Remotely piloted telepresence robots could be the beginning of another tech revolution. Some observers are already predicting that they will be the first robots to go mainstream. But it won't happen right away.

Though the robots themselves are still rare and exotic, the telepresence concept is very simple: basically Apple’s FaceTime videconferencing feature on a mobile, self-propelled, motorized platform. The idea is to make them cheap and easy-to-use stand-ins for people in school, office and other settings.

Today's typical telepresence robot has a display, video camera, microphone and speakers on a stalk attached to a two- or four-wheel platform. The devices are still severely limited in their abilities but are beginning to find homes in health care to stretch resources, in businesses to enable remote meetings and other interactions for telecommuters and in education.

In Seneca, N.Y., and Knox City, Texas, an elementary and a high school student are each using Vgo robots to attend classes and socialize with friends. Both suffer from rare diseases that prevent them from leaving their homes. They control their mechanical surrogates from a personal computer.

Prices Coming Down

Right now, most telepresence robots cost thousands of dollars, but manufacturers like MantaroBot and Double Robotics are trying to change that by leveraging existing consumer technologies. The companies are building robots that use an Android tablet or Apple iPad for the video conferencing functionality. Just like the more expensive models, a remote worker can attend meetings and move the robot from one conference room to another or "visit" with colleagues.

Despite using off-the-shelf technology, though, these devices still tend to be too expensive for consumers. The Vgo robots cost $5,000 each, while pre-orders of the slick looking Double Robotics product cost $2,000. (The price is scheduled to rise to $2,500 once the robot goes on sale in early 2013.)

At those prices, the products are likely consigned to a niche within the telepresence market that is expected to reach $13.1 billion worldwide by the end of 2016, according to ABI Research. To try to take mobile telepresence to the masses, entrepreneurs are turning to Kickstarter to raise money to build smartphone-toting robots that would cost just a couple of hundred dollars.

Telepresence Robots For $200?

Examples include Botiful, developed by roboticist Claire Delaunay of Silicon Valley, and Helios, invented by Tian Long Wang, an electrical and electronic engineer of Princeton, N.J. Both robots are essentially wheelbases with a smartphone cradle that can tilt up or down for better viewing.

While the entrepreneurs deserve credit for trying, these low-priced gadgets may not be successful in the mass market. That's because they do not offer much more than what a person can do holding a smartphone or tablet in their hand. The inventions are essentially novelties - with no real problem to fix. "It's not something that most people really need or really want," said Phil Solis, analyst for ABI Research. At this stage, cheap telepresence robots are more likely bought as fun Christmas gifts than for everyday use.

The Future

Nevertheless, these early devices will help build awareness of the use of robots in the home. Apart from the Roomba vacuum cleaners, the vast majority of robots today are found in factories, with the auto industry alone accounting for half of the products sold. That could change as aging baby boomers look to robots for assistance in order to remain independent in their homes when human helpers become too expensive. "It's an evolution," Solis predicted.

Eventually, telepresence could be incorporated into security robots that a homeowner could control while on vacation to check their house, rather than have multiple cameras fixed throughout the building, Solis says. While such robots have been used in commercial buildings and mansions, the introduction of new technologies could help drive prices low enough for the mass market.

In the short term, a few makers of telepresence robots will fill a niche, while others will come and go. But , someone will use the technology in something useful and inexpensive, and to the victor will go the spoils.

In January, The New York Times wondered aloud why Apple did not make the iPhone in America. The story heaped a torrent of commentary and scrutiny on Silicon Valley’s most valuable company. Whether you think manufacturing in the U.S. is right or not for Apple, Cadillac is proving that American-made technology can compete with the best.

The new Cadillac ATS was designed to be a luxury car world-beater - a tall order that required catching up to the likes of BMW’s 3-series and Mercedes’ C-class. But the folks at General Motors took a unique approach to the job and the ATS definitely arrives at the head of its class.

What Cadillac did is often overlooked in Silicon Valley. To help design the Cadillac User Experience (CUE), the company assembled a team of designers, engineers and software developers to shadow drivers while observing them in their natural habitat.

This “contextual design” technique required team members to accompany actual consumers, an eye-opening experience. The shadow team was able to identify several different driving styles, which were categorized under a pseudonym. One type of driver, dubbed “Spencer,” always needed to check text messages immediately, while ‘‘Emily” liked listening to music, whether on her phone, iPod or flash drive.

Cadillac spokesperson David Caldwell tells me, “We took a hard look at what carmakers call 'infotainment.' Everyone’s doing that, that’s sort of par for the course. We took a bit of a riskier approach: Is there something we can do that says ‘hey these guys are doing something different?’”

Enter A New GUI

What became clear quickly is that most drivers are distracted by a myriad of bells, beeps and whistles emitted by our digital lifestyle tools. So Cadillac engineers set out to develop a less invasive type of user interface, one that communicates via seat vibrations.

You might call it “BUI,” but GM prefers the less colloquial Cadillac Safety Alert Seat. The Alert Seat is able to tell a driver whether an object is nearby on the left by triggering a pulse on the left side of the seat.

Cadillac also joins another innovative force in technology: the open source movement. The CUE system runs on a triple-core ARM 11 processor and uses a Linux platform so developers can help keep the architecture fresh with new extensions.

CUE powers both an 8-inch capacitive touch screen, reportedly the first non-resistive display in an automobile, and a second, 12.3-inch fully configurable instrument cluster mounted behind the steering wheel.

Another automotive engineering feat was the addition of haptic feedback. There’s a proximity sensor, which brightens the display when a driver’s hand approaches the system’s user interface and a touch screen that provides both pulse feedback and the ability to swipe and pinch.

Living In America

That producing a product as complex as a car with its myriad of alloys and steel and hundreds of technology features is not a trivial procedure is underscored by this Esquire article, How to Build an American Car, which breathtakingly describes the production process.

So would Apple benefit from building the iPhone in America? There are two trends to consider here. First, it’s increasingly likely that volatility in the oil business will cause fuel prices to double in the not-too-distant future. That will make shipping even a high-value iPhone from China via FedEx a less attractive proposition.

Another is that increasingly the added value in any consumer product is software. And in this area, America still out-shines the rest of the world although domestic educational obstacles and the ascent of India may diminish that advantage.

Still though, I’m happy to see that once-considered-dead General Motors can not only match global competitors in engineering but also reinvent an area where automobiles will increasingly have to shine - the human-machine interface. Don’t believe me? I have just one word to say, iDrive.

Happy motoring America, and please contribute software innovations for the automobile and computer revolution to our Spigit innovation crowdsourcing engine.

Just as many companies won't hire the unemployed, new research suggests workers may tend to avoid jobs that have been open too long. A look at high-growth areas like Silicon Valley reveals some big disconnects between the expectations of tech job employers and job seekers - leaving many positions open and many professionals unemployed. 

Finding a tech job these days should be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, right? Not since the dot.com boom of the late 1990s have so many companies sprouted up with a mission to create software and provide online services to the masses. Heck, even jobs in general seem to be making a comeback. The U.S. Labor Department's national numbers on unemployment claims dropped to 7.8% from 8.1% last week.

That optimism might be overheated, however. Information technology-related jobs (IT jobs) saw reductions of 1,700 workers last month, according to research released this week from Foote Partners Research Group. That's the first monthly drop in IT industry jobs that was not labor related since 2010. Compared to earlier this year, unemployment for IT workers mostly befell Web developers, network architects, computer systems analysts and software developers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Not Time To Panic For Tech Workers

While not cause for full-scale panic, the decrease hints at a broader industry problem: Employers can't find enough qualified employees even as job seekers can't find qualified openings.

In a perfect world, every manager fills open positions as quickly as possible. But even as many workers can't find appropriate positions, the market for technology professionals in certain geographies and skill-sets is remarkably tight.

Some 45% of surveyed hiring managers and recruiters told Dice.com it was taking longer to fill positions relative to last year (June 2012 compared to June 2011). The number one reason, according to Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com: an inability to find qualified professionals. That was followed by hiring managers being more discerning waiting for the perfect match.

The problem is that waiting for the ideal candidate may mean job postings remain open for longer than some job seekers are comfortable with. The longer a job is open, the less likely it will get filled, according to Randstad Technologies a technology recruiter based in the U.K.

Does A Job Posting Have A Shelf Life?

To test its theory that employers should not keep job postings open indefinitely, Randstad contracted a survey of 2,001 people asking, "How many working days does a vacancy for a permanent job have to be open before it starts to look like a bad job that no one wants?"

Technology professionals in the U.K said they thought a post that was vacant an average of 67 days was most likely a job that no one wants. The survey did not indicate what kinds of employers had postings that lasted that long, nor what kinds of jobs could not be filled in more than two months time. Typically, online job posting websites like Dice.com, CareerBuilder.com and SimplyHired.com keep each posting for only a month. Most fill up in two weeks time, according to Dice.com's Hill.

Just as important, there could be many reasons why it’s taking longer to fill a particular position and not necessarily because it’s a “bad” job.

"There are instances where consulting or staffing companies are constantly in need of certain professionals," Hill says. "The job may appear to be the same, but it’s really a unique role with similar qualifications and experience needed."

Testing The Theory In Silicon Valley

Does this theory really hold true - especially in the hyper-competitive market of Silicon Valley? To find out, we took a look at job listings for tech positions listed on four well-known job-search sites for in Cupertino, Calif., the home of Apple.

It seems that some employers do have a hard time filing software developer jobs. A simple search turned up the following un-filled positions posted for more than a month:

Dice.com

• Software Developer & Report Writer - posted September 5
• .Net Software Developer - posted September 7

Careerbuilder.com

• CloudSystem Software Engineer - VI for a high-profile company in Palo Alto - posted 3 weeks ago
• Software Developer at a lesser-known company - posted 3 weeks ago

Simply Hired

• Sr. Software Dev Engineer Wireless at a high profile company in Seattle - posted 29 days ago
• Software Development Engineer in Test Framework at a high-profile company in Seattle - posted 17 days ago

Craigslist

• SW. Developer - Music Apps at an unknown company - posted September 8
• Senior C/C++ Software Developer at an unknown company - posted September 7

Job Postings Are Like Real Estate Listings

"Recruiting for a tech post is like trying to sell your house. Leave it on the market too long and, for whatever reason, people start to think there is something wrong with it," said Mike Beresford, managing director of Randstad. "That leads to fewer applications and increased pressures on the rest of the staff left trying to cover the empty position."

While IT jobs continue to be in high demand, the nature of employees and those looking for work in tech remains a dance between employers looking for skilled workers and skilled workers looking for better opportunities.

It may seem that in this economy, just posting an open position should be enough to get it filled. But as the research shows, it's also important to manage expectations - and to refresh job listings left up too long - if we want to get those positions filled and people back to work.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

It was bound to happen at some point: Search.xxx, a new search engine from ICM Registry, the operator for .xxx domains, has made its debut. So why does it look so much like other search engines?

Search.xxx is a surprisingly demure site that lets users search for their preferred brand of "content" based on sexual preference, even allowing them to switch up languages, for a more global-friendly porn search. Results are scanned by McAfee for malware and labeled by MetaCert as adult content to keep younger eyes away.

Unlike other porn searching sites, there's no gyrating GIFs of people engaging with one another, no gimmicky ads, popups or distractions like that. Even the search results are just a simple list, no video previews. Only sites registered with a .xxx domain name will show up in the search results. Since ICM hosts these domains, and therefore makes money from them, the site didn't need to put ads on Search.xxx itelf. You see just a white screen and a search bar. If someone was to peer over your shoulder real quick, they'd have no idea what you were searching for. It's about as clean as a porn search engine can get. 

The creators of Search.xxx have been working on the search engine for more than a year. According to ICM, the goal was to create a different kind of Internet, one where people who search for explicit content can do so discreetly without malware or spamming worries. As The Verge pointed out, ICM is also seeking rights to top-level domain names like .sex, .adult and .porn, which if approved would presumably also show up in Search.xxx's results. 

A Short History Of .xxx Domains

The idea to label sites that display explicit content with the domain name ".xxx" was proposed as a way to differentiate sites that want to provide that kind of content from ones that don't. It was also presented as a way to ease blocking those kinds of sites  for parents,workplaces and search engines. Proposed as top-level domain (TLD) by ICM Registry in 2000, .xxx endured more than a decade of back and forth discussion between ICM and ICANN, as well as objections from organizations ranging from the adult entertainment industry to parent advocacy groups. Today, 21 million pages are being hosted by ICM. 

The company says it follows the same strict guidelines as other search engines: No paid partnerships or preferential treatment. Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry told The Verge "We want genuine results," adding, "Just like Google will penalize people for trying to outsmart the ranking system, we will do the same."

The search engine follows the same International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR) guidelines that all .xxx domain sites do. These guidelines protect freedom of expression, while also preventing the distribution of underage or illegal images and using sites to phish, spam or inflict any kind of malicious behavior. 

From an industry standpoint, Search.xx seems like a smart approach. Offering a clean, simply designed site that avoids malware to access adult content plays against type and may help deflect criticism and boost traffic to ICM's hosted sites.

“Wi-Fi exists in all airports but should be free and unrestricted, like air and water.” That common sentiment was voiced by Michael Liebow, CEO Foretuit, an enterprise mobility company. Liebow is the kind of customer you might expect the air industry to bend over backwards for. He has racked up more than a million frequent flier miles on both Delta and American Airlines.

Of course, tech amenities such as Wi-Fi vary from airport to airport. And travelers aren’t just demanding free and reliable Internet access. These days the tech-savvy traveler wants better mobile boarding options and more push notifications about travel alerts and delays, according to a survey of 2,600 travelers released this week by FlightView, a provider of real-time travel information.

Among the survey’s key findings:

• Only 31% of travelers are satisfied with current in-flight Wi-Fi offerings, and only 42% are satisfied with airport Wi-Fi.
• 93% of travellers want flight status alerts, 73% want boarding alerts and 57% want seat upgrade info.
• 80% of travelers want to board with an electronic pass, but only 50% have had the opportunity and less than 60% took advantage of it.
• 37% of travelers use a tablet in flight while only 38% are still using laptops.

Europe Outpaces The U.S.

While the survey covered U.S. airports and travelers, international travelers told us that tech amenities are generally better both in non-U.S. airports and on airlines based in other countries. Liebow noted the highly touted tech offerings of Emirates, including mobile, curbside check-in, while Jennifer Haack of Berlin-based tourism startup Waymate gave high marks to Scandanavian SAS Airlines.

“As with many things, Scandinavians are ahead of the curve," she said. "SAS offers free Wi-Fi on all its flights. Stockholm airport offers up to three hours of free Wi-Fi, and the new terminal has plenty of outlets to easily charge your devices."

Delta Tops Domestic Carriers

While the FlightView survey didn’t drill down to offerings from specific airlines, travelers we spoke with mentioned Delta as the U.S. airline that offered the most tech amenities. At Delta’s terminal in Laguardia Airport (New York City), the airline offers free iPad stations to all customers - not just Delta SkyMile members.

“This is an excellent example of an airline embracing technology to meet the demands of travelers, particularly in a notoriously congested airport where any relief is welcome,” said Pete Meyers, a vice president with EuroCheapo.com who flies in and out of LaGuardia on a regular basis.

Evaluating Wi-Fi Service At Top Airports

Brian Hooks is a captain with American Eagle, a commuter fleet owned by AMR, parent corporation of American Airlines. He sees his fair share of airports in any given month. Hooks said service “is pretty poor across the board.”

Here’s how Hooks rated some of the airports he frequents:

• Raleigh/Durham International: Boingo provides Wi-Fi in the brand-new terminal, but it is among the worst Hooks has encountered. “It still drops out constantly and is slow when it does work, plus you pay,” Hooks said.
• Reagan National (Washington, DC): Just “okay,” according to Hooks. The service is free, he said, “but the signal won't extend to the end of the concourse.”
• Toronto: Free and decent with good range, according to Hooks. 
• JFK (New York City): Another Boingo-serviced airport, and another airport with “poor and pricy” Wi-Fi. The exception, Hooks said, is the JetBlue terminal, where the Wi-Fi is free and works well.

Updated 5/1/2013.

YouTube has come to define the era of online video, so let's take a look at its most popular videos of all time. Our latest update has Psy's Gangnam Style at number 1 with the first video to reach a billion views. Falling to second place is Justin Bieber's Baby, which was the first video to earn a half a billion views!

We first did this list in August 2007, at which point Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply was number 1 with nearly 56 million views. The next update was September 2008, when Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend pop music video was number 1 with 103 million views. In January 2010, Charlie bit my finger - again ! was number 1, with 148 million views. By the beginning of January 2011, Justin Bieber was at number 1 with over 400 million views for Baby.

Here are the top 10, as of Febuary 2013:

1. PSY - GANGNAM STYLE; 1,491,867,496 views

2. Justin Bieber - Baby ft. Ludacris; 845,312,696 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Bieber's 'Baby' Will Hit 500m Views Today; It's Also The Most Hated Video on YouTube (For Now)

3. Jennifer Lopez - On The Floor ft. Pitbull; 661,002,113 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Gettin' Down on Friday: Bieber's Baby No Longer Most Disliked Video on YouTube

4. Eminem - Love The Way You Lie ft. Rihanna; 551,380,582 views

5. LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock; 531,116,118 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time (2007)

6. Charlie bit my finger - again !; 519,814,575 views

7. Shakira - Waka Waka(This Time for Africa); 515,795,317 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time, 2008

8. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance; 514,458,291 views

9. Michel Telo - Ai Se Eu Te Pego - Oficial (Assim voce me mata); 491,987,017 views

10. Don Omar - Danza Kuduro ft. Lucenzo; 435,911,231 views

This post is regularly updated by Deane Rimerman

A lot of people in Silicon Valley are down on job-hoppers these days. They’re flaky, they’re bad employees, they steal all the Sharpies when they leave, blah, blah, blah. But it turns out that all that job-hopping is an important part of what makes the Valley so special. 

Everyone loves a good game of musical chairs. The tune kicks on, everyone jumps up and runs in a circle laughing and the party is good. That’s Silicon Valley over the past few years. A lot of people whirling around and having a grand old time. But what would happen if the music started and nobody got up to play? What if companies want to hire but all the workers stay firmly seated in their current positions?

The truth is that Silicon Valley startups depend on job-hoppers to fill their open positions - and a lot of them would struggle if the job-hoppers stopped hopping.

Job Hopping Makes Silicon Valley Hum

“That’s why employers populate Silicon Valley, because they have access to great talent,” said Kathryn Shaw, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, who researches ways that firms attract top talent in knowledge industries. “They want people to be relatively mobile, because when they have a need for a particular skill, they want people to be available.”

Job-hopping means startups have an easier time finding a match for their needs. If job-hopping ceased, Silicon Valley would lose a lot of its appeal as a location, Shaw said. “You need job-hopping to continually update the matching process between employer and employee. That’s why we have Silicon Valley. Otherwise people would be more scattered.”

So job-hoppers are a vital commodity for tech companies. But what about the other side of the chip? Conventional wisdom among startups workers is: move around as much as you can and you’ll benefit from ever-increasing compensation as firms seek to attract your talents.

Surprise: Job Hoppers Make Less Cash

In fact, that’s not true. In her research, Shaw has discovered that people who stay longer at one company get paid more. A few years ago she did a study of 50,000 Silicon Valley software employees and found that those with at least five years’ experience at the same employer typically earned annual raises of 8%, compared to 5% for those with a history of job-hopping. She also found that employees who stay in place longer are more productive and creative. (Perhaps because they don’t waste so much time in orientation sessions.)

Shaw’s data included stock options vested as they were realized. She drew her data from the state of California, not survey forms.

“To constantly hop between jobs to try to chase the greatest pay is not advisable,” she said. “If you take someone who has high income right now and look at the sources of that income, what they did to achieve that high income, how they did it was staying with one or two employers, not by hopping [among] employers.”

The Future Of Job Hopping

So will startup workers keep on job-hopping? Culture is the key to the decision-making process. When workers see a culture in which every employee at Instagram gets filthy rich overnight, it’s only natural for them to decide to chase the next Instagram. When they look around and see their friends jumping from one startup to another for more stock options and cooler rooftop parties, it’s easy for them to do the same.

But what happens if the bubble pops and everybody sobers up and admits the reality revealed in research by people like Shaw? it’s likely there will be less mobility in Silicon Valley. Exactly how much job-hopping continues could hold long-term implications for companies big and small - not to mention their employees.

IBM, anyone?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Staying on top of trends is key to any startup’s success. Spotting trends early makes it possible tocome up with smart startup ideas - or modify your startup plans to jump on a new trend just as it takes off. Just as most important, you can avoid the risk of starting a business based on a trend that’s just about to fizzle out. Fortunately, tracking trends isn’t as hard as it used to be.

Here are my tips and sources to help you stay on top of the latest business and consumer trends:

Read industry news. Set up a system that works for you to regularly read the websites, blogs and Twitter feeds that matter in your industry. Stay active in industry conferences, events and associations: they can help you keep up on what’s new and what matters.

Get out of the office. Your ecommerce business may be online, but trends happen in the real world. Make it a point to get out and mingle where your customers are - offline. If you sell teen apparel, hang out at the local mall or movie theater. If you sell surf gear, hit the waves.

Listen in. Keep your ear to what your friends, family and connections are talking about. Are all the moms buzzing about some new deal-of-the-day website? Is your uncle nuts about a new online investing app? Listen, ask questions and you’re likely to spot trends in unexpected places.

Think global. The Internet has made it even easier for trends that catch on in one country to spread to others. Look to big cities, where trends are often born, and keep up to date with news and trends in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tokyo.

Watch for countertrends. For every consumer craving one thing (simple, streamlined investing apps) there’s another craving the opposite (personalized, one-on-one investing advice). Can you create a business based on a countertrend? If there are lots of competitors in your niche, how can your business deliver something totally opposite?

Watch demographic changes. Modifying products or services for different generations is a great way to capitalize on trends. A website catering to baby boomers will need to be very different than one for Millennial consumers. Keep up on demographic trends and be aware how your target customers’ needs may vary (or shift) based on their ages and life stages.

Need more? Here are three websites to help you keep up with trends.

Cassandra: Formerly TrendCentral, this site gathers trends in lifestyle, entertainment, technology, food and more, spotlighting breaking trends from all over the world while they’re still burgeoning. Sign up for the daily enewsletter to get more ideas than you can handle.

Trendwatching.com: This globally oriented site takes a big-picture view; it’s particularly strong on analysis. Its monthly trend newsletter is comprehensive in scope, garnered from trendspotters in hundreds of countries worldwide.

Springwise.com: If Trendwatching.com is big-picture, its sister site Springwise.com is snapshot-oriented. Sign up for the e-newsletter to get quick snippets of business ideas from around the world that will give you lots of fodder for fine-tuning your own startup.

And pardon the self-promotion, but you can sign up for TrendCast, my weekly free trends e-newsletter.

Lead image from TrendWatching.com.

For all the parental and media hand-wringing, sexting remains a poorly studied phenomenon. But according to new peer-reviewed research, that concern might not be unfounded. Teen texts are indeed ablaze with sexual content - but how does technology-based sexual activity intersect with actual behavior?

Teens are sending more text messages than ever before. In July 2011, 63% of U.S. teens were texting on a daily basis, and almost one out of three teens between the ages of 12 and 17 were tapping out 60 texts per day. Beyond wreaking havoc on any parent’s family phone plan, the content of those texts is a reflection of teen habits - at least when it comes to sex.

Sexting, defined as "the practice of electronically sending sexually explicit images or messages from one person to another," is the back channel of choice for members of Generation Z expressing their sexuality. 

The phenomenon is much-reported but seldom examined from a scientifically sound perspective. In a new study, published this month in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, researchers questioned a culturally diverse sample of 964 Houston-area students between the ages of 14 and 19 from seven public high schools. Below are some of the most notable findings:

• 27.6% of teens reported having texted or emailed a naked picture of themselves
• Male and female teens send sexts with about the same frequency. Female teens reported a higher rate of being asked to send a sext (68%) while male teens more frequently asked for someone to send a sext (46%).
• White teens reported the highest sexting rates (35%), followed by black teens (27%) and Latino teens (22%).
• Sexting was more common in older teens, who also reported being less bothered by requests from peers to send a sext.
• Of girls who had sexted before, 77% also reported having had sex compared to 42% of non-sexters.
• Beyond being more sexually active, girls who had sexted were significantly more likely to have also engaged in “risky” sexual behaviors, such as using alcohol and drugs before sex and having had more than one sexual partner in the last year.
• Among boys who had sent a sext, 82% were sexually active, compared to 45% of boys who had never sexted. Among male respondents, sexting was not associated with risky sexual behavior.

Bear in mind that correlation is not causation. If you’re a concerned parent, cutting off a texting plan isn’t likely to rein in your teen’s sexual habits - those sexts are just a reflection of their less plugged-in habits at large. But in a paradoxical culture in which most parents still dread "the talk" while kids soak up (often questionable) ideas about sex from every other angle, sexting might prove to be a good conversation starter.

Pinterest: The Fastest Growing Social Network of 2012

There's no doubt that image-based social network Pinterest has had a stellar year. According to comScore, it now has a global monthly audience of nearly 30 million visitors. It was just under 12 million at the start of this year. comScore reports that Pinterest has grown 4377% since its public launch in May 2011, with a steep uptick that started around December last year.

Pinterest's user base is skewed towards female users. Ben Hovaness of TBG Digital did an analysis of this, using three different sources. Forget white, middle class males (cough), it looks like women are driving the Visual Web!

Instagram: Helping Facebook Become The New Kodak

The biggest news story of 2012 so far was all about the Visual Web. On 9 April, Facebook announced it had acquired mobile photo sharing app Instagram for $1 billion. The deal was important to Facebook in two main ways: 1) it increased Facebook's mobile presence, thanks to Instagram's more than 30 million iPhone and Android users; and 2) it helped Facebook in its goal to become the place where people upload their photos.

As ReadWriteWeb's Kevin Kelleher memorably put it earlier this month when Facebook bought another Visual Web startup, face recognition company Face.com: "Facebook is cornering the market of what we used to call Kodak moments. They are becoming Facebook moments."

The Instagram success story points to a key reason why the Visual Web has ramped up this year: tens of millions of people now carry a high quality digital camera around with them everyday, in the form of smartphones like iPhone and Android devices. That's led to a huge increase in online photographs, which Instagram savvily tapped into early.

The Visual Web is about much more than Pinterest and Instagram. Blogging service Tumblr continues to expand, driven by the quick, image-fueled blog posts of its users. Visually stunning apps like Flipboard and 500px are also growing fast.

It's 2012, welcome to the Visual Web era.

Top image: Socialmatic Camera, found via (of course) Pinterest.

Note that the cloud - a.k.a. the Internet - is of course the backend of many a popular consumer app. Flickr, Gmail and even Facebook all store your content in the cloud. But what we're talking about here are services that allow you to store and manage files in the cloud. Online file management is the key feature and you (the consumer) are fully aware that your files are being stored on the Web. Cheap hardware and virtualization have been the main drivers of this trend.

In 2012, there are three main types of Consumer Cloud services:

1. Online storage: Dropbox is the leading brand in this category, despite competing with heavyweights like Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, Box.net and others.
2. Online sync: iCloud enables Apple users to easily sync their media across devices. So far music is the battleground in this category, although it will eventually extend to other types of media (like videos). iTunes Match allows iTunes users to sync their music collection across devices, using iCloud. Competitors include Google Music and Spotify.
3. Online notes: Evernote is the leading player in this niche; it really has no peers.

You may use different products, depending on your preferred computing platform. For example many of you will use Microsoft's SkyDrive, as you're Windows users. Or you may prefer Spotify to sync your music, because of the other benefits it offers (the ability to stream almost any music, even if you don't own it). But whatever your personal setup, I'd wager you're using all three of these product categories more now than 6-12 months ago.

I know for sure that I am. Evernote is probably my most-used web app, outside of the obvious daily services like email and calendar. My usage of Evernote has increased markedly this year, as I've moved from making notes in paper notebooks to inputting virtually everything into Evernote. It's helped my planning and self-organization immensely, knowing I can input and access notes across computers, tablet and smartphone.

My usage of Dropbox, ReadWriteWeb's Best LittleCo of 2011, has also increased in 2012. I use it mainly for storing business files, so I can access them on whatever device I'm using. Others use Dropbox to store their photos, or to share music, or to send large documents to colleagues, or anything else involving files in this multi-device era.

However Dropbox faces more challenges than Evernote, because it has serious competition. In particular, Google and Microsoft. In April this year Google launched Google Drive - which directly competes with Dropbox as an online file storage solution. Google Drive is basically a file system for Google Docs. Microsoft's SkyDrive has similar functionality. Also Amazon launched Amazon Cloud Drive in early May, but it isn't as good as its competitors.

Like NPR's All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen, this year I took the step of moving my music collection to iTunes Match. Although I didn't go as far as Boilen, who deleted over 25,000 songs from his iTunes library. Boilen, whose whole life revolves around music, wrote that he's going to "trust in the cloud, where my library now lives." Here is Boilen's description of what iTunes Match does exactly:

"Before I deleted the songs, the service scanned my music library, "matched" all the music that is available in the iTunes store, and uploaded what isn't. Now, my entire library is accessible from anywhere I can get a wireless Internet or cell phone signal. Another benefit: since I used to rip my music at 128kbps, much of my "library" now sounds better, since Apple's songs are encoded at 256kbps. It doesn't matter if the original was purchased from Amazon's mp3 store, ripped from a CD, downloaded from a friend or obtained illegally — I now have a legit 256kbps version."

I'm using iTunes Match too now and I've found that it makes it easier to manage my music collection across (Apple) devices. It takes a bit of getting used to downloading your files from the Internet, rather than plugging in a USB cord to transfer between devices. But the benefits - such as getting more up-to-date and potentially higher quality "matched" files from iTunes - outweigh any issues.

The common theme here is that cloud computing has reached the consumer market in a big way now. If you're not using Dropbox, Evernote and iTunes Match (or any of their competitors), you are missing out on hassle-free online storage, a totally new way to organize your notes, and easy content sync across devices. It's 2012, welcome to the Consumer Cloud era.

The mobile space will see a shakeout of sorts over the next 18 months. Nokia, the Finland-based maker of mobile phones, announced Wednesday that it will cut 10,000 jobs from its worldwide workforce through the end of 2013, as it attempts to regain its once-dominant place in a market increasingly defined by Apple's iPhone and a variety of mobile devices built on Google's Android operating system.

"These planned reductions are a difficult consequence of the intended actions we believe we must take to ensure Nokia's long-term competitive strength," Stephen Elop, Nokia's president and CEO, said in a statement. "We do not make plans that may impact our employees lightly, and as a company we will work tirelessly to ensure that those at risk are offered the support, options and advice necessary to find new opportunities."

The shakeout extends to Nokia's executive team as well, as chief marketing officer Jerri DeVard, executive vice president of mobile phones Mary McDowell, and EVP of markets Niklas Savander are all out effective June 30.

Nokia has made a bid to rejeuvenate its phone product lines by adopting Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system as its devices' base, making it the largest mobile device maker for that system. Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 in a partnership deal that should net Nokia "billions" over the next few years in what the companies have termed "platform support" payments.

However, the company has lost significant market share during the past five years in particular to the iPhone and Android, dropping it to second place worldwide in mobile market share behind Samsung, and it faces a tough uphill battle to regain its momentum even as competitors press their advantages with those increasingly popular mobile operating systems.

The announced layoffs are another in a string of recent job cuts at significant industry companies, most recently Hewlett-Packard's decision to eliminate 30,000 workers. Yahoo chopped 2,000 jobs in April, amounting to 14% of its workforce, and Nokia isn't the only company in the mobile industry to be shedding positions - Research in Motion, the maker of the Blackberry, also expects to eliminate jobs as it similarly fights to regain market share lost to the iPhone and Android.

Image courtesy of Nokia.

One in every ten tablet users views video content almost daily on their device, according to a new report by comScore. The study also found that tablet users are nearly three times more likely to watch video on their device compared to smartphone users.

Nearly one in four smartphone owners now owns a tablet, according to comScore. That's an increase of 13.9 percentage points since a year ago.

comScore's statistics are reflective of the rapid growth in the tablet market, since the iPad was launched two years ago. In her presentation on Internet trends this month, Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker showed that growth in iPad sales per quarter has been three times that of iPhones. While that's partly due to Apple's dominance in the tablet market, it's also an indication that tablets have been adopted by consumers much faster than smartphones. The iPhone was released in 2007, but it took mobile apps and mobile websites at least a few years to mature. Tablet apps on the other hand, and in particular iPad apps, have matured much faster.

Another telling statistic from Meeker's presentation is the growth of tablet and eReader ownership. 29% of US adults now own one of those devices, up from 2% just three years ago.

The lesson in all of this? Video apps for tablets are an area of tremendous potential. It explains why there is such interest from Facebook in social video apps like Viddy and Socialcam. Facebook knows video is going to be crucial in the coming years, which is why it is sniffing around Viddy - a potential Instagram for video.

The biggest video site on the planet, YouTube, is already adapting to the fast-emerging tablet market for content. Over the coming months on ReadWriteWeb, we'll be profiling other growth stories in tablet video. Stay tuned!

Today at the D10 Conference, star analyst Mary Meeker gave her latest presentation of Internet Trends. You can download the presentation here (PDF), or view it at the bottom of this post. It's well worth spending time perusing the whole presentation, but here are the main takeaways. Get ready for lots of re-imagining and proof of rapid growth!

Meeker has been obsessed with mobile growth in recent presentations - and that trend continues. The executive summary of her latest report is that mobile technology is being rapidly adopted, but it's "still in [the] early stages." Meanwhile, Internet growth in general is described as "robust."

Mobile devices are, unsurprisingly, the biggest growth area. The standout statistic was this: 29% of USA adults now own a tablet or eReader, up from 2% less than three years ago. That's been fueled by the rapid growth of devices like the iPad and Kindle.

Mobile adoption is having a big impact on overall Web traffic. Global mobile traffic is "growing rapidly" and is now 10% of Internet Traffic.

The following is a very sobering stat for Facebook. It's as good an explanation as any for why Facebook spent $1 billion on Instagram. In India, the world's second largest Internet market behind China, mobile Internet traffic has now surpassed desktop Internet traffic!

Back to the US, the combined growth of mobile devices and mobile traffic has resulted in a big jump in mobile revenue. However, most of it (71%) is revenue from apps. 29% is from mobile advertising.

Overall, Meeker is bullish on mobile monetization. The desktop Internet proved that advertising dollars follow eyeballs, Meeker said, so it's just a matter of time before mobile attracts dollars. She points to the strong mobile app revenue figures, as well as "rapid growth" (that phrase again) of mobile commerce and associated payment systems.

"Re-Imagination" is a new catchphrase that Meeker introduced in this presentation. The first generation of Re-Imagination was the desktop Internet usurping old business models. For example the newspaper industry, where print ad revenue was surpassed by Internet revenue in 2010.

She then presented a slew of examples of how (mostly mobile) technology is "re-imagining nearly everything." Here are just a few of them:

Lots to digest in this excellent presentation by Mary Meeker, who has more than proven herself to be the standout analyst of this Internet era.

"We don't think a billion dollars is all that cool, either," he said, riffing on the fictionalized Sean Parker quote from The Social Network. "You know what's really cool? Making a hundred-year company." Today, Evernote announced a new round valuing the company at... yep, $1 billion. Cool.

But the number "1 billion" is starting to sound like Monopoly money in this tech cycle. Let's deal with the bolder claim. Take it as read that a 100-year company is worth at least $1 billion. $1 billion will be inflated away by then, anyway. The much more interesting question is, Can Evernote last 100 years?

Fashionable Apps

So much of the headline-grabbing software in this tech cycle is built around contemporary conventions. These apps are designed for today's hardware and social norms. Instagram is a touchscreen smartphone thing, and that's a form factor of the 2010s.

Likewise, social technology like Facebook is designed for this era. And as we see in the constant freak-outs over privacy, these apps have to push social norms forward relentlessly in order to profit. There's a tension between the users of these applications and the companies that make them. How long can that possibly last?

An Elephant Never Forgets

Evernote is fundamentally the opposite kind of technology. Certainly, its current suite of applications are contemporary. They're desktop, tablet, smartphone and Web apps, and they do things like scan paper receipts and clip Web pages. But they all have the same root purpose: to capture today's data, in today's formats, and preserve it in your virtual desk drawers.

Can't you imagine digital documents from today that you'd want to access in 50 years? Maybe you trust yourself to do all the necessary storage, backup and conversion. But paying Evernote to manage it, update it and keep it compatible with future versions seems safer and easier.

Libin told Josh Constine before this deal that Evernote has 1 million paying customers, and that the conversion rate goes up the longer people use it. Once you start putting things in the Evernote desk, it becomes more valuable over time. If that's how its customers feel, its investors should feel the same way. Evernote's icon says it all. "An elephant never forgets."

Predicting a Post-App Economy

The mobile Post-App Economy would be fundamentally social, browser-based and content-driven. 

For now, we remain firmly entrenched in the era of the App Economy, dominated by native and hybrid offerings through the Apple App Store, Android Google Play, Windows Phone Marketplace and BlackBerry App World. But developers looking to circumvent the application store ecosystem are working toward a mobile Web-driven economy where the app stores are marginalized. In the short-term, look for the emergence of a dual economy combining the mobile Web and native app stores. The question is whether or not a true Post-App Economy driven by browsers and the social Web will ever fundamentally replace today's largely native landscape.

The App Economy - as seen through iOS and Android - is a content economy. The vast majority of popular apps are media content driven: In one way or another, content is driven through a service: Instagram (photos), Spotify/Pandora/Rdio (music streaming), Evernote (content storage), Zite/Flipboard (articles), Netflix/Hulu+ (video), Words With Friends/Angry Birds (games), Twitter/Facebook (content creation and sharing).

Within this economy, Facebook and Twitter are both apps and platforms, serving as a way to discover and disseminate content. The numbers tell the tale: As of December 2011, one in every five minutes spent on the Web was devoted to social-networking sites. Facebook accounts for one in every seven minutes spent online and three-quarters of all social-networking minutes. 64% of U.S. smartphone users accessed social networking from their phones, and two out of every five smartphone owners accessed social networking every day, according to comScore.

The Post-App Economy could be driven by social interaction and discovery through Facebook and Twitter to mobile Web. "With the rise in social media applications on mobile, we're seeing a shift beyond the single-purpose application back towards the mobile Web," said Crave Labs CEO Jeff Peden.

The Near Future: A Dual Economy

In the present, content and media are being created specifically for native platforms and pushed to the varying application stores. That includes pure native apps written in native code for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, along with hybrid apps built with Web tools like HTML5, CSS and Java and then "wrapped" to take advantage of native platforms. Either way, the destination is the app store, not the Web.

For a variety of reasons, this ecosystem is starting to fragment. Content publishers, retail businesses and restaurants are slowly realizing that they do not need to have a presence in the App Store to build a successful mobile presence. For many, it is much more important to show up in search on a smartphone or tablet through the browser rather than an app. Sure, there are native apps designed specifically for local discovery and content consumption, but search remains king in both of those realms. Even Apple's Siri delivers search results through the browser by accessing online databases like Yelp. Siri results are browser-driven, not delivered from native apps.

Over time, the mobile ecosystem will increasingly be split between games and utilities that function best on native platforms (Instagram or Infinity Blade, for instance) and more traditional content and local presences that use the mobile Web. While processor-heavy apps reliant on device APIs will be better written with native code, content-driven apps can be created more easily and "good enough" on the mobile Web.

"I think there is a start of a bifurcation of apps-versus-HTML5 mobile-optimized sites that began at the end of last year," said Carnet Williams, VP of Sprout at ad firm InMobi. "And [that] is evident along lines that I would describe as 'utilities and games' versus 'content.'"

The simple fact is that HTML5 and browser-based websites and services make much more sense for many content providers. For instance, look at the HTML5-driven websites for The Financial Times and BostonGlobe.com. These kinds of apps are cheaper and more convenient to develop, deploy and deliver all the essentials of a mobile content app. The same goes for sites and apps aimed at local businesses. Several companies have lined up to provide mobile-optimized site tools for small businesses, including DudaMobile and FiddleFly.

Williams sums up the Dual Economy nicely:

"I do not see the mobile Web becoming the predominant mobile content platform as much as an additional platform for native apps," Williams said. "The immense success of both Flipboard and Instagram are great examples. Flipboard removes content from the mobile and desktop Web and presents it in a readable format in a native application. Instagram didn't have a mobile Web app that replicated native functionality."

Will We Ever Reach a True Post-App Economy?

The simple answer is not anytime soon. This is not a matter of consumer preference or business logistics, the rise of the mobile social portal or maintaining search-optimized websites. It is a technological imperative.

The mobile browser is just not ready for a true Post-App Economy. When we talk about mobile Web apps, HTML5, CSS and the like, we are talking about the quality and capabilities of the mobile browser. Currently, none of the major mobile browser providers have the capability to serve top-notch, app-like experiences that serve all user expectations. Mozilla is probably the company working most directly on this problem, with its Boot2Gecko smartphone operating system. Direct access to the full capabilities of mobile devices is the primary issue, but not the only one. Others include rendering, graphics and load time (all basically in the same category), along with HTML5 audio and video quality. 

Facebook and Twitter want to give the ecosystem the tools it will need to create mobile Web presences that will benefit their platforms. Facebook has released a suite of tools called Ringmark to help mobile Web developers create browser-based apps that can be tied to the social network. While those tools are useful, and while social discovery is an important factor in creating a Post-App Economy, the mobile Web is still limited by the capabilities of the ecosystem reliant on HTML5 and mobile browser technology.

Users don't care whether they're using the mobile Web or native apps, they just head toward the best content and utilities. So the only way to fully disrupt the App Economy is to improve the capabilities of the mobile browser so it is more competitive with native apps. That's not likely to happen for at least two to four years. And even then it will take users several more years to fully change their conditioned behavior (downloading applications from app stores). And the native platforms aren't going to be stagnant during that time. 

The true "Post-App Economy" won't debut until 2020, if ever.

Top and bottom images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Another scheme in Japan resulted in the police there arresting six individuals involving a one-click billing scheme. Typically, as shown in the diagram to the right, a user would visit a compromised site, click on a link to play a video, and end up with an infected device. The Japanese scheme netted some $150,000.

Another nasty piece of business is what is called "Ransomware," which is a set of malware that infects a user's machine and holds his or her files hostage. Sometimes, the software will encrypt part of your hard drive, demanding money before allowing you to decrypt the files. In one case, users saw a splash screen that demanded they pay a 100 euro fine for viewing porn or other questionable material on the computer.

Ransomware is now branching out to other countries in Europe, and has a big footprint in the U.S., as you can see here:

Part of the problem is that installing a mobile app is so easy, many users do it almost unconsciously, so it often doesn't get the same kind of due diligence that desktop applications get. Combined with the willingness of many Gen Yers to share personal information, and it's easier than ever for the bad guys to spread malware and steal your data, your money, or both.

As part of its security scanning efforts, TrendLabs processes more than four terabytes of data each day and analyzes some 8 billion URLs and 200,000 IP addresses. The report also includes the company's top 10 blocked URLs or malicious domains.

It is well worth a closer read.

Today, Windows PC makers are trying to use price to grab market share from Apple. The target is Apple's MacBook Air, which today accounts for 89 percent of light-and-thin laptops - an emerging category Intel calls "ultrabooks" - according to International Strategy & Investment Group.

Ultrabooks entering the market today from vendors Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo, LG and Hewlett-Packard are going head-to-head against the basic Air, which costs $1,000 (fully tricked-out models cost almost $1,800). For Windows PC buyers used to spending less than $400 for a basic laptop, current ultrabook prices of between $900 and $1,000 are way too high.

That gap will narrow by the fourth quarter, when ultrabook pricing is expected to fall to $700. So, should Apple worry? Hardly.

As Jobs said in pooh-poohing netbooks, "There are some customers which we chose not to serve." And those customers are the ones looking for the most basic laptop at a rock-bottom price.

What You Get for $700

Which is exactly what they will get for $700, according research firm IHS iSuppli, which does tear-down analysis for consumer electronics. First, those discount ultrabooks will rely on older microprocessors. Higher-end systems will get Intel's Ivy Bridge processor, a 22-nanometer chip that could ship as early as this month. People who can afford only $700 will have to wait until next year for an Ivy Bridge system, after Intel releases the chip's successor, codenamed Haswell.

More compromises will come in display, storage and memory. Cheap ultrabook screens will stay stuck at 1366 x 768, compared to the 13-inch MacBook Air's 1440 x 900. Perhaps most significantly, storage will likely be handled by a conventional 2.5-inch hard drive instead of the pricier solid-state drives that make using a high-end ultrabook such a fast, seamless experience. Memory capacity will also be less: 2 GB versus 4 GB in higher-end systems.

Also, by the end of the year, high-end ultrabooks (including the Air) are expected to begin using touchscreens. You won't see that in a $700 ultrabook. In addition, entry-level ultrabooks will likely have standard Wi-Fi with 4G wireless connections saved for the more expensive models.

Apple's unibody chassis, which is cut from a single piece of aluminum, is also expected to be a differentiator - at least until the fourth quarter. That's because Apple currently consumes most of the global manufacturing capacity for these kinds of cases, and it's going to take time for case manufacturers to be able to accommodate other computer makers. In the meantime, competitors will have to settle for a plastic case that won't be as sturdy or look as elegant.

To turn a profit on a $700 ultrabook, computer makers will need to get the cost of materials down to $500, said Kevin Keller, senior principal analyst for iSuppli. "In a low-end ultrabook, you will have the same features as a low-end conventional laptop." For many consumers and businesses, that may be enough. A basic ultrabook will certainly be capable of running Microsoft Office and standard video, and accessing most Web services, albeit a bit more slowly. "It always depends on what people are looking for," Keller said.

Not the Same Thing As a MacBook Air

But no matter how you cut it, plastic ultrabooks with poky processors and conventional hard drives will have a hard time competing directly with the MacBook Air. "An ultrabook in a plastic enclosure just looks like a thin laptop, as opposed to an entirely new product," Keller said.

But that doesn't mean some people won't buy them, so even though MacBook Air sales are expected to continue to grow, Apple's share of the overall ultrabook market is expected to shrink to 32% by 2013, according to International Strategy & Investment Group.

The real question, perhaps, is not whether PC makers can come up with $700 ultrabooks to appeal to cheapskates, but how much they'll have to charge for upcoming high-end Windows 8 ultrabooks that really can take on the MacBook Air.

By Antone Gonsalves

Venture capitalists are always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing when it comes to consumer apps. But fledgling entrepreneurs may find a higher likelihood of creating a sustainable business and attracting VC dollars in the business-to-business (B2B) market.

The Allure of the Consumer

Consumer apps are sexy. Mobile developers and designers working on the top consumer mobile apps are considered rock stars in Silicon Valley. The Path team has been widely commended for its app's user interface. Instagram created a huge community for wannabe hipsters. These developers are highly sought after, well-respected and are going to get paid big time.

But for every Foursquare, there are hundred of startups that meet an inglorious end. Succeeding in consumer mobile is difficult. Consumers expect things to be free, or very cheap. The ability to monetize consumer mobile apps depends entirely on scale. Build a user base and squeeze revenue through whatever means possible - be it ads, in-app purchases or paid downloads. Venture capitalists are willing to give seed rounds or Series-A rounds to consumer mobile apps only if there looks like a way the service might be able to scale. 


"If you build Instagram or the equivalent, that sort of thing can happen to you. You can go from zero to hero sort of almost overnight. That is never going to end, by the way. That has sort of been the story with media. Not just in the mobile world but in the Web world and the film world and the television world and the music world for a really long time," said Kevin Spain, general partner at Emergence Capital.

But Emergence Capital does not look for consumer apps. In its decade of existence, the VC firm has focused exclusively on B2B applications, getting in on venture rounds for Salesforce, Box, Yammer and others. Spain said the VC firm is willing to look at the "unsexy" element that is B2B because there is value to be had in the realm.

"The hits are really big, but guess what? Then there is everybody else. That is the 99%," Spain said. "We are starting to see a lot of entrepreneurs that maybe a year ago were starting to develop consumer apps that are now starting to think about business-oriented apps. You can still build really big, successful businesses here, by the way. Look at Salesforce, look at SuccessFactors and countless others."

The advantage of building a B2B mobile app over a consumer app is that, from the start, there is a target for revenue. In many ways, the freemium world of consumer apps relies on a strategy of "build an awesome product, tack on a monetization method, and pray." This can prove to be difficult. Only a handful of companies are going to be able to make meaningful money, or make meaningful exits, developing for the consumer world.

Is B2B for You?

Spain and Emergence Capital are not B2B evangelists. The firm is not actively trying to change entrepreneurs' minds on what they should build. If an entrepreneur walks into Emergence's offices and says they are 50/50 on whether to go consumer or business, the firm will state its case for business and let the entrepreneur decide. Emergence's advice would sound something like what Spain told ReadWriteMobile in a phone interview earlier this week:

"If you are successful in executing, there is a greater likelihood that you are going to be successful and have a winning outcome than if you go down the consumer path. Maybe the highs aren't quite as high. There is not a B2B company out there that is worth the $100 to $200 billion that Facebook is going to be worth. Not anything that has been created recently, at least. That is OK. If you build a business that is worth $10 billion, that is still a pretty big win. If you can do that with a higher probability, I think for developers that seems like a smarter path to take," Spain said.

There are opportunities in several B2B categories. One is to find an existing category with an incumbent business and try to outdo it in the mobile realm. As an example, Spain said that a mobile CRM solution could potentially disrupt Salesforce. This route can be difficult, though, because a purely mobile solution has to be head and shoulders above the incumbent to gain enterprise market share.

What excites firms like Emergence Capital more is the ability to create a new category of mobile B2B app.

"Mobile is a new platform, fundamentally. The Web was the last platform, client-server was the platform before that. So, if you think about client-server, there were entirely new classes of applications that came into being. You think about spreadsheets and word processing programs," Spain said. "Whole new mobile-centric B2B application categories [are what] we are much more energized and excited about. We think that is where the really, really big wins will probably come from."

Spain mentioned health care as an area ripe for B2B mobile disruption. The health care industry, as a complete vertical (from physicians to insurance, pharmaceuticals, hospitals and hospice etc.), is the biggest single industry in the United States. Many of the mobile applications for health care are still consumer-related, not fundamentally trying to change how business is conducted.

The barriers for B2B mobile health care apps remain high. A doctor once told me, "my staff told me that if we go completely digital, they would all quit." And that was in a Web-based world. Imagine adding the mobile niche, and the headache blowback likely intensifies. Health care, as an institution, is the hardest industry to move in the U.S.

For entrepreneurs and app developers, consumer products are sexier and offer the biggest potential rewards. The safer bet, though, may be to look toward enterprise customers.

"Fundamentally, in the business world, you build companies to serve other businesses that solve real problems. Businesses that have money in the bank are happy to have people solve their problems for them - and pay them for that privilege," Spain said.


 Healthcare and B2B images courtesy Shutterstock.

On January 18, 75,000 websites took part in a coordinated strike to protest the bills. 162 million people viewed Wikipedia's blackout page. 350,000 emails flooded Congress through SopaStrike.com and AmericanCensorship.org. Dozens of Representatives and Senators came out against the legislation - including, embarrassingly, three sponsors of the bills. Days later, SOPA was pulled. #EpicFail for @Congress.

It's hard to dispute the startling efficacy of anti-SOPA outreach, and the outsize influence of individuals who have grown up on the Web. By having a clear, tangible objective (Killing SOPA) and a coordinated action plan (Blackout Wednesday), online protesters converted social unease (No more Reddit? WTF) into political engagement (bombarding elected officials).

The creators of KONY 2012, the most viral video ever, are also following this model of digital-to-actual netroots activism. Unlike SOPA, which had Web juggernauts (Google, Wikipedia, Facebook) and the entire tech industry involved, KONY 2012 grabbed eyeballs with a gripping video. The campaign's goal is to have Joseph Kony, international war criminal, abductor and murderer of children, brought to justice by December 2012. At the end of March, the original YouTube video had over 86 million views.

Engineered to spread - visceral and disturbing, passionate and provoking - KONY 2012 is the rare documentary that stirs more than it saddens. (After watching "No End in Sight," or "Inside Job," the overriding emotion is despair. Neither film offers solutions.)

Where most commercials for politicians are clueless self-parodies - depicting the world as either impossibly optimistic, when they are about themselves, or frighteningly apocalyptic, when they are about the out-of-touch opponent, KONY 2012 instead takes its viewers seriously.

Since the video was released, both the House and Senate introduced resolutions in support of disarming Kony's militia, the LRA; and the African Union's Security Council has deployed 5,000 soldiers to track Kony down.

KONY 2012's next step, "Cover the Night," encourages activists to plaster their cities with campaign posters today. (Imagine waking and finding your entire neighborhood covered by peculiar ads.) By raising awareness of Kony's brutality, it is believed more American political leaders will be pressured to take action. "Cover the Night" will be a telling experience. Since it requires activists to do more than type and click, a strong turnout will prove the campaign to be more than a trending meme.

Building a digital campaign around a compelling narrative has also drawn critics to KONY 2012. Many argue that the campaign oversimplifies the issue, that its slick appeal exploits the plight of Africans. Take Angelo Izama's essay, "Kony Is Not the Problem," in The New York Times: "Campaigns like 'Kony 2012' aspire to frame the debate about these criminals and inspire action to stop them. Instead, they simply conscript our outrage to advance a specific political agenda - in this case, increased military action."

Similar to the debate around SOPA, it seems that dramatizing a political issue, framing the conversation for the general public, also risks diluting its nuance. However, to interpret KONY 2012 as a misguided attempt to manipulate is too harsh.

Everywhere, in books and film, magazines and television, we are told of our country's enduring problems: inequality of women and gays, the education gap, climate change, military overspending, etc. The issue isn't a lack of intellectual discussion, but rather the sheer absence of political engagement. It's not that we do not know; it's that we do not care - or too few care enough to act.

If advocates abstain from popular storytelling, from employing emotion to persuade, how else do you rouse a population to participate? If sports teams, consumer products and movies inspire so much loyalty, why not borrow some of their marketing techniques for politics - where the stakes and payoffs are so much higher?

Stephen Colbert understands this. Originally titled "Hail to the Cheese Stephen Colbert's Nacho Cheese Doritos 2008 Presidential Campaign," the comedian-candidate illustrated the onerous requirements for grassroots politicians.

Later in 2010, he testified in front of Congress to draw attention to our jingoistic stance on migrant farm workers. In full character, Colbert captures the hypocrisy of our immigration laws ill-suited for a globalized economy: "America's farms are presently far too dependent on immigrant labor to pick our fruits and vegetables... I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian."

When was the last time you watched a congressional hearing... about anything?

Colbert also brings much-needed criticism to the insidious and ubiquitous role of campaign fundraising. By promoting his own super PAC, "Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow," Colbert mocks as he teaches: PACs can accept unlimited amounts of money from individuals, are generally used to fund negative ads, and are usually connected with candidates (which is illegal but easy to evade). No cultural icon is engaging the public in this playfully creative way. Nor has any public figure bothered to provoke young Americans to tangle with the Federal Election Committee.

Nobody is arguing that digital petitions, viral videos and late-night TV will lead to American regime change. Twitter didn't topple tyrants - protestors did. The Arab Spring wasn't started by a tweet, but by a Tunisian - who set the desert on fire by using his flesh as kindling.

The social Web isn't the revolution, but a tool for revolutionaries. As Occupy Wall Street demonstrates, tech-savvy anger without a unified, actionable agenda is just noise. (OWS could make a convincing case for specific electoral reform - dismantling the winner-take all Electoral College, creating publicly funded campaigns or standardizing fair ballot access for third parties).

While other areas of our culture are blazing with tech innovation, our modes of political activity remain stagnant. As Sean Parker, Napster founder and former President of Facebook, has noted, "Politics is one of the few remaining large-scale consumer-facing opportunities on the Internet ... It's a very interesting moment, where politics is a bit behind the rest of the economy in embracing these new technologies."

Putting his money where his mouth is, Parker founded the startup company Causes and has also invested in Nation Builder - both social platforms that rally like-minded individuals through activism and philanthropy.

Another Parker-backed venture, Votizen enables activists to create coalitions based on public voting records. By combining the digital ties of social networks with actual political activity, Votizen hopes to lessen the influence of money and bolster voter-to-voter engagement.

Where political institutions have failed to harness our discontent, this kind of technology has daring promise. As the digital protests surrounding SOPA, KONY 2012 and Stephen Colbert suggest, our underlying concern needs only to be sparked.

Lead photo courtesy of Flickr/jackmcgo210.