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Great talk from FB+Instagram engineers on designing with constraints (slow phones, small screens, bad networks)

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I’ve been here before. At Nokia the commercial success of entry products (low cost devices, that at a rough estimate accumulatively sold close to 1.5 billion units) was turned into a “connecting people” story, and my team’s research providing a human angle to that arc. I’ve seen what gets exaggerated and by whom, and where the real and underreported impact lies.

https://medium.com/todays-office/connectivity-is-not-binary-the-network-is-never-neutral-4620b2a26746

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Newsflash: dumb pipes actually quite profitable

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Illuminating graphic from Quartz:

There are still 494 million mobile phone users ready to come online in India.

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Digital Equipment Corp. entered the thickening ranks of companies offering online micropayment solutions, announcing its Millicent e-commerce system at the recent Spring Internet World convention in Los Angeles. Unlike competitors’ micropayment solutions, Digital wants to put banks in the driver’s seat of its three-part payment solution, which the company is testing internally before launching a public trial in the summer.

State of the art micropayments conversation circa 1997 #tbt #ssdd

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Leading Emerging Market Operators to Expand Financial Inclusion through Collaboration in GSMA Mobile Money Interoperability Programme London: The GSMA today announced that nine mobile network operat...

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To the larger economy, the biggest thing that is happening is a skills deficit that inhibits us from doing what we need to do. Having a four-year college degree or better is key. I am not for this, but BP in Indiana is expanding a huuuuuuge refinery. They are bringing in people from Alabama and Kentucky because we don’t have enough pipefitters up here.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117247/contentious-interview-rahm-emanuel

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What does it really cost to use the internet?

Relative cost of 500 MB mobile data on a pre-paid data plan by region:

Africa: 39% of GDP

Asia and the Pacific: 6% of GDP

Europe: 1% of GDP

The Americas: 6% of GDP

Source: ITU, 2012 data relative to GDP per capita

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Facebook sees WhatsApp as the future of communication. Telecoms view it another way: as a menace that is extracting revenues.

$33 billion in lost revenue for telcos, but $0 in increased costs (to send data as compared to SMS) = huge efficiency gain for the economy

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Firing on all cylinders

Lower image is my speed test at home on Comcast's second highest tier plan

*This is about three times as fast as the previous offering (at the same store) by AT&T

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Payments only matter when they're broken

It's Tuesday morning at 7 am. I'm staying with a friend in the Western Addition (or NoPa depending on how hipster you are) neighborhood of San Francisco and I want to take a Muni bus. The contents of my wallet include:

Two major credit cards

One debit card

Ten $20 bills, fresh from the ATM

One San Francisco commuter check good for $30 in fares

One iPhone and one Android phone, loaded with payment apps (Venmo, PayPal, Square, etc.)

...and none of these forms of tender could get me on the bus, short of leaving an $18 tip for the driver. I wandered in search of a bodega or dry cleaner, but alas neither opens before 7:30 am in San Francisco. I eventually decided to have breakfast at a diner (and pay in cash) before grabbing the bus, but it did serve to remind me that payments are one of those things that should be simple, but rarely are. And as consumers, we only notice the method of payment, when it's broken.

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Another article from Techcrunch on Facebook's push into emerging markets. Unlike a traditional content company, Facebook inventory is almost 100% user generated content (UGC). And since there are billions of pages available to place ads on Facebook, they can make money even if CPMs are quite low. Despite having 60 million users in India, Facebook's penetration is still incredibly low. This move can be seen as a step towards boxing out potential competitors in the South Asian market, without a huge upfront cost.

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Neil Davidson is one of the most knowledgeable people writing about mobile money and how it works in emerging markets as compared to the United States. Today's post looks at direct deposit and how it effects a whole host of behaviors related to cash, credit card, and mobile money usage. Check out his blog and follow him today -- I promise you'll learn something new!

#mobile money #direct deposit #banking #emerging markets # <script async src=https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XHY2107159></script> <scr

Google is now offering cell phone users in Nigeria free email delivered via text messages. Users will also be able to send emails via text, although normal messaging rates apply. Facebook is also extending its service on to basic phones in emerging markets with their Facebook for Every Phone initiative.

While most of us here in the U.S. are excited (or whining) about today's launch of the iPhone 5, there are still 4 billion "dumb phones" in circulation worldwide. The race to serve those clients is still very much in flux, with Google, Facebook, NokiaSoft, and Chinese manufacturers all pushing hard to reach emerging market consumers.

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Tom Noyes lays out a pretty compelling case against the mobile network operator-led Isis digital wallet effort. I guess the contrasting approaches in the U.S. would be Google (trying to build a freeway) and Apple/Square (building the most beautiful private road possible).

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As usual @rakeshlobster cuts through the hype to examine the use case and value creation of technology, in this case mobile parking apps, meters, and NFC.

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