Facebook and WhatsApp

On February 19th Facebook announce that they will acquire WhatsApp for $19 billion, making the deal the largest acquisition ever for venture-backed company, the deal sure raised some eyebrows.

Given that Facebook's business is mainly selling ads towards its users, there was an initial worry that user data from WhatsApp would be offered to Facebook partners, but the messaging from the WhatsApp team has been clear; that it would not happen (for the time being at least).

Given the strong position the WhatsApp founder has taken against having ads and collecting user data for monetization, some early tries of other interesting means of monetization has been tested by WhatsApp and their partners.

Three Recommended Links #3RL

• WhatsApp: The inside story (Wired UK) - The Founder Story told by David Rowan, gives an interesting insight into the founder duo of WhatsApp.

• WhatsApp’s anti-ad philosophy is really a broad new vision for mobile – Quartz - A look at the apparent contradiction between the business models of WhatsApp and Facebook, and perhaps a new way to fund basic services on mobile going forward, by Zach Seward.

• WhatsApp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Even though the founder story of WhatsApp focus on privacy and security, this Wikipedia article gives an pretty detailed account about the companies spotty track record.

Video by Bloomberg

Social trends to private

With the latest financial reports in from Twitter and LinkedIn, there are signs reiterating the trend that the more public leaning “one to many” social networks are more hitting a slow down in terms of growth.

Much of the growth in the consumer Internet industry right now is towards the more private "one to one” or "one to few” types of services with much of the user growth and product innovation occurring in South East Asia with services like WeChat, LINE and Kakao Talk.

In some cases we are also seeing expressions of private in terms of ephemeral services like Snapchat or even anonymous services like Secret.

There are several dynamics at play here (mobile, fatigue of publicness to mention a few) which really opens up for opportunity to innovate for the next billion of Internet users.

Three Recommended Links #3RL

• Messaging App War: WeChat and Line are Leaving KakaoTalk Behind - A great summary of the top 3 messaging service with roots in South East Asia by Enricko Lukman

• Entering the Era of Private and Semi-Anonymous Apps - NYTimes.com - Nick Bilton of the New York Times Bits Blog takes a look at a group of new more private oriented social services

• Do Millennials Believe in Data Security? - Harvard Business Review - Data from a great survey on attitudes towards privacy and security among users with focus on millennials by Sarah Green

Image by Flickr user Amnesty International UK under CC BY 2.0

Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella

On February 4th Microsoft announced that Satya Nadella would take over the role of CEO at Microsoft.

Much of the attention these days is focused on the consumer technologies companies and especially on the four horsemen Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Yet Microsoft still has an important role in both enterprise (Office and Windows) and computing infrastructure (Azure and Server products).

It will be very interesting to see what Satya Nadella has planed for the tech giant, given that he seems to have a non Windows centric view of the world considering his previous work with the Azure services for mobile.

Three Recommened Links #3RL

• Windows Weekly 348 | TWiT.TV - From the "Microsoft camp" writers Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott

• Ken Turns Effect - The Talk Show - Mule Radio Syndicate - From the "Apple camp" writers John Gruber and MG Siegler

• Vector 29: Microsoft's new CEO and Lenovo's new Moto | iMore - An interview with technology industry analyst Ben Thompson

Image by flickr user Pierre Lecourt under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

Ghost vs Squarespace

As with most endeavors, an initial phase of researching the tools needed for the task is an excellent opportunity to dig into some interesting products and technologies. Finding a simple yet suitable platform for writing is no easy feat these days.

First platform that came to mind was Wordpress, I've used it for several projects in the past and it has massive user and hosting adoption. Though I quickly realized that Wordpress has grown far beyond my needs, it is not just a platform for writing but a full CMS now days, one might say it has become the Microsoft Office of online publishing. :)

After some additional research two services ended up on my short list; Ghost and Squarespace.

Ghost - Highlights

• FLOSS project on Kickstarter started by former Wordpress developers
• Excellent Markdown editor with preview
• Great collection of themes

Squarespace - Highlights

• Solid company and platform 10 years in the making
• Amazing tools for customization of themes
• Great mobile apps

I decided to go with Squarespace for now, though I really like the super elegant Markdown editor on Ghost, too bad it lack simple Google Analytics support.

Image by Flickr user Huasonic under CC BY-NC 2.0 license

Welcome

With close to 40.000 tweets on Twitter over the past few years, most of them being curated links that I've shared, I began to think about what an additional formats I could make use of for my content curation online.

Going forward I intend to post interesting links, comments and insights on topics relating digital strategies, analysis and trends.

I hope that you will enjoy my posts! :)

Image by flickr user ☻☺ under CC BY-SA 2.0 license