me*dia*or

Tim Cook: ‘Stay Tuned,’ We Can Do More With Facebook (AAPL, FB) | BusinessInsider

“Facebook is a great company,” according to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Not exactly the consensus view on Wall Street right now!

Cook expressed his admiration for the beleaguered social-networking giant at the D10 conference, which we’re covering live.

Conference cohost Walt Mossberg pressed Cook on the lack of Facebook integration on the iPhone: “Twitter is there, but no Facebook. What’s the relationship like?”

Cook answered, “I think our relationship is good. I think we can do more with them. Stay tuned.”

“We want to provide customers a simple way to do what they want to do. Facebook has millions of customers. We want them to have the best experience on our platform.”

Apple’s Ping music-sharing social network flopped in large part because it launched without Facebook integration. Former CEO Steve Jobs said Facebook’s terms for doing a deal were “onerous.”

Cook was more generous: “They have their way of doing things. But people say that about us. It doesn’t mean you can’t work with them.”

Mossberg asked if Cook was going to kill Ping. Cook said: “I don’t know. I’m going to look at it.” 

Apple has to be enviously watching Spotify’s success with Facebook’s new Open Graph integration, which places items in users’ news feeds about the songs their friends are listening to. 

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How To Clean Up Your Messy iPad Home Screen | BusinessInsider

You can make your iPad home screen less cluttered by organizing your apps and putting them in folders.

Watch the video below to find out how you can create folders and clear up your messy iPad home screen.

Produced By William Wei

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• The Must-Know iPhone Trick For Heavy Texters

• It’s Super Easy To Make Music On Your iPad: Here’s How

• How To Sync Your Calendar With LinkedIn’s New iPad App

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HOW TO PARTY LIKE MILLIONAIRES FOR FREE: San Francisco Startup Hustlers Show The Way | BusinessInsider

Even in Silicon Valley, some people are jealous of New York’s startup boogie.

The cofounders of Tracks.by, a San Francisco startup which helps musicians cultivate online fans, jetted off to New York on a whim last week to drum up business and see what the buzz was about.

Matt Schlicht and Mazy Kazerooni had no plans and barely any Big Apple connections—but they’d helped Lil Wayne get 36 million Facebook fans, and they cultivated relationships with artists as early employees at Ustream.

They ended up partying with Britney Spears’s manager, Adam Leber, and landing a Hamptons mansion, rent-free.

Oh, and it wasn’t all play: They signed up new clients and added 100,000,000 new fans to Tracks.by’s platform.

Schlicht flew five people to New York on a whim the Friday before Memorial Day. His budget: $2,500.

Jason Baptiste, their former roommate, now CEO of OnSwipe, took them to the Standard. “We ended up dancing on the tables.”

Next stop: 50 Cent’s record label, G-Unit.

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How Amazon Could Break Into The Phone Market | BusinessInsider

This is a news note from Business Insider Intelligence, a new research and analysis service focused on mobile computing and the Internet. Sign up here.

Amazon is going to sell prepaid wireless service in Japan, Nikkei reports (via The Verge). It is entering the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) market there.

This looks like an experiment that could presage an Amazon phone, which has been rumored since Amazon forked its own version of Android to create a tablet. 

And in fact, an MVNO is how we think Amazon should proceed. Here’s why:

• For Amazon to make a credible play for the phone market, it needs to stand apart from the incumbents in some important way.

• The way Amazon likes to stand apart is by offering cheaper prices. 

Amazon can make a strong foray into the smartphone market with the following strategy: become an MVNO, charge lower prices, give away the smartphones, and make money on its software and media ecosystem. 

And on a smartphone, there are endless ways for Amazon to make money:

• From media sales (books and music)

• From software sales: not only from sales of third-party apps (and game virtual goods), but also by preinstalling phones with copycat versions of popular phone games (perhaps by acquiring a good mobile games studio) and reaping the whole reward of virtual goods and games

• From ads: Amazon is quietly becoming a formidable force in mobile advertising thanks to the strength of its data and Kindle ecosystem

• From commerce, of course.

The key thing to understand is that Amazon’s mobile platform is the most “locked down” of the big mobile platforms: Amazon decides what apps and ads go on each device.

So unlike Apple, which is content to make money on hardware sales, and Google, which is content to not make (much) money from Android, Amazon can grab most of the value from its ecosystem, and thus potentially make it a profitable proposition to subsidize both the handset and the telecom service. 

Here Is Our Latest Report On The Kindle Ecosystem →

A Look At Amazon’s Strengths In Online Advertising →

Our Primer On Kindle Economics →

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THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Here’s How Google Can Beat Facebook (GOOG) | BusinessInsider

The Google Investor is a daily report from SAI. Sign up here to receive it by email

GOOG Up With Markets
Markets are up after the long weekend but these next four days are going to be huge. Shares of GOOG are up with tech. Investors continue look for Android momentum on smartphones and tablets and monetization; clarity on the Motorola acquisition; regaining ground in China; the resurgence of Google TV; continued growth of YouTube; expansion of social network Google+; and progress in other initiatives (location-based services, mapping, Google Wallet, Google Music, etc.). The stock trades at approximately 10.6x Enterprise Value / EBIT.

A Look At Google’s Knowledge Graph (The New Yorker)
Google introduced a new technology called Google Knowledge Graph. In the short-term, it will not make a big difference in your world. But what’s under the hood represents a significant change in engineering. And more than that, in a decade or two, scientists and journalists may well look back at this moment as the dividing line between machines that dredged massive amounts of data and machines that started to think, just a little bit, like people. It’s refreshing to see that computer engineers still occasionally need to steal a page from the human mind.

Baidu Is Saying It Has Been Doing Semantic Search For Years (Search Engine Watch)
Knowledge Graph? That’s old news. Baidu is claiming this is not new as the Chinese search giant has been dabbling in semantic search since 2009. “What they’re doing is essentially what Baidu has been doing since it launched its Aladdin open data platform in late 2009. Aladdin has evolved to become part of a grander strategy in search - a concept we call Box Computing,” said Kaiser Kuo, Baidu’s director for International Communications.

How Google Can Beat Facebook Sans Google + (The Atlantic)
Google needs to stop looking across town at Facebook and look within itself. Google is riddled with invisible social networks surrounding a wide range of products. Even better, Google’s homegrown social networks tend to be built around Google’s core strength: organized (and organizing) information. Google needs to find areas where people are already congregating excitedly, not build new areas. So Google, if you’re listening, find your explicit and implicit social power users, then empower them to build your social network.

Smartphones And Tablets Now Make Up 20% Of Online Traffic (Chitika via All Things Digital)
Mobile Web browsing continues to take off, with smartphones and tablets accounting for 20% of online traffic in the U.S. and Canada, according to Chitika. Smartphones account for 14.6% and tablets make up 5.6%. Of note, tablet and mobile phone Internet usage peaks in the evening hours when people leave their computers for a bit and pretend to have a life, but are really just staring at their phones or sitting on the couch watching TV and simultaneously pawing an iPad. Speaking of, 95% of tablet Web traffic comes from an iPad, compared to phones, where Apple’s share is 72%, compared to 26% for Android devices.

Cisco Kills Their Enterprise Android Tablet (Business Insider)
Cisco has killed its year-old Cius Android-based tablet. This isn’t exactly shocking. The tablet was a strange, overpriced beast for Cisco. While the general idea with this tablet wasn’t bad, the way Cisco went about it was odd. Cius was supposed to represent a new breed of communications for the enterprise and it didn’t sell Cius to consumers either. It could only be bought by companies, so it never really sold well.

Project Glass Becoming Even More Of A Reality (PocketLint)
Google’s Project Glass eyewear has taken yet another step in becoming a reality after a video shot through the glasses was posted on the company’s Google+ account. The video clip is only 15 seconds long and the type of technology we can expect from the augmented reality glasses is still limited.  However, it does suggest that the pair Google CEO Larry Page was recently photographed wearing could indeed have been a prototype pair rather than a mere dummy model. What we do know from the latest video clip is that it was recorded in 720P.

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CHART: The Situation At Pandora Is Actually Getting Worse (P) | BusinessInsider

Pandora’s stock jumped 12 percent to $11.60 after mobile ad sales were greater than expected. CEO Joe Kennedy told Wall Street that 55 percent of his ad revenue now comes from mobile, and mobile advertising is a fast-growing part of the business.

All that good news, however, drowned out the bad news that’s as plain as day in Pandora’s numbers: Its business model still isn’t working—it lost $20.2 million in the quarter, worse than a $6.7 million loss the year before—and it’s deteriorating rather than getting better.

None of this is new, but it’s worth reiterating given that the stock is rising even though Pandora’s performance as a money-making business gets worse. This chart tells the whole story. It shows that Pandora’s revenues are falling behind its operating costs:

Previously, Pandora’s costs and revenues moved in lockstep. That suggested the company might be able to become profitable if it could find a way to incrementally cut its costs or raise its revenue.

In Q1 2013, however, revenue growth slowed while expenses accelerated. The main culprit: The royalties Pandora must pay on each song it plays. Those costs nearly doubled to $101 million. On their own, Pandora’s royalty fees are greater than the $80.7 million it earned in total revenues.

The earnings report indicates that the vicious cycle within Pandora’s model is getting, well, more vicious. I’ve said this before: Every time Pandora plays a song it must pay a licensing fee to the artist who created the music. Therefore, Pandora must make more money on the ads it shows its users than it pays in song royalty fees. The problem is that each new user plays more and more songs, generating more and more fees. So Pandora must find more and more advertisers to cover that. Of course, advertisers want the largest audience possible. But a larger audience generates larger song fees … it never ends.

The only reason Pandora was cashflow positive was because of a $28 million windfall from “Maturities of short-term investments.” Financial engineering rather than music or advertising, in other words.

Unless Pandora can raise ad prices—and there’s reason to believe that mobile ads actually lower them— or increase the number of ads it plays to listeners, this company will remain in real trouble.

• This Chart Shows Why Spotify’s Pandora-Killer Is Doomed

• Pandora’s Box Unlocked: Are Those Profits Miracle Or Mirage?

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THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: What The Motorola Acquisition Means For Android (GOOG) | BusinessInsider

The Google Investor is a daily report from SAI. Sign up here to receive it by email

GOOG Off As Market Recovers
The markets are rebounding after the U.S.’s first ever Flash PMI numbers came in above random expectations. Shares of GOOG are off with th NASDAQ. Investors continue look for Android momentum on smartphones and tablets and monetization; clarity on the Motorola acquisition; regaining ground in China; the resurgence of Google TV; continued growth of YouTube; expansion of social network Google+; and progress in other initiatives (location-based services, mapping, Google Wallet, Google Music, etc.). The stock trades at approximately 11.1x Enterprise Value / EBIT.

Google’s Victory Over Oracle Is A Big Win For Android (Read Write Web)
Google won big in its lawsuit with Oracle over patents used for Android. The jury delivered a unanimous verdict in favor of Google, exonerating the company’s use of Java in Android. The trial was supposed to have three phases: copyright, patents and then damages. The jury delivered a partial verdict in the copyright phase, which means the decision to award damages comes down to the judge, William Alsup. There will be no phase three and the trial. With Google’s ownership of Motorola now however, expect companies like Research In Motion, Microsoft and Apple to now come directly after Google in future lawsuits.

What The Motorola Acquisition Means For Android (Read Write Mobile)
An acquisition of the size of Motorola is a fascinating study on the global impact of Android. While Google does not directly profit from Android hardware (for now), there are billions of dollars wrapped up in the Android ecosystem. And this is where Google needs to tread carefully. It needs to balance its desire to streamline the Android process while also not alienating its OEM and carrier partners in the process. The potential benefits of Google taking top-level control of the Android ecosystem are broad; Google benefits, consumers benefit, developers benefit. It remains to be seen if the carriers and other manufacturers will benefit. And while Motorola lags in the race, the smartphone market is still huge.

Google Gets Serious About Hardware Design, Buys Design Studio (Core 77)
Google acquired San-Francisco-based ID studio Mike & Maaike. The team has produced designs for Steelcase, Incase, Microsoft’s Xbox division, the Republic of Fritz Hansen and others. Mike & Maaike previously designed the G1, Google’s first Android phone, as well as the Android Smartphone 1, a testbed device that was used internally. And with Motorola, it appears they’ll be attempting to strengthen their share of the mobile device market, armed with Mike & Maaike’s design skills. Here are what some of the future phones could look like.

I Had No Idea Google Didn’t Sell Apps In China (Bloomberg)
Google’s Android operating system runs two-thirds of the smartphones sold in China yet the company’s online app store, Google Play, isn’t open for business there. Taj Meadows, a Tokyo-based spokesman for Google, declined to comment on why Google Play was unavailable in China. That’s creating an opportunity for China Mobile which opened its Mobile Market store for Android apps in 2009, and it now has 158 million registered users. Customers have downloaded more than 630 million apps, making Mobile Market the world’s largest carrier-operated app store.

Google + Is Winning When It Comes To Pictures (VentureBeat)
Google+ is succeeding in small bursts, feature by feature. As a social network competing with Facebook it’s a flop, but its video-chat tool Hangouts is a winner. Now photo sharing is poised to be the service’s next breakout hit, thanks to an enthusiastic community of photographers who like the focus on attractive full-size images, Google+’s new photo-centric iPhone app, and a uniquely Google passion for metadata. In fact, Google+ is pushing hard on the photography front and is in a great position to dominate the floundering Flickr.

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This Is The Best Thing That Came From Google’s Awesome Moog Doodle (GOOG) | BusinessInsider

Yesterday’s Google Doodle was a Moog keyboard in honor of its inventor, Robert Moog. Here’s one of the most ambitious uses of it we’ve seen by a musician named Brett Domino, who uses it to cover Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic.”

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THE APPLE INVESTOR: Are You Listening Cable Providers? Apple Is Going To Crush You (AAPL) | BusinessInsider

The Apple Investor is a daily report from SAI. Sign up here to receive it by email.

AAPL Sideways As Market Dives 
As Europe implodes, the U.S. markets are following suit. Shares of AAPL seesawing along the flatline. Upcoming events include Tim Cook’s keynote next week at the D10 Conference on May 29 and Apple’s developer conference (WWDC) slated to start June 11 (where the company is expected to make a slew of announcements). Investors remain focused on iPhone penetration globally and the anticipated launch of the next generation iPhone in the fall; iPad adoption; market share growth of the Mac business as well as the upcoming refresh; the introduction of the anticipated Apple TV set; and platforms such as Siri, iAd and iBooks. Shares of Apple trade at 8.7x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities), ridiculously low based on historical trends.

Apple Not Likely Affected By Qualcomm Chip Shortage (Apple Insider)
A new report from Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray claims 28nm chip shortages at Qualcomm are unlikely to keep Apple from releasing a next-generation iPhone with a “completely redesigned body style” in October. Qualcomm is widely expected to provide the baseband chip for the next-generation iPhone. He estimates an 80% chance that iPhone sales will meet its forecast of 49 million units in the December 2012 quarter. Even if Apple was affected by shortages, Munster expressed belief that iPhone sales would simply be shifted into the March 2013 quarter and beyond.

The iPhone 3GS Might Become Apple’s Pre-Paid Option (Forbes)
With the iPhone 4S jumping off the shelves, and buzz about the iPhone 5 continuing to mount, no one spends much time talking or thinking about the lowly 3GS, which you can get for free with a two-year service contract. But the phone, now almost 3 years old, might have more life left than most people would suspect. Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek asserts that Apple has signed an agreement “with a major global distributor” which will look for ways to penetrate the pre-paid and developing markets. He thinks the phone will be repriced (at the wholesale level) from $375 down to the $200 to $250 range.

Apple Shipped The Most Mobile PCs In The First Quarter (VentureBeat)
Apple shipped 17.2 million mobile PCs in the first quarter of 2012, leading the world in units shipped by 22.5%, according to a study by NPD DisplaySearch. And with new releases like the latest iPad, interest will continue to grow. Compared to the same quarter last year, Apple shipped 118% more mobile PCs, 80% of which were iPads. That accounts for 162% growth year over year. The iPad accounted for so much mobile PC growth, that Apple didn’t even show up on the list of companies who shipped the most notebook units. HP won that game. But the amount of iPads shipped was enough to raise Apple up over its competitors in the overall market. For more, check out the new BI Intelligence report, Apple Now Dominates Portable Computer Sales Because Of The iPad.

The Rumored Apple TV Will Revolutionize Cable And Advertising (Seeking Alpha)
Apple TV will completely revolutionize the cable TV and TV advertising markets as we know it. How? Through TV apps. These will disrupt the cable industry just as much as Apple disrupted the music industry. Currently, cable subscribers have to subscribe to a set of packages, some of which are mandated by federal and local law. But why? Why can’t cable users subscribe to channels on an individual basis, or even to purchase individual shows as desired? With TV apps, they can. The new Apple TV will allow content producers to create apps which will be used to distribute content.

Here’s A Great Infographic On Apple’s… Presence (Sortable via Mashable)
Keeping up with Apple‘s growth is like sneezing with your eyes open; it’s nearly impossible. So here’s an awesome infographic just to put that in context. It shares the latest Apple profits, revenues and cash-in-hand, along with the company’s reach; 30% of smartphone users in the U.S. have an iPhone. Along with an impressive iPad market share (62%) and an astounding number of employees (over 30,000), don’t forget one of Apple’s most valuable properties; the App Store. You’ll currently find 600,000 apps and counting in the store, and 895 new apps are added every day.

The 9 Most Interesting Facts About Apple Stock (Business Insider)
Morgan Stanley’s Adam Parker has an interesting report on The Elephant In The Room. Otherwise know as Apple. It’s not so much about the company, but rather about the stock itself and how investors should deal with such a megacap in their portfolios. The stock brings its headaches, since typically a prudent investor would trim their holdings as it got larger and larger. The problem is, selling Apple at any price (up until recently) has been a huge blunder. The report advises against trying to create a basket of related stocks (like suppliers) as they have failed to perform as well as Apple, and the baskets require constant rebalancing.

How Does Apple Make Ping Not Suck? (Adam Haworth)
Ping is terrible. Everyone knows it. But there are a few ways that it can be rescued according to blogger Adam Haworth: Ping needs to be taken out of iTunes.app and moved into its own:

1. It makes it seem like a proper social network, not just an afterthought
2. It makes the service easier to use with ultimately a better experience
3. A separate app allows this better integration to come into its own
4. It allows Apple to create a brand for Ping

If Apple isn’t going to change the concept in any way, it might as well just quit it now and kill the service off.

Investor Recommends Others To Short Apple Stock (ValueWalk)
Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO and CIO at Double Line Capital, is recommending investors short Apple. The recommendation has added to the downward trend the company has been seeing in it’s stock price since just after its announcement of earnings for the company’s second quarter. Gundlach has relied on precedent in Google’s stock price in 2007, to predict a drop in Apple’s price. He believes the company is valued far too high and lays the blame for that at analysts guessing higher and higher price target for the company in recent months. “The genius isn’t there anymore” Gundlach says. Learn more about Gundlach, the world’s greatest bond investor.

Over 90% Polled Believe Apple Is A Better Investment Than Facebook (Scoople)
When asked the question, is Apple stock right now a better investment than the newly traded Facebook stock, an overwhelming 92% said yes.

Tim Cook Is The Highest Paid CEO (The Wall Street Journal)
Steve Jobs left big shoes. Apple is betting $378 million that Tim Cook is the right guy to fill them. That is the value of the annual pay package Mr. Cook was awarded last August, when he was named Apple chief executive, about two months before Mr. Jobs died. Nearly all of the compensation stems from a grant of one million shares of restricted stock, valued at $376.2 million, based on Apple’s stock price at the time. Mr. Cook’s 2011 compensation is the highest recorded in The Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO pay survey since at least 2006, when the Securities and Exchange Commission changed its rules for reporting executive pay.

Apple Sees Its Brand Value Increase 19% From Last Year, According To Study (BrandZ via The Next Web)
Technology companies dominate the world’s most valuable brands, according BrandZ’s Top 100 report, which saw iPhone and iPad maker Apple hold off IBM and Google to top the pile again. Apple saw its brand value increase by 19% on last year’s study, which it also lead, to reach $183 billion. That figure puts it ahead of IBM ($116 million), Google ($108 million), McDonald’s ($95 million) and Microsoft ($77 million). The brand value figure calculation ranks the firms by combining the financial valuation of each company with the appeal and loyalty that they inspire in consumers.

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Solutions To One Of The Most Common iPad Frustrations | BusinessInsider

It can get pretty annoying when the screen orientation switches on the iPad if you move or tilt it slightly.

Watch the video below to find out how you can lock your screen to stay in one direction:

Produced By William Wei

And Don’t Miss…

• The Must-Know iPhone Trick For Heavy Texters

• It’s Super Easy To Make Music On Your iPad: Here’s How

• How To Sync Your Calendar With LinkedIn’s New iPad App

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JACK BOGLE: This Facebook Fiasco Is What Happens When All The Parties Involved Are Greedy | BusinessInsider

Vanguard Senior Chairman and founder Jack Bogle told CNBC TV today that he was not surprised by Facebook’s lackluster performance during its initial public offering on Friday.

Denigrating the greedy atmosphere surrounding the IPO process, he suggested that investors expecting shares of Facebook to repeat the massive pop investors have seen in other tech offerings were being short-sighted and greedy.

Then again, Bogle revealed a general disdain for IPOs and trading in individual stocks in general, arguing that the only thing investors can truly predict is that corporate earnings will grow in the long term.

Don’t fool around with new issues, new offerings, IPOs. Don’t fool around even—I’d go all the way to saying—don’t fool around with individual stocks. Nobody can predict their price performance. Nobody can predict their future value. And while nobody can predict the price of the total stock market, we can predict its future performance, which depends clearly and 100 percent on how the underlying American economy does and how corporations do in the long run.

EXCLUSIVE Q&A: Hedge Funder Who Bet $100 Million On The Facebook IPO Just Called And Boy Was He Furious >

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Here’s How Easy It Is To Download Any Video On YouTube (GOOG) | BusinessInsider

Have you ever wanted to download a YouTube video to watch later?

What about just downloading the audio?

There’s a wonderful extension for Firefox called YouTube MP3 Podcaster that makes both processes a snap (try to look past the clunky name, it works really well).

All you need to do to get started is go download the extension and follow these easy instructions.

Let’s say we want to download the audio of this video — YouTube MP3 Podcaster gives you some onboard tools to make it happen

They appear at the bottom-right of the video

Because there’s a long introduction before the music begins, click on the scissors and pause the video where you want the audio to begin

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Here’s How Ridiculously Easy It Is To Use iTunes Match (AAPL) | BusinessInsider

We told you why we love iTunes Match, and now we’re going to show you how to put the service into use.

Keep reading for instructions on how to set up the service and start streaming your music from the cloud.

Open iTunes and select ‘iTunes Match’ in the side bar.

Select ‘Add This Computer’

Next, sign in with your apple-id and password.

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THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: YouTube Has An Insane Amount Of Activity (GOOG) | BusinessInsider

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GOOG Down In A Weak Market
The market is stabilizing just over the flatline after the Richmond Fed missed and existing home sales came in in-line. Shares of GOOG are down over 1%. Investors continue look for Android momentum on smartphones and tablets and monetization; clarity on the Motorola acquisition; regaining ground in China; the resurgence of Google TV; continued growth of YouTube; expansion of social network Google+; and progress in other initiatives (location-based services, mapping, Google Wallet, Google Music, etc.). The stock trades at approximately 11.2x Enterprise Value / EBIT.

Google Given The OK From China To Purchase Motorola (TechCrunch)
It’s been just over nine months since Google announced their intentions to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion, and now it seems that the final pieces of the deal have fallen into place; Chinese officials have finally given the Google-Motorola deal their blessing. Google managed to score regulatory approvals from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission back in February, but China’s anti-monopoly bureau leapt into action just a few days later. With this final approval in place, Google has confirmed that they expect purchase to be completed some time next week.

Make No Mistake, Google Is In The Content Business (BI Intelligence)
Google likes to keep up the pretense that it’s not a content company like traditional media companies that produce content and sell ads against them, and that it doesn’t compete with them; instead it provides platforms for them to distribute and monetize their content. Of course, that’s rubbish: Google does produce content; it just happens to be generated by computers and third parties instead of creatives on Google’s payroll. Google’s content is unique (extremely relevant search results), as is the way it’s consumed (often with purchasing intent), which makes for an outstanding business model.

PayPal Processing 60% Of All Web Transactions, Leaving Google Checkout In The Dust (VentureBeat)
PayPal processes 60% of web transactions and Google is the fastest payment gateway, according to New Relic’s study of the web’s most popular payment gateways (the modern cash register). PayPal is by far the biggest payment processor on the web. During the test period, PayPal processed over 66,000 payments, more than three times as many as the nearest competitor, Authorize.net. Google Checkout came in fifth with just over 3400 payments. Google does win, however, in the speed category. Google Checkout’s average payment processing time was a blistering .26 seconds.

Users Are Uploading And Watching Staggering Amounts Of Video On YouTube (USA Today)
Happy belated birthday to YouTube, which celebrated its 7th anniversary with a some new stats on video uploads. Users upload 72 hours of video a minute to the website. No that’s not a typo. It’s nearly double the same time last year, when users were uploading 48 hours of video every 60 seconds. Users of the video-sharing site love watching clips, too. They’re logging 3 billion hours a month viewing videos on the site. Google seriously needs to monetize this better.

Google+ Not Doing So Well According To Study (Digital Trends)
RJMetrics looked at the public timelines of 40,000 randomly selected Google+ users to track just how successful it actually is. The results suggest that users don’t appear to be actually using it:

• The average Google+ post has less than one +1 vote, less than one reply, and less than one share
• There is an average of twelve days between publicly-viewable posts from users surveyed
• 30% of users who make a public post never make another, with users who make do multiple posts seeing a monthly reduction in the number of public posts on an ongoing basis

That last point is something that should worry Google. Sticky it is not.

Social Media By The Numbers: A New Blog Post (Simply Zesty)
There’s a great new blog posting dedicated to the latest social media figures. Some highlights:

• Facebook: 900 million active users, 500 million active mobile users, 300 million photos uploaded daily
• Twitter: 165 million users with 50% actively on mobile, 1 million new accounts created daily
• Instagram: 30+ million registered users with 58 photos uploaded per second

And then there’s Google+ at 90 million users and some other pretty sad metrics.

Facebook Versus Google: Who Will Win? (PC World)
Google certainly is serious about social and it’s no secret that Facebook wants more of Google’s advertising, but who will come out on top? Yes, Facebook has a huge head start in social compared to Google (with 10x the number of users), but Google+ users tend to be fiercely loyal. Unlike Facebook, Google+ is where you’re more likely to engage with strangers, many of whom reach out from countries around the world. It’s great for content aggregation and collaboration in addition to the services provided by the other major social apps. And Google’s products are an advantage.

Did Chrome Just Pass IE To Becoming The Most Popular Browser? (TIME)
Fresh stats from web analytics company StatCounter have Chrome edging past Internet Explorer in market share, at least for a week. It’s a landmark moment in web history; the fall of IE and the rise of Chrome. Except this is one of numerous companies which releases browser market-share figures, and there’s no consensus on the precise breakdown and there are enormous disparities. StatCounter’s figures (for May 14-20) are based on 3 million sites that use StatCounter’s analytics service and 15 billion monthly pageviews. But there’s Clicky, Net Applications, W3Counter, etc. Most of the others have IE still reigning as king.

Google Now Paying Microsoft A License For Motorola Phones (Bloomberg)
Microsoft won a federal trade ruling that will force Motorola (now officially a Google company) to alter software on some of its Android-based mobile phones to keep bringing them into the U.S. A U.S. International Trade Commission judge found that Motorola infringed a patent covering a program by Microsoft called ActiveSync, which lets users generate meeting requests among a group. “We hope that now Motorola will be willing to join the vast majority of Android device makers selling phones in the U.S. by taking a license to our patents,” said David Howard, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel. I bet. That’s how they are making money in mobile.

The EU Is Giving Google Weeks To Come Clean (All Things Digital)
The European Commission said that an investigation has determined that Google may have abused its dominance and outlined four specific antitrust concerns identified during the EC investigation. 1) Google may be unfairly exploiting its market position by giving preferential treatment to its own services; 2) The company may have copied material from rivals’ Web sites; 3) and 4) Relate to search advertising and allegations that Google requires sites “to obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google, thus shutting out competing providers of search advertising intermediation services.” What would a settlement mean for competitors and advertisers?

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THE MICROSOFT INVESTOR: Windows Tablet Makers Can’t Compete With Apple On Price (MSFT) | BusinessInsider

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MSFT Flat As Tech Rises   
The market is stabilizing just above the flatline after the Richmond Fed missed and existing home sales came in in-line. Shares of MSFT are flat. Catalysts for the stock include Windows 8, Windows Server 8, Office 15 and Windows Phone 8; expansion in the smartphone market with primary hardware partner Nokia; strides in cloud computing; profitability in the online business, including integration of Skype; and continued evolution of Kinect and next generation Xbox. The stock currently trades at 7.4x Enterprise Value / TTM Free Cash Flow.

Google Now Paying Microsoft A License For Motorola Phones (Bloomberg)
Microsoft won a federal trade ruling that will force Motorola to alter software on some of its Android-based mobile phones to keep bringing them into the U.S. A U.S. International Trade Commission judge found that Motorola infringed a patent covering a program by Microsoft called ActiveSync, which lets users generate meeting requests among a group. “We hope that now Motorola will be willing to join the vast majority of Android device makers selling phones in the U.S. by taking a license to our patents,” said David Howard, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel. I bet. That’s how they are making money in mobile.

Windows Tablet Makers Can’t Compete With Apple On Price (Extreme Tech)
Hardware manufacturers are struggling to create Windows 8 on ARM devices that are competitively priced against Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The reason? OEMs have to pay Microsoft $90-100 for a Windows 8 license. While a $90-100 figure sounds a little bit on the high side, it doesn’t really matter. Even at $10 or $20, Microsoft (and OEMs) would be hard pressed to compete; Apple effectively gives iOS away and Amazon gets Android for free. Microsoft has to charge for Windows 8 and Windows RT because it’s a software company. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t make any money, which shareholders might see as a bit of a problem.

Here’s The Size Of The Market Microsoft Is Targeting With Windows 8 (BI Intelligence)
Windows 8 is two operating systems in one. The centerpiece is a new interface, code-named Metro, that was designed for touch screens. Apps are represented as big colorful squares, and it features a system of sliding horizontal and vertical menu screens that was first designed for the ill-fated Zune HD music player, and later adapted to Windows Phone. Windows 8 will also feature a classic-style desktop interface that looks and works a lot like traditional Windows. The goal is to provide a single operating system that works equally well on all kinds of portable computers; laptops, tablets, or convertible hybrids.

Microsoft Claims Windows Phone Has More Market Share Than iPhone In China (WMPoweruser)
When Microsoft announced at the launch of Windows Phone Tango handsets in China that passing the iPhone in that market was just an interim goal on the way to overtaking Android, it did seem rather ridiculous. However, Michel van der Bel, COO Greater China Region at Microsoft says now that a mere 2 months after the launch Windows Phone 7 handsets already have a 7% market share in China, ahead of the 6% for the iPhone. Android still dominates the Chinese mobile market with a market share of around 69%. In terms of the app battle, Bell admitted that Windows Phone was behind.

Microsoft Quietly Launches Its Social Network, Why Is Anyone’s Guess (VentureBeat)
Microsoft has officially launched an “experimental” social networking site called So.cl (pronounced “Social”), which combines facets of social networking, search and media sharing. Previously, So.cl was only available to students studying information and design at the University of Washington, Syracuse and NYU. The project is now open to anyone who wants to give it a shot. The layout closely resembles Google+, but it also takes ideas from Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Imitation is the best form of flattery. Will you try So.cl?

Did Chrome Just Pass IE To Becoming The Most Popular Browser? (TIME)
Fresh stats from web analytics company StatCounter have Chrome edging past Internet Explorer in market share, at least for a week. It’s a landmark moment in web history; the fall of IE and the rise of Chrome. Except this is one of numerous companies which releases browser market-share figures, and there’s no consensus on the precise breakdown and there are enormous disparities. StatCounter’s figures (for May 14-20) are based on 3 million sites that use StatCounter’s analytics service and 15 billion monthly pageviews. But there’s Clicky, Net Applications, W3Counter, etc. Most of the others have IE still reigning as king.

Microsoft Copying Apple’s Retail Presence In Everything But Customers (PCMike)
What’s the difference between a Microsoft retail store and an Apple retail store? The Apple store has customers. The slick Microsoft store in Atlanta’s Buckhead area has a video wall, clean design, a genius bar look alike and employees wearing name tags and brightly colored shirts. They even copied the floor color. It’s just that nobody seems to be interested in Windows phones and computers. While a few customers did go in, they did a 180 and walked out within a minute or two. If this store is any indication of how the others are doing, you gotta wonder how long Microsoft will keep the stores open. Hopefully the tablets will bring some buzz.

Microsoft To Launch EC2 Rival, Again (Wired)
Rumor has it that Microsoft is just two weeks away from launching a competitor to Amazon’s popular EC2 service. This seems like big news, until you consider that Microsoft already offers a competitor to Amazon EC2: Azure. The service already offers raw virtual servers, much like Amazon does, and Azure has offered these virtual servers for nearly a year and a half. It’s just that right now they only run Windows. It appears to be that Microsoft’s Azure cloud will finally offer Linux, and Microsoft may paint this as an entirely new service. The move is telling in an effort to attract the new breed of developer who grew up on Linux and other open source tools.

Do You Agree That Ballmer Is The Worst CEO? (Scoople)
In our last post we highlighted a Forbes article pegging Steve Ballmer as the worst CEO of any publicly traded company. A resounding 75% of you agreed.

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