Mashblur provides links to other sites on the internet and doesnt host any files itself. Mashblur is a place to watch movies online without paying ridiculous theater prices. Watch Movies and Tv Shows
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As Election Day approaches, tension is rising. Schools are canceling classes. Investors are waiting cautiously. Law enforcement is on alert for violence at polling locations. And when what seemed like half the internet shut down last week, fear of a large-scale cyberattack joined that list.
Sam Altman, president of the start-up accelerator Y Combinator, was
one of many to ask the question: Is the U.S. about to be on the
receiving end of a major attack timed for the election?
"That attack on Dyn felt to me like a warm-up to something or a practice run," Altman told Mashblur. "Like someone going after something very specific."
Following the attack, concerns about a massive effort to disrupt the
internet on Election Day started to percolate in the tech community. The
attack came in an election season in which cybersecurity has been an
underlying concern thanks to hacking attributed to Russia.
The Dyn attack, though different from the hacks that ended up making
public massive amounts of Democratic National Committee and Hillary
Clinton campaign emails, only added to the broader fears. The FBI has warned state election boards to be on alert — though they may be powerless to do much about significant attacks.
Cybersecurity experts that spoke with Mashable, however,
were not particularly worried about large-scale attacks directed at the
internet itself. They could not, however, rule anything out.
Rock the vote
Most components of US Election Day infrastructure don't rely on the
internet, so an attack wouldn't directly impact actual votes. But if the
internet were down, people wouldn't be able to look up polling place
locations or other voting information. A widespread cyberattack could
cause fear about exactly what's going on on Election Day and even sway
some voters to stay home.
According to Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice
University who studies the security of electronic voting systems, voting
machines are never connected to the internet. Voter registration
databases will mostly be printed out by Election Day, but counties that
allow voting in more than one polling place and use electronic voter
registration information could be affected.
Media reports of election results, of course, could be knocked out of
commission by a DDoS attack. And last-minute get out the vote efforts
would definitely be disrupted by a cyberattack.
"That kind of attack would dramatically disrupt get out the vote efforts," Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Mashable.
Expect the worst
There are cyberattacks every day. They just usually aren't as
effective as the one that took out access to several major websites and
services last Friday.
Widespread problems with websites including Spotify, Netflix and
Twitter, were the result of a DDoS or "distributed denial of service"
attack against the domain name system host Dyn.
Unidentified hackers used 100,000 devices
to overwhelm Dyn's DNS systems. By overwhelming Dyn with traffic from
what were likely poorly protected devices like connected TVs and DVRs,
hackers were able to prevent people from accessing any website that
relied on Dyn's DNS services.
DDoS attacks are relatively simple
and only require massive scale, not complex skill. Since the attacks
don't need to target only one website and can instead take down huge
swaths of the internet, they're pretty scary on a day as big as Nov. 8.
SEE ALSO: Hacking the presidential election just isn't possible (yet)
"We see new levels of attacks, new zero days, new strains every day,"
Dale Drew, chief security officer for the internet service provider
Level 3 Communications, told Mashable. "We have been trained to expect the worst case scenario every time we see an attack."
Learning from the past
Last week's cyberattack primarily affected the East Coast. Another
attack could be geographically based, or cover a wider range. That
doesn't mean it won't be as effective the next time around.
Companies like Dyn face cyberattacks every day. Most are fended off,
or don't affect as many clients and people as last week's. In the
aftermath of this attack, clients who use one DNS provider have already
added a second or ramped up their security in other ways, Hall said.
If anything, the chances of a similar attack on Election Day are lower, Hall said.
"No one seriously going to use that to disrupt or attack elections
would have done something so blatant and so public," Hall said.
No one has claimed responsibility for the recent cyberattack, but
security experts know that it came from a bot net using the base code
Mirai. The hackers behind the bot net were likely displaying the net's
power to anyone interested in its services for hire, Hall said. He
thought it unlikely the same group would try another attack so soon
afterward.
SEE ALSO: This mesmerizing map shows what cyberattacks look like
Still, people are worried. Ahead of one of the most tense days in
American history, cybersecurity experts advised clients of DNS providers
to widen their security options.
Dyn is preparing for future attacks whether or not they fall on Election Day.
"As you may imagine, we cannot predict future DDoS attacks," Dyn spokesman Adam Coughlin told Mashable.
"We have learned a great deal from the recent attack and very quickly
put protective measures in place during the attack, and we are extending
and scaling those measures aggressively. Additionally, Dyn has been
active in discussions with internet infrastructure providers to share
learnings and mitigation methods for future attacks."
And people at home — whose devices might have been part of the attack
without their knowledge — should check exactly what they have plugged
in before they head out to the polls.
For nearly two weeks, Facebook has been at the center of a media firestorm about whether its "human editors" have been inappropriately tampering with the "Trending Topics" seen by millions.
A U.S. senator has pressured Facebook for answers. Top Facebook executives have met with leading conservative figures like Glenn Beck to assure them that no systemic liberal bias reaches the users of its social network. And CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put his own integrity on the line to ensure everything is above board.
This is Facebook in 2016: A sprawling $300 billion giant with 1.6 billion users and such intense scrutiny on it that even an unsubstantiated rumor about a possible political bias by one contracted editor managing a section many users don't even look at can set the political and media world on fire for weeks.
The real takeaway from this controversy, according to some longtime Facebook watchers, is less about the whiff of bias than the reminder that Facebook is now in uncharted waters, with no clear guidebook for how to manage itself and the expectations of its community.
"No matter how much you think, 'Some day, we'll get to everyone on the planet,' no company in any industry has ever been in that kind of position. Therefore there is no precedent for the structure, systems, responsibilities and controls that are necessary for an organization that has that degree of influence," David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, the definitive account of Facebook's rise, told Mashable's Biz Please podcast, which you can listen to below, or download on iTunes and Stitcher.
"[Mark] is still a relatively young person who is learning as he goes," says Kirkpatrick, who also founded the Techonomy conference, "as are all the people there because nothing like this has ever existed before."
Should Facebook have a public editor to vet its media efforts, as Mashable has suggested? Should it invite government oversight, or push for radical transparency with the public on this and other projects? These are all fair questions, but there is little precedent for the right answer.
Facebook could change a few lines of code and impact the personal lives of millions, an extreme level of influence that it unintentionally demonstrated when it conducted an emotion manipulationstudy in 2014.
Zuckerberg, who famously wrote "I'm CEO, bitch" on his business cards in the early days, has remodeled himself in recent years as a younger statesmen, philanthropist and father of the year, effectively becoming a polished ambassador for the powerful business. Facebook, likewise, has attempted to build trust with an equal playing field paved by algorithms. More than anything, the reports about trending topic bias threatened that trust.
"I consider them a highly ethical company that takes issues like this deeply seriously," Kirkpatrick says. "The fact that Zuckerberg met with these conservative leaders.... is a sign of how seriously he takes it and how much he feels misunderstood and how much he wants to demonstrate that he is fair-minded."
It seems to have worked: Beck praised Zuckerberg for looking him in the eye and appearing "sincere" in the desire to create a fair public space.
Perhaps that will end this particular controversy, perhaps not. Either way, this particular incident is still far from the worst that Zuckerberg and his team have experienced.
When Kirkpatrick first met Zuckerberg, it was for lunch in 2006 "right in the middle of the News Feed controversy," when a big chunk of its user base revolted over the introduction of the News Feed. "But he just rolled right through it. Because being the data geek he was, he knew that people were actually using this new feature, and what they said was much less important than what they did."
As Facebook continues to stretch deeper into media, politics and the very core of our lives, data may not be enough to weather the inevitable storms that come.
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Writer Paulette Perhach had just broken up with her boyfriend, and she wasn’t exactly the picture of financial security.
“I had a little over $100 to my name, I owed my mom $1200, I owed my boyfriend $2000,” she tells Mashable. “It’s a terrible feeling to have to rely on someone else.”
But Perhach landed back on her feet, and turned her all-too-cautionary tale into an essay on Medium titled “A Story of a Fuck Off Fund,” which advised people to have a secret stash of cash should your relationship go south, you get into an uncomfortable situation at work, or you just need to make a clean break.
“If any man ever hit you, if anyone ever sexually harassed you, you’d tell him to fuck right off. You want to be, no, you will be the kind of woman who can tell anyone to fuck off if a fuck off is deserved, so naturally you start a Fuck Off Fund,” she wrote.
While ‘how to regain your financial independence after a bad break-up’ might not be the type of story you want to read on the supposedly most romantic day of the year, Perhach’s story is all-too-common for many people.
Perhaps you’re behind on your bills or riddled with student loan debt, so you decide it might be easy to rely on your partner for just a couple of months. Or maybe you get married and your partner takes control of your joint finances.
But if the relationship dies out, you’ll be left high and dry. You’ll need to find a way to get back on your feet — and build a strong financial foundation for the future.
“You need to love yourself enough to get out of that situation,” Perhach tells Mashable, “and make a plan to never put yourself in that situation again.”
Make a clean break
“As soon as the breakup happens, call the bank,” Erin Lowry, a certified financial planner and founder of the Broke Millennial, says.
Maybe your break-up won’t be a bad one, but it’s important to protect yourself from the possibility that your ex might drain your accounts. Take caution to change the passwords and account information on all of your accounts — even the ones that you aren’t sure your partner had access to.
It’s important to completely cut financial ties with your ex. Remove your partner’s name from any leases, your will, your life insurance policies, and any other accounts that protect your financial health.
If you had a joint bank account or any other joint possessions, you’ll need to figure out how to divide those assets fairly. If your former partner was abusive or you anticipate the discussions turning nasty, you should enlist a lawyer to represent your interests in these discussions.
Once you have all of your finances on hand, it’s important to do an honest assessment of what might be a damaging financial situation.
First, Lowry advises, you should pull a credit report, which you can do online for free once a year. It’s important to know what your credit score looks like — and to assure that your ex didn’t do anything to damage your credit score.
“If you don’t have a strong credit score, it’s important to immediately start the process of aggressively rebuilding it,” Lowry says.
And then you’ll need to look at all of the money you currently have in the bank, where all of the money that’s going out is going, and just how much debt you have that you’ll need to pay off.
“It starts about knowing what you have, and knowing what you owe,” Sophia Bera, a certified financial planner at Gen Y Planning, says. “If you want to increase your net worth, it’s important to know what’s in all of your accounts, find strategies to pay off debt.”
Then, you need to set financial goals, including how much you can spend each month, how long you’ll give yourself to pay off your debts, and how much you want to save each month. It’s essential that these goals are attainable based on your financial reality — not your financial fantasy.
Make it work
If you got yourself in a position where you needed to rely on someone else to make ends meet, it’s going to be a difficult climb to financial stability.
“I definitely got in my own bad situation. I always wanted to be fun and crazy and impulsive. And people like that can say ‘eh why not?’ and spend all their money. It’s something that I constantly struggle,” Perhach says. “You need to be cool with with being broke.”
“Our coffee table is a door that we put on top of two crates,” Perhach says. “It can be really freeing to just be yourself in your financial stage, and not living the life that everyone advertises you should be having.”
Accept your financial situation and find a way to make it better — and that often comes from downsizing. If you have a nice car, you might consider selling it and buying a used car. Cancel your Netflix account. Learn to cook and stop eating take out.
“Get yourself into a position that you’re not living outside of your means,” Lowry says. “That could mean uncomfortable decisions.”
It might be time to start looking for a better and high-paying gig. Or, you might want to land a side-gig, waitressing or freelancing. That extra money could help you cover costs — or you could funnel it all into a savings account if your day job covers your bills and other monthly costs.
At this stage in rebuilding, it’s important to be saving more than you’re spending: budget enough so you can cover your monthly costs, and then put 70% of what’s left over in savings and use the other 30% for some sort of fun fund.
A few months of living like a pauper will be worth it when you lay the groundwork for a palatial financial future.
Don’t do it alone — but don't rely on others
Your path to financial independence doesn’t need to be a solo journey. It’s OK to enlist the help of your family and friends.
For instance, if you can’t afford a new place right on the heels of your breakup, you might consider crashing at your friends’ or your parents’ place for a few weeks or months.
But it’s important that you don’t get yourself into another situation of financial dependence — so consider paying rent to your family or friends if you anticipate on staying longer than expected.
Perhach says she moved back into her parents, where she got three months free and then paid rent that was cheaper than the market rate.
“If you need to live with your parents to get a stronger start on life, it’s not that crazy of a thing to do,” she says. “It’s all about our egos, but it shouldn’t be.”
Also, enlist the help of your friends to keep you accountable. Share your financial goals and your budget with someone you trust, and schedule a weekly check in with them so they’ll know you’re doing your part to keep yourself financially healthy.
Protect yourself in the future
Once you get yourself in a strong financial position, make sure you make sure that your financial independence will last — even if you get in another relationship.
If you do decide to merge your finances with a new partner, make sure you’re taking precautions to protect yourself and your finances. That means educating yourself about financial matters, staying smart about your spending habits, involving yourself in all financial decisions your partner makes, and perhaps even drafting a prenuptial agreement to protect your assets.
Follow Perhach’s advice and start an “Fuck off” fund or security fund so you’ll always have savings should anything in your life abruptly change, and budget a certain amount each month to go into that fund.
That way, you won’t have to start from scratch if the relationship ends.
“It’s a terrible feeling to have to rely on someone else,” Perhach says. “And I think the popularity of the article shows how many people have gotten into similar situations. So many people have said to me: ‘I wished I had this.’
Your Twitter addiction might save you some money starting Tuesday.
The company has launched Twitter Offers, which lets marketers run promotions that you can redeem via your credit card. If a Twitter Offer pops up in your timeline, now you can add the Offer to your credit card or debit card. When you click to buy the item, the discount will be applied, though the cash back won't show up for a few days.
As with Twitter's Buy button, to redeem the offer, users have to click on it. Then they'll be directed to a landing page where they can enter their credit- or debit card info.
Once you enter your card information, Twitter has it on hand so you can redeem future offers without that hassle. (Having your data also helps Twitter push its "Buy" button.)
For advertisers, Twitter Offers presents a way to track ROI for Twitter-based promotions. If 50 people redeem an Offer, for instance, they can work out how much they spent for each redemption.
The company says it is planning to work with a "handful" of unnamed brands for Twitter Offers this holiday season.
Filling an open position in your organization is a lot like dating: Once you find the right match, you want to do everything in your power to keep that person around. And just like in the dating world, your perfect candidate has the right to walk away if he or she isn't satisfied with what your company has to offer.
A few years ago, when unemployment was high and job opportunities were scarce, a company didn't have to work as hard to retain its best employees. But the tides have shifted as the economy continues to improve, and employers now must vie for the attention of today's top professionals.
"Qualified candidates are often inundated with multiple job offers," said Edward Fleischman, CEO of recruitment firm Execu|Search. "As a result, they can be more selective and are more comfortable waiting for an offer that meets their specific criteria — and job hopping when another offer comes in."
Gus Pena, managing partner of staffing firm Ascendo Resources, believes that high turnover rates within a company stem from crucial mistakes during the hiring process.
"It starts with buy-in and attention paid to hiring new employees," Pena told Business News Daily. "If the hiring team doesn't put the right amount of time into hiring, companies may be forced to take less-than-ideal candidates, because the best options will be snapped up by the competitors."
If you want to hold onto your new hires for more than a few months, follow these five employee retention tips:
Consider a test drive. Giving a candidate a sample assignment before hiring can be a great way to see if he or she is the right person for the job. Test projects and 'working interviews' give both the employer and candidate an opportunity to see if the hire will work, Pena said.
Offer fair market value. As the economy rebounds, employers should offer fair market value for potential employees, as compensation is a major reason candidates may not want to work for you, Pena said. If you can't match a candidate's desired salary, at least consider offering the opportunity for a performance-based raise after a certain period of time.
Help new employees get adjusted. Ensure that new hires feel involved and comfortable in their new roles, Fleischman said. Hiring managers should make sure an employee's first days and weeks include a healthy balance of training, meeting new colleagues and learning about the job's responsibilities. This will help the new worker acclimate to the position in a way that isn't too harrowing or discouraging.
Discuss the new hire's career path at your company. Fleischman advised discussingadvancement opportunities as soon as possible, and providing continuing education services to help employees get there. But don't make promises you can't keep: Pena noted that both employers and candidates are known for over-promising, which can lead to issues later on when one or both parties fail to live up to expectations.
Check in frequently, and react quickly. Once a new employee has settled in, check in regularly to make sure he or she is still happy with the workload and environment. Identifying issues and taking immediate action to correct them will boost employee engagement and keep good employees from leaving.
TheMashable Events Boardis a great place to find leading conferences in your industry, whether it's advertising, technology, media or public relations. This week, we're highlighting five events that we think can help move your career forward, from those in Seattle to New York. If you don't find something that's right for you, check out more than 60 events featured in ourcomplete listing.
On the Events Board, you can sort listings by date added, get discount codes as a Mashablereader and watch videos of past events to get previews of what to expect. You can also follow@MashableEvents on Twitter to catch the best events before they sell out.
PR News Social Media Summit with Taste of Tech Date: June 3 Location: New York, N.Y.
This event will connect communicators with the latest technology and tools to help them create successful campaigns and communications initiatives, and with digital communications leaders who will share the latest best practices in using the social media networks that matter most to their organizations and clients.
MozCon 2014 Date: July 14 to 16 Location: Seattle, Wash.
Join us for three days of forward-thinking, actionable sessions on SEO, social media, community building, content marketing, brand development, CRO, the mobile landscape, analytics, and more.
Mobile+Web DevCon: Chicago 2014 Date: July 15 to 17 Location: Chicago, Ill.
Mobile+Web DevCon is a three day event dedicated to helping developers and software engineers like you master the latest development tools and trends as well as best practices in design and UX. We want to help you make awesome apps and websites.
SwitchPitch LA Date: May 22 Location: Los Angeles, Calif.
SwitchPitch is a role-reversal event where established companies pitch funded innovation projects to qualified startups looking for great partners. This event is for startups, development shops and design shops interested in meeting decision-makers at Fortune 500 companies interested in working with startups.
Social Media Strategies Summit: New York 2014 Date: June 11 to 12 Location: New York, N.Y.
This summit brings together some of the brightest and best in social media and marketing and will provide the latest information about the changing industry.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when — after all theblood, sweat and tears you put into your application— you click on your decision letter only to read, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Put simply, it’s pretty awful.
When I got my first rejection letter, I had just arrived at Penn Station in New York City on a business trip. I reloaded the letter a couple of times on my computer, just to make sure, and then I walked to Sephora and bought myself some way-too-expensive nail polish. Then I called my mom. Ultimately, things worked out for me, but none of that mattered at the moment.
Unfortunately, given how tough the competition is, it’s possible that you won’t get into your dream business school. After you get the news, however, the fact that you didn’t get in becomes way less important than what you do about it.
Once you’ve digested the news (and indulged yourself with a little pampering for the rest of the day), it’s important to wake up the next morning fresh and ready to get to work. Here are my tips for getting past the “no” and getting back on track.
Scenario 1: You Loved Your Dream School, But You’d Be Interested in Going Somewhere Else
Of course, it’s likely that you’re still waiting for decisions from other schools you applied to and are excited about (most Round I decisions come out by the end of January). While schools typically don’t like candidates to send over additional information after the admissions deadline, if you’ve had anything big happen since you applied that was not covered in your application (e.g., you’ve taken on major new responsibilities at work or started volunteering at a local shelter), don’t be afraid to send an email to the admissions office and make sure they know about it. In the meantime, enjoy all of the holiday festivities I’m sure you’ve got coming up in the next few weeks, and try to take your mind off of the process. If you didn’t get into any of the schools you’ve already applied to, there’s still some good news:
Most schools have a second application deadline in January or February, and some programs even accept applicants on a rolling basis well into late spring. So, if you really want to start school in the fall, there’s still time to get back into research mode and find a few more programs that are a good fit.
If you decide to go this route, you’ll need to ramp up pretty quickly (i.e., you might have to write some essays over the holidays). Make sure to really plan out your next couple months so that you’ll be able to fit everything in.
Scenario 2: You Really Don’t Want to Go Anywhere But Your Dream School
If your top choice really is the only school for you, it may be time to reconsider your timeline. There’s still a chance you’ll be able to attend it, you just may need to spend a year or two bolstering your application.
Many schools allow you to call the admissions office to get feedback on your application, especially if you went in for an interview. This should definitely be your first step, as knowing what held you back will be wildly valuable as you plan out how you’ll move forward.
That being said, I’ve heard that this feedback can be pretty vague, so you’ll have to do some decoding. For example, “We didn’t feel that you demonstrated your academic and quantitative abilities to us as strongly as we would have liked to see,” could mean that you were passed onbecause of your GMAT score or GPA.
If this is the case, start studying to retake the GMAT for next year’s application, or consider taking classes at a local college to show off your academic abilities now. And if you’re still in college, you’ve got one more semester, so make it count
If you suspect the reason you didn’t get in was because of a gap in your experience — maybe you’ve never demonstrated quantitative or leadership skills at work — think about what long-term steps you can take to make you a more well-rounded candidate. For example, consider taking an accounting class or asking for more leadership responsibilities at work.
Solid candidates will likely hear the much-less-useful, “We thought you were a great applicant, we just couldn’t find space for you.” If tough competition was your problem, think of things you can do to make your application really stand out next year. Do some meaningful volunteer work, complete an impressive side project at work, or gain a marketable new skill, for example.
Whatever you need to do to improve, start taking steps to do so as soon as possible. Even if you will ultimately be executing a long-term approach, there are still things you can do now to get started — talk to your boss, register for a class, or, if you’re still in undergrad, look for a job that will get you some real-world work experience — to make sure that you’re setting yourself up for a great business school application down the road.
Scenario 3: You Got Put on the Waitlist
Waitlists are tricky, because they work differently for b-schools than they do elsewhere. Business schools are often focused on building a diverse class of students, so instead of having one list with everyone in order, they likely have many lists comprised of students from different backgrounds and sectors. For example, I have a nonprofit background, so I would be on the nonprofit, education and government waitlist.
Given that, it can be a little harder to get pulled off of the waitlist, but it’s definitely not impossible. The most important thing you can do is continue to let the school know that you’re interested (without being overbearing, of course). A friend who was successfully admitted off of the waitlist sent an email once a month to the admissions office to tell them that he still would be happy to accept an offer.
Just make sure to follow the instructions from the admissions office, including what they tell you not to do— the last thing you want to do is antagonize the person who is in charge of deciding whether or not you get in. In other words, if you follow up once and get a response asking you not to do so again, the best thing you can do is wait it out (and maybe start working on your back-up plan just in case).
Getting rejected from the school you were really hoping for can be rough, but it doesn’t have to be the end of your b-school dreams. Ultimately, what you get out of this experience will be what you put into it, so even if you end up at a different school, give it your all. It will definitely still be rewarding.
Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday 2013 have come and gone, but the holiday shopping season has only just begun. Over the next several weeks, U.S. shoppers will be checking off their lists, and according to Shop.org, they'll be spending a projected $82 billion online this holiday season. If you're an e-commerce retailer, it's in your best interest to keep your website in tip-top shape this month.
Small e-commerce businesses, in particular, stand to gain a lot by putting themselves out there and competing with the bigger retailers during this peak selling season. Debbi Lechner, vice president of marketing for Web.com, suggested that small businesses improve their website right away in order to maximize sales.
"We know that small business owners are strapped from both a time and resource standpoint, but they want to get the most out of this busy holiday season online," she said.
Lechner offered the following tips for optimizing your e-commerce website for increased holiday sales:
Feature special offers and discounts on your website. Make sure that your holiday offers are featured prominently on your home page. Update your website's images, keywords and search engine optimization to help shoppers find your business in search results.
Share your holiday offers on social media. You should frequently post your special offers to your top social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Linking your posts back to your website will promote calls and orders, and drive more traffic to your website. You will also see increased awareness and followers of your social channels when customers share your offers with their friends.
Consider pay-per-click advertising. Pay-per-click advertising is the fastest way to drive prospective customers to your website to learn about your special deals and offers. You can advertise on Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and more, and target your advertising on these sites to better reach your local customers. To do this, edit your existing messaging into short advertising phrases and test your responses. Make sure you measure your results to maximize your budget.
Make sure your website is mobile-optimized. Today, more and more consumers use theirmobile device when considering a purchase. Be sure to provide your prospects and customers with a good online experience, regardless of whether they are browsing via a smartphone, tablet or PC.
Be ready with your customer support. Holiday shoppers want a positive customer experience. Make your contact details easy to find on all pages of your website. You may want to consider adding temporary help to answer the additional calls, if you think you will need it. A simple answering service can ensure you don't miss a call and lets customers know you plan to get back to them quickly.
Seven years ago, Twitter was just a small, ragtag collection of hackers fighting over the basis premise of the company and struggling to keep the site from crashing every other day. Twitter has come a long way since then.
The company is on track to bring in more than half a billion dollars in revenue this year. It hasmore than 230 million monthly active users worldwide and some 2,300 employees in offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Dublin and Sao Paulo. It navigated a smooth IPO in November (unlike another social network that shall remain nameless) and is now valued at around $30 billion.
Twitter has grown up, but the business still needs to mature. The social network has just more than 53 million monthly active users in the U.S., significantly less than Facebook and only about a fifth of the country's total number of Internet users. Global user growth has slowed dramatically, both on a quarter-over-quarter basis and year-over-year. And while revenue is on track to nearly double this year from 2012, the company is far from profitable. It reported a net loss of $79 million in 2012 and a loss of $133.9 million in the first nine months of this year.
On the product side, Twitter recently made significant changes to the user experience on mobile and desktop, emphasizing conversations and visual content in the stream. However, those changes were quickly criticized by many of Twitter's oldest and most active users. Behind the scenes, Twitter is still painfully hesitant about approving new features and reportedly even considered killing off some of these recent changes shortly after their releases due to the negative reaction.
As Twitter begins its first full year as a public company, it will have to commit its resources to tackle these other issues — all while operating under the gaze of investors looking for Twitter to grow revenue and yes, turn a profit.
A Richer, Effortless Experience
Despite the initial uproar over Twitter's redesign, the social network will likely only become more visual and interactive in the coming year. That means more prominence for pictures, articles, TV clips, ecommerce features, you name it. Profile pages should expect a redesign to "highlight more useful information," and direct messages — once a buried feature on the service — are becoming prominent and more visual thanks to a new option to send images.
These changes are intended to kill two birds — no pun intended, Twitter — with one stone: provide a more visual (valuable)platform for advertisers and boost user numbers and engagement. Just a few months ago, brand posts on Twitter were essentially just chunks of text with links or small images; now they look like full-fledged banner ads. Likewise, the Twitter feed increasingly resembles the News Feed on Facebook, which may help lower the bar for entry for users who are familiar with Facebook but still confused by Twitter."I definitely think we are going to see Twitter focusing on user acquisition, and develop ways to increase engagement with the existing user base and to attract new users," Clark Fredricksen, VP at eMarketer, told Mash. "Whether through partnerships with media, more engaging product enhancements like images in stream or other ways."
To that end, it's also likely Twitter will continue trying to explain exactly what Twitter is to new users. The company updated its about page to better explain how the service works; it unveiled adedicated account in November that offers a guide to the social network, though it hasn't tweeted much of late. In the same vein, Twitter introduced several new accounts, including @magicrecsand @eventparrot, which automatically notify users about people to follow or breaking news, respectively. Through such accounts, even beginners may eventually be able to get as much out of Twitter as longtime users.
Advertising Beyond Twitter's Nest
The year Facebook went public, it went on a monetization bender. The social network introducedmobile ads, sponsored posts in the News Feed, paid messages — remember that? — and prompted users to pay $7 to promote their own posts. These efforts were as obvious as they were flawed: Facebook needed to show investors its revenue potential.
Instead, Twitter's focus in the coming year will likely be expanding on two of its ad tools. The first is selling native adson other apps outside the Twitter ecosystem, thanks to the recent acquisition of MoPub, a mobile ad exchange. By moving beyond its own network, Twitter should be able to promise advertisers a broader reach than they would get otherwise. "Right now," Blau said, "Facebook ads are only on Facebook, but Twitter is moving pretty fast to break that."Twitter, on the other hand, will probably be more cautious when it comes to introducing new revenue-generating products."Facebook tends to innovate very quickly. They tend to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks," said Brian Blau, a social media analyst with Gartner. "Twitter is not as experimental."
The second big push, according to Fredricksen, will be to expand its self-service ad platform to more countries in order to spur international revenue growth. "One of the ways that Google and Facebook have seen huge increases in sales, particularly in foreign markets where they don't have sales teams necessarily, has been through their self-service tools," he said.
Beyond that, some speculate that the social network might eventually roll out more video ads through Vine or Twitter — or that they may introduce some new promoted product. Given how slowly Twitter moves, however, that might take a while.
Embracing the Second Screen
The T-word was dropped more than 40 times in the company's IPO paperwork. No, not Twitter.Television.
"By enhancing the activity related to their programming or event on Twitter, media outlets can drive tune-in and awareness of their original content, leveraging Twitter’s strength as a second screen for television programming," Twitter's team wrote in the S-1, essentially highlighting its pitch to marketers. The emphasis on television shouldn't be too surprising. Marketers spend $70 billion a year on television placements; Twitter (and Facebook) want a piece of that.
In recent months, Twitter has inked partnerships with CBS, BBC, A&E and others as part of the Twitter Amplify program to promote video clips like instant replays or exclusive behind-the-scenes shots that promote shows airing on television. Twitter has also supplied data to Nielsen to track engagement around shows on the social network, and Twitter has partnered with Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others to let subscribers view TV shows and movies via tweets.
"We expect Twitter to continue to develop partnerships with the media," Fredricksen said. "Partnerships in media are core to their Amplify program and their pitch to advertisers."
Given the importance of the second screen to Twitter's business, it seems likely television content will be featured more prominently in its app and on its website. As part of its redesign in November, Twitter introduced the option to see trending TV shows in the Discover tab, but these shows appeared far down on the page. We would expect to see this area receive higher placement in the coming months.
Acquisitions, Acquisitions, Acquisitions
With all the hype and speculation,
Much of that money will likely go toward helping Twitter continue to scale through new hires, infrastructure investments and, of course, acquisitions. It may not have the resources like Facebook or Google to bid billions of dollars on startups like Snapchat, but Blau expects to see Twitter buy up businesses in the second screen space as well as companies that focus on natural language processing and analytics.it's sometimes easy to forget the real reason companies like Twitter go public: to raise money. Twitter raised just more than $1.8 billion from its IPO, a large influx of money though much less than the $16 billion that Facebook raised in its public offering. The company also secured a $1 billion credit line shortly before the IPO.
"Twitter is going to be on an acquisition binge," Blau said, noting that Twitter had previously been on a pace of buying five or six companies a year. "I don't think their rate of acquisition is going to slow down ... I tend to think it will be slightly more weighted to the backend."
Profitable? Probably Not
Twitter is expected to generate close to $1 billion in revenue next year as its ad products continue to mature. That marks impressive growth for the company, but it doesn't mean Twitter will achieve profitability.
Multiple reports based on interviews with bankers and analysts suggest that Twitter will continue spending aggressively in 2014 to scale and compete with other major social networks. As a result, anyone waiting for Twitter to turn a profit may have to wait until 2015
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