Author: Payal Arora
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674983785
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geo-tagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? Payal Arora answers these questions and many more about the internet’s next billion users.

Author: Payal Arora
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238885
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
A digital anthropologist examines the online lives of millions of people in China, India, Brazil, and across the Middle East—home to most of the world’s internet users—and discovers that what they are doing is not what we imagine. New-media pundits obsess over online privacy and security, cyberbullying, and revenge porn, but do these things really matter in most of the world? The Next Billion Users reveals that many assumptions about internet use in developing countries are wrong. After immersing herself in factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas, Payal Arora assesses real patterns of internet usage in India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. She finds Himalayan teens growing closer by sharing a single computer with common passwords and profiles. In China’s gaming factories, the line between work and leisure disappears. In Riyadh, a group of young women organizes a YouTube fashion show. Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance policies appear to care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geo-tagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? The Next Billion Users answers these questions and many more. Through extensive fieldwork, Arora demonstrates that the global poor are far from virtuous utilitarians who mainly go online to study, find jobs, and obtain health information. She reveals habits of use bound to intrigue everyone from casual internet users to developers of global digital platforms to organizations seeking to reach the next billion internet users.

Author: Matthew Yglesias
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 0593853881
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER What would actually make America great: more people. If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lost the will and the means to lead. We can’t compete with the huge population clusters of the global marketplace by keeping our population static or letting it diminish, or with our crumbling transit and unaffordable housing. The winner in the future world is going to have more—more ideas, more ambition, more utilization of resources, more people. Exactly how many Americans do we need to win? According to Matthew Yglesias, one billion. From one of our foremost policy writers, One Billion Americans is the provocative yet logical argument that if we aren’t moving forward, we’re losing. Vox founder Yglesias invites us to think bigger, while taking the problems of decline seriously. What really contributes to national prosperity should not be controversial: supporting parents and children, welcoming immigrants and their contributions, and exploring creative policies that support growth—like more housing, better transportation, improved education, revitalized welfare, and climate change mitigation. Drawing on examples and solutions from around the world, Yglesias shows not only that we can do this, but why we must. Making the case for massive population growth with analytic rigor and imagination, One Billion Americans issues a radical but undeniable challenge: Why not do it all, and stay on top forever?

Author: Andrew Chen
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062969757
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A startup executive and investor draws on expertise developed at the premier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and as an executive at Uber to address how tech’s most successful products have solved the dreaded "cold start problem”—by leveraging network effects to launch and scale toward billions of users. Although software has become easier to build, launching and scaling new products and services remains difficult. Startups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect,” where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them, whether they’re messaging apps, workplace collaboration tools, or marketplaces. Network effects provide a path for fledgling products to break through, attracting new users through viral growth and word of mouth. Yet most entrepreneurs lack the vocabulary and context to describe them—much less understand the fundamental principles that drive the effect. What exactly are network effects? How do teams create and build them into their products? How do products compete in a market where every player has them? Andrew Chen draws on his experience and on interviews with the CEOs and founding teams of LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest to offer unique insights in answering these questions. Chen also provides practical frameworks and principles that can be applied across products and industries. The Cold Start Problem reveals what makes winning networks thrive, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and, most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.

Author: Nick Couldry
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503609758
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation. Colonialism might seem like a thing of the past, but this book shows that the historic appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources is mirrored today in this new era of pervasive datafication. Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, and then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. The authors argue that this development foreshadows the creation of a new social order emerging globally—and it must be challenged. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, they offer a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.

Author: Griffin Kao
Publisher: Apress
ISBN: 1484256298
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
A few square miles of Northern California contain some of the world’s largest companies whose products affect billions of people every single day. What made these giants of Silicon Valley as impactful as they are? What do their paths to success have in common? Turning Silicon into Gold is a sharp analysis of 25 case studies examining just that. Authors Griffin Kao, Jessica Hong, Michael Perusse, and Weizhen Sheng provide relevant commentary as they explore the stories behind companies such as Apple, Amazon, OpenTable, and many more. These organizations used unique problem-solving strategies to forever change the face of tech—whether it was Facebook’s second mover advantage over MySpace or Nintendo’s leap of faith in the 1980s to revitalize the video game industry. Learn by example as Turning Silicon into Gold divulges the inner workings behind some of the most significant business decisions in tech history. The nuanced ways these companies tackled emerging markets and generated growth in uncertain times is essential knowledge for modern business leaders, innovators, and aspiring founders. Whether you are simply curious about the origins of the world’s tech giants or you are an entrepreneur looking for inspiration, the thoughtful, comprehensive case study collection that is Turning Silicon into Gold belongs on your bookshelf. What You Will LearnUnderstand why companies like Amazon, Facebook, OpenTable and more have made some controversial and strategic decisionsRealize how Big Data is driving the success of many new and mature venturesSee how tech companies are tackling emerging markets and generating growthExamine how capital flows through the tech industry Who This Book is For The book is for people currently in or interested in exploring a career in the intersection of technology and business, such as product management, entrepreneurship, or non-coding positions at a tech company—it’s also great for people generally curious about how the tech industry operates. The book offers case studies in an engaging and approachable way, while still providing important takeaways and probing questions—perfect for the casual reader or even someone trying to prepare for interviews.

Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385546149
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

Author: George Berkowski
Publisher: Little Brown Uk
ISBN: 9780349401379
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
An accessible, step-by-step guide to building an app-based business—essential reading for anyone who has an idea for an app, but is unsure of where to start Apps have changed the way we communicate, shop, play, interact, and travel, and their phenomenal popularity has presented possibly the biggest business opportunity in history. InHow to Build a Billion Dollar App, serial tech entrepreneur George Berkowski—one of the minds behind the internationally successful taxi hailing app Hailo—gives you exclusive access to the secrets behind the success of the select group of apps that have achieved billion-dollar success. Berkowski draws exclusively on the inside stories of the billion-dollar app club members, including Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Candy Crush, Square, Viber, Clash of Clans, Angry Birds, Uber, and Flipboard to provide all the information you need to create your own spectacularly successful mobile business. He guides you through each step, from an idea scribbled on the back of an envelope, through to finding a cofounder, building a team, attracting (and keeping) millions of users, all the way through to juggling the pressures of being CEO of a billion-dollar company (and still staying ahead of the competition). If you've ever dreamed of quitting your nine to five job to launch your own company or you're a gifted developer, seasoned entrepreneur, or just intrigued by mobile technology, How to Build a Billion Dollar App will show you what itreally takes to create your own billion-dollar, mobile business.

Author: Asli Demirguc-Kunt
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464812683
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
In 2011 the World Bank—with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—launched the Global Findex database, the world's most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Drawing on survey data collected in collaboration with Gallup, Inc., the Global Findex database covers more than 140 economies around the world. The initial survey round was followed by a second one in 2014 and by a third in 2017. Compiled using nationally representative surveys of more than 150,000 adults age 15 and above in over 140 economies, The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It has additional data on the use of financial technology (or fintech), including the use of mobile phones and the Internet to conduct financial transactions. The data reveal opportunities to expand access to financial services among people who do not have an account—the unbanked—as well as to promote greater use of digital financial services among those who do have an account. The Global Findex database has become a mainstay of global efforts to promote financial inclusion. In addition to being widely cited by scholars and development practitioners, Global Findex data are used to track progress toward the World Bank goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The database, the full text of the report, and the underlying country-level data for all figures—along with the questionnaire, the survey methodology, and other relevant materials—are available at www.worldbank.org/globalfindex.

Author: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169268
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
What people get out of social media—and how businesses can get more out of it Almost no one had heard of social media a decade ago, but today websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have more than 1 billion users and account for almost 25 percent of Internet use. Practically overnight, social media seems indispensable to our lives—from friendship and dating to news and business. What makes social media so different from traditional media? Answering that question is the key to making social media work for any business, argues Miko?aj Piskorski, one of the world's leading experts on the business of social media. In A Social Strategy, he provides the most convincing answer yet, one backed by original research, data, and case studies from companies such as Nike and American Express. Drawing on his analysis of proprietary data from social media sites, Piskorski argues that the secret of successful ones is that they allow people to fulfill social needs that either can’t be met offline or can be met only at much greater cost. This insight provides the key to how companies can leverage social platforms to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Companies need to help people interact with each other before they will promote products to their friends or help companies in other ways. Done right, a company’s social media should benefit customers and the firm. Piskorski calls this "a social strategy," and he describes how companies such as Yelp and Zynga have done it. Groundbreaking and important, A Social Strategy provides not only a story- and data-driven explanation for the explosion of social media but also an invaluable, concrete road map for any company that wants to tap the marketing potential of this remarkable phenomenon.