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Smartphones Finally Overtook Dumbphone Sales Globally In Q2, Android Now At 79%, Says Gartner
Analyst Gartner has put out its latest smartphone market report, and the Q2 2013 numbers show the inevitable finally occurred: smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales for the first time. Android has been strangling the life out of dumbphones for years, but it looks like the market tipping point is being reached.
In Q2, Gartner says worldwide smartphones sales rose 46.5% from the year earlier quarter to hit 225 million units shipped, while sales of feature phones declined 21% year-on-year to 210 million units. Smartphone shipments grew most in Asia Pacific, Latin American and Eastern Europe, with growth rates of 74.1%, 55.7% and 31.6% respectively, but the analyst said sales grew in all regions. IDC‘s recent market figures put Android on approaching 80% worldwide marketshare for Q2. Google’s mobile OS is clearly expanding its share by picking up former feature phone users.
The rising tide of global smartphone ownership is raising all boats, but Samsung continues to dominate the smartphone landscape. Gartner said Samsung grew its share to approaching a third (31.7%), up 29.7% on Q2 2012. Apple also grew shipments of its iPhone but its marketshare declined — highlighting the case for Cupertino to make a low cost iPhone to capture growth at the budget end of the market. Apple took a 14.2% share in Q2, 2013, vs 18.8% in the year ago quarter. It still shipped 10.2% more iPhones vs Q2 2012 but is being outpaced by higher smartphone market growth rates.
After Samsung and Apple, it’s a tale of all Asian smartphone makers battling for third place: LG grabbed third place in Q2 (with a 5.1% share); followed by Lenovo (4.7%) whose Lephone has been a popular seller in China; and ZTE (4.3%).
Gartner said Apple saw a significant drop in the average selling price (ASP) of its devices in Q2, with its ASP declining to the lowest figure registered by Apple since the iPhone’s launch in 2007. This is down to strong sales of the iPhone 4 — again underlining the case (from a volume perspective) for Apple to launch a cheaper iPhone. However doing so would clearly accelerate that decrease in its ASP, even if market growth is now being powered by budget devices — providing the impetus for Apple to expand the iPhone to cheaper price-points still.
“While Apple’s [declining] ASP demonstrates the need for a new flagship model, it is risky for Apple to introduce a new lower-priced model too,” commented Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta in a statement. ”Although the possible new lower-priced device may be priced similarly to the iPhone 4 at $300 to $400, the potential for cannibalisation will be much greater than what is seen today with the iPhone 4. Despite being seen as the less expensive sibling of the flagship product, it would represent a new device with the hype of the marketing associated with it.”
Also noteworthy in Q2, Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform pushed past BlackBerry’s OS for the first time to take third place. When Windows Phone launched, back in 2010, Steve Ballmer and Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop talked of their ambition to create a third ecosystem in the smartphone space. They’re still trying to stock the fires of an ecosystem but are at least in third place from a sales perspective.
Windows Phone took a 3.3% global market share in Q2 vs just 2.7% for the struggling BlackBerry OS. Gupta, noted: “While Microsoft has managed to increase share and volume in the quarter, Microsoft should continue to focus on growing interest from app developers to help grow its appeal among users.”
Taken together, Android and iOS took a 93.2% global marketshare in the quarter — underlining why developers opt to support these two platform first and foremost, and generally require incentives to expend effort elsewhere. Android’s global marketshare in Q2 was a staggering 79% according to Gartner, up from 64.2% in the year ago quarter — buoyed by feature phone switchers.
The drop off in feature phone sales is bad news for Nokia, which still leans heavily on its feature phone business (being as its smartphone business is tied to the Windows Phone underdog). Nokia shipped just 61 million feature phones in Q2, down from 83 million in the year ago quarter. But the Finnish mobile maker is at least seeing some decent growth in smartphones, thanks to having a broader portfolio of devices to offer at different price points. Nokia’s Windows Phone-powered Lumia sales grew 112.7% in Q2 2013, according to Gartner.
A few weeks ago we reported that Nate Richardson, the CEO and co-founder of Waywire, would be leaving the company as it makes a strategic shift from content creation to content curation. Well now we know where he's landed: Richardson has joined our parent company AOL as the President of 
Back in June, Facebook said it would be rolling out a number of features for following public conversations, and it looks like the company's holding true to that promise. Specifically, the company is testing a section highlighting "Trending" topics that appears alongside its desktop newsfeed. The Wall Street Journal 
A story published by Bloomberg floats the idea that Microsoft might spin off its Xbox business, which it calls "more likely [following current CEO Steve Ballmer's] exit." The publication values Xbox at around $17 billion, a figure based on a comparative revenue multiple with Nintendo. This is precisely the sort of bilge that cavorts and pretends to be serious analysis.
Target's answer to Walmart's Vudu, Netflix, and iTunes, is preparing to launch. Employees at the Minneapolis-headquartered retailer were told this week that 
You know what's cooler than reading TechCrunch every day? Diving into startup culture head first by attending 
Today Microsoft announced that it has reached a “cooperation agreement” with ValueAct Capital, an investment company that had been a thorn in its side. It was said that ValueAct wanted a seat on Microsoft’s board. Instead, Microsoft and ValueAct have come to a different agreement, in which the president of ValueAct – Mason Morfit – and Microsoft directors will meet to talk over issues relating to the company. Morfit will also be given a chance at joining the board, after the company’s annual shareholder meeting. ValueAct owns 0.8% of Microsoft’s outstanding shares. It’s a hefty investment, one that is large enough for the investor to command the attention of the company’s board. It was said following Microsoft CEO’s Steve Ballmer’s promise to step down within the next 12 months that ValueAct and its pressure on the company was key to his removal. It is not clear if that is the case, or pressure resulting from a massive $900 million Surface writedown, or the ensuing market shellacking of Microsoft’s stock were larger catalysts. That said, to have the news of the agreement come precisely one week following the Ballmer announcement, is more than slightly suspicious. ValueAct is a large firm, with assets under management of $12 billion. That’s enough money to cause havoc. Departing CEO Steve Ballmer had nice things to say about his tormentors: “Our board and management team are committed to enhancing growth and value for Microsoft shareholders, and we look forward to ValueAct Capital’s input.” Only, I don’t think that that is true. Nice boilerplate, but I can’t imagine that Ballmer is too enthused about ceding some of his authority in his final days atop the Microsoft org chart to money folks from San Francisco. Whatever the case, Microsoft appears to have cleaned the decks of its little investor problem. Top Image Credit: Robert Scoble
Gillmor Gang - Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session for today has concluded
The 
A new startup called 
It's hard to trust the cloud. With the NSA coming in one end and hackers coming in through the other, complete encryption is key. That's what 
Transportation tech startup 
While augmented reality has been around for a while, Augment is trying to monetize it with its platform. The company just released its Business Catalog feature, targeted toward salespeople. For $30 per month and per user, you can carry around all your catalog on your iPad and show how it would look like to your client. It makes sense for furniture, merchandising displays or even art prints. “Our biggest competitor is choosing not to use augmented reality,” co-founder and CEO Jean-François Chianetta told me in a phone interview. “Thanks to our platform, you can upload and visualize your 3D models as augmented reality objects in minutes,” he continued. With the business catalog, everybody on the sales team has the same 3D portfolio on their tablets and phones. Everything is downloaded to the devices so that they don’t have to worry about connectivity. Comparatively, the free account is much more limited as you can only see a few test models and upload your own models to your own account for testing purposes — you cannot deliver your models to your team and you need to be always connected. The premium offering was already available in beta for a few months. More than 3,000 users tried it out. But, starting this week, they now have to pay the subscription fee. When asked who Augment’s potential clients were, the answer was very straightforward. “We work with companies who already use 3D models,” co-founder and CMO Mickaël Jordan said. “We support 3ds Max, Maya or even SketchUp files,” he continued. So far, 8,000 users have uploaded 3D models to the platform. Companies like Curioos use Augment for its digital art marketplace. Before buying an art print, you can figure out what print size you should order for your living room, and how it would look like over the fireplace. There’s another part to Augment’s business. The company also creates advertising campaigns using augmented reality. For example, clients can create a booth to promote DVD sales in a supermarket and let anyone take a picture of his or her friend with a famous movie character. The character will be in 3D thanks to the Augment app. In many cases, companies need to hire an agency to create a special app — when you work with Augment it’s easier as you can build your campaign on top of its existing platform. Back in April, the French
Today Nokia 
Microsoft today published a short blog post stating that it feels that recent government changes to how it reports surveillance activities are insufficient. Calling the decision by the federal government to publish more information on the quantity of consumer data requests relating to national security each year “a good start,” Microsoft claims the Constitution demands more progress. Microsoft cites the founding document several times in its post, also declaring that it believes that it has “a clear right under the U.S. Constitution to share more information with the public.” In a rare moment of solidarity, Microsoft name-checked Google, saying that the two companies agree that more must be made legally allowable to disclose. Both companies are in litigation with the government for the right to share more about what they are forced to hand to the government. Specifically, Microsoft wants to disclose how often user content such as the content of an email is demanded. Revelations from documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to journalist Glenn Greenwald showed that through a program called PRISM, the United States government requested hefty amounts of user data from large Internet companies. There are gag rules around what can be said regarding government data requests. This stifles discussion, debate, and functional oversight of the government by its ultimate leaders, the citizenry. Microsoft and Google are also likely not particularly excited about sharing their private user data with intelligence agencies. Microsoft, citing a “failure of [its] recent negotiations” promises to press forward with its lawsuit “in the hope that the courts will uphold [its] right to speak more freely.” The company claims to have met with the government on six different occasions. Microsoft indicated that its suit was filed in June. You don’t often see a company worth hundreds of billions go full philosophy, but Microsoft went there (this appears to be a trend at the company – I’m looking at you, Frank): The United States has long been admired around the world for its leadership in promoting free speech and open discussion. We benefit from living in a country with a Constitution that guarantees the fundamental freedom to engage in free expression unless silence is required by a narrowly tailored, compelling Government interest. We believe there remains a path forward that will share more information with the public while protecting national security. Our hope is that the courts and Congress will ensure that our
Twitter is appointing Vijaya Gadde as its new General Counsel after current appointee Alex Macgillivray has announced his plans to move on. The news came as a post on Macgillivray’s personal site and was shortly thereafter reported on by Mike Isaac at All Things D. Techcrunch has confirmed both the departure of Macgillivray and the hire of Gadde with Twitter. Macgillivray says that he is planning on dialing back his involvement with Twitter over the next few months as the team transitions to new leadership. “I'll continue to support the company and its great people by staying on as an advisor for the legal, trust & safety, corporate development and public policy teams,” says Macgillivray. “I continue to care deeply about Twitter, the folks who work at Twitter and our tremendous users, so I'll remain close to all three.” Macgillivray was hired by Twitter in 2009 and previously served as DGC of Product at IP at Google. Gadde has been a director in Twitter’s legal department since July of 2011 and will now take on the GC role. Macgillivray’s former post at Google had him going to bat for the company over its efforts to scan books. His move there was seen as a key ‘first amendment’ hire as Twitter began to be considered a platform for expression and came under attack from government agencies of various countries looking to quash or investigate statements made by users. Gadde was formerly an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where Macgillivray was also formerly an attorney. Though Gadde doesn’t have the same bonafides as Macgillivray when it comes to first amendment stuff, she is apparently regarded well in the company and at her former firm. In addition, from what we’ve heard, Twitter will be doing some shuffling of the legal structure as well. Its director of public policy Colin Crowell will no longer report to the General Counsel, but will report directly to CEO Dick Costolo on matters affecting Twitter and Washington. All signs at the moment are pointing towards this being a voluntary exit for Macgillivray, who was well liked and respected. No one at Twitter is happy to see him go, as they might be with someone who wasn’t getting the job done. Macgillivray states in his post that he’s “looking forward to engaging my various internet passions from new and different perspectives, seeing friends and family without distraction, and just
Getting Arduino-powered devices to talk to each other over long distances is going to get cheaper and easier if this Kickstarter project flies. Flutter is a wireless development platform for Arduino with over half a mile of usage range -- making it suitable for outdoor projects covering greater distances than Wi-Fi can comfortably manage.
With the NFL season just a week away, fans are pouring over stats, trash talking their friends, and gearing up for the real season: fantasy football. Here are the coolest and most useful places to play fantasy football out there—from the household names like ESPN to a small startup that's doing fantasy exclusively on your phone.
Yes. Fantasy football season is upon us. Amid a sea of apps and sites promising to get you a little closer to perfection, I turned to some of 2012's most accurate fantasy experts to get their take on which online tools you actually need to be using when you're quietly researching your lineup at work. As fantasy sports have moved into the digital age, there aren't many people scanning newspapers with a pencil in hand anymore. But you know what? A lot of these guys still rock it old school to an extent. FF Toolbox writer 
National Security Agency leaker and new Russia resident Edward Snowden has 
Working from the couch in sweatpants is awesome (in fact, I'm doing it right now), but there are certainly benefits to working with other people in the flesh. For example, if you can see that your coworker is at her desk, you don't have to preface a quick question with, "You there?" Little things like that can really make all the difference when it comes to collaborating naturally and getting good work done. 
Rumors that Foursquare is looking to take on a strategic investment from a large technology company kicked up a gear when several sources have reported that Microsoft is perhaps the potential suitor, and, to quote Dina Bass of Bloomberg, the talks are “advanced.” What the hell, you might be thinking, does Microsoft want with Foursquare? It’s not application support for its platforms, that’s already a done deal. Instead, I think that the investment is being considered for the same reason that Microsoft pumped hundreds of millions into Facebook: Bing. By buying into Facebook as its only corporate investor, Microsoft has locked up a long-term deal to provide mapping and search capabilities for the social giant. Snagging a chunk of Foursquare is pro-Bing, albeit in a different fashion. Bing competes with Google and Apple to provide local data, and mapping. The two domains are increasingly overlapping as mobile maps become increasingly multifaceted and less about directions, and more about how to live. Bing, of course, on Windows Phone has Local Scout, a tool that combines geolocation and local business information. Foursquare fits into this by simply having data that Microsoft wants. The startup has spent years accreting information from its users about more than restaurants, hotels, houses, and everything in between. Back that into Bing and it could enrich its offering perhaps past what Google proffers to mobile users. Bing already uses Foursquare data. That is the reason I think that Microsoft is interested in the stuff: It knows its value. Also, it would hate to see the inflow stop (if Facebook died), or other parties buy it (Yahoo, etc) and cut off its access. The move is a combination of offense and defense. Yahoo, of course, leans on Bing for the moment to power its search technology, but that might not be the case in a year’s time. This would improve the user experience of Windows 8, 8.1, Windows Phone 8, and the online desktop Bing experience. Now, why not buy Foursquare outright? I don’t think that Microsoft has to. Foursquare’s last round valued the firm at $600 million. Investors would want a premium, and Microsoft has cash. It would not be a cheap acquisition, even given Foursquare current weaknesses. But with say, $50 million, Microsoft could bail Foursquare out of its most recent loans, and inject enough capital for it to prove a revenue-fueled future. Microsoft gets access to
Next up on the agenda for 
Box has an enviable enterprise install base, a key strategic advantage as being The Holder of the Files, and now the exec that called the Office shots at Microsoft for years. That sums together into an enterprise-facing productivity solution, in my view. Box is going public in short order. To tell investors that it has a new product coming that will help preserve its margins would be welcome.
Barcelona-based startup Lodgify is launching its product today, which aims to be the "Shopify of vacation rentals" according to its co-founder Naveen Sharma. Like Shopify, Lodgify allows small business owners to easily set up an online commerce presence – but this time the target is people who are renting out their homes to vacationers and short-term renters.
Yahoo's efforts at improving Flickr with 
Peer-to-peer delivery startup 
They're baaack. Bang With Friends, the Facebook friend hookup app that seemed to be endlessly engulfed in one controversy or another earlier this year, is returning to the iOS App Store (albeit in a slightly toned down form) after gettin' the boot back in May.
A bug in Apple’s CoreText rendering engine in iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 causes any apps that try to render a string of Arabic characters to crash on sight. The string of characters which can trigger the bug — which was discovered yesterday and has spread around the hacking and coding community — has made its way to Twitter, where even looking at it in your timeline will crash the app. The issue affects apps on iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 but does not work on OS X 10.9 Mavericks and iOS 7 beta releases. So whatever bug the characters are triggering, they’ve already been fixed in future releases of the engine. This doesn’t help anyone still on iOS 6 of course. Because it’s a CoreText bug, any apps that access this font framework to render text are affected. This means that any apps that use WebKit like Safari are also affected because WebKit uses CoreText. This is a picture of the string of characters, not replicated here for obvious reasons: If you’d care to experience the bug for yourself, feel free to seek out the tweet in the pic above, I’m not posting a link. For the record: Tweetbot appears to be immune to this, though it also uses the CoreText engine. The characters were discovered and posted on a Russian site yesterday morning. The site claims that Apple has known about the problem for ‘six months’ and has not reacted. There is some evidence of the string appearing on Twitter back in February. The posting includes a request to click the crash report button on any apps affected and report it to Apple. The malicious possibilities are simple: if you send the characters in an SMS, it can initiate a revolving crash of Messages on both OS X and iOS. We confirmed this on both operating systems. You can also deliver the string of text via a web link. You could also change the name of a wireless network to the characters and it will crash any device that scans that network to connect. That being said, this is an extremely specific set of unicode characters, so the possibilities of accidentally coming across it are nil. Unfortunately, once this stuff is out in the wild, it’s all down to who has the knowhow and will to try to use it to annoy or offend. Looks like Facebook has
Earlier today, a 
Ride-sharing startup Lyft continues to grow, adding new markets where users can hail a ride via their mobile phones and have a mustachioed car pick them up. With the launch of service in Indianapolis, St. Paul, and Atlanta, the company now has operations in 10 markets nationwide.
After 
Back in 2011 Doo 
Today enterprise cloud file and document storage company Box announced that it has brought former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky 
We've 
Brock Blake and Levi King have founded more than six companies between them. Over the course of their various entrepreneurial endeavors, like many other small business owners entrepreneurs, Blake and King applied for dozens of business loans -- and received dozens of rejections. When they did receive approvals, they usually came with terms, rates or amounts that made the loan more of a hassle than a help.
Given that the average breadbox is 12 inches wide by 6 inches high and deep, we can safely say that the GMax 3D printer, a 
Dropbox-owned Mailbox has just added a couple of nice features, including the ability to search all of your Gmail messages in the cloud and locally on your device. Previously, you could only dig through messages that had already been downloaded, which was one of the big flaws that stopped me from continuing to use the app. Searching is quick and happens in two stages. Type your query and you’ll get an instant list of local results. Mailbox polls Gmail in the background and begins filling out results from the server as soon as it has them in a list. At some points in my testing, I did get a gray overlay that said ‘no results’ while it was still searching the cloud. I’d love to see this better indicate that you might have results, they’re just on their way — especially when you have a poor network connection. Most of the searches were quick enough to fill out the list fairly swiftly. In addition to the new cloud search option, you can now also attach signatures to individual emails based on the address that you’re using to send them. So if you’re replying to an email from your work address, they’ll see the signature you use for work, not the pocket robot joke you use on your personal account. In what is a growing trend with apps on Apple’s iOS platform, the new Mailbox also allows you to toggle an option to open links inside Chrome, Google’s alternative browser. Google’s apps have, of course, been making a habit of this. That includes Gmail, which now makes it possible to open links in Chrome and almost all attachments in their corresponding Google apps like Drive. Mailbox, in what is an unsurprising but nice little synergistic move, continues to give away 1GB of free space on Dropbox when you link your account up to Mailbox. Mailbox recently added Dropbox integration for attachments, and this is a great way to drive people to the settings menu to toggle that option on. Mailbox continues to iterate on its initial promise, especially in terms of thinking outside of the device itself and into the cloud. Which is, pretty much, the exact reason why you’d be excited about being acquired by a company like Dropbox.
Singapore-based accelerator 
When co-founder Boris Mordkovich and his team at Evelo were ready to launch their electric bicycle company in April 2012, they took an unusual approach: They rode electric bikes from New York to San Francisco, stopping frequently along the way to demo their bikes to prospective bicycle dealers and customers. Now, the bootstrapped startup is on track to exceed $1 million in revenue.
On the heels of Vodafone and O2 
Is it Wednesday already? It must be, because we've got yet another edition of the TechCrunch Droidcast to carry you the rest of your day (or least the next half hour).This week it's just Darrell Etherington and I shooting the breeze about the goings-on in the Android world, but there's plenty to for us dig into. Samsung has a new tablet for kiddies and confirmed it'll show off the Galaxy Gear smartwatch next week for starters, and Google has just priced its 8 and 16GB Nexus 4s to move. Meanwhile, poor old HTC may be trying to put together a mobile operating system of its own so it can make some inroads into the Chinese market (and hopefully secure itself a future).
We're just over a week away from the Disrupt SF Hackathon, where hundreds of devs will be locked in a battle to build the coolest thing they can build in a single 24 hour stretch. The prize? Fame. Glory. Oh, and a nice stack of cash. Even if you don't win, you'll probably walk away with the most important prize of all: knowledge*. (Psst, we've also got some more Hackathon tickets in here..)
Experimentation is a roller coaster. San Jose State University suspended its controversial 
A betting service has compiled a list of potential candidates for Microsoft’s soon-to-be-vacant CEO role that you can wager on. It’s a partially serious, partially silly list. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner as CEO? Perhaps. Apple CEO Tim Cook as the new Microsoft boss? Probably not. But Turner pays out but 6 to 1 while Cook is a 100 to 1 longshot, so place your bets accordingly. In the thinking of betting group Ladbrokes, Steven Sinofsky might make a return to Microsoft (8 to 1 odds), Stephen Elop might leave Nokia to run his former employer (5 to 1), Marissa Mayer might ditch Yahoo for Big Redmond (33 to 1), and Jack Dorsey might head up a company whose products he likely hasn’t used in years (40 to 1). Yes, you can bet that Bill Gates will come back to Microsoft as its chief, but it pays out 50 to 1, which is a pretty decent indication that the boys at Ladbrokes aren’t utterly silly. But they have “Cheryl Sandberg” [sic] on the list at 40 to 1, so I doubt their savvy. CNET jokingly notes that “bookie’s algorithms are more finely tuned than a first violinist’s Strad,” which makes the above fun, as the bookies in this case have created a few bets that they know won’t pay out. Hell, they could offer Cook at 1,000 to 1 and it would still be a decidedly negative EV bet for the average piker. We here at TechCrunch recently played Ballmer Bingo ourselves, noting that Google’s Vic Gundotra might be in play. Ladbrokes will pay out 25 to 1 if that happens. In reality, a short list of candidates has not been leaked yet, probably because Microsoft is early in the process of picking its next CEO. Who will it be? I know it’s not me or you. The list of candidates — people with enough experience and knowledge and charisma to run a technology company at the scale of Microsoft — is small, but not vanishing. For now, bet away — current Windows boss Terry Myerson pays out 12 to 1. Top Image Credit: Aanjhan Ranganathan
As part of his promises regarding better oversight of the National Security Agency, President Obama called for expert external opinion on where the lines of privacy should be drawn: "...We're forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era. We now have to unravel terrorist plots by finding a needle in the haystack of global telecommunications. And meanwhile, technology has given governments -- including our own -- unprecedented capability to monitor communications."
Twitter just flipped the format of its timeline with a new conversation view. The full timeline will still show in the traditional ‘newest stuff at the top’ view, but now there are linked conversations which display tweets in an easier-to-understand format. At first glance, this might seem like a simple update that links related tweets together with a thin blue line and a fancy expandable box. But the reasons for this go deeper than just making it easier to read. It’s also making it feel more human and less Twitter. The new view is rolling out on Twitter.com, as well as in the iPhone and Android apps and features an ‘old’ tweet first, with newer replies to it in order afterwards. Here’s an example of an expanded conversation in a timeline (only a couple of the replies are visible until you spread them out): Note the timestamps along the side. Instead of the traditional ‘countdown’ as you go up, the tweets actually get older, not newer. This is a reversal of the way that Twitter has worked before. And, at least to my eye, it’s much easier to follow conversations when you’re reading them chronologically from the oldest tweet through replies that add to the discussion. From the beginning, Twitter has had its own system of communication. Third-party developers helped define the conventions like the @ symbol, the RT and more, but that system has grown increasingly opaque to new users of the service. As with any network, the conventions grow organically to include in-jokes, little nooks of oddness and big swaths of unintelligible conversation. Twitter had backed itself right into a similar situation by letting the audience define those conventions for so long. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, Twitter wouldn’t be half of what it is if those early enthusiasts hadn’t stretched and pulled the SMS messenger into its current shape. But, if Twitter wants to execute on its plan of embracing media companies and new users that will actually interact with and engage, it now needs to make things simpler and more coherent. Recently, at the D11 conference, CEO Dick Costolo indicated that Twitter need to address this communication issue: As far as what Costolo says that Twitter is missing, he says "simplicity". "Bridging the gap between the awareness of what Twitter is and…going in and understanding what it is right away." That gap is what happens when you have
Can you measure corporate performance based on customer happiness? According to my Founder Stories guest this week, Zendesk's 
Twitter has just released an update for iOS, Android and the web application with a brand new interface for conversations, as well as enhanced sharing and abuse reporting capabilities. According to 
Twitter has acquired 
