Cookie tracking: How Facebook could be worth $100 billion?

By Eric Eldon 10.29.07

When Facebook launches its "SocialAds" advertising product on November 6th, the technology will reportedly rely on cookies — unique identifiers sent to each user's computer from Facebook, and tracked by Facebook when they visit web pages.

The cookies can then be used to serve users contextually relevant ads on other sites, as those users surf across the web.

This could be how Facebook's $15 billion valuation implied by Microsoft's investment last week will start to make sense.

Lee Lorenzen, of Altura Ventures and Facebook application company Adonomics, cites sources in Microsoft and Facebook as well as other developers during a long essay on the possibility of Facebook using cookies to track users, while AllFacebook confirms the rumor.

A Facebook user, for example, who's a 26-year-old male and lists that he likes beer in his Facebook profile might get served an ad for a beer company when he goes to check his favorite team's scores on an outside sports site.

Cookies are pieces of data containing information about web pages that users look at, that are stored in the user's web browser by sites. Facebook already uses cookies to recognize existing users as they return to its site for a new session, so they don't have to login every time. The difference going forward would be that the cookies could be used by to track users beyond Facebook's site.

What we don't know is whether Facebook would control the cookie data (forcing other sites to partner with Facebook, by opening their pages to advertising wanting to access the platform) or whether Facebook would license the data away to another network willing to pay big bucks, for example a BlueLithium or Tacoda..

Krishna Subramanian of BlueLithium, an ad-targeting company recently bought by Yahoo for $300 million, tells us the addition of social data to ad networks can greatly improve the value of banner advertising.

Cookies help advertisers target ads to individual Facebook users, because these cookies reportedly could automatically identify each Facebook user as they surf the web, and then serve advertising relevant to their stated interests on Facebook.

Advertisers would be able to clearly see interests in beer and other such personal information for 50 million Facebook users, for the first time. Right now, the ad networks record actions like surfing or clicking, but lack specific data about what you're actually trying to accomplish through your actions. There aren't many places besides a Facebook profile where the average young man will write "I like to drink beer" next to their name.

Cookie-tracking technology is already in place at ad networks such as aQuantive, a company bought by Microsoft earlier this year.

CPMs, or the amount of money gained per thousand views of an advertisement, are low on social networks — as low as $0.10 per thousand impressions. The people who would benefit most: Vertical advertisers like beverage makers, Subramanian tells us. While he notes not every type of advertiser may benefit, some may be willing to pay CPM rates that are double what they are paying now.

Microsoft's strategic investment in Facebook means it not only has the chance to play with the company's rich and untapped data set, it gets to keep it away from Google.

Lorenzen has previously claimed that Facebook could be worth up to $100 billion because of its ability to drive relevant online advertising. Others scoff at his valuation.

The rumor of a highly-targeted Facebook ad network has been going at least since August ( our coverage here).

Tagged co:Facebook, people:lee lorenzen

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Guess Who Makes the World’s Fastest Windows Vista Laptop

from Digital Inspiration by Amit

Can you guess which company manufactures the fastest notebook computer that runs Windows Vista ? Your choices are Sony, Lenovo, Acer, Gateway, Dell, HP, Toshiba or none of these.

According to PC World benchmarks, the fastest Windows Vista notebook they they've ever tested is the MacBook Pro from Apple.

This 17″ Apple notebook is not just the fastest Vista computer, it is also the lightest 17-inch notebook available at 6.6 pounds and just 1 inch thick. Wish there was a Tablet version of the MacBook.

Last year, Gearlog dubbed Apple MacBook Pro as the fastest Windows XP Core Duo notebook in the market. Thanks David.

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Human-generated ozone will damage crops, according to MIT study

Could reduce production by more than 10 percent by 2100

Nancy Stauffer, MIT Energy Initiative
October 26, 2007

A novel MIT study concludes that increasing levels of ozone due to the growing use of fossil fuels will damage global vegetation, resulting in serious costs to the world's economy.

The analysis, reported in the November issue of Energy Policy, focused on how three environmental changes (increases in temperature, carbon dioxide and ozone) associated with human activity will affect crops, pastures and forests.

The research shows that increases in temperature and in carbon dioxide may actually benefit vegetation, especially in northern temperate regions. However, those benefits may be more than offset by the detrimental effects of increases in ozone, notably on crops. Ozone is a form of oxygen that is an atmospheric pollutant at ground level.

The economic cost of the damage will be moderated by changes in land use and by agricultural trade, with some regions more able to adapt than others. But the overall economic consequences will be considerable. According to the analysis, if nothing is done, by 2100 the global value of crop production will fall by 10 to 12 percent.

"Even assuming that best-practice technology for controlling ozone is adopted worldwide, we see rapidly rising ozone concentrations in the coming decades," said John M. Reilly, associate director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. "That result is both surprising and worrisome."

While others have looked at how changes in climate and in carbon dioxide concentrations may affect vegetation, Reilly and colleagues added to that mix changes in tropospheric ozone. Moreover, they looked at the combined impact of all three environmental "stressors" at once. (Changes in ecosystems and human health and other impacts of potential concern are outside the scope of this study.)

They performed their analysis using the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, which combines linked state-of-the-art economic, climate and agricultural computer models to project emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone precursors based on human activity and natural systems.

Expected and unexpected findings

Results for the impacts of climate change and rising carbon dioxide concentrations (assuming business as usual, with no emissions restrictions) brought few surprises. For example, the estimated carbon dioxide and temperature increases would benefit vegetation in much of the world.

The effects of ozone are decidedly different.

Without emissions restrictions, growing fuel combustion worldwide will push global average ozone up 50 percent by 2100. That increase will have a disproportionately large impact on vegetation because ozone concentrations in many locations will rise above the critical level where adverse effects are observed in plants and ecosystems.

Crops are hardest hit. Model predictions show that ozone levels tend to be highest in regions where crops are grown. In addition, crops are particularly sensitive to ozone, in part because they are fertilized. "When crops are fertilized, their stomata open up, and they suck in more air. And the more air they suck in, the more ozone damage occurs," said Reilly. "It's a little like going out and exercising really hard on a high-ozone day."

What is the net effect of the three environmental changes? Without emissions restrictions, yields from forests and pastures decline slightly or even increase because of the climate and carbon dioxide effects. But crop yields fall by nearly 40 percent worldwide.

However, those yield losses do not translate directly into economic losses. According to the economic model, the world adapts by allocating more land to crops. That adaptation, however, comes at a cost. The use of additional resources brings a global economic loss of 10-12 percent of the total value of crop production.

The regional view

Global estimates do not tell the whole story, however, as regional impacts vary significantly.

For example, northern temperate regions generally benefit from climate change because higher temperatures extend their growing season. However, the crop losses associated with high ozone concentrations will be significant. In contrast, the tropics, already warm, do not benefit from further warming, but they are not as hard hit by ozone damage because ozone-precursor emissions are lower in the tropics.

The net result: regions such as the United States, China and Europe would need to import food, and supplying those imports would be a benefit to tropical countries.

Reilly warns that the study's climate projections may be overly optimistic. The researchers are now incorporating a more realistic climate simulation into their analysis.

Reilly's colleagues are from MIT and the Marine Biological Laboratory. The research was supported by the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

It is part of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), an Institute-wide initiative designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the challenges of the future. MITEI includes research, education, campus energy management and outreach activities, an interdisciplinary approach that covers all areas of energy supply and demand, security and environmental impact.

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Eye-Fi Adds Wi-Fi to Almost Any Digital Camera

The gadget: The Eye-Fi. It's an SD memory card that adds Wi-Fi to any camera. Plus the free Eye-Fi service supports automatic uploads to 20 different web photo sites (like Flickr) as well as a computer on your home network.

The verdict: It works flawlessly.

The performance: Like we said, the Eye-Fi works flawlessly. Setup takes roughly five minutes (you program the card through your computer and bundled card reader). From there, you simply snap pics in the range of your router, and chances are, by the time you go back to your computer, the pictures will be viewable. If your router dies, you turn off your camera, or even if you take out the card and put it back in, the photos will upload when you get things sorted out again. It's actually a normal 2GB memory card underneath all of the other functionality and can work as such.

The catch: We figured it must drain more battery—but apparently in-camera SD power standards dictate that this extra consumed power needs to be minimal, to the level of not being noticeable to the end user. Unfortunately, the product doesn't support hotspots.

The price: $100

The verdict Part II: Sure, the Eye-Fi is basically a cradle replacement. But snapping photos and automatically uploading them in real time to share is truly fantastic, especially when the images can be better than one's camera phone. And the entire product experience is built with simplicity. If you can get over the price and are sick of cords, we strongly recommend the purchase. Available now. [eye-fi]

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A Global, Long-Term Perspective on Crop Production

from Earth2Tech by Alexis Madrigal

The effects of climate change are turning the outlook for long-term food production into an increasingly dire one, according to an MIT study released this week and a report delivered last week by the UN's Special Rapporteur on Food.

UN expert Jean Ziegler is calling for a five-year global moratorium on converting agricultural land into biofuel crop acreage. The use of food crops for production of biofuels, notably corn, he argues, has sent food prices rocketing in a world where the majority of African countries have to import food. Obviously such a move would have a negative impact on the world biofuel market, even if the U.S. were to ignore the advice, as we likely would.

It might seem strange for an advocate for poor African countries like Ziegler to oppose biofuels, considering that many (like the UN ) are quick to point out that climate change would have a disproportionately negative impact on poor communities living in marginal ecological areas. But in many regions, as the MIT report points out, increased carbon dioxide levels would actually be good for crops and soil. Seen purely through a food production lens, a warm, CO2-heavy world might not be such a bad thing.

Still, the desire to head off climate change without starving people living on 50 cents a day is a catch-22 for defenders of our world's poorest populations, and not one that's likely to go away.

But there was bad news for crop production out of the MIT report that biofuel and food proponents can fret about together. The MIT researchers project that ozone would cut crop yields per acre by 40 percent by 2100 if nothing is done to stop its increasing concentration in the atmosphere.

While we normally think about ozone in terms of keeping it intact high in the atmosphere (ah, the hole in the ozone layer ), at ground level it's actually is a nasty pollutant that damages lungs and plants alike. A 2006 Yale study found that even low concentrations of ozone cause higher mortality rates among people.

So, what's causing increased ozone concentrations? Surprise: burning fossil fuels. Scrubbing ozone out of our lives seems like a great challenge for cleantech entrepreneurs looking for fresher fields in which to lay seed capital.

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The Really Really Viral Game

from Okdork.com by Noah Kagan

Guess the 3 sites. What can we learn? Think about what is super viral yet no one publicly talks about…

Winner gets a $1 check mailed to them:)

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USB to DVI Adapter Expands Screen Space Without Adding Video Cards [Adapter]

from Gizmodo by Jason Chen

The idea of driving a DVI or VGA display with a USB adapter isn't new, but Sewell's latest adapter seems to be fairly cheap and useful. Their adapter costs $119 and has 128MB RAM on board, which is then powered by USB ports from your computer to drive a 1600x1200 resolution monitor at the same time as your standard monitors. Sewell claims that these USB-driven monitors have the same quality as standard DVI monitors at displays of up to 20-inches. If you're trying to power anything bigger, like a 22 or a 24-inch, you're better off getting a new video card anyway. Unless you're on a laptop, in which case you're boned. [Sewell via Sewell]

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Facebook's NY Rent: $29k/Month

from Silicon Alley Insider by Peter Kafka

First we found Facebook's secret Midtown office. Now, thanks to a helpful reader with access to a real estate database, we can tell you what Mark Zuckerberg is paying for the 5,350 square feet he's renting in the French Building: $65 per square foot, or $347,750 a year. That's $29,000 a month. Full details after jump.

Our tipster wonders why Facebook is slumming it in midtown: While the French Building has cool art deco flourishes, it's considered a "B" building by commercial real estate standards, and it's not really wired for state-of-the-art IT companies. Google's Chelsea space, by comparison, is famously situated right over a major Internet hotbed. But this doesn't seem like a mystery to us: Google's NY office is heavy on actual engineers, and there's actual technical work happening there. Facebook's NY outpost, at least for now, is a sales office with a heavy Madison Avenue orientation.

Related: Inside Facebook's Secret NYC Office, Facebook's NYC Digs: Photos!

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First Technical Review of the Samsung LED Backlit LCDs [LCDs]a

from Gizmodo by Brian Lam

Gary Merson backs up our review of Samsung's new LED driven LCD displays, agreeing with my impression that its the best LCD I've ever seen. Gary's tests went deeper, revealing that the TV resolves 800 lines of motion which means that these sets have better blur resistance than even most 120Hz sets, and even some plasmas.

He also disliked the set's handling of 480 content, reporting massive jaggies. But scaler aside for a moment, anyone can tell this set looks good, technical tests or not, by looking at it plain and simple. If you're considering this TV, he also drops in comparisons to plasmas and some other sets so reading his review is worth it. [HD Guru and Samsung's 81 Series on Giz]

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Anti-ripoff megapost from The Consumerist

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

The Consumerist has posted a giant round-up of their advocacy articles called "The Ultimate Consumerist Guide To Fighting Back." It breaks down into three sections:

Section 1: "I've been wronged! What do I do next?"
Section 2: The Consumerist Corporate Executive Directory
Section 3: Success Stories

and each section contains links to excellent articles on everything from timestamping your communications with customer-service lines to "launching an executive email carpet-bomb" to the delightfully named "Underlying Principle For Forcing An Uncaring And Adversarial Company Fix Your Problem." The next time I'm ripped off, I'm starting here. Link

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Anti-Stealth for College Applications

from This is going to be BIG. by CEO

In the same way that Path 101 wants to bust open the data lockbox for the job market, showing you what others like you are doing with their careers, PeerDecision is aiming shed light on college admissions.  This is fascinating, because I don't think there's anything more competitive and cutthroat than college admissions (except maybe Upper East Side Nursery School admissions), and so I could imagine students swarming on this in a hurry. 

I wonder if the anti-stealth nature of it might cause a little fudging.  I'm sure Jack actually got a 1480 on his SAT, but how do we really know for sure?  :)

This is data I think everyone wants to see, but perhaps this is a case where public profiles aren't a good idea.  If people start comparing themselves to others, is that going to open up some really negative interactions?  I think people want to compare aggregate numbers, but I think singling out individuals might get too personal, and maybe even downright ugly. 

They also have voting, where you could vote people up or down depending on whether or not you'd make certain schools.  Again, this might bring out the worst in people.

So, I REALLY like PeerDecision, I just think people are evil... especially overambitious high school kids.

One thing I might consider is flipping the voting a little.  Have people try to gauge themselves...  vote which schools you think you have a good shot of making and then show me the aggregate data.   This way, I don't have a reason to mess up the voting, because I'd only be screwing up my own account.

Another thing they need to nail that Path 101 needs to nail as well is a reason to get people to add this data.  I could join and tell people what schools I made, but what do I get back immediately from that?  For Path 101, we can do some job skills and trend data, but PD is tackling something that's even a bigger data black hole... so I'm not sure how you could even prime the pump here.

What about maybe a way to gripe?  "What's the school that turned you down?  Tell us about it...add other schools".

It's interesting... check out their site...  It's a process I'd love to see them succeed in opening up more, but I'm not sure how to do that.

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BenQ unveils the MP771 short-throw XGA projector

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Displays

BenQ certainly loves to crank out the projectors, and the company's latest, the MP771, features a short-throw lens that's able to put up a 74-inch picture from just a meter away. The 1024 x 768-res unit puts 3000 lumens of shine behind your content with a 2000:1 contrast ratio and BenQ's UNISHAPE variable-brightness lamp tech, which varys the brightness of the lamp in sync with the DLP mirrors and color wheel, resulting in a 40% boost in brightness. Input include VGA, DVI-D with HDCP, S-video and composite, and BenQ says the wall-color correction system will put up an accurate picture on non-white walls with a minimum of fuss. No word on pricing just yet, but we should be seeing these hit in November.

[Via About Projectors]

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Lightning Round: Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card [Review]

from Gizmodo by Mark Wilson

The gadget: The Eye-Fi. It's an SD memory card that adds Wi-Fi to any camera. Plus the free Eye-Fi service supports automatic uploads to 20 different web photo sites (like Flickr) as well as a computer on your home network.

The verdict: It works flawlessly.

The performance: Like we said, the Eye-Fi works flawlessly. Setup takes roughly five minutes (you program the card through your computer and bundled card reader.) From there, you simply snap pics in the range of your router, and chances are, by the time you go back to your computer, the pictures will be viewable. If your router dies, you turn off your camera, or even if you take out the card and put it back in, the photos will upload when you get things sorted out again. It's actually a normal 2GB memory card underneath all of the other functionality and can work as such.

The catch: We figured iIt must drain more battery —but apparently in-camera SD power standards dictate that this extra consumed power needs to be minimal, to the level of not noticeable to the end user. Unfortunately, the product doesn't support hotspots.

The price: $100

The verdict Part II: Sure, the Eye-Fi is basically a cradle replacement. But snapping photos and automatically uploading them in real time to share is truly fantastic, especially when the images can be better than one's camera phone. And the entire product experience is built with Apple-like simplicity. If you can get over the price and are sick of cords, we strongly recommend the purchase. Available now. [eye-fi]

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Meebo Opens Site to Developers

By REBECCA BUCKMAN
October 30, 2007; Page B4

Meebo Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up aiming to morph from a Web-instant-messaging company into a general-purpose media company, will open its Web site to software developers, throwing it into possible competition with the likes of Facebook Inc. and Google Inc.

You can, on Facebook, where thousands of free applications let you interact with friends in unusual ways. But while fun for users, developers are vying for eyeballs, hoping to turn a profit with ad dollars. Stacey Delo reports. (Oct. 29)

Two years ago, Meebo began offering technology that enables instant messaging through a Web site without the user downloading software from other companies. Now, in a bid to become a broader "destination" site and cash in on the online-ad market, the Mountain View, Calif., company will allow outside software developers to build programs and applications around its instant-messaging technology.

The new programs, which could expand Meebo's reach, will stress activities that can be enjoyed live online with groups of friends, like interactive speed dating and computer games. Meebo, backed by high-profile Silicon Valley investors Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, hopes to make money by selling online ads inside the programs.

The company's transformation shows how hot the trend of social networking and Web-based "communities" has become, and how eager venture capitalists are to fund such ventures, despite questions about their profit potential. Meebo started collecting revenue only two months ago, from ads sold inside its chat rooms. The company, with its focus on live activities, "has the potential to be a fabulous business" and earn money, said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia.

Facebook, a popular social-networking site, opened its Web platform this year. Since then, nearly 6,000 programs have been added to Facebook's site, the company says.

Meebo's initial rollout will feature services including Internet phone-calling and online video. The company is partnering with TokBox Inc., also backed by Sequoia, to provide video Web calling. It will work with Ustream.TV Inc. to offer live, streaming video. The idea is to encourage programs that stress the always-on nature of Meebo and its users, as opposed to the "static" set-up of sites like Facebook and Google's YouTube, says Seth Sternberg, Meebo's chief executive.

Instead of posting a video on YouTube, a Meebo user could stream video of an event as it is happening and simultaneously share it with a pre-selected group of instant-messaging friends, Mr. Sternberg says. He co-founded Meebo two years ago with Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen.

This year, Meebo launched Meebo Rooms, which essentially are chat rooms. It has had success parlaying some rooms into larger media partnerships. CBS Corp., for instance, now links to the Meebo chat room about the offbeat TV show "Jericho" and has made it the main Jericho chat room on the CBS Web site.

"We want to encourage lots of different partners . . . to build really super-viral, super-engaged platforms to sit outside of cbs.com," said Patrick Keane, an executive vice president and chief marketing officer for CBS Interactive. CBS provides behind-the-scenes Jericho footage and other tidbits for the Meebo chat room and has signed on as a Meebo advertiser, Mr. Keane says.

CBS says it is working with other sites, including Facebook. Facebook has added programs that offer instant-messaging to its site, which might reduce any advantage Meebo has. Meebo executives and investors say the company has established itself as a destination for instant-messaging, with more than six million unique users logging in monthly.

Write to Rebecca Buckman at rebecca.buckman@wsj.com

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CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XLVII: NBC Universal chief says Apple "destroyed" music pricing

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker clearly did not get enough raisins in his cereal this morning, because dude was not holding anything back during that speech he gave at Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications -- in addition to saying NBC had made only $15M in iTunes video sales despite being the number one producer of content, he flat-out said that Apple and iTunes had "destroyed the music business" in terms of pricing and that video was next unless "we take control." Of course, seeing as consumers can access Universal's entire music catalog with various subscription services for under $10 a month ($36 a year, in the case of Yahoo Music) and entire NBC shows for free on the web, but still choose to buy songs and shows straight-up on iTunes anyway, it might be fair to say that NBC Universal is still figuring out how to monetize its content effectively, but really, where's the fun in that? Round 7, fight!

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