Amazon, At no. 1 position in India

Just two and a half years after launching, Amazon has staked claim to ecommerce supremacy in India. According to a press release Amazon issued Dec. 14, Amazon.in became the most visited ecommerce site in India in October 2015, which includes the busy Diwali shopping season, according to the global analytics firm comScore.ComScore’s numbers do show that Amazon.in had 30.1 million visitors in October, and surpassed Flipkart.com (just under 27 million visitors) in monthly visitors for the second time in 2015 (In May, Amazon.in topped Flipkart.com by about 100,000 visitors).“This is a huge milestone, and we’re all raising a glass to toast our colleagues in India,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “Customer response like this is so energizing for us, and we’re grateful. Customers and sellers can count on us to continue innovating and investing heavily in India – it’s very much still Day One at Amazon.in.”But is Amazon telling the whole truth about being Number 1 in India, or is it just using comScore’s numbers as an excuse to run a celebration sale in the U.S. with 50% off a selection of Bollywood digital videos at Amazon.com, as it says in a press release?Adam Lella, Senior Analyst, Marketing Insights for comScore, Inc., told Multichannel Merchant via email that its figures are based on desktop visits, which includes desktops and laptops, but does not include smartphone and tablet visits.And as Multichannel Merchant has documented, India’s ecommerce customers are largely mobile-first.In April, Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal told Ystats.com that they expect to be largely a mobile-based ecommerce company in a couple of years. The Times of India also reported that Flipkart will be shutting down its ecommerce site within a year and move to an app-only format.“Last year, we had more on the app, but still did our web and desktop.  In the next year or so, we’re going to be only mobile,”Michael Adnani, vice president for retail and head of brand alliances at Flipkart told The Times of India. “A year ago, 6% of our traffic was coming from mobile. In less than 18 months, that traffic is tenfold. That shows the significance of what a mobile phone is doing for the consumers and consequently doing for us.”On top of the comScore report, Amazon’s press releae claims that the app analytics firm App Annie reported that Amazon.in app downloads grew by over 200% year-over-year in October.According to the App Annie database, as of Dec. 17, Amazon is the 5th most-popular iPhone free shopping app in India, while Flipkart is ranked number-two. Wish is the most-popular free shopping app for the iPhone in India, according to the App Annie database.Ecommerce marketplaces are on the rise in India, and sales there are growing faster than those in China.

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Twitter Unveils ‘Fabric’ Platform for Developers

  Twitter on Wednesday set out to weave itself into mobile applications with a free "Fabric" platform to help developers build better programs and make more money. 

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo touted Fabric as "the future of mobile software development" while unveiling the platform at the one-to-many messaging service's first conference for makers of applications for smartphones or tablet computers. 

Fabric consists of software tools to tackle challenges such as stability and distribution of applications as well as streamlining user log ins and placing ads. 

The move could build Twitter functions directly into new mobile apps, which could greatly expand the reach of the messaging platform. 

Twitter has been under pressure to build up its ranks of users, and making itself a global foundation for sharing, communicating, and placing money-making ads would put it at the heart of modern day mobile Internet lifestyles. 

A kit for making sense of application performance data is built on Twitter-owned Crashlytics, while ad management uses the San Francisco-based company's MoPub mobile ad exchange. 

"We started Fabric more than a year ago to take on, tackle, and solve challenges faced by developers," Crashlytics co-founder and Twitter product manager Jeff Seibert said during a keynote presentation at the Flight conference for mobile developers. 

Fabric puts Twitter at the heart of letting users share comments in real-time from inside mini-programs and providing a common way for people to log in, according to demonstrations at the day-long San Francisco conference. 

Fabric promised to weave Twitter into all kinds of mobile applications around the world by letting developers easily build in "tweeting" and logging in using Twitter IDs. 

"Nothing is as powerful as someone using your app and wanting to share a moment of pure joy being able to do that instantly," Seibert told developers. 

The list of more than 100 "beta" partners for the Fabric launch included McDonald's, Spotify, Jawbone, and the Wall Street Journal. 

"We view Twitter as a very complementary news channel to all of our news brands," said News Corp senior vice president of strategy Raju Narisetti, whose company operates the newspaper. 

"Now, our app is part of the conversation people are having about our journalism." 

Fabric is being used to quickly detect and fix bugs at streaming music service Spotify, and to let users share songs, according to global business head Jorge Espinel. 

"Music is social and meant to be shared, so having a simple implementation to have fans share music via Twitter is critical," Espinel said while taking part in the keynote presentation. 

Fabric kits were made available to developers at Flight and will be rolled out broadly to the developer community in coming days, according to Twitter. 

Fun, functional or hip applications are seen as vital to the popularity of smartphones or tablets.

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Gartner Predicts Positive Modi Effect On e-India

Prime minister narendra Modi’s much-hailed ‘Digital India’ initiative, which earned a vote of confidence from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who met the PM in early October) is expected to boost the government’s IT spending by 5 percent to $7.2 billion in 2015, estimates technology research firm Gartner.

A chunk of these expenses is expected to be incurred in the revving up of external IT services and telecommunications, the development of broadband and cloud-based initiatives, and the creation of digitally-governed smart cities across the country.

Anurag Gupta, research director, Gartner, said in a statement, “The delivery of a citizen-centric and transparent government is only possible through the extensive use of technology and by leveraging digital government.”

Gartner also identified the top strategic technology trends for 2015 in its report. It defines “strategic trends” as those that are likely to have a significant impact on an organisation for the next three years and have “a high potential for disruption of the business [for both end users and IT] and the need for a major investment”.

Gartner analyst David Cearley noted that “the merging of the real and virtual worlds, the advent of intelligence everywhere, and the technology impact of the digital business shift” will define tech in the coming year.

Some of the trends to watch out for are:

• Computing everywhere with the rise of handheld devices
• Rise of 3D printing
• Advanced analytics with every app becoming an ‘analytic app’
• Convergence of cloud and mobile computing
• Growth of ‘smart machines’ in which advanced algorithms will allow systems to understand their environment, learn for themselves, and act autonomously
• Advent of ‘web-scale IT’, a pattern of computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting
• Risk-based security and self-protection

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Google Offers Guide To Help iOS Users Switch To Android

 
Designed for iPhone and iPad users, the new Switch website explains everything from transferring photos and music to setting up email and messaging.

Google has launched a website called Switch that has one goal in mind: educate Apple iPhone and iPad users on how they can easily move their data to Android-based devices.

Essentially a manual, it describes how owners of Apple devices, which run the iOS mobile operating system, can take photos and music and bring them to devices running Google's Android, as well as transfer contacts, set-up email and find apps that they were using on their iOS-based devices.

While the site is somewhat small in its scope, it's an obvious shot at Apple. The site provides detailed instructions on getting content from one device to another and touts how "simple" it is to transfer that information.

Apple and Google have been in a war of words -- and a battle for customers -- over the last several years with each side hammering the other for seeming shortfalls. Apple at a special press event last week took aim at Android's alleged fragmentation, pointing out that the platform is having trouble getting users onto a single version of the software. Google, meanwhile, tends to focus on the benefits of Android and features where it believes its product stands out.

Google's Android has about a 51 percent share of the US market when it comes to smartphone platforms, according to a report last month from research firm ComScore. Apple has slightly more than 42 percent of the market.

The iPhone maker last month launched its own guide on how to switch from Android to iOS. Like Google, Apple provides directions on how to make the move and explains how it believes the switch is easy.

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Rich List: Mumbai University Has More Billionaire Alumni Than MIT

 Who knew that Mumbai University would have produced more number of billionaires than some of the best universities in USA or UK. Wealth-X, in association with UBS, has released Billionaires census 2014, which reveals the top universities of the world that have shaped the maximum number of billionaires.

The Top 10 universities list is filled with American schools, other than the number 9 and 10 spot. Mumbai University features at the ninth place that has produced 12 billionaires. Surprisingly, Mumbai University has beaten New York University and MIT in the list. University of Pennsylvania leads the list with 25 billionaires with Harward in second place with 22.

Another startling fact that came to light from this list is that only one UK based school features in the list and no it is not oxford. London School of Economics is at number 10 that has prepared 11 billionaires. The top 20 list has only 4 outsiders, the rest are all universities from USA. The Russian Lomonosov Moscow State University is at number 11 and ETH Zurich is at number 20.

Interestingly, 35% of the 2,325 billionaires in the world have not obtained a tertiary-level degree. The Wealth-X and UBS study suggests that higher education is not a precondition to becoming a billionaire.

However, In India studies are considered as the most essential part of growing up. Each parent wants the child to grow up and become successful in their lives, hence education is very important if one wants to climb the success ladder. But, on the other side, if you look at some of the biggest names in the Billionaires arena, have not completed college. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg being the most prominent of them all.

Top 20 list of universities that produced the maximum billionaires:

1. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA (UNITED STATES) — 25

2. HARVARD UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 22

3. YALE UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 20

4. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES) — 16

5. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 14

6. CORNELL UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 14

7. STANFORD UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) 14

8. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY (UNITED STATES) — 12

9. UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI (INDIA) — 12

10. LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE (UNITED KINGDOM) — 11

11. LOMONOSOV MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY (RUSSIA) — 11

12. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS (UNITED STATES) — 10

13. DARTMOUTH COLLEGE (UNITED STATES) — 10

14. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN (UNITED STATES) — 10

15. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 9

16. DUKE UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 9

17. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 8

18. BROWN UNIVERSITY (UNITED STATES) — 8

19. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (UNITED STATES) — 7

20. ETH ZURICH SWITZERLAND — 6

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Father Son Duo Sue Facebook, Ferrari

A Swiss father and his son who gained millions of Facebook Inc followers through their Ferrari SpA fan pages sued the social media company and the carmaker claiming they teamed up to illegally seize control of the websites. The lawsuit filed in California state court follows earlier legal spats in Europe between Olivier and Sammy Wasem and the sports car company over their "Ferrari Fan Page" and a "Formula 1 Vision" page. 

"Ferrari wanted it," the Wasems said in a complaint filed October 14 in San Mateo County Superior Court. "So, with Facebook's knowledge and substantial assistance, Ferrari took it." 

The Wasems claim that after their page debuted in June 2008, Ferrari created its own page that wasn't as popular, prompting the company to ask Facebook to give it administrative control over the Ferrari Fan Page. In March 2009 the sports car company contacted the Wasems and said "legal issues" had forced it to take over administration of their page, they said. 

After the Ferrari co-administrator was added without permission from the Wasems, the company began to negotiate with them about a partnership to manage the fan page and create a Formula 1 page, according to the complaint. In 2012, the Wasems said, Facebook notified them that they had been downgraded to content creators, and the social networking company cut off their access entirely to both fan pages last year.

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Photo Sharing Site Twitpic Is Doomed After All

 It's been a pretty tumultuous couple of months for photo-sharing site Twitpic.

Early last month, the company announced that it was shutting down on Sept. 25, citing a trademark dispute with Twitter. A couple weeks later, the company announced that it had been acquired, and would no longer be shutting its doors.

In a blog post on its site today, Twitpic founder Noah Everett announced that Twitpic is, in fact, shutting down after all:

It's with a heavy heart that I announce again that Twitpic will be shutting down on October 25th. We worked through a handful of potential acquirers and exhausted all potential options. We were almost certain we had found a new home for Twitpic (hence our previous tweet), but agreeable terms could not be met. Normally we wouldn't announce something like that prematurely but we were hoping to let our users know as soon as possible that Twitpic was living on.

I'm sincerely sorry (and embarrassed) for the circumstances leading up to this, from our initial shutdown announcement to an acquisition false alarm.

The post also offers a link with how to export all your photos you have on the site. It's limited to only the most recent 5,000 pictures.

TechCrunch's Josh Constine says that the tool is lagging right now, but that's probably because a flood of people are trying to download their photos at the same time.

Twitpic has been around since 2008 and allowed you to share photos on Twitter long before you were natively allowed to do so from within Twitter. It's also one of the only ways to tweet out animated GIFs on popular Twitter feed readers like TweetDeck.

The dispute that led to the end of Twitpic has to do with trademarks. Twitpic was contacted by Twitter and asked to abandon the trademark application or Twitter would shut down its API access. Rather than fight the company, Everett decided to shut Twitpic down.

Twitter said that it would allow Twitpic to use the name, and only objected to the company's trademark application.

"We're sad to see Twitpic is shutting down," a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider at the time. "We encourage developers to build on top of the Twitter service, as Twitpic has done for years, and we made it clear that they could operate using the Twitpic name. Of course, we also have to protect our brand, and that includes trademarks tied to the brand."

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Google Launches New Text Messaging Apps Competing Facebook Messenger

 Google is introducing a text-messaging app called "Messenger" with the launch of Android 5.0 Lollipop, the new version of its mobile operating system.

That, obviously, will be confusing because it has the same name as Facebook's existing messaging app, Messenger. Do not expect folks at Facebook to jump for joy at this news.

Facebook Messenger is a juggernaut: it's currently No.1 in the app store charts, according to App Annie. It has more than 200 million users, and that number will climb as Facebook requires its users to do their messaging separately inside Messenger instead of Facebook (the company's new policy). It's also a really good app.

Facebook also has another "messenger" app you may have heard of: Whatsapp Messenger. It's No.3 in the app store charts. It has more than 600 million users.

It gets even more confusing because Google already has a really good messaging app. If you're an Android user, you'll know that Google's Hangouts app is one of the best things about Android - chat messages from your Gmail account follow you automatically on your phone. It's seamless.

So it's not clear why Google wants people on a traditional SMS/MMS text messaging platform as well. Google told the 9to5Google blog:

Messenger and Hangouts offer users choice, each have their own benefits. Hangouts work great for cross platform (web, iOS, Android) and cross medium communications (video, voice,messaging, SMS). Messenger will be specially designed to be a quick and easy way to send and receive SMS and MMS messages on Android; more to come (Nexus 6 will come with both apps).

And just to be even more confusing, "Messenger" used to be called "Messaging," according to Phone Arena.

OK, so users will have choices. That's great. It would be easier to figure out those choices if the product names were a little more distinctive, though. Just a suggestion.

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Former Google CEO: Here How To Build A $300 Billion Company

 To be successful in the technology-driven internet age, a company has to attract "smart creative" employees and then create an environment where they can thrive.

At least that's the argument that Google's Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg make in "How Google Works."

In the new book, executive chairman and former CEO Schmidt and former SVP of product Rosenberg outline what they learned while building Google into a company now worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The duo created a fun, illustrated presentation to highlight the main principles of the book.

Google gave us permission to republish those slides here.

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