We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:
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Filmmaker Ryan James Yezak boiled down the biggest stories of 2012 into four minutes. And, yes, Honey Boo Boo made it in there:
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So, raise your hand if you knew Patrick Stewart and company were having this much fun behind the scenes at Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Marvel’s Stan Lee — the guy who created characters like the Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and the X-Men — turned 90 the other day. In honor of him and his heroes, here are all his cameos from all of the Marvel movies he helped create:
And, finally, it’s 2013 somewhere… right? Please take caution when announcing that news to this very excitable baby. Happy New Year!
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Ringing in 2013 properly requires a few things: bottom-shelf champagne, “I survived the apocalypse” t-shirts, excessive sequins and — most importantly — New Year’s resolutions that may or may not last beyond February.
[More from Mashable: These Are the Worst Case Scenarios for New Year’s Eve]
You promise to lose weight or quit smoking or stop stalking your ex on Facebook, but what about those people that shoot for a slightly different goal in the new year? Sometimes these resolution-makers come up with brilliant challenges and other times — well, ummm — they share goals that are more “WTF?” than an adult dressed like the New Year’s baby.
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BONUS: 14 Solutions to Your New Year’s Midnight Kiss
There’s got to be one crawling around somewhere. What’s cuter than kissing a baby’s fat cheek? Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
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Image Credit: Mashable composite. Photos via iStockphoto, Adventure_photo and Seanicer
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Michigan passed a bill on Friday that prohibits employers and schools from asking employees and students for login information to their personal social media accounts.
House Bill 5523, signed by Governor Rick Snyder and introduced by state Rep. Aric Nesbitt, “prohibit[s] employers and educational institutions from requiring certain individuals to grant access to, allow observation of, or disclose information that allows access to or observation of personal internet accounts.”
[More from Mashable: An Epic Walk From Beijing to London Fueled by Social Media]
This means an employer or institution cannot require that you provide them with your username or passwords for sites like Facebook and Twitter. The bill is known as the “internet privacy protection act.”
“Potential employees and students should be judged on their skills and abilities, not private online activity,” Snyder said in a press release.
[More from Mashable: Facebook in 2013: More Growing Pains Ahead]
Michigan isn’t alone in adapting laws to the changing Internet social sphere.
Earlier this year, Delaware banned public and private schools from requiring students’ social media account information. The bill passed through the House in a unanimous vote. Months earlier, Maryland introduced a similar bill that would particularly benefit student athletes.
In September, California passed a law that barred companies from asking its workers to surrender their social media account passwords.
Will bills and acts similar to these become more commonplace in our local and national legislature? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
You’re out of college, it’s not cool anymore – just ask your boss.
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Photo via iStockphoto, DNY59
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
A common issue often presents itself when Apple (AAPL) launches new products: it can’t build them fast enough. We’ve seen it time and time again, most recently when Apple launched the iPhone 5 and 150,000 dedicated factory workers still couldn’t keep up with demand. Now, a report has surfaced claiming that Apple’s manufacturing partners in the Far East can’t build units fast enough to keep pace with Apple’s iPad mini orders.
[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]
According to Digitimes’ supply chain sources, Apple’s parts suppliers have prepared enough components to build between 10 million and 12 million iPad mini tablets in the fourth quarter to accomodate heavy demand. Apple’s manufacturing partners are only expected to ship 8 million assembled units, however.
[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]
The report states that yield rates are improving though, and Apple is expected to ship 13 million iPad mini tablets in the first quarter of 2013.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
RIYADH (Reuters) – The editor of a Saudi Arabian website could be sentenced to death after a judge cited him for apostasy and moved his case to a higher court, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.
Raif Badawi, who started the Free Saudi Liberals website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in June, Human Rights Watch said.
Badawi had initially been charged with the less serious offence of insulting Islam through electronic channels, but at a December 17 hearing a judge referred him to a more senior court and recommended he be tried for apostasy, the monitoring group said.
Apostasy, the act of changing religious affiliation, carries an automatic death sentence in Saudi Arabia, along with crimes including blasphemy.
Badawi’s website included articles that were critical of senior religious figures, the monitoring group said.
A spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s Justice Ministry was not available to comment.
The world’s top oil exporter follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam and applies Islamic law, or sharia.
Judges base their decisions on their own interpretation of religious law rather than on a written legal code or on precedent.
King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s ruler, has pushed for reforms to the legal system, including improved training for judges and the introduction of precedent to standardize verdicts and make courts more transparent.
However, Saudi lawyers say that conservatives in the Justice Ministry and the judiciary have resisted implementing many of the changes that he announced in 2007. (Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
In theory, a driving game set in North Korea could be fun — it could revolve around delivering kidnapped movie stars from the airport to Dear Leader’s headquarters, for instance. In reality, though, it looks as though playing a driving game set in North Korea is about as much fun as actually living in North Korea. Business Insider’s Gus Lubin has posted his first impressions of “Welcome to Pyongyang,” an online game that’s “produced by Nosotek, a western IT company based in North Korea,” and he’s found that it’s pretty lame.
[More from BGR: Years after cashing out, MySpace cofounder mocks people who work for a living]
The goal of the game is to drive around the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and become familiar with all the great tourist attractions it has to offer. But unlike action-driving classics such as Crazy Taxi and the Grand Theft Auto series, Welcome to Pyongyang is annoyingly authoritarian and won’t put up with you crashing into cars or mowing down civilians. To make matters worse, the game doesn’t even give you the satisfaction dying at the hands of bloody-minded authorities if you break the rules too often — rather, it sends out a fascistic meter maid to simply tell you that you have been “stopped for bad driving.” We’re not sure what the actual penalty is for reckless is in North Korea, but we get the feeling it’s more severe than getting nitpicked by an annoying digital character.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Kantar Worldpanel’s report for November came out and much has been made of the iPhone market share surge in the United States. What I find interesting in the November numbers is just how ice cold the iPhone has gone in so many international markets, from Australia to Brazil to Southern Europe. The iOS market share showed hefty declines outside in many major markets: down 5.4 percentage points in Australia to 35.9% and down 1.6 points in Brazil to 1.6%. That’s right — the iPhone market share has halved in the most important South American market over the past year. And this happened while BlackBerry and Symbian market shares absolutely caved in. This should have been the period for Apple (AAPL) to pick up points while RIM (RIMM) and Nokia (NOK) floundered. Instead, the sky-high pricing of the iPhone models has effectively started reversing Apple’s market share gains across several major markets.
[More from BGR: Fan-made tweak gives Apple a blueprint for better multitasking in iOS 7 [video]]
In November, the burden of the stiff iPhone pricing was highlighted by how rapidly Windows has started closing the market share gap in Spain, Italy and France. Because Nokia has had trouble ramping up the production of the new Lumia 920 and 820 Windows models, it chose to crank out older Windows models like 800 and 610 for remarkably aggressive Christmas promotions. As European markets are now hitting 50% smartphone market penetration, consumer demand is shifting towards cheap models, and Apple cannot compete in the budget category. The new first-time smartphone buyers have a lot lower household income than the consumers who bought smartphones in 2010. In the recession-ravaged Europe, the upgrade cycle is lengthening and prepaid smartphones are a more important part of the overall product mix.
[More from BGR: RIM’s biggest problem: It’s still scrambling to catch yesterday’s hottest mobile app]
As a result, Windows market share in Italy hit a stunning 11.8% in November despite the razor thin availability of the Lumia 920. Windows has already erased most of the market share lead iPhone had in Italy. The iOS market share slipped to 20.6% during the last month. In Spain, Windows market share vaulted to 3% from 0.4% a year earlier while iOS share faded to 4.4%. As the affordable HTC (2498) 8S ramps up and the even cheaper Lumia 620 launches at the end of January, Windows may overtake iPhone in Spain already in February.
The strong performance Apple had in France and the United Kingdom kept its overall European market share climbing by 2.5 percentage points in November. But in Southern Europe, Latin America and parts of Asia, iPhone is slipping badly due to the lack of a low-end version. This is what is driving the Google (GOOG) Play revenue surge globally as Android apps now narrow the huge lead Apple built in the app market before the year 2012. Apple may well have to reconsider its iPhone pricing strategy in a fundamental way. Maintaining $ 620 ASP level globally could lead to a scenario where Android has 10-to-1 volume lead outside the United States and Northern Europe, and Windows actually has a shot at pulling well ahead of Apple in lower income countries from Spain to Brazil to South-East Asia.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
According to Japanese gaming bible Famitsu, Nintendo 3DS sold 333,000 units in the week ending December 16. Sony’s PS Vita limped along at 13’000 units. The new Wii U did an OK 130,000 units and PS3 managed 46,000 units. The utter hardware domination of the 3DS is reshaping the Japanese software market. Franchises that were thought to be fading have been revitalized in their portable versions. The 3DS version of the ancient “Animal Crossing” series, famed for being the game where nothing happens, hit a staggering 1.7 million units last week in Japan. “Inazuma Eleven” sold 170,000 units in its launch week, up from 140’000 units its DS version managed in 2011.
[More from BGR: RIM, HTC and Nokia could all be headed the way of Palm]
Nintendo’s portable console 3DS had a muted start in its home market in the spring of 2011. Many thought that Sony would have a fair shot at competing with Nintendo once Playstation Vita launched at the end of 2011. But once Nintendo executed an aggressive price cut for 3DS in the summer of 2011 and then launched a large-screen version of the console in mid-2012, the gadget has grown into a godzilla in Japan, demolishing both Sony Vita and aging tabletop console competition.
[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]
3DS is doing well also in America, where its lifetime sales are moving close to the 6 million unit mark this holiday season. According to NPD, the 3DS sales in the US market topped 500,000 units in November. That’s a decent number, though far from the torrid volume the portable is racking up in its home market. The US November video game software chart was dominated by massive home console juggernauts: new installments of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin’s Creed franchises shifted more than 13 million units in retail. At the same time, the Japanese software chart remains in a Nineties time warp, dominated by Nintendo’s musty masterpieces: Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc.
Japanese and American tastes have always been different. But what we are witnessing now is a particularly fascinating divergence. American consumers are spending more of their time and money on smartphone and tablet games, while console game spending is increasingly focusing on massive, graphically stunning blockbuster titles on Xbox360 and PS3. The casual gamers are shifting to mobile games, while hardcore gamers remain attracted to sprawling epics on home consoles. The overall video game spending in America keeps declining month after month, as casual titles and mid-list games slide. But the Triple A whales like Call of Duty series are doing better than ever.
In Japan, Nintendo has been able to battle back iPhone and Android game invasion with a nostalgic series of portable games that basically recycle the biggest hits of Eighties and early Nineties. Mario, Pokemons and other portable heroes are slowly losing their grip on US and European consumers. But in Japan, some form of national nostalgia is keeping Nintendo on track.
The problem here is that the Japanese success of the 3DS may now be convincing Nintendo that it does not have to rethink its business strategy. The smartphone and tablet game spending continues growing explosively across the world. Unlike console games, mobile game sales in China are legal. The global gaming spending is shifting towards new hardware platforms even as console mammoths like Halo still reign in America. At this critical juncture, Nintendo has managed to cocoon its home market in a web of nostalgia, turning the 3DS console and its Eighties left-over franchises into epic bestsellers yet again.
This means that there is no sense of urgency to push Nintendo into rethinking its long-term plans. The company may continue simply ignoring the smartphone and tablet challenge, designing new portable consoles and the 28th Mario game to support it. 20 years ago, Japan’s insularity doomed its chances to succeed in the mobile phone business. Ithe idiosyncratic nature of Japan may now be leading its biggest entertainment industry success astray.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is selling Motorola Mobility‘s TV set-top business for $ 2.35 billion, lightening the load that the Internet search leader took on earlier this year when it completed the biggest acquisition in its history.
The cash-and-stock deal announced late Wednesday will turn over Motorola‘s set-top division to Arris Group Inc., a relatively small provider of high-speed Internet equipment that is looking to become a bigger player in the delivery of video. Investors applauded the move, driving up Arris‘ stock by nearly 17 percent.
Google‘s decision to jettison the set-top boxes comes seven months after the Mountain View, Calif., company took control of Motorola Mobility Holdings in a $ 12.4 billion purchase.
The set-top boxes were never a big allure for Google, although the company is interested in finding ways to pipe its service on to TVs so it can sell more advertising.
Google prized Motorola for its portfolio of more than 17,000 mobile patents. Those form an arsenal that it can use in a fierce battle that has broken out over intellectual property as smartphones and tablet computers have emerged as hot commodities in recent years.
Motorola also makes smartphones and tablets, a manufacturing business that Google will retain, despite lingering concerns on Wall Street about the hardware shrinking Google‘s profit margins and possibly alienating other device makers that use the company’s Android software.
Besides not being a natural fit for Google, Motorola‘s set-top box also has become a potentially expensive liability. Digital video recorder pioneer TiVo Inc. is seeking billions of dollars in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Motorola‘s boxes infringed on its patents. Those claims are scheduled to go to trial next year in federal court in Texas.
Although they declined to provide specifics, Arris Group executives told analysts in a Wednesday conference call that Google still must cover most of the bill for any damages or settlement that TiVo might win.
TiVo already has negotiated about $ 1 billion in combined settlements in other patent-infringement cases it has brought against other companies, including Dish Network Corp., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications.
The proposed sale of Motorola‘s set-top division calls for Google to receive $ 2.05 billion in cash and $ 300 million worth of Arris stock. If the deal wins regulatory approval, Arris Group expects to take over the division before the end of June.
Google will also pare its expenses, something likely to please investors concerned about Motorola being a drag on the company’s earnings. Arris said about 7,000 people work in Motorola‘s set-top division. Google ended September with about 53,500 employees, including 17,400 who worked on the Motorola side of its operations. More than 20,000 people worked at Motorola Mobility when Google became the owner in late May, but the payroll was slashed as part of an effort to pare the losses that have been piling up within Motorola as its once popular cellphones lost market share to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics.
But Motorola‘s set-top business had been making money, according to Google, though the company didn’t say how much.
In the past year ending in September, Motorola‘s set-top operations generated $ 3.4 billion in revenue. That makes it twice as big as Arris Group, whose revenue totaled $ 1.3 billion during the same period. Arris Group, which is based Suwanee, Ga., had earned $ 39 million through the nine months of last year after suffering a loss of nearly $ 13 million for all of 2011.
“This represents a great leap forward for Arris,” CEO Bob Stanzione said during Wednesday’s conference call.
Arris’ stock surged $ 2.46 to $ 17 in extended trading Wednesday while Google‘s stock dipped $ 2.61 to $ 717.50.
The other half of the old Motorola Inc., Motorola Solutions Inc., remains an independent company. Based in Schaumburg, Ill., it sells communications equipment to government and corporate customers.
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
When Tumblr went down Wednesday evening, users flocked to Mashable to express their rage and disbelief.
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[More from Mashable: Mysterious Package Addressed to Indiana Jones Arrives at UChicago]
Where were you the day that Tumblr went down? Whether you were at home, at work or on the move, it’s possible that you somehow ended up on Mashable. That was the case for thousands of Tumblr users, who, desperate for their GIF fix after a Tumblr outage on Wednesday, found themselves commenting on a Mashable story about the glitch.
Frustrated Tumblr frequenters left without a blogging platform transformed the comment thread on Mashable’s story into a makeshift Tumblr dashboard. Users gathered to commiserate, voice their anger and post GIFs to express their feelings. The micro-community that sprung up in the post made these the top comments on Mashable this week.
[More from Mashable: The Top Comments on Mashable This Week]
We recently renovated our commenting system to allow readers to embed video and images, a feature Wednesday’s commenters took full advantage of. By the time Tumblr was again functional, the story had accrued over 4,000 comments. Users traded domain names, discussed their blogs and, above all, bemoaned a lack of access to the site. YouTube user moviepimpdj posted a video of the rapidly moving comment thread.
This week we also saw major changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, with our readers feeling mixed emotions about the shift. The community mused on what 2013 might hold with respect to responsive design.
What were your favorite comments from the Mashable community this week? Get involved with the discussion by signing up for Mashable Follow. You could see your voice in our next weekly roundup!
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This story originally published on Mashable here.
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The US State Department designated the Jabhat al-Nusra militia fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria a foreign terrorist organization today.
The speed with which the US government moved to designate a fairly new group that has never attacked US interests and is engaged in fighting a regime that successive administrations have demonized is evidence of the strange bedfellows and overlapping agendas that make the Syrian civil war so explosive.
The State Department says Jabhat al-Nusra (or the “Nusra Front“) is essentially a wing of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the jihadi group that flourished in Anbar Province after the US invaded to topple the Baathist regime of secular dictator Saddam Hussein. During the Iraq war, Sunni Arab tribesmen living along the Euphrates in eastern Syria flocked to fight with the friends and relatives in the towns along the Euphrates river in Anbar Province.
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The terrain, both actual and human, is similar on both sides of that border, and the rat lines that kept foreign fighters and money flowing into Iraq from Syria work just as well in reverse. Now, the jihadis who fought and largely lost against the Shiite political ascendancy in Iraq are flocking to eastern Syria to repay a debt of gratitude in a battle that looks more likely to succeed every day.
The Nusra Front has gone from victory to victory in eastern Syria and has shown signs of both significant funding and greater military prowess than the average citizens’ militia, with veterans of fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya among its numbers.
The US of course aided the fight in Libya to bring down Muammar Qaddafi. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the chance to fight and kill Americans was the major drawing card.
In Iraq, the US toppled a Baathist dictatorship dominated by Sunni Arabs, opening the door for the political dominance of Iraq’s Shiite Arab majority and the fury of the country’s Sunni jihadis. In Syria, a Baathist regime dominated by the tiny Alawite sect (a long-ago offshoot of Shiite Islam) risks being brought down by the Sunni majority. Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in the odd position of now rooting for a Baathist regime to survive, frightened that a religiously inspired Sunni regime may replace Assad and potentially destabilize parts of his country from Haditha in Anbar’s far west to the northern city of Mosul.
For the US, the situation is more complicated still. The Obama administration appears eager for Assad to fall, but is also afraid of what might replace him, not least because of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. If the regime collapses, the aftermath is sure to be chaotic, much as it was in Libya, where arms stores were looted throughout the country. The presence of VX and sarin nerve gas, and the fear of Al Qaeda aligned militants getting their hands on it, has the US considering sending in troops to secure the weapons.
That’s the context in which today’s designation was made – part of an overall effort to shape the Syrian opposition to US liking, and hopefully have influence in the political outcome if and when Assad’s regime collapses. But while the US has been trying to find a government or leadership in waiting among Syrian exiles, Nusra has been going from strength to strength. Aaron Zelin, who tracks jihadi groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes in a recent piece for Foreign Policy that 20 out of the 48 “martyrdom” notices posted on Al Qaeda forums for the Syria war were made by people claiming to be members of Nusra.
Zelin writes that it’s highly unusual for the US to designate as a terrorist group anyone who hasn’t attempted an attack on the US. In fact, the US only designated the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan, which had been involved in attacks on US troops there for over a decade, this September.
His guess as to why the US took such an unusual step?
The U.S. administration, in designating Jabhat al-Nusra, is likely to argue that the group is an outgrowth of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). While there is not much open-source evidence of this, classified material may offer proof — and there is certainly circumstantial evidence that Jabhat al-Nusra operates as a branch of the ISI.
Getting Syria’s rebels to disavow Jabhat al-Nusra may not be an easy task, however. As in Iraq, jihadists have been some of the most effective and audacious fighters against the Assad regime, garnering respect from other rebel groups in the process. Jabhat al-Nusra seems to have learned from the mistakes of al Qaeda in Iraq: It has not attacked civilians randomly, nor has it shown wanton disregard for human life by publicizing videos showing the beheading of its enemies. Even if its views are extreme, it is getting the benefit of the doubt from other insurgents due to its prowess on the battlefield.
Will it hurt the group’s support inside Syria? It’s hard to see how. The US hasn’t formally explained its logic yet, but it’s hard to see how that will matter either. The rebellion against Assad has raged for almost two years now and the country’s fighters are eager for victory, and revenge. The US has done little to militarily assist the rebellion, and fighters have been happy to take support where they can get it.
Most of the money or weapons flowing into the country for rebels has come from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and some of that support, of course, has ended up in the hands of Islamist militias like Nusra.
Usually the US doesn’t like support flowing to its designated terrorist organizations, and leans on countries like Saudi Arabia to cut off support. But in this case, a doctrinaire enforcement of its will could look like helping Assad (who has insisted everyone fighting his government is a terrorist since long before Nusra even existed).
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It is not clear that Samsung (005930) even cares — but HTC (2498) continues outmaneuvering its far bigger rival when it comes to Windows Phones. The budget HTC Windows Phone 8S is no available from UK operator Three starting at the notably low £17 per month contract price. This is about half of what the monthly contract price of Samsung’s ATIV S Windows Phone model is expected to cost in the UK. Once it finally arrives. Possibly during the last week of the year. There is no firm word on when ATIV S might arrive on AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) at this point.
So not only did Samsung miss the U.S. and European Christmas sales seasons completely with its first Windows Phone 8 device, HTC actually managed to get both the high-end Windows Phone 8X and the budget 8S out before Christmas in some key markets. And Three now actually seems to be giving robust marketing support for HTC’s Windows Phone devices. They are featured prominently on the website and 8X buyers get a free Windows Pro upgrade for their PCs.
It is worth noting that the Windows Phone 8S looks very competitive in the UK prepaid market with a £180 price tag at Three. The Samsung Galaxy S Advance is £270 and Nokia’s (NOK) Lumia 710 is £200.
HTC recently started looking like Jessica Biel — too bland and too expensive — but with the 8S, it might be getting some of its European budget groove back. It is now starting to look like the November sales momentum HTC just showed will extend to December.
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Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Cloudera, a distributor of software that helps companies analyze big data, said it has raised $ 65 million in new funding.
The company is part of a growing group of businesses that help dig into the vast trove of data created by digital sources such as sensors, posts to the Internet, pictures and videos.
The field caught investor attention when Splunk, another data analytics firm, held an initial public offering earlier this year and doubled in price on its first trading day.
Cloudera’s business is based on Hadoop, open-source software that aggregates results from large sets of data. Cloudera provides services that allow companies to easily use Hadoop.
The funding round was led by Accel Partners, with participation from Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and Meritech Capital Partners. All Things D, which first reported the funding, said the company’s valuation was $ 700 million.
Cloudera, based in Palo Alto, California, last raised $ 40 million in November 2011.
(Reporting By Sarah McBride; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Facebook (FB) announced on Tuesday that it will begin opening Facebook Messenger to consumers who do not have a Facebook account, starting in countries like India and South Africa, and later rolling out the service in the United States and Europe. This is a belated acknowledgement of a staggering strategic mistake Facebook made two years ago. That is when the messaging app competition was still wide open and giants like Facebook or Google (GOOG) could have entered the competition. WhatsApp, the leading messaging app firm, had just 1 million users as late as December 2009. By the end of 2010, that number had grown to 10 million. Right now, it likely tops 200 million, though there is no current official number on the matter.
SMS usage started peaking in countries like Netherlands in 2010. Companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google were being offered a giant new market on a silver platter with more than 3 billion consumers worldwide use texting on their phones and many of them started drifting away from basic SMS towards IP-based alternatives a few years ago. None of the behemoths saw or understood the opportunity.
They allowed the mobile messaging market to turn into a free-for-all between tiny start-ups like KakaoTalk, Kik, Viber, WhatsApp, etc. And with astonishing speed, the global market picked a winner and rallied around it. Back in early 2011, there was serious debate about the relative merits of different messaging apps and which one might ultimately edge ahead.
In December 2012, the competitive landscape is stark. Kik is not a Top 5 app in any country in the world. Viber is a Top 5 app in 21 countries, but they are countries like Barbados, Nepal and Tajikistan. WhatsApp is a Top 5 app in 141 countries, including the U.S,, U.K., Germany, Brazil and India. The only real weakness of WhatsApp lies in China, Japan and South Korea, where local champions still lead. But those local apps have zero chance of breaking out of their home markets.
The mobile messaging app competition is over. It turned into a red rout sometime during late 2011 and WhatsApp has emerged as the sole beneficiary of a textbook case of the network effect.
Facebook, Google and Twitter threw away their golden chance to create an SMS killer and grab hold of a billion users globally. It would have been so easy and cheap to develop a simple texting app in 2009, leverage the current user base of any of the IT giants and then watch the app soar to global prominence.
And it is so very, very hard to do now. Dislodging WhatsApp now would mean neutralizing a smartphone market penetration advantage that is hitting 80% in some markets. People often ask me why I’m so fixated on WhatsApp and the answer is simple: it’s the most popular and important mobile app in the world. And it beat Facebook, Twitter, Google and other major companies before they even realized there was an important war being waged.
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Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
His name is Nolan Daniels, and he’s just about to give some random dude or dudette $ 1 million. Or so he claims.
Purporting to be the second Powerball winner in Wednesday’s $ 588 million payout, Mr. Daniels posted a Facebook photo late Thursday of himself holding a ticket showing the winning numbers. The photo is the only one visible on Daniels’s account, which dates to 2008.
“Looks like I’m not going to work … EVER!!!” the smiling purported winner exclaimed. The numbers on his ticket – 5-23-16-22-29-Powerball 6 – correspond to the winning combination, but the ticket has not been publicly verified.
To make the Facebook announcement that much more bizarre, Daniels vowed to give $ 1 million of his winnings to a “random” person who “shares” his photo.
That set off a frenzy Friday as thousands of Facebook users got in on the action, with the photo being shared over 1,000 times a minute, with over 100,000 shares as of 3:30 p.m.
On his Facebook page, Daniels chastised skeptics and suggested, “Anyone who doubts the legitimacy of this photo will not be included in the 1 million dollar drawing.”
There were two winners in the drawing. The only winners confirmed so far are Cindy and Mark Hill of Dearborn, Mo., who decided to take a lump sum payment. Lottery authorities have not revealed the name of the other winner, who bought a ticket in Arizona. Earlier on Friday, some guessed that a video of a man celebrating in Maryland might show the winner.
The payout is the second largest in US history after three ticket buyers shared a $ 656 million jackpot in March. As the amount grew this week, tickets were selling at a rate of 130,000 a minute.
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Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony Corp has been approached by at least three investment banks offering to sell its battery business as the struggling Japanese group looks to offload non-core assets and focus on reviving its consumer electronics business, banking sources said.
Selling the unit, which employs 2,700 people and had sales last year of $ 1.74 billion, would help Sony cut costs and generate cash as it restructures its operations, three people involved in the preliminary discussions told Reuters.
The company, a byword for innovative gadgetry in the 1970s and 80s, has been battered by weak demand for its TVs in a fiercely competitive market. The TV business has racked up huge losses; Sony’s market value has slumped to below $ 10 billion and ratings agency Fitch last week downgraded the company’s debt to “junk” status – a move likely to push up borrowing costs and make asset sales more attractive.
CEO Kazuo Hirai has pledged to rebuild Sony around gaming, digital imaging and mobile devices, while nurturing new businesses such as medical devices. He is axing 10,000 jobs, closing facilities and selling assets. Any disposals would be part of a broader “garage sale” by Japan’s leading electronics groups that are hurting in weak markets and tight financing.
Potential buyers for Sony Energy Devices Corp – founded in 1975 as Sony-Eveready, a joint venture with Union Carbide Corp – could include Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry and BYD Co Ltd, a Chinese carmaker backed by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, said one of the sources. Hon Hai is also in negotiations to become rival TV maker Sharp Corp’s biggest shareholder.
FOREIGN INTEREST
Despite a strong yen, interest is likely to come mainly from potential foreign buyers, said the sources, who did not want to be named as the talks are private.
Selling the business overseas may not go down well with a Japanese government that in the past has kept technology at home by promoting alliances between local producers. Panasonic Corp, NEC Corp and Hitachi Ltd also make lithium-ion batteries, though the firms’ fabrication technology differs.
Sony declined to comment on the possible sale of the business, which makes lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones, tablets and PCs. “At our corporate strategy announcement in April, (Hirai) said we would explore possible alliances in E-vehicle batteries and battery storage,” said spokesman George Boyd.
As with TVs, Sony has struggled to compete against South Korean rivals in a battery business that is worth $ 18 billion a year. The small cells that power mobile devices now account for around 60 percent of the market, ahead of those used in cars and electrical tools, according to research company IHS iSuppli.
While lithium-ion battery demand has steadily expanded with the boom in mobile consumer electronics, severe price competition has resulted in razor thin margins that favor large-scale manufacturers with weak local currencies.
“The battery business is a prime example of the company’s loss-making and unwanted assets. It doesn’t make sense for them to keep it,” said one of the banking sources.
FALLING MARKET SHARE
As Hirai doubles down on Sony’s strength in consumer electronics, the company has sold a chemicals company, with 2,900 workers, and may also let go its U.S. headquarters building in New York go. At the same time, it has spent close to $ 2 billion on a U.S. game clouding company and a stake in medical equipment maker Olympus Corp.
Sony produced 74 million lithium-ion battery cells in July-September – almost 40 percent fewer than in the first quarter of 2008, when its output topped Samsung SDI Co Ltd’s 110 million and LG Chem Ltd’s 54 million, according to Techno System Research in Tokyo. Sony’s market share is now 7 percent, dwarfed by Samsung SDI’s 27 percent, Panasonic’s 21 percent and LG Chem’s 17 percent.
Sony’s battery unit, which also makes button batteries for watches and smaller appliances and optical devices, has three factories in Japan and two overseas assembly plants in China and Singapore. It has yet to enter the more lucrative business for automotive batteries.
In its most recent filing, Sony valued the battery unit’s fixed assets, including production sites and machinery, at 52 billion yen ($ 633 million). Under Sony’s accounting rules, asset sales are typically booked as operating profit.
The cost to protect $ 10 million of Sony debt against default for five years has edged higher this week to almost $ 400,000. The CDS spreads had tumbled earlier this month – from above 480 basis points – after Sony said it would raise 150 billion yen ($ 1.9 billion) through a sale of convertible bonds.
($ 1 = 82.1200 Japanese yen)
(Additional reporting by Reiji Murai; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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