Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The company so many people love to hate, Facebook, is synonymous with the Internet in some parts of the world! “Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook…“It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook,” he concluded.” Ben Thompson states what the Facebook haters don’t like to admit: “The reality is the company is part of the fabric of the Internet: you may not like email, but you have an email address, and you could say a similar thing about Facebook. If anything the fact some don’t like the product yet use it anyway is a testament to just how strong it is.” Thompson then points to the usual counter-point that detractors make: “Sure, Facebook looks unstoppable today, but then again, Google looked unstoppable ten years ago when social seemingly came out of nowhere: surely the Facebook killer is imminent!” Sure, ...

Citing the Association of American Publishers data , Nick Carr pointed out that the explosive growth of e-books sales in the US (doubling or much more every year between 2008 and 2011) seems to have not just slowed down, it seems to have come to a halt (it was an anemic 5% this year). Note that Carr is not saying that e-book sales have stopped; just that the growth in sales between successive years has slowed. In fact, as Carr points out, the share of printed books in the US continues to fall, just not as fast as before. E-books currently account for 25% of total book sales. Carr’s list of suspects for this apparent e-book plateau includes factors like the medium not suiting certain types of books (“like nonfiction and literary fiction”) or certain reading positions (like “lying on the couch at home”); the existence of multipurpose tablets that distract you from reading; and there not being much of a price difference between printed and e-books. And, perhaps, it also ha...