Google Activates 3.7 Million Android Devices on Christmas Weekend [VIDEO]

As previously noted, this Christmas was a big one for the smartphone category.

While Flurry Analytics found that 6.8 million Android and iOS devices were activated on Christmas Day, though, the company declined to outline how much share each platform got. But now Google svp Andy Rubin has shed a little bit more light on the issue. Rubin on Wednesday tweeted that 3.7 million Android devices were activated on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25.

That’s a big jump over the 700,000 activations per day for Android that he had previously announced.

Did you get an Android device for the holidays? Let us know in the comments.

Amazon Wins, Netflix Loses in Holiday Satisfaction Study [VIDEO]

Internet shoppers were happy with Amazon and disappointed in Netflix this holiday season, according to a study released Wednesday.

In an annual index of ecommerce sites’ customer satisfaction by analytics firm ForeSee, Amazon’s performance improved while Netflix’s plunged after the two companies spent several years dueling for the study’s top spot. Amazon’s overall score rose two points to register 88 out of 100 possible points for the index’s best mark.

But Netflix, following a year marred by a series of service and public relations missteps, saw its total fall seven points for an overall rank of 79. The 8% decline in score was the steepest of all the companies included in the study.

The survey considers a range of factors to rank online retailers, including website content, functionality, merchandise and prices. ForeSee considers a score of 80 to be “the standard for excellence.”

Netflix appears to be experiencing continued blowback from a fiasco-plagued 2011. In July, the company unexpectedly raised its prices for both streaming and DVD delivery by 60%. Then in August, it attempted to create a spinoff company that would have required customers to create two separate accounts for what was previously one service.

Netflix then scrapped that plan in October, but its stock price had already lost half its value the month before. ForeSee says its holiday satisfaction survey is the first methodical assessment of customer satisfaction with Netflix since company’s blunders earlier this year.

“Customer satisfaction is predictive, which means that Netflix’s financial woes may be just beginning,” ForeSee president Larry Freed said in a statement accompanying the study’s release.

Amazon, meanwhile, continues its dominance of the online retail space in multiple sectors and rebranded its streaming video service earlier this year to better compete with Netflix. Amazon has also received a boost from its line of popular Kindle products, which have sold at an astounding rate recently.

While Amazon enjoyed a glowing review according to the holiday shopping study, other companies made even more impressive jumps in online customer satisfaction. Electronics retailer TigerDirect.com made the largest jump, with an 8 percent increase in customer satisfaction for an overall score of 79. JC Penney, which named former Apple executive Ron Johnson as CEO earlier this year, improved by 6% for an overall score of 83.

Gap.com and Overstock.com posted the steepest declines after Netflix, falling six and five percent, respectively. Gap.com registered an overall score of 73, while Overstock.coms’ score was 72.

General online shopper satisfaction has increased from 74 when the holiday satisfaction study began in 2005 to an all-time high of 79 this year.

Where do Netflix and Amazon stand in your opinion? What e-retailers were you impressed or let down by this holiday season?

View the original article here

Osama bin Laden’s Death is AOL’s Top Story of 2011

The votes have been cast, the results have been tallied and the death of Osama bin Laden has been named the top news story of 2011 according to AOL’s “11 Days That Shaped 2011? challenge. Organized in chronological order, Osama bin Laden’s death was sixth option on the site.

The site was created as a way to sum up the year in news based on shares, engagement and impact on the AOL website and its media partners, including The Huffington Post, Engadget and more.

Viewers were asked to vote for which news event they felt was the most important in 2011. Osama bin Laden’s death was the clear winner with 31% of the vote, the next closest was the earthquake and tsunami in Japan (15%) and the Debt Ceiling Crisis and Arab Spring (each with 10% of the vote).

SEE ALSO: AOL Names 11 News Stories That Shaped 2011

“I wasn’t surprised that the death of Osama bin Laden was voted the top moment of 2011 for a few reasons,” says AOL CMO Maureen Sullivan. “First, the story was several years in the making, stretching back almost a decade to 2001. Second, the event really captured how news coverage is changing in the 21st century. Word of Bin Laden’s death broke on Twitter and was picked up by the mainstream media there, so it also highlights the important relationship between social media and mainstream media. And finally, this event really touched people on global, national and local levels.”

Of course, not all the news stories were as comparably momentous. Charlie Sheen’s public meltdown made the short list but fell far behind the rest of the pack. Voters could also write in their own picks for top story, some of which included Kim Kardashian’s wedding divorce, the transplant of the world’s first artificial organ, the Casey Anthony trial and the death of Muammar Gaddafi.

You can find the full results by scrolling through the 11 Days That Shaped 2011. Each slide provides information, factoids, headlines and context for each of the major events. You can also jump straight to the results by clicking here.

Was Osama bin Laden’s death the biggest story of 2011? What would you vote for? Sound off in the comments.

Ruling Increases Odds for Online Gambling Legalization

Online lotteries and poker may be poised to become legal thanks to a new decision by the Justice Department reinterpreting the Wire Act of 1961.

The decision, written in September but made public last Friday, found the Act’s prohibition of wagers via telecommunications crossing state lines or international borders refers only to bets on a “sporting event or contest” and not to lottery tickets sold online. The decision doesn’t mention online poker, but some reason that the ruling will pave the way for online poker.

“The United States Department of Justice has given the online gaming community a big, big present,” Prof. I. Nelson Rose wrote on his blog, Gambling and the Law.

“If the Wire Act is limited to bets on sports events and races, what other federal anti-gambling statutes are left?” wrote Rose. “There are prohibitions on interstate lotteries, but Powerball and the other multi-state lotteries show how easily these can be gotten around, even before Congress passed an express exemption for state lotteries. And poker is not a lottery under federal law.” Rose continued that since the Wire Act refers to bets on an event, poker would be except because poker is itself the event.

The DOJ has aggressively enforced the ban on online poker. In April, the agency shut down three foreign-based online poker firms — Absolute Poker, Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker — charging that each of the companies had violated the law by serving U.S. residents.

What do you think? In April, we polled our readers and found most (54%) thought online gambling was a “victimless crime” and should be legal? Do you agree? Sound off in the comments.

Occupy Facebook: Social Network for Protesters in the Works

Occupy Wall Street activists are developing a social network called The Global Square for the generation of protesters.

“We don’t want to trust Facebook with private messages among activists,” developer Ed Knutson told Wired.

Knutson is helping build the network, which will unite members of Occupy movements across the globe. As more of the physical encampments are evicted across the U.S., digital meeting places will be of increased importance, explains a November RoarMag blog post.

“In addition to the local squares, we now need a global square where people of all nations can come together as equals to participate in the coordination of collective actions and the formulation of common goals and aspirations. For this reason, we call upon the revolutionary whizkids of the world to unite and assist in the development of a new online platform – The Global Square – that combines the communicative functions of the existing social networks with the political functions of the assemblies to provide crucial new tools for the development of our global movement.”

The Global Square will include an interactive map of uprisings around the world, an easy search option to find movements near you, a Facebook-style news feed, calendars, debate forums, collaboration space, messaging and more. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Wired reports that to become a member, you will need a sponsor to ensure you are trustworthy. The site is expected to launch in January.

This is not the first tech innovation we’ve seen spurred by the Occupy movement. OWS broadcaster Tim Pool is creating new reporting techniques, hackathons have united programmers and the Free Network Foundation brought free Wi-Fi to Zuccotti Park.

Established social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, are considered to have been at the center of revolutions across the world this year. However, members of the Occupy movement fear these networks would turn over private messages, when confronted by authorities.

In January, ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak shut off the country’s Internet in fear of the power of social networks. Last week, a Massachusetts district attorney subpoenaed Twitter for private messages from the @OccupyBoston Twitter account.

Do you think The Global Square is filling a void for activists, or are the existing mainstream networks sufficient? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, The Whistling Monkey

China Launches Its Answer to America’s GPS Dominance

Officials at China’s independent satellite navigation system announced Tuesday their GPS alternative is available to the public, reports the BBC.

Named Beidou, Chinese for “compass,” the system has been in development for more than a decade. China began work on Beidou in 2000 in order to become less dependent on the U.S.-owned Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) infrastructure.

Before launching Beidou, the Chinese relied on American GPS for military and domestic use. Should China have gotten involved in a military conflict with a U.S. ally, the United States could have blocked access to GPS, causing a disadvantage for the Chinese military. With Beidou, China now has its own system for warship navigation and missile targeting.

China state media have stressed the commercial potential of the new system. Domestic GPS technology is a thriving market in the United States and Europe, and China expects to replicate that success.

Civilian users of the network will have geolocation accuracy of 10 meters and speed measurements accurate to .2 meters per second. The Chinese military will have access to more accurate data.

The development of Baidou parallels the creation of GPS, which was available exclusively to the American military for the first 20 years of its existence. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton declared GPS to be a “dual-use system” in 1996. This paved the way for car and naval navigation, geolocation, geocaching and a plethora of other GPS applications. However, in the U.S. and elsewhere, the military still enjoys more accurate GPS data than civilians.

Currently, Beidou uses 10 satellites. Coverage is limited to mainland China and nearby areas of Asia. The Chinese government plans to expand the system gradually, providing global coverage by 2020.

Windows Phone Marketplace Passes 50,000 Apps

It seems like only yesterday that the Windows Phone Marketplace hit 40,000 apps — actually, it was Nov. 17 — and now Microsoft’s mobile app store has just passed 50,000, according to All About Windows Phone.

Microsoft currently gives an official count of “more than 35,000? apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, a company spokesperson told Mashable. In the past, Microsoft has said that it doesn’t count extremely simple apps such as wallpapers or multiple versions (i.e. a paid game that also provides a “lite” version) as individual apps, which may explain the large discrepancy between the official number and the estimate.

In either case, it’s a fraction of the number of apps in Apple’s App Store or the Android Market (about 600,000 and 500,000 apps, respectively). However, even though the number isn’t large by app-store standards, the Windows Phone Marketplace is growing rapidly. The platform hit 50,000 apps sooner than all platforms except iOS, in just 14 months, the report notes. It took Android 19 months to reach that mark.

Microsoft’s app store passed the milestone sooner than the site predicted, and it’s seen a strong uptick in the number of apps submitted and approved in the past few weeks. The number of apps is growing at a rate of 265 items per day (see the graph below).

All About Windows Phone chalks up the platform’s growth spurt to the increased availability of Windows Phones (the number of countries recently went up from 16 to 35) and the highly anticipated release of Nokia’s Windows Phones, such as the Lumina 710 in the U.S. However, those events had been anticipated for a while, and it doesn’t fully explain the sudden interest from developers, which isn’t directly related to the spread of the platform.

It’s possible the release of the developer preview of Windows 8 may have been a factor. Since both Windows Phone and Windows 8 share the Metro user interface, more than a few Windows 8 developers who had never created apps in Metro may have been persuaded to give Windows Phone a try.

Even though the Windows Phone Marketplace is taking off, Microsoft faces many challenges before its mobile platform will seriously challenge Apple’s or Google’s. Charlie Kindel, the former general manager of Windows Phone’s developer experience, theorizes that Microsoft doesn’t curry favor among carriers and manufacturers the same way Apple and Android have, and the whole platform suffers, even though, as Kindel says, it provides a superior experience in many ways.

At least developers seem to be finally warming up to the platform. Are you a Windows Phone developer or customer? Why do you favor it? And if you’re not a fan, why not? Let us know in the comments.

iPhone 5 Rumors Start Heating Up [VIDEO]

The second round of iPhone 5 rumors has officially begun, speculating a redesigned front rim in rubber or plastic, possibly to connect the face to a new aluminum back plate or to cover a new antenna system.

BGR says a source close to the company claims the iPhone will launch next fall, around the time the iPhone 4S launched this year. Pop Herald is predicting a 4-inch screen, which would require app developers to overhaul their products to avoid poor resolution.

But as we all know, iPhone rumors will come in all shapes and flavors before the upcoming launch. What do you think about this set?

Why Real-World Socializing Is the Next Big Thing for Social Media

Often, there is an ironic disconnect between your online and offline social networks. In other words, we’re “friends” with strangers on Facebook, and we “hangout” when we’re actually apart on Google+.

Facebook app Shaker attempts to transform the social network into a virtual bar. While buying someone a virtual beer is a poor substitute for the actual experience, Shaker is attempting something pretty interesting when it comes to meeting new people. By mashing up your social graph with your interest graph, Shaker connects you with new people you might actually become friends with in real-life.

But Shaker still feels like an awkward middle ground for social networking — a stopgap bridge between our online and offline selves. In other words, I’m not entirely convinced that I’ll ever really say, “I had a great night last night on Shaker.”

There’s no doubt that social networking has transformed the way we interact with friends and family, and has made the world a more open and connected place. There’s just one problem — social networking is not actually social.

From the Latin root socials, meaning “united, living with others,” the word social is firmly grounded in the physical world and implies face-to-face interaction. If you’re a social person, it means you like to spend time with other people. But this definition conflicts with today’s concept of social networking, in which we interact primarily with screens rather than with people.

Facebook doesn’t understand old school, face-to-face social interaction, and it never will because the concept goes against the company’s bottom line. The more time users spend with the computer screen, the more ads they encounter, and consequently the more money Facebook makes. While Facebook enables some real-world interactions, this practice is the exception, not the rule.

When Google+ launched Circles as a real-life interaction tool, it seemed to understand the problem, stating that the “subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our [current] online tools.” But what was Google’s solution? More nuanced online tools. This is a losing battle because there are no substitutes for real-world interaction.

So, how do we break away from our screens without losing the benefits of a digitally connected life? How do we bridge the gap between online and offline by becoming more connected with our real friends out in the real world? How do we make social networking actually social?

Two converging trends have the potential to socialize social networking: the explosion of mobile and the shift toward “future tense” sharing.

Mobile has done more than any other trend to drag social networking into the real world. No matter where we go, our smartphones help us to stay connected with friends and family. But “staying connected” is different than actually connecting face-to-face. Even industry leaders like Foursquare fall short when it comes to facilitating real-world interactions. The checkin was partly built on the myth of the serendipitous connection — the idea that when I check in somewhere, a nearby friend will decide to join me. In practice, this rarely happens. There are just too many hurdles, missed connections and passed opportunities.

While mobile represents the bridge between the online and offline worlds, mobile alone isn’t enough. It’s not simply a matter of web versus mobile; it’s a matter of past versus future. In the last decade, Facebook and other social networks have focused on mapping and documenting our existing relationships. The company’s preoccupation with the past is highlighted by its new Timeline feature. At the same time, however, Twitter and Foursquare emphasize what is happening right now.

The past and present of our lives are already established online — therefore, the next frontier in social networking is the future. “Future tense” social networking asks: Where do you want to go? Who do you want to meet? What do you want to buy? By sharing your plans, desires and aspirations, you enable real-world interactions. For example, when you push a checkin to the future, you shift the paradigm from “I’m here now” to “I’ll be there later.” You increase the likelihood of connection.

Likewise, “future tense” social networking has the potential to transform location-based marketing because users are directly expressing their intent. For example, imagine that a user broadcasts her plans to grab pizza at Home Slice. A competing pizza place could then offer a deal in an attempt to swipe Home Slice’s checkin. Then, Home Slice could upsell by offering the customer half-off a second pie. So it goes.

Marketing has always been about understanding a potential customer’s intent. When you understand intent, you can serve a more relevant ad at a time when that person is most likely to take action.

Understanding intent is just as beneficial for consumers as it is for businesses. Consider the travel industry: When a customer buys a plane ticket from Expedia, his intent is clearly to travel to a specific city on a specific day. Consequently, Expedia can present great hotel and rental car deals for that destination — and the payoff is big. According to Expedia’s 2011 third quarter report, only 9% of its worldwide revenue comes from booking airline tickets — the remaining comes from booking hotels, car rentals and other travel-related services.

The shift from present tense to future tense might seem trivial, but it will generate a huge shift. “Future tense” social networking catches people at a unique moment in the buying cycle. The consumer hasn’t entirely made up her mind about where to go or what she plans to buy, which means businesses can take an active role in the decision-making process. After all, you can’t change the past or the present, but you can change the future.

Ultimately, real-world socializing will win the day. Humans are social creatures hard-wired for interpersonal contact and companionship. It’s time to bridge the gap between our online and offline lives and make social networking actually social. Real life: Accept no substitutes.

 

Circa Promises Different, ‘Beautiful’ News Reading Experience

A new startup backed by the founders of I Can Has Cheezburger and geo-location app service SimpleGeo aims to change the way we read news.

Details about Circa — which plans to roll out within the next six months — have been scarce, but former SimpleGeo founder Matt Galligan, who left the company in August to pursue new interests, told Mashable that the startup will rethink how news is distributed and build a new model from the ground up.

“We think that there is room for improvement in how news is written, distributed and read, and we’re trying to tackle that challenge,” Galligan told Mashable. “We’re simply trying to create the news experience that we would want to use every single day.’

The concept started with Galligan and Cheezburger founder Ben Huh – who will serve as a company adviser — creating what they call the “Moby Dick Project.”

SEE ALSO: 6 Game-Changing Digital Journalism Events of 2011 | Ben Huh: What Saved His Life

“The idea was that news needs to be reinvented,” Galligan said. “We’ve now expanded on the initial vision and it’s become much deeper. We aim to create the best news experience by optimizing for truths, encouraging diversity and empowering the readers.”

He wouldn’t elaborate on how the site would differ from others, but he said it will begin its focus on headline news and politics and will expand beyond that in the future. Galligan also noted that there will be an emphasis on the look and layout of the site.

“We’re placing a lot of focus on beautiful design,” Galligan said. “Layout, typography and user experience are all paramount in our vision. We believe that the best possible news experience needs to be presented in a very beautiful way and will be more compelling as a result.”

Although the site isn’t up and running just yet, it’s taking invitation requests now.

“People will get approved to enter the site as soon as we have a minimally-viable product able to offer them,” Galligan said. “We’re doing an invite-only beta to get feedback on the product and try to build the best news experience possible.”

Circa’s goal in the next few years? “We hope we have inspired users to see news differently than they see it today.”

Are you satisfied with the way news is distributed today? Do you think readers are ready for a new model? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Dropbox Tests Automatic Camera Uploads

Beta builds of the Dropbox software for Mac, Windows and Linux has added a nifty new feature to the cloud-storage service: Automatic photo uploads.

The new feature tries its hand at one of iCloud’s most appealing new features: Photo Stream.

With Photo Stream, Apple makes it easy to access photos from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch within iPhoto, Aperture or Windows Explorer automagically. This aids in backing photos up to your computer, as well as storing photos to the cloud.

The new Dropbox photo upload feature — which is currently available in the latest Experimental Forum Build of the desktop app — works in a similar manner.

Once enabled, plugging in a camera or memory card will give you the option of automatically importing the photographs and movies and then uploading that content directly to Dropbox.

I have my iPhone 4S setup not to connect to iPhoto/Aperture or any other camera utility, so I tested the new feature using an SD card from a Polaroid Z340 that we had around the office.

Upon inserting the card, I was greeted with this message:

As you can see, you can choose to automatically import photos from a particular device or opt to “never” import from that device.

Once you select “Start Import,” the process starts. All of the photos and videos on the SD card are imported to a newly created “Camera Uploads” folder within Dropbox. That folder is then synced with Dropbox’s servers.

The entire process is quick and seamless.

In the Dropbox forums, some users have complained about the feature — worrying that the feature will make it too easy for free users to burst past their account sizes. Others dislike the lack of granularity in choosing what files to upload and to what folder.

While we would certainly appreciate an option to select an upload location, rather than defaulting to “Camera Uploads,” we think this is a fantastic new feature.

For people like my mom — who avoids uploading her photos from her camera on a regular basis — this sort of tool would ensure that her photos stay backed up in at least one more location (in addition to using iCloud).

As someone who frequently uploads shots from my camera to Dropbox, especially when at live events, this feature will save one more step. My hope of hopes? That Dropbox and EyeFi can find a way to work together so that photos I take with my EyeFi card can upload directly to a Dropbox folder.

The feature is still in beta, so be prepared for some potential bugginess. Mac users who want to stay on the cutting-edge with Dropbox updates should check out the excellent MacDropUpdate utility.

Twitter’s 15 Major Milestones in 2011

Much like any other year, 2011 experienced major events that shook the world, whether the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East or the worldwide protests led by Occupy Wall Street.

But in 2011, microblogging service Twitter was at the epicenter of these events, broadcasting minute-to-minute updates and firsthand experiences from users to the rest of the world.

For protesters, Twitter served as a primary communicator to connect with other protesters and civilians, organize meetings and post pictures and videos of uprisings. Unfortunately, hundreds of protesters who encouraged violence via social media, or who were photographed and filmed taking part in the violence, were prosecuted.

SEE ALSO: Top 16 Tweets-Per-Second Moments of 2011 | The 21 Most Memorable Tweets of 2011

Twitter also launched new upgrades and designs for its services and made several acquisitions, including web advertising company AdGrok, social analytics platform BackType and lists and interests-focused startup Bagcheck.

Unfortunately for Twitter, 2011 also brought a number of scams — from 11.6 hours to a beach body weight-loss product to the Tweeter Viewer, these scams targeted many user accounts.

Check out the gallery below to see more of Twitter’s major milestones in 2011.

View As Slideshow »

January: After violence between anti-government protesters and police continued to erupt in Cairo, Egypt, the Egyptian government censored microblogging service Twitter as well as other websites.

Social media played a key role throughout Egypt's protests. First, the protests were organized through a Facebook Page, then protesters turned to Twitter to post photos, video feeds and other information about the protests, using several hashtags devoted to the revolution.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mtrommer

March: Twitter turned five and, in celebration of its birthday, the company launched a new website -- discover.twitter.com -- which features 16 prominent users from a variety of backgrounds that users can follow. The list currently includes Snoop Dog, Martha Stewart and Serena Williams.

Twitter also launched a new YouTube video of the 16 featured users discussing who they follow on the site and the value Twitter brings to their lives.

Image courtesy of Discover.twitter.com

April: Twitter extended its Local Trends feature to 70 additional cities and countries around the world, including South Africa, Jakarta, Santiago and Japan.

The feature, which has more than 100 international locations, allows users to discover which topics are trending in their region.

May: Twitter announced its acquisition of TweetDeck, a personal browser that lets users manage their social networks all on one dashboard.

“This acquisition is an important step forward for us,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in a blog post. “TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about.”

Although Twitter did not release the price of the acquisition, reports suggested the amount to be approximately $40 million.

Image courtesy of TweetDeck

May: Twitter launched a "follow" button, enabling users to subscribe to the Twitter feeds of individuals and companies directly from their external websites. The new feature has prompted website publishers to add the "follow us" link to their sites.

Prior to the "follow" button, users could only follow other Twitter users from Twitter.com.

June: Twitter has always left photos and videos to third-party services like Twitpic and Yfrog, but this year the company launched its own version that directly connects video and photos to tweets.

Twitter users can now view photos and videos without having to leave the site.

June: To allow users to access more multimedia content without leaving Twitter.com, the site integrated several new social tools, including Amazon, AOL Video, Foursquare, Plancast and Gowalla.

Now multimedia appears on Twitter whenever users tweet links from any of these sites. The company also plans to integrate other social tools in the future.

June: After surpassing 50 million tweets per day in 2010, Twitter reached a new milestone of 200 million tweets sent per day. Each second, 2,400 tweets are sent through Twitter, totaling about 1.4 billion tweets per week.

According to Twitter's calculations, the amount of tweets sent in one day is enough to write a 10 million-page book or 8,163 copies of War and Peace.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, matspersson0

July: According to reports from The Wall Street Journal, Twitter's value has almost doubled in seven months after raising hundreds of millions of dollars. At just $3.7 billion in December, Twitter's valuation skyrocketed to $7 billion by July.

The increase in valuation derives from the company's growing number of revenue streams.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, cruphoto

August: As part of its web application redesign, Twitter introduced two new features: “@[username]” and “Activity".

The @username, which replaced the mentions tab, includes tweets specifically directed at users via @replies, favorite tweets and retweeted tweets and new follow notifications.

The Activity's tab, similar to notifications in Facebook's News Feed, showcases the same activities as the @username tab but focuses more on the individuals a user follows.

September: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed Twitter has 100 million active users who log in at least once a month and 50 million active users each day.

Costolo also shared that out of 200 million registered users, exactly half logs on to the microblogging service each month, which is up 82% since the beginning of 2011.

Image courtesy of Flickr, shawncampbell

September: Twitter unveiled Twitter Web Analytics, a new tool that allows users to measure the amount of traffic their websites receive from Twitter.

The tool provides website owners with more data on the effectiveness of their Twitter integration strategies.

September: Twitter expanded its service to five new languages: Hindi, Tagalog, Malay and simplified and traditional Chinese, bringing the total number of languages to 17.

Twitter also added Dutch and Indonesian to its list of languages this year.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, warchi

October: New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg joined Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in announcing the company's first official New York office, located at 340 Madison Avenue.

The office is the former address of Facebook's office in Manhattan.

December: An exciting end to 2011, Twitter introduced an entirely new look for its website, mobile apps and TweetDeck, in hopes that the new look will simplify the user experience.

The new design has moved tweets to the right side of the page and includes three new buttons at the top of the page -- Home, @Connect and #Discover. @Connect shows you who has mentioned you in a tweet and gives you suggestions of accounts to follow. #Discover shows you what is trending and directs you to important stories and videos.

In addition, Twitter unveiled embeddable tweets, which lets users embed tweets on their websites using a one-line code, and allows visitors to reply, retweet and favorite without leaving the site.

Image courtesy of Flickr, BeauGiles

5 Ways to Win at Website Localization

Robert Laing is the founder of myGengo, a 500 Startups company that helps businesses all over the world go global with convenient, affordable and high quality human translation service that scales.

Let’s delve into the topic of website localization to learn exactly what every company needs before going global. But first, to define localization: the translation and adaptation of content for foreign markets. Simple enough, right?

Now, take a close look at five important points to remember when it comes to website localization. 

Let’s assume that the images on your company website are already geared towards your intended audience. When going global, it’s best to rely on images that are culturally appropriate and sensitive. Do this well and you’ll boost your company’s ability to connect with those visiting the site, not to mention, foster a healthy relationship with potential customers.

Let’s take a look at an example of good website localization. In the screenshot above, notice how Zynga Japan, the company behind Farmville and Cityville, incorporates the Japanese flag into its homepage banner. Clearly, the image is appropriate for a website intended for a Japanese audience.

Don’t forget that the way one audience perceives a particular image can differ greatly from another reacts. And then there’s the fact that what’s acceptable for one target market can take on an entirely different meaning for another. For example, a thumbs-up gesture in one culture is a positive affirmation, whereas in another, it could mean, “Up yours, pal!”

Keep these things in mind when localizing the company site and you’ll be one step closer to connecting with your target market. Here are some other things to consider.

Attention to Detail: Mistaking the Italian and Mexican flags, for example, is bad news.Cultural Sensitivity: People have strong feelings about things like colors, symbols and metaphors. Does the color white symbolize purity or death for your intended audience?Risk Assessment: Aim to avoid any unintended consequences that could be embarrassing or potentially hazardous to your company.

The bottom line: When building trust and earning customer loyalty is the objective, images can make all the difference in the world.

Make no mistake, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work with website localization. People do things differently around the world; therefore, companies going global must adapt and adjust to succeed. Let’s compare the English and Japanese websites of Rakuten, the company behind the largest online shopping mall in Japan, to explain this further.

Notice that the Rakuten USA website (above) is simple and clean when compared to the Rakuten Japan website (below). Of course, know that Japanese websites can oftentimes appear overly busy to the non-native eye.

In a blog post titled The Puzzle of Japanese Design, Sean Hussey, former employee of Rakuten USA, offers his perspective about the Japanese company: “We tried to develop our products with clean designs and interfaces, which came in direct contrast with the home company’s approach. It was understood as a cultural difference…Japanese sites are full of text, images, animations, clashing colors and scroll-scroll-scrolling layout choices.”

The bottom line: The style and design of a well-localized site means staying consistent with local norms so it looks and feels familiar and usable to your audience.

Question: If a major component of the localization process is content translation, then why do some companies purposely exclude the translation of certain keywords, tabs, menus, taglines and slogans when localizing their website?

The short answer is that no one ever said website translation had to be an all-or-nothing process. In fact, in some cases it can be beneficial for a company website to blur the language lines rather than opt to translate the whole thing from start to finish. If you want to see this in action then check out the Japanese myGengo site.

Now let’s take a look at one example: Airbnb‘s website is used by people around the globe looking for local accommodations away from home. Specifically, Airbnb provides a platform for its users to rent from “real people in 19,732 cities in 192 countries.” The tagline appears on the company website, where I’d now like to draw your attention. 

In these two screenshots, notice the tagline used for the Chinese version is in English (not Chinese), yet the Italian version of the website has been remained in its local language. Why one and not the other? Also, check out the photograph of the happy friends at the top of the page. In both examples, the words below the image are in English, and haven’t been translated into Chinese or Italian. This is because localization isn’t always a science — it’s an art too.

Here are some points to keep in mind when tackling the language component of your website localization.

Language Lengths: Some languages appear longer when written or typed. Do the words “Invite Your Friends” fit as nicely in Italian as they do in English?Emphasis: Foreign languages are cool. If you want to make your page pop, using a non-native language might be your secret weapon. Just be careful with translation!International Appeal: Localization is all about going global. Translating some (not all) of the content on your site into another language might be an excellent way to strengthen your international appeal.

The bottom line: When done in moderation, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with mixing languages on a localized website.

A company’s slogan/tagline can be one of its most important branding assets. When a memorable phrase follows a company’s name, people are more inclined to remember it. That said, making a brand stick in the hearts and minds of potential customers is by no means an easy feat. This is especially true when crossing borders and languages.

What is the most effective way for a company to keep its brand identity strong as it expands into new markets around the world? It all depends. Here are a few points worth mentioning.

Brand Identity: Consistency plays an important role in maintaining a company’s image.Nuances: Culture systems, belief systems and worldviews shape the way we think about the words we use.Target Audience: Know your audience. What may be considered funny in one language may be insulting in another.

Let’s take two examples.

A. Wikipedia, The Translation Path

Wikipedia, a company with a clear and precise mission (to be the free encyclopedia of the world), has a tagline to echo its vision. In the screenshot to the left, you’ll see the same tagline translated into each of Wikipedia’s languages.

In this case, when translating the phrase “the free encyclopedia,” there isn’t too much room for a mistranslation (don’t hold me to that). If you believe the same holds true for your company’s tagline/slogan, then perhaps opting for the translation might be a great idea.

B. Facebook, The Non-Translation Path: Everyone knows Facebook has completely changed the way people communicate with the world, but how does Facebook communicate with its users? Let’s compare the English with the Japanese version of the Facebook homepage to see what stands out.

The English page says, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” The Japanese page says, “Using Facebook, you can connect with friends, colleagues and classmates to deepen your connections. Also access Facebook from cell phones and smartphones.”
Notice that the Japanese page mentions users can access the site with phones, but the English page doesn’t. That’s probably because 95% of the Japanese population are mobile subscribers. The same study explains that Japan uses the mobile Internet more than any other country in the world. It appears Facebook crafted its Japanese homepage with this point in mind. So, what can we learn here? If you want to maximize your outreach potential, you’d better know your target market inside and out.

The bottom line: Having a carefully localized slogan/tagline for your company can be an effective way to foster relationships with potential customers in new markets.

A successfully localized website is one that appears to have been developed locally, even when it wasn’t. Since localization mistakes and oversights can be awkward for website users and potentially embarrassing for the company, make sure to get it right — it’s absolutely worth the time and effort. The last thing any company wants is to turn away potential customers from its website before those visitors ever have a chance to experience the product or service. Generally speaking, website localization means giving some extra attention to things like:

Dates: Month, day, year vs. day, month, year. Time: 12-hour vs. 24-hour time. Color: Avoid local color sensitivities. Currency: Pay attention to conversions and formats. Phone Numbers: Formats are different around the world. National Holidays: Holidays are country and region specific. Geographic Examples: Keep it relevant for your audience. Website Language Codes: ISO codes are important to know.

Let’s take a look at the two images above. The first image was taken from Apple’s U.S. website, and the second from the UK website. Can you spot the differences between the two? Here’s what I came up with.

Date: U.S.: May 19, 2012 vs UK: 19-May-2012.Time: U.S.: 9:41 a.m, vs. UK: 09:41.Color: Look closely at the colors behind the girl.Bonus: What’s going on behind the girl’s shoulder in the UK version of the photo. Is that a tail?

The bottom line: When the aim is to make it look like you’ve developed the website in your target market, the details are incredibly important.

And there you have it: what every company needs to know when localizing its website. With the help of the Internet, expanding into new markets continues to become easier than ever before. Of course, going global, and doing it with style, requires a strategic game plan, a comprehensive vision. Good luck, and we’ll see you out there soon!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tumpikuja

Twitter Delivers Bug-Fixing TweetDeck Update

Ever since Twitter unveiled its first Twitter-branded version of TweetDeck, there have been complaints about the Twitter dashboard’s stability and overall performance. Now Twitter is finally rolling out TweetDeck 1.1 for the desktop, as well as an update to the Web-based Chrome version.

There is some irony in TweetDeck’s 1.1 status. The original TweetDeck, which was around for a few years, never hit version 1 status before Twitter acquired the third-party Twitter tool in May. Now, just a couple of weeks after finally graduating from beta to finished app, TweetDeck is already at “point-one” status.

TweetDeck 1.1 looks just like version 1.0. That’s because this update delivers exactly zero feature enhancements. All the changes are all under the hood, which may dissapoint some who were hoping for the reinstatement of some missing features. I wish that right-clicking virtually anywhere on the app still worked. Sadly, even in TweetDeck 1.1, it still does not.

In use, this update is far more stable than TweetDeck 1.0, which crashed so often — even while I was trying to craft a Tweet — that I finally gave up and reverted to the Adobe Air version, which never crashed. All versions of TweetDeck are now built around HTML 5 and I had heard similar complaints from those using TweetDeck in Chrome. This update should solve their issues as well.

Installing the desktop version is a painless process, but you do have to uninstall version 1.0 first. Once that’s done, installation takes less than a minute and all your settings from the previous install should still be in place.

If you’re a TweetDeck user, I suggest you grab this update today. Then let me know in the comments how it works for you. If you discover any new bugs, report them and we’ll report them back to Twitter.

Since none of the features have changed, here’s another look at TweetDeck 1.0's (and 1.1's) feature highlights

ConnectYard Connects Students and Profs Via Text, Social Media

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: ConnectYard

Quick Pitch: A social media platform that connects students and professors through their preferred form of communication.

Genius Idea: A professor emails a student and it’s delivered in whatever form the student prefers, such as a text message or Twitter and Facebook post.

More students these days prefer interacting on mobile devices and social media sites over traditional forms of communication such as email. To help eliminate the communication barriers between students and their professors, institutions from Cornell University to Georgia State University are turning to a social platform called ConnectYard that allows them both to send and receive messages however they like.

If students prefer interacting through text messages or on Facebook and Twitter, they can send messages to their professors this way. In turn, professors can receive and send responses however they prefer – and typically, that’s through email, according to ConnectYard CEO Donald Doane.

“Faculty isn’t always keen on adopting new technology and many don’t want to encroach on the personal space of students on social networking sites,” Doane told Mashable. “ConnectYard allows students and professors to interact on the platforms they prefer to use. If a teacher cancels a class and sends an email to students, some students might choose to receive the message as a text or Facebook post instead.”

Students can also respond to messages on whatever platform they choose. If they are on Facebook and send an email to their professor about a class, the professor can receive it through email.

“We wanted to give students and faculty an easy way to reach each other and interact without having anyone change their communication habits,” Doane said. “We’ve had great success with it so far and more institutions are jumping on board.”

ConnectYard also integrates with other popular learning platforms such as Blackboard and Desire2Learn, so students and professors can post and respond to queries, and the site archives all interactions as a reference, regardless of where they originate.

In addition, if a student is reading an ebook, she can pose a question from their ereader and the professor can respond via email, It will then show up directly in the the student’s ebook notes on the device.

“ConnectYard is flexible in how it allows students and faculty members communicate,” Doane said. “Everyone prefers to communicate in different ways, so we want to make sure people can interact with others however they feel most comfortable — whether it’s just through email or through a high-tech device or social platform.”

6 Crazy Tech Predictions for 2012

We live in a world of absolutes: Here’s what happened. Even when we look to the future, our predictions are couched in the world’s sometimes difficult realities. It can, to be honest, take all the fun out of guess work. So, once a year I allow myself to go beyond the likely, beyond the possible and deep into the world of the implausible. What follows are my most ridiculous and unlikely predictions. Most are just nuts, but one is, to be honest, all too scarily possible. See if you can guess which prediction I’m talking about.

Facebook’s 2012 will look a lot like its 2011: More growth, more change. Still, it hasn’t quite broken through on the content curation and voting side of things. With all the frictionless sharing people will be doing, they may no longer think about accumulating “likes.”

Digg started using Facebook’s OpenGraph in 2011, which makes it easy to share what you’re reading on Digg to Facebook. As I see it, this is simply the first step on the road to a much deeper relationship. When Facebook buys Digg next year, users will get the ability to “Digg” not only profile pages, but people. That’s right, you could really “Digg” someone on Facebook. It’s so 1976, but also so cool.

I foresee another side to the Facebook universe where people, places and things are Dugg on a more generalized basis, but those Diggs bubble up to individual profile pages and appear alongside Likes, Readings, Watching, etc. There is an 85% chance that all of Digg’s existing audience will walk away from the service if this acquisition happens, but I’m not sure most of them will stay with the content curation destination anyway.

3D has pretty much flopped, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to get movie-goers into theaters. Scientists will partner with Hollywood studios to unveil a new technology known as “Fresh Ends.” Using CGI, Hollywood script writers, voice and context recognition and logic algorithms, Fresh Ends technology will generate new endings for some of the world’s most popular films. These slightly rewritten movies will be re-released to theaters — just like the 3D rereleases — and are expected to add 15- to 20% additional box office returns to each film. For now, Fresh Ends only works with movies shot digitally.

Myopic congressman and a distracted president take the Stop Online Piracy Act and pass it into law. Designed, at least according to the bill, “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes,” SOPA has an almost unprecedented chilling effect on the web. Thousands of U.S. sites shut down, other larger ones continue, but are now full of boring pap that could never be misconstrued as content piracy.

Content creators of all stripes are so unsure of what will be labeled piracy they struggle to create anything. By the end of 2012, however, an underground Internet (The UnderWebs) arises. It’s full of unfettered communication and content, and slowly but surely, millions of web surfers around the world begin using it instead of the government-policed Internet — a platform that dies a sad, quiet death in 2018.

Sorry, no iPhone 5 or iPad 3. Unable to decide whether it should deliver a 7-inch iPad 3 or a 4.5-inch iPhone 5, Apple comes down squarely in the middle with a giant handheld that, naturally, makes calls and is almost large enough to be a usable tablet. The hidden bonus? It’s also a fully functional HDTV. Apple, however, will remain mum for most of the year on whether or not it plans on actually delivering a larger Apple iTV.

Virtually unchanged for more than a decade, Google’s search page undergoes a subtle, yet important transformation. The search giant places a “+” sign right next to the “Google” Logo. But the change is more than logo-deep. If you hit your own “+” sign on your keyboard before typing in your search query, all results will feature Google+ search results on top. If you hit “+” twice, your search query can be used to launch a new Google+ post. You’ll still have to select which circles you want to share your search query with. Rumors will swirl throughout 2012 that Google wants to rename the entire company “Google+.”

Japanese auto manufacturer Honda shocks the world by unveiling a fully operational, $1,999 Honda Asimo Home Helper Robot. Like the Asimo we’ve seen in product demonstrations and on YouTube, “Home Asimo” can walk, run, jump, make coffee and sandwiches and, as we soon learn, clean toilets. Honda sells a stunning half million units before August, 2012. The most startling news, though, comes when one Home Honda robot in Dearborn, Michigan turns on its family’s computer and signs itself up for Twitter and Facebook. By December, more than 300,000 of the robots have been destroyed or returned.

Now it’s your turn. Drop into comments and share your wildest predictions for the New Year.

Words With Friends Arrives to Nook Tablets, Twitter Coming Soon

Popular scrabble game Words With Friends is now available for Nook Tablet and Nook Color, with Barnes & Noble promising several more high-profile apps in the near future.

Owners of Nook Tablet have had quite a slim choice of apps so far, with even obvious favorites such as Twitter missing from the picture.

This is about to change, as B&N promises Twitter “soon” as well as Plants vs. Zombies and “many more” apps early next year.

As for Words With Friends, we advise Nook Tablet owners to be careful when airborne. Alec Baldwin recently got booted off a plane for refusing to stop playing the game.