About Facebook
Nor does she mince words when taking on one behemoth in particular. “I hate it,” she writes. “The company is one of the biggest mistakes in modern history, a digital cesspool that, while calamitous when it fails, is at its most dangerous when it works as intended. Facebook is an ant farm of humanity.”
Wednesday’s report from TechCrunch of an “exposed server” that “contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users, 18 million records of users in the U.K., and another with more than 50 million records on users in Vietnam.”
Mentors can listen, give advice, but sponsors can speak up, create opportunities and provide real time feedback.
For under represented workers, having a mentor is great, but having a sponsor makes a world of difference!
Thank You Susan!
She’s 26, and Brought Down Uber’s C.E.O. What’s Next? https://nyti.ms/2gVN51t
Yelp is a marketplace connecting small business owners with their customers.
New customers want to find small businesses (restaurants, plumbers, dentists) who are near them, with high trustworthy user reviews and matches their needs. For restaurants, it might be the type of cuisine, a particular food item, atmosphere. For a dentist, it might be a type of dental speciality, whether they are friendly, and the type of insurance they accept.
Yelp solves the new customer use case very well.
If a business is successful in keeping these new customers coming back, why would a loyal customer visit Yelp again? There is no reason for regular customers to go on Yelp for the business that the use very frequently. This is where Yelp has missed a huge opportunity to connect the most loyal customers with the business owner.
As a business owner these are the activities that a user interacts with the business on Yelp.
Mobile Check-ins : A customer is inside the business and wants to tell the owners : “Hey I’m here”
Directions & Map : A customer is looking up directions to the business
Deals Sold : A customer buys a deal, prepaid and will come in very soon.
Messages : A customer sense a messages to the business owner
Calls to Your Business : A phone call is made
Clicks to your website : Click to check out the website
Online Reservations : Made a reservation using Yelp Reservations
Yelp Online Orders : Order food/ items to be delivered or picked up
Users uploaded Photos : The customer was at the business and took a photo
Yelp bookmarks : The potential customer bookmark with intent to go
Call To Action Clicks : The button that the business wants a customer to click on, and it actually happens.
These activities are cool to look at, but only the ‘Mobile check in’ applies to loyal customers
If I were a loyal customer of a restaurant, I would like to choose to receive the following. Deals for me as a loyal customer, special occasion deals (birthdays, my anniversary). New menu updates. Maybe a direct line to the owner on my favorite dishes, and also maybe some comments on dishes I don’t like. A way to directly message with the chef.
For a dentist or optometrist, I would like a way to message and make appointments easily. A way for them to remind me of appointments that I need to schedule. Maybe a way for me to refer my friends and I get a small kick back?
For my favorite local bookstore, let me subscribe to their email list easily?
Linux Mag asked Bill Joy (creator of VI): “So you didn’t really write vi in one weekend like everybody says?”
No. It took a long time. It was really hard to do because you’ve got to remember that I was trying to make it usable over a 300 baud modem. That’s also the reason you have all these funny commands. It just barely worked to use a screen editor over a modem. It was just barely fast enough. A 1200 baud modem was an upgrade. 1200 baud now is pretty slow.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift/
Those who have ever talked with me know I am not a fan of the iPhone. I have never owned an iPhone, but my family does. I do have the Mac laptops and I have owned the first generation iPad.
When the iPhone first came out, I chose other phones because of the lack of swappable memory, no memory expansion and the lack of customization of the home screen.
Now I choose not to own an iPhone because it is a boring user interface, locked in ecosystem, profit driven company culture.
Apple Inc. lacks open source contributions (ref), gives back almost zero to the developer communities and seems to have isolated themselves to do everything for the sake the of the mighty dollar.
Of course my argument is easier when I hand pick arguments from readers of New York Times who agree with me.
The perception from this reader is that Apple is focused on profit with no low end products for students. Hard to argue given how much cash this company has amassed and storing it all in foreign countries to avoid US taxes.
People who have learned to use the iPhone, bought music from iTunes and paid for apps are not going to leave this eco system. Free I Messages for people on iPhone, no interoperability, lock in. Yay for Apple. Bad for consumers.
iPhone addiction? That voice from their designer, makes you want the phone. Who cares about whether you need it, you want it.
iPhone is a status symbol. The OS and home screen software is bland and boring and has not changed for 10 years.
New York Times technology reporter Mike Isaac talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode about the controversies that have plagued Uber for the past two months. In a new profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Isaac reported that the company ran afoul of Apple’s rules by keeping track of the iPhones on which Uber had been deleted and re-downloaded. The trio talks about whether Uber’s culture will — or can — be reshaped at this point and why Kalanick is unlikely to lose his job, a
Duration: 1:01h, Played: 40:28
Published: 4/27/17 9:05:00 PM
Episode Download Link (56 MB): http://rss.art19.com/episodes/2e450eec-e55a-4acf-9424-a9c1d05b28f3.mp3
Episode Feed: Too Embarrassed to Ask – http://feeds.feedburner.com/Recode-TETA
Dear LinkedIn,
You are the only service out there to discover data about companies both private and public, what type of employees work there, which universities the employees graduated from and lots of other useful data about the professional lives of the workers.
LinkedIn is a fantastic service for professionals.
There have been many articles in recent years published about the lack of diversity in technology. Even the Federal regulators call on tech companies to improve diversity. (sfgate article May 18th, 2016)
Many top technology companies voluntarily publish annual reports on diversity. For example in 2016 Google has 19% women, 1% Black, 3% Hispanic in tech roles. (2016 data from Google on diversity). Pinterest (2015) has 21% women, 1% Black, 2% Hispanic in tech roles. Twitter (2015) has 13% women, 1% Black, 3% Hispanic in tech roles). Facebook (2015) has 16% women, 1% Black, 3% Hispanic.
While voluntary data from companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter is great. This data is not available from all companies and the data is not consistently published to make it easy to compare data across companies.
What if LinkedIn actually made diversity data transparent and real time to the public?
Would this encourage different long term behaviors for tech companies now that the data is no longer just voluntary?
Would this transparent diversity data lead to a much interesting interaction between job seekers and employers since this data could be extra dimension for job seekers to judge the type of companies they want to work for?
Tony T.
Readers: What do you think? Would you like to see diversity data published by LinkedIn? Share and tag on LinkedIn please.
Apple iPhone, Once a Status Symbol in China, Loses Its Luster http://nyti.ms/1VChAbY
“I like Apple a lot,” she said. “I use an Apple computer. But in recent years, especially after I tried my friends’ Android phones, I realized that the brand has lost a bit of its charm.”
Tony Tam 