The First Battle In The Mobile Payments War Is Over

While the war to control mobile payments has been broadly covered over the last several years, it seems that the tactical warfare that has been at play is less understood by most observers.

It’s been a tale of conflict, closed door bargaining, and one with a David vs Goliath subplot and huge fortunes at stake. Many watched and waited as PayPal and Google battled the oligopoly of the Networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex), only to be surprised by a twist ending.

PayPal’s Attempts To Move Offline

For PayPal, the smartphone revolution presented the entry point into offline sales that it had been waiting for. The PayPal wallet, previously limited to use via a web browser, could potentially be in every consumer’s pocket (a la the mobile phone).  In 2010, PayPal seized on the opportunity and began a series of strategic moves to extend their online payment network into the $3 trillion offline payment world.

They signed some early, big offline merchants (i.e. Home Depot) and began work with several point of sale vendors to integrate into their embedded merchant card terminals. And, most important of all, they began negotiations with the major payment processors (players like First Data, who do the heavy lifting in managing payment processes for the Networks) to enable PayPal as a form of payment on the more than 10 million merchant card terminals installed across the U.S.

The ambitious strategy, however, was met with many expected challenges and the rollout has been painfully slow. Payment processors proved to be challenging to work with. They sought economics out of the relationship that were untenable for PayPal and their allegiance with the Networks was being tested.

If that weren’t enough, alternative paths to get integrated into merchants’ points of sale proved equally difficult. It’s been an uphill battle for a relatively new entrant, once again trying to rely on established tracks laid by the Networks.

In the online world, PayPal’s ascent was equally complex, but the stars were aligned around their value proposition and the objectives of the Networks. In the late 1990’s, there were hundreds of millions of dollars of e-commerce occurring on eBay (on its way to billions) and those transactions were being settled with checks and money orders.

PayPal provided the means to cheaply and easily onboard those eBay Sellers on to the card Networks, in the process shifting potentially billions of dollars of payment volume to the Networks.  PayPal was good for the Networks and they cooperated.  PayPal was also good for eBay, as they accelerated the velocity of transactions by speeding up the payment cycle, so eBay acquired PayPal.

Google Wanted A Shot at Owning Mobile Transactions Too

Google in 2010, like the Networks and PayPal, recognized the value of offline payments and the potential for a new entrant to play a major role with the explosion of smartphones.  Google wanted a shot at being a major player here, but for different reasons. For Google, it was all about the data.

By sitting in the middle of a consumer’s offline payment spend, they would have a window into where a consumer is spending and how that spending is influenced by advertising. For the first time, Google would be able to “close the loop” from advertisement exposure to consumer spending, like they were already able to do on the web, and thereby address much more of the advertising market. In particular, they could sell more advertising to the CPG brands, a huge and previously unpenetrated advertising market for Google

In 2011, Google pioneered the vision for NFC payments and secure tokenization (more on these technologies in a bit). It was a beautiful concept, but like PayPal, they too ran into execution challenges. They needed to partner with the big mobile operators who had their own visions of owning offline payments. And, they were early; ahead of the terminal upgrades upon which the whole solution depended.  Google Wallet, while the right vision, was stalled.

The Networks’ Effort to Own Mobile Payments

In the mean time, the Networks were busy at work figuring out how to make sure the mobile phone was an expansion opportunity for them and not a threat. The strategy they executed was simple in concept, but complex in execution. The plan was to do what they do best: define standards and rules by which their existing network could be extended to operate in a world where the mobile phone replaced the physical bank card.  Two key standards they placed bets on:

1. NFC (Near Field Communications) was the protocol by which data would be wirelessly transmitted from the phone to the merchant card terminal. NFC was a standard the Networks had rallied around about ten years ago, but had failed to get traction for lack of merchant support and consumer value proposition. Tapping a card was not much simpler than swiping a card.  Now was the time for NFC’s second act.

2. Tokenization via a “secure element” was the means by which a card number could be stored on a mobile phone and transmitted by NFC to the merchant card terminal.  In simpler terms, it was a means to (i) store a bank card number on a secure chip in a mobile phone and (ii) dole out tokens that were proxies for that card number, resulting in a more secure system than plastic bank cards and that could be manufactured and distributed by third party mobile phone manufacturers.

The Networks’ strategy ensued as they put all their weight (and chances) behind these two protocols. Their first step was to figure out how to get merchant card terminals to support NFC and the means to do this was, once again, to define and legislate standards.

In 2006, Europe mandated the use of “chip & pin” security cards (aka EMV). These cards, based on EMV standards developed as far back as 1994, provided additional layers of security. They were becoming widely adopted across the world and were proving to drive down fraud costs. In the U.S., efforts to drive EMV adoption had stalled.

Card fraud was not viewed as big a problem as in the rest of the world (this was before Home Depot and Target security breaches), and moving to “chip & pin” would require upgrades of all merchant card terminals across the US, estimated to cost over $6B.

And then, Main Street was hit with the 2008 recession, and there was even less interest in forcing expensive upgrades. The Networks, however, had another reason to move to EMV. Coincidentally, or maybe not, it was pretty certain that when merchants upgraded their terminals to support EMV, they would also gain NFC capability.

Starting in 2013, the Networks again collaboratively defined and later published standards by which tokenization would work. Many insiders tell me this was the fastest any such standard that required cooperation among the Networks had ever gone from concept to final published standard.

The Networks made their move. In 2011 and 2012 the Networks cooperatively announced the mandated upgrade of US payments networks to EMV.  All merchants would be required to upgrade their payments terminals to support EMV, or take on liability for fraudulent transactions. Conveniently, support for NFC would be a byproduct of this upgrade.

The next step to enable secure mobile payments, was to garner support for tokenization. Starting in 2013, the Networks again collaboratively defined and later published standards by which tokenization would work. Many insiders tell me this was the fastest any such standard that required cooperation among the Networks had ever gone from concept to final published standard.

With the key standards and technology in place, and banks and merchants on board, the Networks now needed a major mobile phone deal to bring consumers along and make it all work. Enter Apple–the perfect distribution partner–a master at bringing disparate parties together and creating consumer demand out of nowhere.

The Victory Goes to The Networks

In the Fall of 2014, ApplePay was launched, and as they say, the rest was history. Mobile payments won’t take off overnight, and Google Wallet, with Apple paving the way, is now poised to capture Android offline payments. But, after a 5 year set of skirmishes, it’s clear that the first victory in mobile payments goes to the Networks, leaving PayPal to fight another day.

The Next Battle for Google and PayPal

For Google, the next several years will be about fast-follow execution.  They need to draft off of the technology and deal structures that were put in place by the Networks and Apple.  They are unlikely to get the economic shares that Apple was able to extract, but that is ok if they can leverage the data for advertising.

For PayPal, the story is more complicated.  In Fall of 2015, PayPal becomes an independent, publicly traded company and, in many respects, it will have more to lose if it doesn’t make the right set of strategic moves in a world where the mobile OS is poised to become the wallet of choice for consumers.  For online payments (PayPal’s entire business), PayPal will need to develop a value proposition for consumers that is greater than (1) Privacy: shopping without sharing your card number and (2) Convenience: all your cards are digitally stored and you don’t need to pull out your physical wallet.  Apple and Google are now better than parity for these propositions. These innovations will likely orient around meta commerce services like merchant loyalty / incentives, spend management and consumer to consumer.  In any event, the pace of innovation will need to be accelerated to defend the empire that has been built.

The other interesting question is whether or not PayPal remains an independent company for much longer, or does the spin-out by PayPal set it up for takeover in the next couple of years.  It would be easy to argue that is a spectacularly valuable asset for one of the major Networks, with a digital first global footprint, a more flexible technology stack than any of the incumbents have, direct relationships with millions of consumers and merchants, and an enormous direct debit network.

It will be an interesting second battle in the ongoing war.

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The Senate Advances NSA Surveillance Reform Legislation As Deadline Approaches

The Senate voted 77-to-17 to take up the USA Freedom Act, a bill already passed in the House that would reform National Security Agency (NSA), in a rare Sunday session.

The procedural vote came just hours before key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire at midnight. It will likely take until the middle of the week for the Senate to pass the House bill, meaning several programs under the bill will temporarily lapse.

Among the expiring provisions is Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which has been applied to allow the controversial bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. It was one of the first programs reported by The Guardian after former government contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret documents about American surveillance processes.

Although privacy advocates and many in tech supported allowing Section 215 to expire, the surveillance reform bill did receive the support of many tech companies. President Barack Obama has also committed to signing the bill into law.

Passage of the bill would mark the first time lawmakers have reined in the surveillance powers of the intelligence community in the two years since Snowden first revealed the controversial intelligence gathering programs.

Over the weeks leading up to the deadline, lawmakers have grappled with protecting Americans’ civil liberties while upholding the nation’s counterterrorism programs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell led a push to extend the programs but the Senate blocked his attempt.

After leading opposition against the Freedom Act in 2014 and again last week, McConnell voted on Sunday evening to advance discussion of the bill. He encouraged other members of his party to support the bill so that the surveillance programs would not expire.

McConnell also attempted to temporarily extend two lesser known Patriot Act provisions expiring tomorrow that involve roving wiretaps and tracking “lone wolf” terrorist suspects. Paul objected to that vote.

Under the Freedom Act, the phone companies, not government agencies, would hold American phone records. The NSA could only access these records after receiving permission from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

The Freedom Act does not go far enough in curtailing American surveillance practices. It only addresses the bulk collection of American phone records and does nothing to rein in many of the gross oversteps we have seen from the Snowden revelations. The American Civil Liberties Union does not formally support or oppose the bill, but when it passed the House, it said significant changes should be made to strengthen privacy rights.

“The Senate should not make the same mistake and instead remedy the bill’s many deficiencies, which have been criticized on both sides of the aisle,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, at the time.

The bill does not address the surveillance of non-Americans or the communications of U.S. citizens with people outside the country under FISA Section 702 or Executive Order 12333. But today’s vote remains a victory for the advocates that have been fighting for two years to limit the scope of the NSA’s surveillance.

A recent Pew survey found majority of Americans do not believe there are adequate limits on what telephone and Internet data the government can collect. Today was a step in the right direction, but the fight isn’t over.

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Formula 1 Technology Is Being Used To Make Better Surgeons

There was plenty of drama at the Monaco Grand Prix last Sunday with driver Nico Rosberg of Mercedes taking first place from teammate Lewis Hamilton late in the race. But there’s always plenty of action off the track too as race engineers analyze and transmit data to teams before and during any race.

McLaren, based in Woking, UK, is one of the biggest names in F1 but is now using their know-how in real-time data to help surgeons. Dr. Caroline Hargrove came to McLaren 18 years ago and is now Technical Director of McLaren Applied Technologies (or MAT), a subsidiary of the McLaren Technology Group.

Hargrove explains that 100s of sensors go into F1 race cars and stream torrents of live data to engineers far away in Woking, helping them make real-time decisions to optimize race strategy. But MAT is now applying this expertise to surgery – a profession where seconds also matter.

McLaren announced just last month an agreement with the University of Oxford to enhance key medical services by jointly developing analysis and decision support tools. The partnership draws on McLaren’s expertise in simulation technology, data management and predictive analytics. They’re starting with 50 surgeons, mostly ones in training but also more experienced surgeons. 

How F1 technology is working in the operating room

 A sensor is placed on a surgeon’s elbow while they operate. The data is sent via Bluetooth technology to computers. Hargrove explains that sensors can produce a stream of data that can be analyzed in real time for immediate feedback on a surgeon. She says, “We know there are certain traits that distinguish a great surgeon, such as speed and dexterity – how jerky or smooth is their movement when they cut. There’s always a subjective element in teaching any surgeon. This adds objectivity to it …in addition to another surgeon’s feedback.”

By comparing the results for different surgeons at all stages of their training – from beginners to highly experienced ones – it’s possible to predict their progression and gauge whether they’re hitting their development targets. She says this kind of analysis will not only save time on an operating table but in training a new surgeon. “Has the surgeon improved the last two to three times they did this procedure? Are they better at one thing more than another? Or, they don’t need to practice something 10 times more because they’re already doing it really well.”

“We know there are certain traits that distinguish a great surgeon, such as speed and dexterity – how jerky or smooth is their movement when they cut. There’s always a subjective element in teaching any surgeon. This adds objectivity to it …in addition to another surgeon’s feedback.”

— Dr. Caroline Hargrove

Hargrove also says by providing more feedback early on in a doctor’s career, the surgeons themselves know if indeed surgery is the best fit for their chosen specialty (or if radiology is because of a really keen eye).  “Surgery is perceived as the rock star of the medical field but it costs a lot of money to train surgeons.”

Hargrove says this partnered effort with Oxford is in beta testing for now, but eventually; McLaren may want to commercialize it. She points out the value of a potential database of quantitative (not qualitative) assessments from surgeries on 1,000s of patients.

A surgeon’s point of view

Dr. Freddie Hamdy is Head of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford and Director of Oncology and Surgery at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. “Part of my job is to select the right people to become surgeons and to make sure they’re getting the right training.”

When asked why he chose to work with MAT, Dr. Hamdy said, “They have a lot of experience in expert simulation. In surgery, there’s a need to reproduce that, and a need to see what progress a surgeon is making so we can evaluate them, as well as an opportunity to validate an experienced one.”

How F1 technology helps patients:

In an F1 race, data is immediately analyzed to find the best strategy for the team, and used to run 1,000s of simulations per minute. For example, ‘If I pit now, what will happen?’ Or ‘If Ferrari drivers pit now, how does this affect me?’

As part of the McLaren/Oxford partnership, prescriptive data is also gathered, but from sensors placed on patients …during pre-op and post-op. Hargrove says data can be monitored from a patient at home days before a surgery to see how fit a person is for a procedure, or if they need more time to get into better physical condition.

“With data, we can spot a trend – why has this person’s weight gone up when their diet hasn’t changed. Or, we can monitor a person’s gait (how they walk). When a person’s gait changes, it’s usually due to a medical condition. But you don’t notice this visually.”

— Geoff McGrath

Hargrove points out that no sensor goes on the patient during surgery “as that aspect is already superbly done”. Anesthesiologists take in tons of data already by doing traditional patient monitoring of things like blood oxygenation and blood pressure.

Prescriptive Health Data

Chief Innovation Officer of MAT Geoff McGrath says sometimes the biggest challenge for data in healthcare is “people using prescriptive action based on algorithms across a population”. He adds, “Knowing that you have taken 10,000 steps a day isn’t really meaningful. Will it make a significant impact on your health? It doesn’t’ really tell you how hard you’re working, or what you need to do differently. People can start losing faith in the data.”

McGrath says like in F1 racing, a combination of mathematical data, simulation and modeling can spot a small anomaly in someone’s behavior …whether they’re a patient or a race car driver. “With data, we can spot a trend – why has this person’s weight gone up when their diet hasn’t changed. Or, we can monitor a person’s gait (how they walk). When a person’s gait changes, it’s usually due to a medical condition. But you don’t notice this visually,” McGrath says.

He points out an irony. “In intensive care of any hospital in the world, loads of alarms are going off all the time with loads of complexity there. But go into an F1 racing monitoring room, it’s very calm. But we’re processing way more data there …and presenting precise, detailed information that can then be acted upon out on the track.”

Featured Image: Mary Gorges

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I/O Spotlights Google’s Machine Learning Smarts

Few will argue that this year’s I/O keynote was Google’s flashiest yet. If you were expecting people to jump out of blimps to bring you a new version of Google Glass, the event surely left you disappointed. Instead, Google used its relatively low-key keynote to announce an evolutionary update to its mobile operating system, a new effort to bring Android to the Internet of Things and a number of new tools for developers to better monetize, advertise and analyze their apps.

The three new products that stuck out for me on the consumer side of Google’s announcement, though, were Google Photos, Now On Tap in Android M, and — though it wasn’t announced in the keynote — the latest update to Inbox for Gmail. To some degree, all of them draw on the natural language understanding, deep machine learnings expertise, and immense Knowledge Graph database Google has focused on so much in recent years.

Google Photos, for example, features what is undoubtedly the best photo search engine currently available. Just do a search for ‘trees,’ ‘flowers,’ or ‘mountains’ and see what it finds in your photo collections. Photos, of course, is the stand-alone version of the photo feature of Google+, which was already able to do much of this, but the company has improved search in this version.

Google Now on Tap can understand what’s happening in an app and then give you additional contextual information and answer your questions about it. In Google’s demo, which drew quite a bit of applause from the audience, the presenter brought up a Skrillex song in Spotify (and oddly enough, not Google Music), launched Now on Tap and then asked “what’s his real name?” To do this, Google has to understand what’s playing in the app, understand who the ‘his’ refers to, and then go deep into its knowledge base to give you the answer.

Inbox, which somehow got left out of the keynote , now relies on some of this knowledge and natural language understanding to automatically generate reminders for you when it notices somebody is asking you to do something. It can also recognize emails about upcoming trips and bundle them together into a single group.

Microsoft is starting to do a bit of this with Cortana now and I’m sure Apple is thinking about similar tools, but at the end of the day, Google’s products feel like they are quite a bit ahead of the curve. Nobody else, after all, can draw on a project like Knowledge Graph with data about more than a billion of entities. And for better or worse, nobody knows as much about you and your online (and maybe even offline) habits than Google, so it can put all of this info into context for you.

Google I/O’s keynote may have lacked any real surprises (though the ATAP keynote the day after made more than up for that), but these three features alone show that Google is far ahead of its competitors when it comes to understanding its users.

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An Interview With Nathaniel Popper, Author Of Digital Gold

Digital Gold Traces Bitcoin's Hazy History

If you’ve been reading the site lately you’ll notice we’ve gone Digital Gold-crazy. First we started with an amazing excerpt outlining the story of 21.com. Then we posted a review and a podcast and now we present an short interview with the author in our studio in New York.

Popper and I go through his theories behind the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, why the couldn’t price the book in bitcoin, and how many bitcoins he’s holding. I’d also highly recommend the book if you’re interested in cryptocurrencies. It’s a very human story about a very unique technology and well worth a read.

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Labs And Incubators Fuel Enterprise Innovation

Change doesn’t come easily to large organizations. Over time they have established a firm set of core business processes to give  them the structure to manage massive workforces, which makes sense, but it also means they lack the agility of smaller companies.

They have created systems to provide safe and effective ways of doing business, which protects companies from chaotic decision making and running willy nilly toward every market whim.

This inability to pivot can be a weakness in the current economic environment which requires independent and creative thinking and the ability to react quickly to changing markets.

Big companies by their nature simply aren’t prepared for that kind of approach.

Now, smart executives are seeing the limitations of this strategy and are looking for ways to turn the battleship to find new ways of engaging with customers and doing business.

One method companies have begun employing has been through building internal incubators and labs as innovation engines. Typically these projects have a goal beyond pure experimentation, and at their best they develop new products and ways of working that get absorbed into the organization at large.

Developing New Ways Of Thinking

The lab or incubator provides a way to institutionalize this approach and carve out a pocket of innovation that’s separate for the most part from internal processes. That doesn’t mean necessarily that there is no process, but it’s a process defined with the purpose of building a new generation of tools and to instill new ways of thinking and creating that eventually reach across the entire organization.

“What every company needs today is scale or agility. The Coca-Cola company is one of most scaled companies on the planet. We need to learn more about agility,” David Butler VP of innovation at Coca-Cola told me in February. On the flip side, startups know about agility, but don’t have any understanding of how to scale. Butler believes by incubating startups in-house, Coke can bring these two requirements together and both parties can learn from one another.

You have to have that center of the business that makes it run, but you need something that sits further away from the center so it doesn’t get sucked into the organizational vortex, explained Vanessa Colella, managing director and global head of venture investing at Citi Ventures.

“In a large organization, there is a center of gravity to the business. When you are close in you are necessarily pulled by the gravitational force. There is more focus on how do we do things that are near in,” she explained in a conversation last Fall.

“We found at Citigroup that if we sit further away, we can bring outside innovation in.” She makes it clear though that you still have to bring that innovation inside eventually where it can benefit the whole organization. “Those things can’t be in a different solar system. They have to come together,” she explained.

It’s great thing when you have to get into this mode because you’re [constantly] iterating and delving deeper into what customers want and need

— Vanessa Colella

She said, the challenge is that there is constant change now. From a digital perspective, that means you can’t just make one change and think you’re done. She’s sees this constant push from market forces as positive because it forces you to continually look for new ways to engage your customers.

“It’s great thing when you have to get into this mode because you’re [constantly] iterating and delving deeper into what customers want and need,” Colella said.

All In Service Of The Customer

Ultimately all of this innovation is about one thing: servicing the customer, says Sean Belka  svp and director of Fidelity Labs. “Our goal is how do we identify ideas that solve important customer problems — and how do we apply design thinking + agile + lean startup methods to make that happen.”

Fidelity has been running Fidelity Labs for many years as a place to experiment with different ways of doing business inside the larger company. Today one of its main focuses is offering an entirely new way of approaching customer problems through experimentation and iteration. Its ultimate goal remains developing products that are useful to their core audience of investors.

Fred Leichter, SVP and head of the Design Thinking program at Fidelity Labs is a Stanford Fellow, who attended its d. School. This had a huge influence on his approach.

“The most important job is figuring out what is the customer problem we’re solving for,” Leichter said. This could involve experimenting with a dozen low fidelity prototypes, all with the goal of figuring out if they are solving a real problem in a meaningful and creative way. They understand they could start with a clear premise and proposed solution and find out they were way off base. That’s part of the learning process.

The Labs working under this design process has projects in various stages of development from very early experimentation to one that is fully developed and ready to incorporate into the main product family. The former is called FidSafe, a digital safe deposit box for all your important documents. What’s great about it, is that it solves a big problem for customers, but it also acts as a catalyst for many of the other solutions that are in progress inside the Labs. What’s most important though is that all of the projects are completely focused on the customer and eventually the hope is graduating from the Lab and into the company.

Jerry Wolfe, who runs a company called Vivanda, which started as a small experimental project inside of the spice giant, McCormick says starting small inside a lab or incubator lets the company see the advantages of innovating and opening new digital channels to customers. That’s why these labs and incubators are so popular. They allow a safe way to introduce this kind of thinking inside an organization.

“Don’t start with ‘we need a digital transformation initiative.’ That has a high rate of failure,” he explained. He says look for that small bit of success. In his case it was Vivanda’s FlavorPrint app. For Fidelity Labs, it’s FidSafe. Whatever it is, if you start small, you can build from there and begin to build the type of innovative thinking your company needs to survive moving forward.

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All Screens Are Not Created Equal

Recently, Taiwanese lawmakers approved the “Child and Youth Welfare and Protection Act,” making it illegal for children under the age of 18 to use electronic devices for excessive periods of time.

In the United States, we don’t have legislation restricting screen time, but organizations like the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood have addressed the issue of screen time by creating Screen-Free Week, an annual initiative that encourages families to unplug from technology for a week.

But these actions ignore a fundamental principle: All screens are not created equal. A tablet, TV and computer are all different in terms of function, the way people interact with them and the type of content consumed. All things considered, why don’t we delve into what matters, which is the activity being done, rather than the channel or device?

The basic misconception stems from the notion that the screen itself is more important than the action being performed. Well-meaning organizations have made blanket recommendations calling for an end to screen time for kids, but these recommendations are based on obsolete studies, conducted prior to the iPad and other interactive devices.

In May 2014, Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, co-author of the 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics Guidelines on Infants and Media, spoke out about the guidelines, arguing the “judicious use of interactive media is acceptable for children younger than the age of 2 years.”

Screens have evolved from the days of TV, when most viewing was passive and lacked interaction. Today, tablets can be used for language learning, playing games, watching Khan Academy videos or video chatting with family. The possibilities are endless, and while it’s all done on the same screen, each activity is different, tapping into different emotions, skills and parts of the brain. Knowing this, why would we treat all screen activities the same?

According to a 2014 Zero to Three study, “research shows that when parents and other trusted adults make screen use an interactive, shared experience, it can become a tool for learning, and the potential negative effects can be reduced.” The study advised parents to be selective with content and to “choose programs and apps with interactive components that engage your child’s participation, that use strong story lines, and that model positive interactions between characters.”

As with most things, a balance between kids’ activities is generally best. Too much of anything is not healthy. Reading books is great, but if your nose is stuck in a book and you never step outside, there’s an imbalance there. The same concept applies to sports. Being active and playing basketball is a fantastic way to get exercise and build teamwork skills, but if that means that you never pick up an instrument or draw a picture, then you are missing out on valuable experiences.

This concept is obvious for most parents, and the same simple approach applies to screen time  — keep a balance. If screens can provide value and be useful, use them! If not, put them away. Technology isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution and shouldn’t be treated as such, but it also shouldn’t be deemed categorically bad, either.

Instead, think of tablets as a tool — one that can be used for education, entertainment or communication, depending on your preference. It’s a versatile tool that contains the world’s collected information, all in one single place.

Does your child want to learn how to play the piano? There are videos online that can teach your little Mozart. Do you have a bookworm who is longing to read a new story? Snag a free e-book download. Does your little one miss Grandma and Grandpa? They’re just a video call away.

When you start thinking about technology as a tool, it becomes clear that the point is not to replace anything — it’s just to add value where it can. It shouldn’t take the place of face-to-face interaction. On the contrary, your phone helps you stay in touch with more people than you might otherwise. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Having friends on Facebook doesn’t mean that you can’t have dinner without a phone on the table.

Use technology where it is useful. Teach your kids to think of it in the same way. It’s the same common sense you’re already teaching them.

We know that technology is going to play a major role in kids’ lives. It’s not a matter of “if” children should be using technology, but “how.”

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The psychology of simple

This post originally appeared on the Crew blog.

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For a concept that we all understand, ‘simple’ is deceivingly difficult to pin down.

We may ‘know it when we see it’, but there’s more to what makes a product or website feel simple than just gut reaction.

In the words of Steve Jobs:

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

If there’s so much power in creating things that are simple why do so many of us miss the mark?

Why is simple so, well, complex?

Like most things in life there’s more than just the surface appeal of simplicity. Here’s a look at how our brain comprehends new information, why some things feel more simple than others, and how you can use these ideas on your next project.

Cognitive fluency and the preference for prototypes

In his TED Talk Towards a science of simplicity, Harvard professor George Whitesides breaks ‘simple’ down into three characteristics:

• They are predictable
• They are accessible
• They serve as building blocks

The easiest place to start is with predictability. We love simple things because they’re easy on our brain—it doesn’t have to work as hard to understand them.

Which is good because our minds work at an insanely fast pace.

In a 2012 study from Google and the University of Basel, researchers found that users will judge a website’s aesthetic beauty and perceived functionality in 1/20th – 1/50th of a second. In less time than it takes to snap your fingers we pass judgement on something as complex as a website.

The judgments we make happen so quickly they often feel instinctual or emotional rather than a mental process.

But these judgements are being made by our brain. Just not in a way we’re overly aware of.

Humans are genetically hardwired to make snap decisions. What developed as part of our fight or flight response (to save us from predators in the wild, thanks evolution) continues to have a major influence on our first impressions of new stimuli.

To help make these quick decisions our brain creates shortcuts based on expectations or prototypical elements.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: If I asked you what color you associate with boys, most of you would instantly picture blue (and pink for girls). You don’t have to actively think about the answer. It’s just there. Your brain has made the connection so many times that it creates a shortcut. Boy=blue has become a prototype.

Psychologists call our brain’s preference for prototypes Cognitive fluency and it’s a huge part of what makes something seem ‘simple’.

Cognitive fluency is how we feel about taking in new information. It’s the subjective experience of the ease or difficulty of completing a mental task.

If something feels easy (like knowing blue is for boys), we assume that itis simple. It’s why Harmut Esslingen, the German designer who helped shape the iconic look of Apple products in the 1980s, followed the guiding principle that ‘form follows emotion’.

Let’s use a website as an example. When you first visit a site there are certain prototypical elements you expect to see: things like a navigation bar at the top or side for getting around, or a check-out in the top right corner for an e-commerce site. Every ‘type’ of site, from an online magazine to a fashion blog, has these prototypical elements.

When a site doesn’t conform to these expectations it’s harder for our brains to decode and we almost automatically judge it as either too complex or poorly designed.

Learning the language of simple

There are other factors at play other than just the preference for prototypical elements when it comes to how appealing a simple design is.

Since the 1960s, psychologists have been studying the mere exposure effect—the idea that the number of times we’re exposed to a certain stimuli effects how positively we feel about it.

It’s one of those concepts that advertisers love to exploit (just think about the terrible product placements in the Back to the Future films), because you don’t necessarily have to consciously recognize that you’ve seen the stimuli before.

In one 2013 study, Italian psychologists Stefano Ruggieri and Stefano Boca divided 78 high school students into two groups and had them watch segments of popular movies. One group was shown versions with product names visible while the others watched a version that masked all product identifiers. After the study, the groups answered questions about the film and their preference for certain brands.

The group that were shown product placements reported a higher preference for the brands even if they hadn’t recognized them in the film, when compared to the control group.

However, it’s not just exposure to single elements that effects how we feel. Another phenomenon—the beauty-in-averageness effect—has shown that we’re also more attracted to stimuli that include a number of common elements.

Numerous studies has shown that  faces generally become more attractive when they are blended (morphed) with other faces, or when they are distorted towards the population average.

Average of 15 ‘attractive’ female faces.

The combination of familiar, prototypical elements is more attractive to our brain, and easier to understand, than something completely unique.

Simple—the combination of beauty and function

While making something simple may begin with cognitive fluency it ends with ease of use and accessibility.

When we actively manipulate information, like taking in a new website or learning how to use a new product, we use a part of our brain called the working memory. The only problem is that working memory is a finicky thing.

As anyone who easily loses focus can attest to, it’s hard to continually think about large amounts of information at once. In fact, psychologists have found that our working memory generally maxes out at around seven ‘items’ of information.

Working this knowledge into your design can be a powerful way to ensure that it is as simple as possible in its use.

Here’s an example:

When Apple was working on the first iPod, Steve Jobs applied a rigid test: If he wanted a song or a function, he should be able to get there in three clicks. And he insisted the clicks be intuitive.

Despite all of the complexity inside of the iPod, Jobs knew that for us as consumers to feel instantly comfortable with it, the device had to be insanely simple. That meant being both familiar in its look and use (even though we’d never seen it before). Not only did the clickwheel feel simple because the action is prototypical, but using the interface wasn’t at all tasking on our working memory.

Simple things have a low psychological barrier of entry. We’re able to use them without any training at all.

How to harness the power of simple

Understanding how the brain deems something simple is a great start, but how else can you ensure that what you’re doing comes across as simple?

1. Steal from the past

As it’s hopefully clear by now, prototypical elements are the basis of simplicity. This means having a deep understanding of what your users’s expectations are.

Look at your competitors’s products or website. What are the common elements? What do people expect to see (or read, or hear) when they come to you? Define those elements and leverage them to make your product feel instantly familiar and easy.

2. Create your own product placements

Everything you do, from your website to your logo or your Twitter background conveys a message about you and your brand. Each of these elements is also a unique opportunities to create visual familiarity around your company (remember the mere exposure effect?).

Use a mood board to create a design style guide. Use stock images from the same source on all of your posts and websites. Create a color story that you use across all mediums.

Whatever you do, keep in mind that the more familiarity you develop with your audience, the more simple and attractive they’ll find you.

3. Be ‘same same, but different’

This is one of my favorite phrases I picked up from the kids in Indonesia trying to sell you everything from bracelets to scooters.

‘Same same but different’ basically means something that is similar enough to what you want (or are used to), yet has its own unique selling point (that makes you want it more). In terms of simple this means using those prototypical elements that are so important, yet adding novelty and uniqueness so that your version will stand out in our memories. A little deviation can be a good thing.

The headline of Apple’s first marketing brochure in 1977 proclaimed: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

But I think they got it slightly wrong.

Simplicity isn’t necessarily sophistication, but rather comfort. It’s the only friend at the dinner party. It’s the pigs-in-blankets at the hors d’oeuvres table. It’s the little things that instantly put you at ease.

Find a way to use simple to your advantage and make your users or audience instantly comfortable. Think about what their expectations are and how you can leverage their mental shortcuts to create something that is simple, beautiful, and same same, but different.

Read next: The psychology behind colors

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How Should We Learn?

Ignorance has been a fait accompli throughout the history of human society. There was never enough information about the world and how it functions, and even when we had it, few people had access. Whole branches of knowledge could be lost or simply stagnate, like much of science and mathematics in the European Dark Ages.

The internet changed all that. Data is everywhere, and knowledge is accessible on almost any subject imaginable with just a few clicks. Suddenly, we went from people ignorant of our own ignorance to content consumers struggling to keep up with the information all around us.

We will never stop being the deer in the headlights of knowledge. We shouldn’t celebrate ignorance, but neither can we cure it. Instead, students – hopefully aided someday by a new generation of education startups – need to learn how to navigate in a world where the frontier of knowledge is rapidly expanding and dynamic. We need to inculcate purpose-driven learning and move away from a model of slurping up all the data in the world.

Cancel The Deluge

When pundits describe data in the 21st century, they often resort to the flood metaphor, describing how we are “inundated” or “awash” with data. It is true that the internet has given us almost unlimited and practically free access to the sum of all human knowledge in a way never before seen in history.

The flood metaphor breaks down pretty quickly though upon deeper inspection. Data doesn’t just rush flow by us as we struggle to stay anchored above the deluge. Rather, we have built sophisticated tools to filter through that data and find the pieces that we are most interested in.

Yet, we still feel so overwhelmed by all of this. We are so concerned about our next email or text message that we have to buy special devices for our wrists just to make sure we aren’t falling behind. It’s no better at work, where a majority of executives feel completely powerless to handle the roaring current of data flowing in (I’m metaphorically guilty now).

The challenge is that most of us aren’t actually that good at learning. Sure, we can seek out facts, read news articles and tweets, and analyze tough problems. The software industry in particular is filled with autodidacts who can learn both the higher-level architecture of a massive computer system and the extremely nuanced implementation details required to run it. Data is abundant, and we can consume all of it given enough time.

Data is not knowledge however, and knowledge is not wisdom.

I am reminded of one of my “friends”* who years ago used to constantly click on the random article button on Wikipedia and ingest the articles as quickly as possible. He was considered smart by many people, even brilliant by some who marveled at the level of his know-how. In the end, that data was superficial, enough to keep a conversation going with a specialist but without the ability to fully engage on a topic.

We can consume all the facts in the world and still not comprehend what is really going on. The rise of explanatory journalism – pushed aggressively by Vox and several other internet publications – is a partial antidote to this problem. However, we are only moving from data to knowledge, and we still haven’t found wisdom.

The Ignorance Gap

One of my professors once described education as a fraction. The numerator is the knowledge we know about the world, and the denominator is our understanding about all of the knowledge that exists in the world. He argued that grade school equally expanded the numerator and denominator, and that college expanded the numerator at a slightly faster clip, giving everyone confidence.

The punch line was that getting a doctorate degree would only expand the denominator, which is why after five or more additional years at a university, people feel dumber than when they first started.

One reason we feel overwhelmed by all of this data is that we suddenly know how much we don’t know about the world. Our collective denominators have expanded rapidly in the last twenty years, without a concomitant increase in our own base of knowledge. We are constantly being confronted with stories we know nothing about, in countries we weren’t even truly aware existed.

We have to accept our present condition: we will always be more ignorant than knowledgeable about the world. Our societies are too complicated and the human lifespan is too short to ever hope to try to bridge that gulf.

Instead, we need to accept ignorance and handle it graciously. That doesn’t mean we should revel in our ignorance, but we shouldn’t be bothered when we don’t know the latest trend or some news story, nor should we judge others as “stupid” if they don’t know some factoid. There is a fear that we will enter a conversation not being completely up-to-date, but what is the point of a conversation if all we are exchanging are the facts we already know?

Wisdom comes when we increase both our numerators and our denominators. We need to both know what we know and as much as possible about what we don’t.

How Should We Learn?

We have had an explosion of learning products published online, whether sites like Wikipedia that offer a huge library of content for consumption or MOOCs like Udacity and Coursera that have more interactivity built in. We can learn about almost any subject imaginable today, and of course, get the details and data that the internet always offers.

Yet, these companies have barely started to build platforms for purpose-driven learning. In fact, the rhetoric around online education has focused so much on skills, credentials, and mechanisms of accountability that we have mostly neglected building up the more fundamental skill of simply learning what information is invaluable, merely valuable, and useless in a field.

We need to develop thinkers, not information processors. That’s incredibly hard in a world where students want instantly useful skills that are going to be worth a premium in industry. Just look at all of the coding education startups – there is far more coverage of CSS gradients than algorithms in many of these curriculums. Yet that deeper material is precisely what will differentiate students as thoughtful developers.

We do students a disservice when we only focus on that numerator of knowledge they know rather than that denominator of knowledge they are aware of exists. Yes, we want students to know how to process an HTML form, or to run a regression. But we also want them to become independent learners, adults who know when they need help, and how they might seek out the answers they are looking for.

Two weeks ago, I asked why the university is still here. The answer really comes down to its ability to teach students both knowledge and wisdom. There is no reason this can’t be done online or through books, but so far it hasn’t. It remains one of the largest opportunities in the edtech learning space available to entrepreneurs today.

People can be incredibly smart, even brilliant sometimes, and yet still be bad at deep learning. The internet has given us this omniscience that we have never had before, and we suddenly have this ability to see all of the details that we don’t know about. We need to inculcate the skills to navigate that world, handle ambiguity and ignorance, and become more purpose-driven learners.

*Note: May actually be me.

Featured Image: Paul Falardeau/Flickr UNDER A CC BY-ND 2.0 LICENSE

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10 secrets that will make your life easier as a social media manager

This article originally appeared on the Twitter Counter blog.

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There’s a common misconception that managing social media on a professional level is as easy and breezy as uploading an image on Facebook with a simple caption to go with it. But, you and I both know that there’s much more to it.

Managing social media effectively is about posting the right content on the right platform, establishing your brand’s authority, thinking ahead, building relations, measuring and monitoring your performance, and the list goes on and on.

Basically, social media management can be a full-time job but it can become even more of a challenge if managing your brand’s social media presence is only part of your daily tasks.

So where to begin? Take a big breath and master these ten secrets that will help you save a ton of time and turn social media management into a piece of cake.

1. Planning an audit

As dreadful as it may sound, a social media audit is something that you should do on a frequent basis. If you’ve never done a social media audit for your brand, now is a good time as we’re heading towards the end of the first half of the year.

Social media audits help you get a grasp of how you’ve been doing so far in terms of meeting your social media marketing goals, if everything you had planned at the beginning of the year are working and whether you need to reconsider certain tactics of your social media plan.

But where to begin? Basically from the top down, going into as much depth as you need, in order to gain a better overview of your social media activity so far.

Take a look at a few basic steps for a super quick social media audit you can do on a frequent basis.

Step 1: List all the platforms you are active on with links to your social media profiles.
Step 2: Update any imagery and profile description that needs to be updated.
Step 3: Check some key metrics such as audience growth, reach, engagement and traffic generated from this platform.
Step 4: Evaluate your presence on each social media platform by checking your KPIs. This process will help you gain some perspective and assess where you should focus your efforts from now on.

2. Creating a content firehose

Many of the social media managers I speak to face the same challenge: Content curation. The truth is that finding high quality, relevant content to share on social media can be time-consuming. But fear not! What you need to make it easier is to create a content curation system that works for you.

A few tools that can help you build up your own system:

Feedly: Gather all your favorite news resources on Feedly and browse them every morning to find relevant, useful content to share and of course use it as an inspiration to for creating your own content. One of its helpful features is that it immediately gives you an idea on what’s most shared on a given day with the number of shares being shown next to each headline.

Unroll.me: You probably hate email as much as everyone else but email and newsletters can deliver some hidden gems ready to be tweeted, pinned, instagrammed, you name it. Unroll.me might come in handy in this case. What it does is gather all your newsletters in one place delivering all-in-one emails you can easily browse.

Smart content recommendation tools:

Answering to social media managers’ need of curating content, there are quite a few brilliant tools that recommend you content you can share on your social media platforms. Content that is relevant to you and your audience.

Swayy, and Groupiest are both tools that can recommend you relevant content to tweet, based on your community and the topics you are interested in.

3. Going all visual

Once you find the amazing content to share on social media, it is time to make it shareable. Research has shown that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text which basically explains the superpowers of visual content when it comes to social media marketing.

But you don’t necessarily need to be a pro in video editing or designing to create engaging, compelling visual content for your social media posts. There’s the easy way to go for it.

Social media platforms like Vine and Instagram allow you to create fun, short videos that can also be easily shared on Facebook and Twitter. Oreo is a great example of a brand that has made the most out of Vine on its Twitter feed, with great results on engagement.

Canva is must-use tool for every social media manager. It allows you to create professional looking images for social media in less than three minutes. The best part is that you don’t have to worry about the size of your images since Canva offers templates of visuals for all major platforms.

Infographics are a great way to turn boring data into insightful, engaging visuals that can easily be shared across different social media platforms. Piktochart is just the right tool for creating infographics in a few minutes. What is helpful is the wide range of themes to choose from and the freedom the tool offers in customizing templates to fit your style and needs.

4. Making time for engagement 

This is something that some social media managers neglect as they spend so much time and effort on the content they will post and on measuring how this content is distributed and received. But social media is not just a distribution channel for your brand and are definitely not to be treated as the platform for sharing your press releases.

The idea is to be conversational and interact with your community. Spending as much as a few minutes a day asking questions, replying to comments, engaging with your community and sharing their content can really make a difference.

Twitter chats are another way to engage in your niche, build authority for your brand and expand your reach. They provide you with the chance to be useful and relevant, offer your help and communicate your brand’s voice and identity in a constructive way.

5. Twitter listing everyone

Twitter lists are a powerful tool with endless possibilities to make your life as a social media manager much, much easier simply because they can help you:

1. Listen

Having a good monitoring system in place is one of the most important elements of a good social media strategy and Twitter lists can make Twitter monitoring much easier by adding them to your Twitter dashboard.

2. Build relationships

Twitter lists is what Monica Geller would refer to as ‘organized fun’. You can use them to build Twitter relationships with influencers in your field and reach out to new people in your niche.

This way, you can build authority and a strong community around your brand in a more efficient way.

3. Curate content

Twitter lists are a great way to keep up with all that’s happening in real time and curate content you can share with your followers. For example, you can keep up to date with all the latest from social media influencers or influencers in your industry.

In addition to this, since lists can be public, you can create your own custom feed for people to subscribe. This way you can increase your account’s visibility and build credibility.

Creating a Twitter list that adds value on a specific topic can increase the chances of your account popping up in search results both on Twitter and Google.

6. Planning ahead

When you have a social media content calendar, managing your accounts becomes a lot less daunting. Organizing the way you create and curate content helps you save a lot of time in managing social media but also allows you to have a clear overview of what type of content you post across different platforms, allows you to better plan your social media marketing campaigns and of course gives you a solution when you get to the “What should I post now” point.

The easiest way to organize a content calendar is by using a separate sheet for each month, with activities further broken down by month or day, depending on the volume of content you plan to publish.

How to create your social media content plan

Step 1: Decide how often you should post across platforms

Although there are some general rules of thumb on the posting frequency for each social media platform, the ultimate posting recipe is different for every account as it often depends on the industry and audience, the type of content you post and of course the platform itself.

For example, for Twitter Counter’s Twitter account, we found out that shifting to a once-an-hour, round the clock posting strategy had a positive effect on the overall engagement of our account.

In general, according to a recent Buffer research a good starting point for posting across platforms is this:

Note: it is important to experiment with different frequencies for each platform. Timing is equally important to maximize the exposure of your posts depending on where your audience is.

For Twitter, Followerwonk can tell you when your Twitter followers are online and Twitter Counter calculates the most successful times and days in a week based on your engagement metrics.

Facebook insights offers information on the best times to post for maximum reach whereas for Google+, social media science concludes that weekdays from 09:00 am to 11:00 am are the best.

Step 2: Decide what to post and where

Once you have decided on the best frequency and timing recipe for each platform it is time to decide on the type of content to post on each platform. If you have marketing campaigns planned through out the year, you can already start thinking your message, the visuals and the platforms you will want to use.

It is important to keep in mind that even though you could essentially post the same content on every medium, its structure and copy need to be adjusted to the specifics of each platform.

For example, on LinkedIn link posts with linger copy work better than on Facebook. On Twitter, the 80/20 rule is a rule to tweet by. This means that a good content tactic is sharing 20 percent your own content and 80 percent third party content from trustworthy, reliable sources.

Twitter suggests images or video as the best option to accompany your tweets and boost your reach.

Step 3: Write your copy and create your visuals

When writing your social media copy, keep in mind that length matters. Social media scientist, Dan Zarrella suggests  that tweets that are 100 to 115 characters long are more likely to be retweeted.

On Facebook, posts that are maximum 40 characters long do perform better in terms of engagement, whereas Google+ and LinkedIn call for longer updates. For a quick checklist of what you should keep in mind when writing social media copy take a look at this amazing infographicfrom Quick Sprout.

Step 4: Fill up your social media content calendar

The last step of your social media content strategy is creating a content calendar. This way, you gain an overview of what you are posting on each platform and it is much easier to plan relevant content around important dates such as product releases, holidays and so on.

Oh, and of course you’ll never need to ask yourself ‘What do I post now?’

Depending how much of a visual type you are, you can either use a template or use your scheduling tool to plan your content ahead.

Remember that on social media, it is OK to repeat content as long as you present it in a fresh way using a different visual or copy for example. In fact, repeating content on social is key to boosting traffic and expanding your reach.

7. Loving thy automation 

Managing several social media platforms without some help from automation tools would be impossible. Otherwise, implementing your social media editorial calendar and following through your plan would be much harder. Take a look at three tools that make social media automation a piece of cake.

Buffer is the ultimate tool for scheduling your social media content across platforms. What’s even more time saving about Buffer is that you can quickly schedule content from anywhere on the Web using their browser plugin. Buffer supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and most recently Pinterest.

IFTTT has endless possibilities for automation in general but when it comes to social media management it can really make things easy breezy. It is basically a tool that connects two services together to help you perform specific actions based on certain criteria. For example, “If I post a photo on Instagram, upload it to my Flickr account.

You can either create the recipe that fits best for you of find the recipe that best fits your needs. For example:

Edgar is a great tool for automating your evergreen content. Edgar is a social media automation app that allows you to share and re-share links to your best content automatically. keeping track of your updates after they’ve been shared, and posting them again at a later date.

8. Setting some budget

Social media ad spending in US is expected to grow to nearly $14 billion by 2018 which is an indication that the days when social media were free are over. Social media marketers are realizing more and more the importance of setting some budget aside for social media campaigns throughout the year to gear up on their marketing goals.

For example, if your company is launching a major product, if your account needs an extra boost in audience before a major event or if you need to increase your Facebook reach, having a social media budget you can invest based on your needs can get you out of the difficult position and improve your results.

9. Making an action plan for yourself

Visualizing your daily tasks always helps. This way, you see how you spend your time juggling social media management and other tasks and distribute your time in a better way.

There are many tools to help you out but what I’ve found the handiest is Google Calendar since I can have meetings and tasks all in one place for a better overview and more importantly, I can easily modify my tasks and events to better plan my week.

10. Analyzing and testing

Every social media manager knows that analyzing and testing your social media activity can make things much easier in the long run.

In this process, it is important to clearly define your KPIs and the how you are going to measure them, but also set a time frame for analysis and for testing new things. For example, have you chosen the right posting frequency? Does video on Twitter work for your audience? Is a certain copy format on Facebook outperforming others?

Having the right analytics tools in your tool belt will help you evaluate your social media presence and see what works or doesn’t, through testing and analyzing your tactics every step of the way.

Got any tips for an easier, breezier life managing social media? Share them with us in comments right below!

Read next: What $5 per day will buy you on Facebook ads

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Woman unknowingly tosses a first-gen Apple computer worth $200,000 at a recycling center

A recycling center in Silicon Valley is looking for a mystery woman who unknowingly dropped off a rare, first-generation Apple computer that fetched $200,000 at a private auction.

The woman was reportedly cleaning her late husband’s garage when she came across the Apple I, Apple’s first computer that was hand-assembled by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne in 1976. The computer came with just 4KB of memory, and originally sold for $600. Only about 200 of this model was ever made.

Clean Bay Area recycling center vice president Victor Gichun said the woman dropped off several boxes of electronics, and did not want a tax receipt nor did she leave her contact information. It was only a few weeks after that the recycling team found the Apple I inside.

Clean Bay Area intends to give 50 percent of its auction sale back to the woman, that is, if they can ever find her. “To prove who she is,” Gichun said, “I just need to look at her.”

That’s some 21st century Cinderella game.

➤ Woman donates an old Apple computer that turns out to be a collectible item worth $200,000 [US News]

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Tech news in Eastern Europe: What happened in May

Tech news stories originating from Central and Eastern Europe have become more of a mad torrent than a shallow stream. This month alone, we’ve tracked funding and M&A deals worth more than $300 million, as well as dozens of new laws and software developer you’ve got to check out. Here are the highlights you may have missed from this month.

If you think something is missing, or would like to draw our attention to an important story, feel free to ping the author on Twitter (@shlema) or by e-mail at shlema@gmail.com.

Startups, funds, accelerators

• Lithuanian startup Widerfi has joined MassChallenge, the world’s largest accelerator
• Czech startup Skypicker developed an algorithm that finds discount flight tickets ‘hidden’ on airline websites
• Ukrainian software developer Readdle released its Spark email client
• Ukraine-born startup CheckiO announced a new “coding game,” Empire of Code
• Russian Venture Company launched GenerationS 2015 accelerator, with the program taking place in Moscow from July to November
• MVP Academy Demo Day showcased a wide variety of Romanian startups
• Russian startup developed a GPS dog tracker that spots your pet’s location and monitors obesity
• Estonia’s Bold Gadgets launched keychain phone charger on Indiegogo
• Ukrainian startup Ecois.me has launched a $50,000 Indiegogo campaign for its intelligent home energy monitoring system
• Russian-Canadian biomedical startup Darta Systems launched the Emvio Watch, a gadget that “measures stress and makes everyday stress management easier”
• Russian online language learning startup LinguaLeo has fired 30 percent of its staff due to the tough situation in the country’s economy
• Messenger Telegram created by VK.com founder Pavel Durov has hit 62 million monthly active users
• Estonian startup Taxify has introduced mobile carrier billing for cabs
• Ukrainian-born private jet hire startup JetMe released a new tool called “Name Your Price” to allow users to choose how much they’re willing to spend on a flight
• Russian Venture Company will pour some $20 million in a new space-focused fund
• Russian-born venture fund Flint Capital has raised further $50 million and entered the US market
• Bulgarian Kanbanize has developed a management platform where teams can collaborate and visualize their progress

Funding deals and M&A

• Qiwi Venture has invested $150,000 in mobile payment app AnyBalance
• Slovenian startup ULU has attracted €500,000 from Chinese Fang Group
• Estonian farm management startup VitalFields raised an additional $1.2 million in funding
• Russian-Israeli startup Medviser received $500,000 in funding from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich
• Russian startup LinguaLeo has attracted $500,000 in funding from Social Discovery Ventures and Runa Capital
• Croatian startup Oradian raised seed funding for its microfinance platform
• Russian-Israeli appointment scheduling service Gbooking has attracted $425,000 in funding at a valuation of $3.4 million
• Ukrainian e-commerce service Skidka.ua has landed $250,000 in exchange for a 10 percent stake in the company
• Russian online loan service MoneyMan has attracted $6 million in funding
• Controversial Russian-made fitness tracker HealBe GoBe has attracted $3.5 million in funding
• Warsaw-based medical booking platform DocPlanner announced a $10 million Series B funding round
• Russian travel startup Level.Travel raised about $610,000 in funding
• Estonian-born Pipedrive raised $9 million in Series A funding
• Russian social media monitoring system Kribrum received a $960,000 grant from the Skolkovo foundation and InfoWatch
• Polish SaaS startup Sugester raised €250,000 in funding from Inovo at a valuation of over €1 million
• Ukrainian startup AdTena landed $60,000 in funding from local angel investors
• Ukrainian startup Chargies, which combines the ideas of Yo and Tamagotchi in its mobile app, raised $100,000 from Noosphere Ventures to enter the US market
• Ukrainian mobile marketing startup Clickky has attracted $2 million for global expansion from Moscow-based venture fund iTech Capital
• Romania-based travel technology firm dcs plus landed an undisclosed amount in funding from Earlybird VC
• Russian fund RBV Capital invested $5.2 million in MRI visualization company Image Analysis
• Lithuanian Practica Capital invested €200,000 in local space technology startup NanoAvionics
• Russian venture fund Vaizra Investments participated in a $50 million round in Robinhood and poured some $500,000 in Israeli startup Optishell
• Russian security specialist Group-IB has reportedly secured $4 million in funding from FRII
• Russian payment operator Qiwi has acquired two local players, money transfer system Contact and payment processing system Rapida, for $167 million in stock
• Russian retail analytics solution provider RetailNext has secured a $125 million funding round for global expansion

Laws and governments

• Lithuania has officially become an Internet oligarch
• Contrary to previous reports, Russia is not building its own mobile OS but plans to give grants to developers to port their apps to Tizen and Sailfish, as well as work on a localized version of the latter
• Buzzfeed published a story claiming that Cisco altered sales records in Russia in order to “dodge sanctions and provide equipment to Vladimir Putin’s military and security services”
• Russian think tank claims to have developed software that will search Russian social media posts for signs of plans by political opposition to the government to stage unapproved protests or meetings
• Russia warned Google, Twitter and Facebook on law violations
• Republic of Estonia has invited the world to apply for Estonian ‘e-Residency’ online
• Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has blocked access to three websites selling imported food banned in the country
• Russia has debuted its own CPU as it aims for US tech breakaway
• Hungary will offer tax payment delay on Internet network development in 2016
• Russia and China have signed a cyber-security deal, pledging not to hack each other

In other news

• Mandriva has filed for bankruptcy in France and moved all development to Russia
• Turkish freelancers are protesting against changes in the way the company works with search assessors
• Social investment network eToro launched in Russia
• Clutch has identified top mobile app developers in Poland, Ukraine and Russia
• Flying car prototype crashed in Slovakia. Fortunately, the pilot and inventor Štefan Klein suffered only light injuries
• Yandex has reportedly shut down its Android-based mobile OS project Yandex.Kit
• Estonia is backing up its entire government dataset, and also devising ways to operate through the cloud in the event of an attack by a foreign nation
• Yota Devices launched an Indiegogo campaign for its dual-screen smartphone YotaPhone 2 and has already raised more than $225,000
• Yandex’s browser entered beta, added a strong focus on privacy outside Russia
• Ukrainian GSC Game World, known as the developer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., announced its next title, “Cossacks 3″
• Poland-based company Security Explorations revealed seven vulnerabilities in the Google App Engine

Good (long) reads from around the Web

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Apple says Watch OS 1.0.1 records heart rate irregularly on purpose. Thanks, Apple

In the latest update of Apple Watch OS 1.0.1, users are reporting that their heart rates are being recorded more sporadically instead of every 10 minutes. Previously thought to be a bug, Apple has now confirmed that this behavior is actually intentional. Huh?

In Watch OS 1.0, the user’s heart rate is recorded every 10 minutes. Now, Apple has clarified to say that in the latest version, the Watch will still do the same, but won’t record anything “when you’re in motion or your arm is moving.”

Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, considering that most people would probably be interested in their heart rate changes during cardiovascular exercises, such as running. The same Apple Watch update page even advises that “Rhythmic movements, such as running or cycling, give better results compared to irregular movements.”

9to5Mac alleges that the update was probably made to help conserve battery, at the expense of accurate heart rate measurements.

If you prefer to have the Watch measure your heart rate more frequently, you can force monitor by using the Workout app to record changes every 10 seconds. Doesn’t seem all that smart to have to manually turn this function on, but, you know, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

➤ Apple says Watch OS 1.0.1 attempts to record heart rate every ten minutes, but won’t if arm is moving [9to5mac]

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Treat yourself! The top TNW Deals this week

Whether you are looking to upgrade your business skills, your computer, or your free time, the offers over at TNW Deals this week should interest you. Here’s a roundup…

70% off a VPN Unlimited Lifetime Subscription

The usual reason to set up a virtual private network is for security, as it makes you practically untraceable online. But it also brings other benefits, such as access to region-locked content. VPN Unlimited lets you take full advantage of this by offering unrestricted bandwidth and an uncapped high-speed connection.

This means you can stream video from around the world — you can pick from a list of global servers — and the service works on both desktop and mobile devices. Pick up a lifetime subscription now for $39.

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85% off the Complete Arduino Starter Kit and Course Bundle

Owning an Arduino is a great excuse to unleash your inner (or not so hidden) big kid mode. This bundle provides you with your very own starter Arduino, plus all the kit needed to start making circuits.

When you are ready to get started on some more ambitious projects, you can also check out the three included video courses: Make a Remote-Controlled Car, Your Guide to the Internet of Things, and Make Your Own Environment Monitor System. Get the bundle now for $75.99 with free shipping.

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96% off the Skillsology ‘Start Your Own Business’ Bundle

The benefits of founding a successful startup are very appealing, but to get there, you first need to understand how to make money. This bundle of seven courses teaches business from the ground up, with specific tracks on all the major skills any worthwhile CEO needs to have.

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39% off the Striiv Fusion Activity + Sleep Tracker

The unbeatable feeling of achievement as you watch your personal best rise with each passing day is made possible by wearing a fitness tracker like the Striiv. It counts the steps you take, the calories you burn, the distance you cover, and the time you spend doing it.

But this bracelet can also monitor your sleep patterns, wake you up in the morning with a vibrating alarm, and even go in the shower (it is water-resistant). Hook it up to the Striiv app, and you can view all your past data. You can grab the bracelet now for $59.99 with free shipping.

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92% off the Interactive Coding Bootcamp

If you would like to get into the tech sector as a developer, but don’t know where to start, this is the course for you.

The Bootcamp is a twelve-week course which teaches front-end (HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, and more) and back-end development (Ruby on Rails, Node.js, databases, ecommerce, and more), along with the fundamentals of computer science. You learn through examples, and the idea is that you finish the course with a killer portfolio. Order it now for $39 for the huge discount.

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What $5 per day will buy you on Facebook ads

This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog.

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If you want get your posts seen on Facebook, one of the most common bits of wisdom you’ll hear is this:

Pay for reach with Facebook ads. 

Paid advertising on Facebook seems to be one of the most immediate ways to impact the reach of your content. Though it’s not without its questions. How well does it work? What kind of engagement do you get?

And what can you expect for your hard-earned money?

We’ve been testing Facebook ads a bit with Buffer’s Facebook strategy, looking to see exactly what’s possible on a small budget. I’m happy to share our findings with you. Here’s what we found $5 per day will buy you on Facebook Ads.

I’d love to jump right to our findings here, then get into the specifics below. We tried three different types of Facebook Ads, each designed with a different objective in mind.

Here are our results: 

When we view this in terms of how much $5 per day will buy you, these are the numbers:

• Page Likes – 9 likes per day
• Clicks to the Buffer homepage – 1 per day
• Boosted post – 787 new people reached

How does this jive with your experience on Facebook Ads? 

I’ll be happy to share the specifics of what we tried and how we tried it (and how you can test this for yourself, too.)

One final thought before moving ahead, it might be useful to see how our experience compares to Facebook Ads benchmarks overall. Matthew Kammerer shared an overview of social media advertising in a guest post at the Buffer blog, including the following chart of helpful Facebook benchmarks.

Since we find ourselves in the technology space at Buffer, we can compare to the industry benchmarks in this chart.

Average clickthrough rate: 0.2%

Ours: 0.95%

Average cost per click: $0.20

Ours: $0.97

Average cost per 1,000 impressions: $0.38

Ours: $6.35

A lot of our experience here didn’t quite match up to the benchmarks, likely for a number of factors like this being my first dive into Facebook Ads (lots to learn!) and my not spending the time to truly optimize the campaigns.

Like all the experiments we run and share here, your mileage may vary. And we’d love to hear your experience and results!

How to Set Up a Facebook Ads Campaign

All of Facebook’s ad campaigns run through the Facebook Ads tool, which you can access via a direct link at facebook.com/ads, or by clicking “Manage Ads” in the drop-down menu on your Facebook account, or by clicking any of the CTAs on your Facebook page.

With Facebook, you have many different ways of approaching an ad campaign. These ways can typically fall within three categories of benefits:

• Interaction: Your ad and content right on the homepage allows users to interact with it like they do any other piece of social content.
• Reach: Expand your reach to new potential customers who can interact with your content by commenting, liking, favoriting, retweeting, etc.
• Followers: Brands also report a notable increase in followers through these social advertising options, since brand visibility increases significantly.

For small budgets, you’re likely to get the most bang for your buck with boosting reach. Moz found that $1 per day can grow you audience by 4,000 people (this didn’t quite match our experience, though it’s well worth trying).

Once you’re into the Ads manager, you can navigate with the menu on the left-hand side of the page. To get started with your first ad, click the green button in the top-right corner of the page.

When you click to create a Facebook Ad, you’ll go to a page where you choose the objective for your campaign. There are 10 options here for what you might want to achieve:

1. Boost your posts (more on this below)
2. Promote your page (more on this next)
3. Send people to your website (more on this below)
4. Increase conversions on your website
5. Get installs of your app
6. Increase engagement in your app
7. Reach people near your business
8. Raise attendance at your event
9. Get people to claim your offer
10. Get video views

I won’t get into the specifics of all these as we only tested the top three, but there are some really great resources out there—like this post from Noah Kagan—if you’re interested in learning more about Facebook Ads in their entirety.

How to Set Up a Campaign for Facebook Page Likes

1. Choose the second option from the Create an Ad list: Promote Your Page.

2. At the next screen, select the page you’d like to promote.

3. Choose who will be shown your ad.

The audience can be customized based on all the following demographics:

• Location, starting with a country, state, city, zip code, or address, and refining even further with a mile radius
• Age
• Gender
• Languages
• Interests – Facebook looks at a person’s interests, activity, the Pages they like, and closely related topics
• Behaviors – Things like purchase behavior and intent, as well as device usage
• Connections – Choose to show the ad to all people, just those connected to Buffer, or those not connected to Buffer

In addition, with the Connections setting, you can choose advanced targeting, which lets you include or exclude people who are connected to certain pages, apps, or events.

How we chose an audience for the Buffer ad

Facebook recommends narrowing your reach in a targeted way in order to maximize the impact of your ad. We went quite narrow with this experiment, choosing the following audience demographics:

• Location: United States
• Interests: Social media
• Excluded: People who already like Buffer
• Age: 18-65+
• Language: English (US)

This gave us an estimated reach of up to 3,200 people out of 14 million. The 3,200 people are how many we could expect to be online any given day and potentially see our ad.

4. Choose how much you want to spend.

5. Choose an image to create the ad.

You can pick from your library, search, or upload a new one. If you’re able to upload multiple images, you can create multiple ad variations that will run within your campaign, giving you a sort of A/B test to see what works best.

The recommended image size is 1,200 pixels wide by 444 pixels tall.

6. Write the text and the headline.

For the text, you get 90 characters to share a quick message that will appear above your image.

For the headline (which is hidden beneath an Advanced Options toggle), you can use an alternative to your page name, which is shown by default. Headlines can be 25 characters long.

How we wrote the text and headline

We left the page title the same (“Buffer”), although it’s possible we could have tried something like Buffer – Social Media or Buffer App.

For the text, we aimed for a descriptive headline that would help people understand what it is they’d be getting from us. Since we targeted people with an interest in social media, it also made sense to make the message match the audience.

The Best Tips and Tools for Sharing to Social Media

Here’s how the ad looked:

Next: How to Set Up a Campaign for Boosted Posts

How to Set Up a Campaign for Boosted Posts

1. Choose the first option from the Create an Ad list: Boost Your Posts.

2. At the next screen, select the page you’d like to use. Then select the post you’d like to promote.

3. Choose who will be shown your ad.

You have the same options here as you did in the Page Likes campaign mentioned above.

How we chose an audience for the Buffer ad

For this experiment, we went with a quite targeted demographic: younger San Francisco people with an interest in technology.

• Location: A 50-mile radius from San Francisco
• Interests: Technology
• Excluded: People who already like Buffer
• Age: 21-40
• Language: English (US) and (UK)

This led to a great and targeted group of up to 2,800 people per day who might be served our ad.

4. Choose how much you want to spend.

5. Review your post.

In this section, you can see a preview of your post as it will appear in the News Feed on desktop and on mobile as well as in the right column of desktop screens. You can turn any of these views off so that the ad won’t be shown there.

How we chose what to display

Facebook offers some helpful views of what your ad might look like in various places. The three main spots:

1. The News Feed on desktop
2. The News Feed on mobile
3. The right column on desktop

When it came to boost this post, it seemed to us that the best placement was likely to be in the News Feed instead of the sidebar.

When the content moved to the sidebar, the headline was truncated and the description was truncated. The text itself was harder to see. Ultimately, it just wasn’t intended to be in the sidebar; it was meant for the News Feed.

How to Set Up a Campaign for Clicks to Your Website

1. Choose the third option from the Create an Ad list: Send people to your website.

2. At the next screen, type in the URL where you’d like to send traffic.

3. Choose who will be shown your ad.

How we chose an audience for the Buffer ad

For this ad, we went a slightly different route with our audience selection. We chose to target a specific audience—our MailChimp subscribers—using Facebook’s custom audiences.

To create a custom audience, we chose the option from the audience selection portion of our Facebook ad.

Here, you can choose to create the custom audience from a base of three options:

1. Customer list (like an email list, for instance)
2. Website traffic
3. App activity

We chose to use a customer list for our audience segment. We exported our subscribers from MailChimp and imported into Facebook. Our list of 39,000 names returned 23,900 Facebook users.

We then further segmented the list into specific demographics for location, age, and language. We didn’t quite feel the need to segment for interests since everyone of these folks seemed to be interested in Buffer just by subscribing!

4. Choose how much you want to spend.

5. Choose how you want the ad to look.

Depending on the visuals you’d like to associate with your ad, you can choose to either show one image with your ad or show a gallery of five images that people can scroll to view.

6. Connect your ad to a Facebook page.

This allows the ad to appear in the News Feed as if it came from a page, while the ad itself still goes to your chosen URL.

7. Write a headline.

You get 25 characters max.

8. Write description text.

You get 90 characters max.

9. Choose button text from Facebook’s list of options.

• Shop Now
• Book Now
• Learn More
• Sign Up
• Download

10. Add more text to the Advanced Settings for your link.

11. Choose where the ad will be placed.

In addition to the options above for News Feed and right column, this particular type of ad also includes an option for appearing on Facebook’s audience network, which includes third-party mobile apps.

How we chose what to display

We went with an ad for our Buffer for Business landing page, hoping to encourage any current Buffer newsletter subscribers to take a closer look at our business plan.

The ad itself, well, I’m sure I have lots of room for improvement here!

Reflecting back now, I can see that the headline lacks any information about what it is that Buffer does. There’s no benefit there for the user. The image is from PlaceIt, which does great stuff helping get screenshots and app images that look smooth.

If I were to do it again, I’d likely follow a lot of the advice here in Noah Kagan’s post about Facebook ads.

1. Headline: Give away something for free
2. Text: Social proof showing why the reader should care
3. News Feed Link Description: Give call to action for them to get benefit

For example:

Over to you

I feel like we’re quite early on with learning best practices for Facebook Ads at Buffer. I’d love to get any insight you have in this area and hear any tips you might be willing to share!

Overall, the cost of advertising on Facebook seems like it could be most helpful to us in terms of boosted posts as we were able to get more than 750 new people to check out our content for only $5.00.

What has been the best success you’ve found with Facebook Ads?

Read next: How to spend just $100 on a social media budget

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