"Yes... this is Amy Mainzer and I'm happy to answer this one... Planet X is not coming to get us!
In any event, Tyche a.k.a. Nibiru or Planet X, or whatever the object turns out to be, let's just hope that it never poses a danger to Earth or any of the other planets in our solar system.
Courtesy of an article dated February 16, 2011 appearing in Alien-UFO-Research
In Fathom's latest visualization, bigger graphical elements mean fewer people. Wait, what?
In the visual syntax of infographics and maps, bigger equals... well, bigger. Large dots on a map or bars in a chart correspond to a proportionally large quantity of stuff being visualized--like, for instance, the number of people living in a certain geographic area. But its new visualization of world population density called "Dencity,"Fathom turns this basic graphic language on its head. What if bigger dots on a map signified fewer people, sparsely scattered? As it turns out, this counterintuitive approach makes brilliant sense.
Fathom, the information-visualization firm cofounded by Processing inventor Ben Fry, created "Dencity" in response to a somewhat ambivalent milestone: the world's population surpassing 7 billion souls. What does this look like, really? Well, it looks like a #$*&load of people squished into a relatively few urbanized patches of earth, and a whole lot fewer people spread thinly over everywhere else. Density, as the infographic's title rightly implies, is the real story here--not absolute quantity.
Click Image To Enlarge
In that light, Fathom's choice to represent larger quantities (the aforementioned #$*&load of people) with smaller graphical elements (smaller, brighter circles on the map) ingeniously captures the narrative of "what seven billion looks like." In densely populated parts of the world, every person has less space--just like each of those small dots takes up less room. But by being packed tighter, they're also brighter--literally (the light-colored small dots visually jump out of the map, just like glowing cities do in a satellite photograph). The smaller graphics also invite you to zoom in on those dense areas to really get a good look at what's going on. After all, it makes sense to look at human activity in Beijing on a scale of meters, not hundreds of kilometers.
Conversely, huge patches of barely settled land--like Saharan Africa, northern Asia, and the Australian interior--don't need that kind of detail to tell the same story. A zoomed-out perspective of darker-hued, larger dots (signifying the correspondingly less dense population) does just fine. And they recede into the background of Fathom's map, just like the real human presence in those parts of the world does in comparison to denser areas.
This reversed graphic language makes Fathom's map visually rich--the information-carrying graphic elements fill up the entire map, instead of clustering in pockets surrounded by neutral negative space. But it's also narratively richer, as well. Glancing at the entire map at once tells a different story than peering closely at one of those densely packed yellow and orange clusters. No wonder Fathom is selling "Dencity" as a gorgeous poster: This is an infographic you won't get bored of looking at on your wall anytime soon.
China.The largest city in the world is Beijing, with 17.8 million people. China is home to six of the twenty most populous cities in the world, more than any other country.
India and Pakistan. Delhi and Karachi are the second and third most populous cities in the world. The two countries are almost uniformly dense until they hit geographic boundaries such as the Himalayas to the north, or political boundaries such as Afghanistan to the west.
New York City. The East Coast is the most densely populated region of the United States, but New York City is the only American city to rank in the top twenty of the world's most populous cities. It's one of only three in the western hemisphere on the list.
COMMENTARY: India and China are just one gigantic blob of yellow, signifying their massive populations. Very interesting visualization technology to show how things look in a very eye-pening way.
Courtesy of an article dated November 29, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design
There aren’t many marketing opportunities that can target 800 million people in one — so it’s no surprise that 96 of the top 100 US advertisers are marketing on Facebook. But there’s a problem: Many of those companies tell us they’re not finding Facebook nearly as useful a marketing tool as they’d hoped. In large part, that’s the result of the disorganized approach many companies have to Facebook marketing. Too many raced to launch a Facebook page without ever setting clear objectives, and are now left with a handful of fans but no clear idea of how to engage those fans. Likewise, too many marketers neither understand all the tools at their disposal nor put sufficient resources into their Facebook programs.
To make matters worse, most companies aren’t getting anywhere near the support needed to use Facebook well — either from their agencies or from Facebook itself. In fact, for a company that relies almost exclusively on advertising revenue, Facebook doesn’t do much to help advertisers succeed. Its content management tools are still primitive compared to what third-party vendors offer; Facebook doesn’t give marketers the data needed to optimize and measure their efforts; and it’s constantly changing the rules for how companies can use the site.
The result? An increasing number of marketers who understand that Facebook is important, but can’t quite work out exactly what it’s useful for.
To avoid this fate, and to make Facebook work for them, marketers will need to follow four steps.
Step 1: Set clear objectives. Marketers need to rethink what Facebook can accomplish for their business. Will they use it to drive awareness and purchases? To generate word of mouth? To increase the loyalty of existing customers? Or do marketers need to help other parts of the organization, like the customer-service team or the product-development team, get the best out of Facebook? The site’s versatility lets you choose from objectives that span almost every part of the marketing mix — but to get the most out of Facebook, you need to have a clear idea of what you’re trying to get from it.
Step 2: Build a page that provides value for your fans. Most brand pages are littered with a random mix of company news, promotions, advertising, and other content focused on what marketers want, rather than what their fans want. Carolyn Everson, VP of global marketing solutions at Facebook, says.
"The brands that succeed on Facebook are the ones that give people a reason to be fans.”
Of course, you can’t provide value to your fans if you don’t know anything about those fans. But how can you learn about your audience if Facebook doesn’t provide you with much detail? One option is to get fans to offer up additional information once they hit the ‘like’ button. For instance, EMI worked with campaign-management platform Neolane to develop a Facebook app that collected opt-in customer information and then tied that data back into EMI’s customer database.
Building a valuable page for fans can also mean creating a richer experience. While a “like” allows fans to read and comment on posts, deeper engagement comes from options like games and contests that are often only feasible with an application. Target took this approach for Valentine’s Day last year; its “Super Love Sender” contest let fans vote on which charity would receive a $1 million donation from the brand. The Target Facebook app also allowed fans to send friends personalized valentines and also provided real-time updates on which charity was in the lead.
Step 3: Use the full Facebook toolkit to increase reach and engagement. Facebook offers marketers much more than just branded pages – it also supplies a wide range of earned, owned, and paid media. For instance, consider using Facebook Ads to increase reach and sharing. Expedia used ads to increase participation in its “The Friend Trips Game” – and ultimately drove more than 1 million fans for the page. Events, location-based tools, and apps can also help you get the most out of your Facebook program.
Step 4: Integrate Facebook into your marketing mix. Most marketers treat Facebook as an isolated asset, rather than building it into the marketing mix. But there are lots of good ways to integrate Facebook into your overall marketing plan. For instance, you can make Facebook promotions the foundation for broader campaigns. Corona’s “most liked beer in America” campaign featured the faces of its Facebook fans on a billboard in Times Square – combining the reach of traditional media (signs in Times Square typically get 1.5 million impressions per day) with the value of driving 200,000 new “likes” for the brand’s Facebook page.
Ultimately, though, the most important piece of advice is the first one: You must define clear objectives for your Facebook programs. Once you do this, you’ll see more clearly how you can build value for your customers, use the entire Facebook toolkit, and integrate Facebook into your marketing mix — all of which will increase the chances that Facebook actually works as part of your marketing program.
Checkout this list of Facebook Marketing Strategies:
COMMENTARY: In the past several years, businesses large and small have come to realize the positive impact of engaging their brand-loyal public and — more importantly — potential customers, via Facebook Pages. While fan pages are typically seen as a destination for users to remain privy to brand news, a recent comScore report shows that a Page is really just the place where content resides, as fans are 40 to 150 times more likely to consume branded material in their news feeds than on the actual fan page itself. This discovery led to Facebook’s expansion of “Page Insights,” including new metrics and analytics designed to constantly remind business owners of what truly matters: engaging content.
Facebook utilizes an algorithm that ensures the most relevant content for each user finds its way onto that particular user’s news feed. The relevancy of this content is determined by a number of factors including how many times it is liked, shared, commented on, etc. When fans of a company interact with branded content, it can then be passed on to their friends and their friends’ friends. With fan acquisition as the main motive behind the Facebook strategy of most businesses, it is helpful to learn that friends of fans are more likely to visit a brand’s store, website and even purchase a product than the average, uninfluenced consumer. In addition, the average friends-of-fans group for the top 100 brand pages on Facebook is 34 times larger than the fan group. This means that a business can often have greater influence amongst its second degree connections, and the virality of a page’s content can be directly related to the success of a business. So, ultimately there’s a need for better insights into Facebook content consumption.
Facebook’s Advertising Communications Manager Elisabeth Diana states that the “one of the purposes behind Facebook Page Insights is to provide all page admins with ways to understand how to reach and acquire new customers.” New metrics have been created in order to provide businesses with not only information about how people are interacting with a brand Page, but also a glimpse into how people are connecting with the Page’s content in other parts of Facebook.
One of the metrics added to Facebook’s Page Insights is “People are talking about this.” This set of data counts stories that are eligible to appear in a user’s Newsfeed, such as any likes, wall posts, comments, shares, questions answered, RSVPs to events, Page mentions, photo tagging and location checkins. The metric allows the page administrator to know what posts have proven the most compelling and interactive.
Another metric added to the equation is the metric of virality, which allows for insight into how viral a particular post is. Virality is determined by dividing the number of “people talking about this” by the reach (the number of people who actually saw the content). Diana notes that because virality is a percentage, whether a business is large or small, the metric “can be used to compare across all Page posts.” The virality metric allows page admins to analyze the success of individual posts and will hopefully lead to an improved page strategy through a better understanding of the audience.
Along with these new metrics comes aesthetic changes as well. “Whether you want to get into the deep end or wade in slowly,” Diana says, Facebook wants to make their Page Insights “digestible for everyone, easy to sort and actionable.” She says most of the heavy numbers have been removed from Page Insights, but “for those needing something a little more data-intense, there is always the option to export to a spreadsheet.” Either way, Diana and Facebook promise that “this is just the first step in enhancing Page Insights for small businesses and brands; there is more to come.” In the meantime, however, Facebook will continue to prompt business owners to provide their audiences with the most engaging content possible to guarantee the greater reach and better sales.
Bluefin Labs mapped social chatter about Mountain Dew to TV that Dew fans also buzzed about. Click here for details.
Before moving on you are probably wondering what is 'Social Television' or 'Social TV'. Here's the simple definition of Social TV:
Social Television is a general term for technology that supports communication and social interaction in either the context of watching television, or related to TV content. It also includes the study of television-related social behavior, devices and networks. Social TV is the modern term that replaces 'Interactive Television'.
or even simpler put...
Social Television is the state of the art -- and science -- of monitoring social-media chatter about television.
The concept of socializing around TV content is not new. But Social TV is creating the cyber-living-room and cyber-bar to enable increased interactivity around shared programming both live and time-shifted. In an attempt to recapture the social aspects of television or the sociological influences television has had on society since its inception, lost since the advent of multiple-screen households, which discourage gatherings to watch television together, social television aims to connect viewers with their friends and families even when they are not watching the same screen. As a concept, social television is not linked to a specific architecture such as cable TV, IPTV, peer-to-peer delivery, or internet television (over the top or OTT). Nor is it necessarily limited to a traditional television screen, but could also be presented on a computer or handheld device such as a smartphone, tablet or netbook.
Social TV started in the early 2000s with limited success as the creation of the shared connections was cumbersome with a remote control and the User Interface (UI) design made the interaction disruptive to the TV experience. But social networking has made Social TV suddenly feasible, since it already encourages constant connection between members of the network and the creation of likely minded groups. The shared content and activities often relate to TV content. At the same time, the smartphone market has been growing quickly. 86% of Americans already use their phones while watching TV. A recent AC Nielsen survey also revealed that 33% of consumers regularly use mobile apps while watching TV.
The key thing to remember is that Social TV is not specific solely to your home television set, but incorporates any device that delivers television programming, films or online video content to the consumer.
In the following video, Lorie H. Schwartz, Chief Technology Catalyst, North America, McCan Worldgroup explains how Social TV is growing and exploding on multiple platforms:
In the following video, interactive television experts gathered at SXSWi held at the Hyatt Regency in Austin, Texas on March 12, 2011, to discuss the future of social TV.
Just how big is the market for Social TV? What is it? How is it being used? Watch this video of Mark Ghuneim, CEO, Trendrr (this dude speaks from the side of his mouth) at the NBC Universal Social TV Symposium held in New York on September 14, 2011:
Having given you the various definitions of Social TV and a brief history, here are 7 things you need to know about Social TV right now:
1. TV owns and is driving social
For more than two years now, AdAge.com has had an editorial partnership with Trendrr, the social-media-monitoring company. Trendrr, which was born in 2006 as Infofilter, grew out of Wiredset, a Manhattan digital-marketing agency founded by Mark Ghuneim and Tom Donohue in 2004 (the same year Mark Zuckerberg was launching what was then TheFacebook.com out of his Harvard dorm room, and two years before Twitter fluttered to life). Ad Age partnered with Trendrr to create weekly online EKG charts of rising and falling tweet volume surrounding memes that were dominating Twitter conversations. Back in the summer of 2009, we tracked everything from Sonia Sotomayor (then a nominee for the Supreme Court) to "Glee" to Major League Baseball to "True Blood."
Over time, it dawned on us that more than anything else, TV was driving social. Sotomayor would trend on Twitter only when her confirmation hearings were being televised; a specific team would trend because it was doing great (or sucking) in the game being broadcast at that very moment on ESPN; during prime-time hours in the U.S. and the U.K., Twitter's trending topics list would be all but taken over by TV-related chatter. You could get a real-time take on "Glee" viewers' level of delight over the most deliciously nasty things uttered by Jane Lynch's Sue Sylvester character because fans would dutifully thumb-type their favorite bits of dialogue right into their Twitter streams. (In fact, it started to seem like "Glee" writers were writing as much for Twitter as for TV.)
Over the past couple of years, Trendrr has tightened its focus on TV -- even launching Trendrr.tv specifically to serve the TV industry. Today, 14 of the top 25 TV networks are Trendrr.tv data customers, and as the social-TV business has exploded, Ad Age has also started editorial partnerships (to generate charticles for AdAge.com) with other emerging players in the space, including Bluefin Labs a Cambridge, Mass.-based outgrowth of the MIT Media Lab that is building a broadcast-meets-social database it calls the TV Genome project, and Manhattan-based entertainment check-in service GetGlue.
Mr. Ghuneim said,
"Social TV could not be heating up more, because engagement is really starting to map to currency."
He added.
"The networks that 'get it', are using the social graph to measure the effectiveness of their marketing spend, for real-time audience research to understand the demographics of their viewers, to be smarter about how production dollars are spent and what content will resonate. And especially to demonstrate to advertisers the value of the network off the network."
2. Social TV is, at its core, incredibly old-fashioned
Social TV is about watching TV with other people -- think of "50s-era family and friends gathered around an old Magnavox console to catch "I Love Lucy." Only now the living room has gone national. (Get your feet off the coffee table, Texas!)
3. Twitter is definitely not the only game in town when it comes to social TV
Consider GetGlue, which launched in June of last year. This past August, it hit a high of 11.5 million check-ins, driven by partnerships with big broadcast and cable networks from ABC and Fox to Showtime and HBO. (The summer's most popular show on GetGlue was "True Blood" with 490,787 total check-ins.)
TVGuide.com, which built its own site-specific check-in service and launched it last October, recently surpassed 4 million check-ins and is averaging 20,000 per day just from its user base. General Manager Christy Tanner says that to date TVGuide.com has sold 45 sponsorships to both network and non-network advertisers -- from ABC to Starbucks -- eager to engage with a deeply engaged audience.
And more and more networks are building their own social destinations. At USA Network, says VP-Digital Jesse Redniss, more than 300,000 unique visitors came to its Character Chatter platform -- at characterchatter.usanetwork.com -- this summer to discuss USA shows including "Burn Notice" and "Psych."When USA broadcast a "Burn Notice" marathon and ran Character Chatter posts on an on-screen crawl, "That was a big "a-ha' moment for us because we saw 35,000 concurrent users logging onto the system. It was really cool to watch."
4. Social TV is a form of self-expression -- and a form of peer-to-peer peer-pressure marketing
Get Glue CEO Alex Iskold says,
"What we've learned since launching GetGlue, is that entertainment is an incredibly emotional experience for people and the reason that people love checking in is because it's a gesture of self expression. It's people saying, 'I'm a diehard "True Blood" fan, and that's a really important thing to me, it really matters to me, and that show gets into my head and gets into my soul.'"
A network can drown you in endless promos for a new show it wants you to watch; maybe you'll succumb, maybe you won't. But the influence of social-media messaging about that show from a friend whose taste you trust can't be underestimated. An enthusiastic tweet about "Ringer" is not only an endorsement of the show but an implicit call to action; it says,
"This is what you're missing out on."
5. Social TV has slowed down time-shifting for some of TV's biggest shows
TVGuide.com's Tanner said.
"We did a survey of our 10,000-person TV-fan panel last year, and what we found is that 20% of them said they are watching more live TV specifically to avoid "social spoilers.'"
6. Social TV is not primarily about predicting hits
Some of the big shows premiering this fall already have great social buzz; ABC's "Once Upon a Time," which won't even air its first episode until October, already has more than 100,000 likes on Facebook.What does that tell us? That ABC is doing a good job promoting it and that the fantasy-drama theme conveyed in the promos is resonating with potential viewers. And that's it.
Bluefin Labs VP-Marketing and Business Development Tom Thai said.
"Merely tracking the volume of buzz without a deeper analysis of other factors, is very rudimentary. What matters is context; once a show gets traction, what else can the viewers who are chattering about it tell us about their other preferences as consumers? If you're a CMO for an automaker vs. wireless carrier vs. laundry detergent, your audiences and needs will be different. The key next step is marrying social-TV data about the shows with data about specific brands."
7. The Couch Potato is a dying breed
Remember when TV viewers were seen as passive consumers? The minimal effort required to operate a remote control (and open a beer and a bag of Cheetos) meant that sitting on the couch and taking in a few of your favorite shows made you a "couch potato." Funny how the addition of just another small device -- the smartphone -- to the mix has transformed the couch potato into a superfan/social-marketer/programmer with the power to transform TV.
COMMENTARY: Social TV was named one of the 10 most important emerging technologies by the MIT Technology Review on Social TV in 2010. And in 2011, David Rowan, the Editor of Wired magazine named Social TV at number three of six in his peek into 2011 and what tech trends to expect to get traction. Ynon Kreiz, CEO of the Endemol Group told a packed crowd at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in January 2011:
"Everyone says that social television will be big. I think it’s not going to be big — it’s going to be huge".
According to Gartner Research's Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies for 2011 (see below), Social TV is very much an emerging technology, at the bottom of the "technology trigger" slope of the hype cycle curve. Gartner believes it will become mainstream in 5 to 10 years, but I tend to agree with Mark Ghuneim, CEO, Trendrr, that Social TV will attain mainstream adoption much quicker than this. The proliferation of mobile devices, cloud computing and apps has made access to TV and digital content available anywhere on a 24/7, 365 day basis. The developers of these technologies know what you click and how long you are watching something, and what you are saying about that content on your social network stream.
Click Image To Enlarge
To give you some idea just how rapidly some emerging technologies can become mainstream, compare the Gartner Research's Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies for 2005 (see below) with the Gartner Research's Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies for 2011.
Click Image To Enlarge
You will notice that the word "social" does not even appear on the Hype Cycle curve. At the end of 2005, Facebook had only 5.5 million users and was being hosted out of Mark Zuckerberg's house in Palo Alto, California. Fast forward to July 2011, Facebook claims it now has 800 million users.
Social TV technology can integrate voice communication, text chat, presence and context awareness, TV recommendations, ratings, or video-conferencing with the TV content either directly on the screen or by using ancillary devices.
Social TV is very active area of research and development that is also generating new services as TV operators and content producers are looking for new sources of revenue. While a number of existing social television systems are still at a conceptual stage, or exist as lab prototypes, beta or pilot versions are available commercially.
White-labeled social TV platforms have also emerged (such as Visiware's PlayAlong, LiveHive Systems and Ex Machina's PlayToTV) which allow TV networks and operators to offer branded social TV applications.
On the ratings front, companies such as Networked Insights and TrendrrTV have emerged to measure the social media activities tied to specific TV telecasts. In essence, these new companies seek to serve as the Nielsen Ratings of the social televisions space.
If you want to know more about Social TV, you might want to tune into or attend The TV of Tomorrow ( TVOT) 2011 to be held in New York City on December 5, 2011.
Q: A key investor in my business has suggested that I hire a consultant to do a SWOT Analysis to help plan for the future. I try not to argue with my investors, but I'm not so sure I need to have this done. What do you think? -- Laurie B.
A: Laurie, before you call in the SWOT team to deal with this investor (sorry, couldn't resist that one), let me tell you exactly what a SWOT Analysis is and how it can not only help you plan for the future, but get a gauge of how your business is doing today.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT Analysis is a written exercise that can help you clarify and focus on the specifics that make up the four areas that most affect your business.
The purpose of a SWOT Analysis is to help you build on your business' strengths, minimize and correct the weaknesses, and take the greatest possible advantage of potential opportunities while formulating a plan to deal with potential threats.
Think of a SWOT Analysis as a checkup for your business. By spending a little time examining the internal and external factors that affect your business' health you can better gauge the present state of your business and identify things that may adversely affect your business' health in the future.
It's a good idea for every business to perform a SWOT Analysis on occasion, especially if you are doing strategic planning, contemplating a change in direction or formulating new strategies for distribution, marketing and sales.
Should you hire a consultant to perform a SWOT Analysis for you? Speaking as a consultant who has been paid to perform SWOT Analyses for companies in the past, I can honestly (and yes, without bias) say that depends on three factors:T
The size of your company;
How in-depth the SWOT Analysis needs to be;
How much of your investor's money you'd like to spend.
Larger corporations are most likely to hire professional firms to perform such analyses, primarily due to the complex nature of big business. Some corporate SWOT Analyses can run on for several hundred pages. Typically, a consultant will charge up to $100 or more per hour to perform a detailed corporate SWOT Analysis and most large companies consider this money well spent as a good SWOT Analysis can reveal otherwise ignored factors that might increase the company's bottom line or help avert future losses.
For a smaller business, however, a professional SWOT Analysis can be an exercise in overkill. For your money you will get an impressive, detailed report that will make for great show at your next investor or board meeting and a wonderfully expensive door stop the rest of the time. I don't mean to belittle the value of a professional SWOT Analysis for small businesses. It's just that smaller companies can learn as much from their own efforts as that of an expensive consultant.
You can perform a simple SWOT Analysis with a #2 pencil and a fast food napkin, but to get a truly accurate view of your company's SWOT factor I suggest you do things a bit more formally (and without the aid of condiments). I recommend that you involve all the key players in your business, including management, employees, your attorney, accountant, even your spouse. My wife often gives me insights into my business just from listening to me talk at dinner. Sometimes we business owners and managers can't see the forest for the trees. It's good to have someone else point out things we might miss.
Here's how to perform a simple SWOT Analysis Grid. On a piece of paper draw a vertical line down the center. Now draw a horizontal line through the center of the page. The paper is now divided into four quadrants. This is how the SWOT analysis is organized:
First quadrant (upper left) - Label the word "Strengths."
Second quadrant (upper right) - Label the word "Weaknesses."
Third quadrant (lower left) - Label the first quadrant "Opportunities".
Fourth quadrant (lower right) - Label the world "Threat."
The SWOT Analysis Grid should look like this:
Now just fill in each quadrant accordingly.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors that affect your business.
Opportunities and threats are the external factors.
Let's look at a quick overview of each.
Strengths are those things that make your business stronger. Strengths might include:
A product or service that sells well;
An established customer base;
A good reputation in the marketplace;
A good track history;
A high traffic location;
Strong management;
Qualified employees;
Ownership of patents and trademarks;
Any other aspect that adds value to your business and makes it stand out from the competition. S
Strengths should always be gauged by the strengths of your competitors. If your business does something well just to keep up with the competition, it is not a strength. It is a necessity.
Weakness are the antitheses of strengths. Weaknesses are those areas in which your company does not perform well or could stand improvement. These are the areas of your business that make you susceptible to negative market forces and aggressive competitors. Weaknesses might include:
Poor management;
Employee problems;
Lack of marketing and sales expertise;
Lack of capital;
Bad location;
Poor products or services;
Damaged reputation; etc.
Opportunities are those things that have the potential to make your business stronger, more enduring, and more profitable. Opportunities might include:
New markets becoming available or old markets that are expanding;
Possible mergers, acquisitions, or strategic alliances;
A competitor going out of business or leaving the marketplace, making their customers open to you;
The potential availability of a desired employee.
Threats are those things that have the potential to adversely affect your business. Threats might include:
Changing marketplace conditions;
Rising company debt;
Cash flow problems;
A strong competitor entering your market;
Competitors with lower prices;
Possible laws or taxes that may negatively impact your profits;
Strategic partners going out of business.
Once you have filled in all four quadrants, you can use this information to create strategies that will help you make the best of the information learned. For example, once you have identified your strengths you can better use them to determine which opportunities to pursue and to help reduce your vulnerability to potential threats.
Now that you know your weaknesses you can formulate strategies to overcome them so you can pursue opportunities. Knowing your weaknesses can also help you establish a defensive plan to prevent your weaknesses from making your business particularly susceptible to external threats.
Whether you use a consultant or create a SWOT Analysis on your own it is important to remember that a SWOT Analysis is a subjective analysis tool that can be strongly influenced by the opinions of those performing the analysis. For small businesses especially it is imperative to keep the analysis simple and to the point. Don't overanalyze and don't immediately take the results as gospel.
Remember, it's an analysis tool, not a magic 8 ball.
COMMENTARY: Here's to your success!!
Courtesy of an article dated November 29, 2011 appearing in Manta
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