14th February
1) Networking site LinkedIn’s shares fell 15% on weak earnings outlook– apparently ‘looking for new sources of revenue’ – Read More
2) ….and Twitter’s valuation took a battering at the end of last week –read more. I only recently reported that Goldman Sachs had endorsed the company’s high valuation, as they considered Twitter was ‘the new Google’ – ‘The enhancements include incremental improvements in existing ad products and targeting capabilities similar to the evolution of Google’s Adwords platform’. Just goes to show that market valuations are extremely unreliable at best – Read More
3) Great piece here from @rorysutherland in Wired – Why appeals to altruism are dangerous – read more.
Appeals to altruism are dangerous precisely because they absolve the practitioner from too much criticism or sceptical questioning about the real consequences of their actions, focusing instead on the spirit in which they are carried out. This may explain why we hate Nazis so much more than we hate Maoists or Stalinists: unlike the latter two mass murderous groups, the Nazis didn’t even pretend to be well-intentioned.
4) The New York Times gets into big data – and hires a chief data scientist in order to boost subscriptions – Read More
5) The Twilight of the Brands – The New Yorker on the interminable decline of the Great Brands and branding – Read More
6) Irrefutable evidence that Millenials have it worse than previous generations – Read More
7) Designs of the Year announced. Including one striking ‘Teletubby style’ building from Baku – Read More
8) So the app phenomenon that was Flappy Bird is over, apparently the creator thought it was ‘too addictive’ – read more. Thank goodness then for the Sesame St alternative – Read More
9) For all Game of Thrones obsessives – this is what is coming in season 4 – Read More
10) Pretty windy on Wednesday wasn’t it? This is what Blighty looked like from space – read more. And this from the US – when bad weather is a good thing – Thousands make the trip to see ice caves made accessible by frozen Lake Superior – Read More