Zuckerberg’s Big Mistake: Launching Facebook Home in the U.S.

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Whatever you may think about Facebook Home , you can't question its intent — to put Facebook at the core of your mobile experience, not just another app. Everything about Home and the new HTC First is about making Facebook even more dominant than it already is on people's phones. That idea might by appealing if you either: A). Have a digital life that is completely dominated by Facebook . Or B). Don't yet have a smartphone and have no sense of the value that goes hand in hand with having a variety of apps. People who fit into those two categories exist, but the thing is, they're typically not Americans. That's why I find it perplexing that Facebook is choosing to limit Facebook Home to the U.S Read more »

Hashtags On Facebook Would Open Up Exploration And Discovery Way More Than Graph Search

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The hashtag (#), which is a hallmark of Twitter’s userbase wanting to categorize content, is rumored to become a part of Facebook’s Graph Search . The company is tinkering around with the notion , but not much is known about how far along the social network is with it. While the hashtag isn’t a concept owned entirely by Twitter, the company has helped to make them popular with mainstream users. The most important usage of the hashtag hasn’t been for branding though, its been to bring uncategorized information together into a discoverable and scannable way. how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. Read more »

Iterations: Much Ado About Yahoo!

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Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch . You can follow him on Twitter at @semil . Over the past few weeks, I’ve been genuinely surprised by the depth and reach of the reaction to any moves made by Yahoo! As someone who hasn’t been around the this place for too long, my sense is Yahoo!, despite its recent history of countless missteps, is still vitally important to the cultural memory of Silicon Valley. And, as a result, the moves its new CEO makes becomes the subject of ridiculously intense, global scrutiny, armchair speculation and analysis, and a deafening level of peanut gallery twitter blabber devoid of any reason or context. Let’s *briefly* recap the multiple serious issues facing Yahoo up to mid-2012. There were years of board mismanagement. Musical chairs in the CEO’s office Read more »

“In the Studio,” Hyperink’s Kevin Gao Has A Plan To Organize The Web’s Blog Content

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Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch . You can follow him on Twitter at @semil . “In the Studio” rolls on this week by hosting an ex-management consultant who grew tired of that career path, wrote a book about how to prepare for and perform well during case-style interviews, self-published the work and started to make money from those sales proceeds, and eventually ended up in YC to help build out his new content-publishing business, Hyperink . Kevin Gao brings the razor-sharp analytical skills of an employee from a top management consulting firm to the world of startups. As the CEO and co-founder of Hyperink, an early-stage company with the goal of organizing the web’s blog content around people and topics, Gao  and his colleagues have a bold vision to bring structure to a web overrun with content and knowledge but also face challenges to prove scalability in their model to investors who generally tend to shy away from such businesses. Read more »

BlackBerry Super Bowl Ad Fails to Bring the Brand Back

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From concept to execution, BlackBerry's comeback ad fell flat. When the company formerly known as RIM announced that it was doing a major Super Bowl ad , the idea seemed to be that this was an opportunity to show off BlackBerry 10 and its new Z10 handset. Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben told Mashable that "the objective with the Super Bowl commercial is to let people know that the BlackBerry is back." Instead, the lackluster ad was a wasted opportunity for the new brand and the new product. If you haven't seen the ad, check it out: A company struggling for market share and relevance spends $4 million for air time alone and that is the result? Seriously,… Continue reading... More About: blackberry , BlackBerry 10 , Opinion , Super Bowl Read more »

7 Bad Moves That Hurt Facebook in 2012

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Facebook has made strides in 2012. A billion users and a smart new Timeline UI punctuate a banner year for the world's most important social network. But 2012 also marks aggressive moves to expand and monetize -- some might say at the expense of user experience and community. At best, Team Facebook is making tough choices in a delicate balancing act. At worst, they are tone deaf to conscientious users. While we're a far cry from mass exodus, there are only so many missteps to take before someone eats Facebook's lunch Read more »

While There Are Some Glimpses Of Progress, Mexico Faces A Long Road To Innovation

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Editor’s note:   Maria Rocio Paniagua currently works as a project manager at  Innku , one of the top mobile and web workshops in Mexico. She is very passionate about all things technology, entrepreneurship and innovation. Follow her on  Twitter . A few weeks ago, Vivek Wadhwa visited Mexico and wrote about the possible opportunities he saw for the Mexican IT sector , noting manufacturing plans. In his article, he suggested that the Mexican technology industry “leapfrog India” by moving away from IT services and into a different emerging market, grabbing the opportunity of re-automating the American manufacturing industry on markets like artificial intelligence, 3D printing and robotics. Mexico is graduating roughly  13,000 engineers every year , so the amount of skilled professional talent needed to achieve these tech goals is available. Vivek pointed to a lack of confidence as a hindrance to success in Mexican tech Read more »

The Gift Of Online Privacy

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Every month I see several birth announcements on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I know exactly what moment the baby was born, what they looked like in sonogram photos, what their first food was, their favorite animal, who their siblings are, where they traveled on vacation, etc. I’ve enjoyed these moments, but in the back of my mind, I find myself feeling sad for children who are growing up during our online over-sharing era. These kids get shared with all of us before they are even out of the womb. I’ve grown to adore some of these children I’ve seen online over the years. Children I’ve never met. Their parents seem like good people. Read more »

In Latin America, Women Are Breaking Barriers To Entrepreneurship

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Editor’s note:   Maria Rocio Paniagua currently works as a project manager at  Innku , one of the top mobile and web workshops in Mexico. She is very passionate about all things technology, entrepreneurship and innovation. Follow her on  Twitter . The lack of women in technology in Latin America and the Caribbean is an issue whose cause has deep roots. Latin American women generally are not expected or encouraged to enter the hard sciences and engineering — medicine being one of the biggest exceptions. And unfortunately, private and public programs have yet to be developed or don’t provide the necessary resources to effect change. One exception is Chile, where public and private programs look to foster startups and entrepreneurship. Contrast this with what’s been happening in the U.S. and Europe: The high positions that women hold, especially in the tech sector, as well as the entrepreneurial support they enjoy, has helped to create a trickle-down effect, resulting in more women in tech. In Latin America and the Caribbean, however, the numbers haven’t moved much Read more »

Single-Click Double-Tap Murder

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Gun control is on many minds this week, but let’s not talk about guns. Let’s talk about drones. (With a reported 300 million guns in private hands in America already, it’s probably too late for gun control anyhow.) Drones are to nation-states what assault rifles are to psychotic mass murderers. Worse yet, the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time until alpha insurgencies like Hezbollah and the Zetas have their own fleets of armed or kamikaze drones. The sound-bite anti-gun-control argument is, of course, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The counterargument is, “Yeah, but guns sure make it a whole lot easier.” The same applies to drone warfare. It’s suddenly so much easier to pull the trigger, and you’re not putting any of your own people at risk. And so more people die. But surely sober, thoughtful, serious people make these decisions , you may say, aided by the fabled disposition matrix . If so, there are a few points you need to keep in mind: If you think drone warfare is going to stay limited to the relatively checked-and-balanced trigger fingers of the U.S. military, you are living in one of the more astoundingly deluded dreamlands of recent times. Read more »