Interesting article about the number of inactive user accounts currently on Twitter. Of the 941 million Twitter accounts in existence, almost half (44%) have never even sent a tweet. This seems like a problem for a company with a market cap of 23.6 billion, but a reported net loss last year of $511 million. The biggest struggle for these social media companies is finding a way to successfully monetize their user bases. Ad revenue is the obvious answer, but it likely presents a challenge for a company like Twitter to lure in new advertisers who might be wary whether their ads are actually reaching real people, as opposed to fake or computer generated twitter accounts. I wonder to what extent the problem of user inactivity at Twitter is evident of a problem in the social media industry as a whole. If social media companies cannot find ways to generate more revenue, the massive valuations that many of these companies have received (Whatsapp, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram etc.) may begin to look more and more like a bubble ready to burst.
Monthly Archives: April 2014
Harvard Takes a Step Toward Social Responsibility
Saw this article the other day about Harvard University and their endowment manager’s (Harvard Management Co.) decision to join the global group known as Principles for Responsible Investment. This decision seems to be a pinnacle choice going forward in terms of the precedent it may set for university endowments to partake in socially and environmentally responsible initiatives. What I found interesting about what this article did not say is that last year, students petitioned to have HMC divest itself of some of its energy holdings as a means of being more “responsible.” Whether this decision to join PRI was a direct result of that student action may never be known, but it certainly raises an interesting issue going forward in terms of how universities choose to invest.
San Francisco v. AirBnB
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-cracks-down-on-Airbnb-rentals-5381237.php#photo-6130485
San Francisco is beginning to evict renters that are using Airbnb to rent out spots on their sofas. There is an ordinance that clearly distinguishes apartments from hotels. Because Airbnb allows strangers to rent space in apartments, it turns apartments into pseudo-hotels. This is the perfect example of bureaucracy getting in the way of entrepreneurial ventures. People use this site for supplemental income to offset the absurdly high rent prices in San Francisco. It will be interesting to see how other cities react to this and if this will affect other websites such as couch surfing.
Learning to be an entrepreneur… at age 8.
A new chapter in our ongoing discussion of whether you are “born” an entrepreneur or “learn” to be an entrepreneur – apparently some think that you can teach entrepreneurial skills, to elementary school-aged children.
Read about it HERE.
Potential Bill to Encourage Angel Investors to Give More Capital to Entrepreneurs
A new development concerning our guest speaker’s talk on angel investing. It looks at a proposed bill that would give tax breaks to angel investors.
Considerations in Issuing Patents
Although dated, this article elucidates the legal landscape at the time this week’s cases were coming out. It sheds light on both the case law and legislation, and considers the country’s reception and possible effects. Some of the article also brings to mind our previous discussions of disruptive innovations.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B07EEDC153BF930A25752C0A96E9C8B63
And this article provides an interesting and entertaining take on the patent world.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/03/10/patent-smucker-newton-ent-tech-cx_mf_0310smallbizoutlookpatent.html
When Innovation Outpaces Laws
Despite the surge in IP laws, it still remains that the legislative process is a long one, and innovators have been able to be a few steps ahead in today’s age.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3001169/uber-when-innovation-outpaces-law
IP Laws and Innovation Study
Despite the rational thought that laws may hinder innovation, there seems to be little proof behind the accusation.
Law and Innovation from an Opportunity Standpoint
Even in 1999, innovation and law’s effect on it was debated. Interesting to think about how the stance brought forward in this paper has changed over the last 15 years though, and whether laws can still be opportunistic in regards to innovation.
http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3576&context=flr
High taxes act like Prohibition
Interesting article about cigarette smuggling in Michigan. This started in the late 1990s, when the Michigan legislature decided to pass the second highest cigarette tax in the nation. (New York had the highest cigarette taxes at the time.) Within months, people were starting to buy cigarettes in Toledo and other places across the border in Ohio and Indiana. Party stores, gas stations and other Michigan vendors – particularly those close to the borders of other states – began complaining that they were losing revenues to stores in the other states. Whereupon the Michigan legislature passed yet another law, making it illegal to purchase more than X/cartons in other states. And then the smuggling started.
How can you enforce laws like that? You really can’t without random stops. And so that’s what the Michigan State Police started doing – randomly stopping vehicles crossing the Ohio and Indiana state lines into Michigan, and checking for what is now “contraband.”