It’s Like Tap Tap Tap Buying TUAW*

So this happened.

There was this post the other day by M.G. Siegler citing an example of Disney owning both ESPN and Anaheim Mighty Ducks at the same time for a period and that Boston Red Sox is owned by The New York Times Company. This particular situation however, is not exactly comparable. Like the title said, it’s like Tap Tap Tap buying TUAW. Or the Red Sox buying the NYTimes.

I see it as purely a talent acquisition. The founder of the blog is after all a graphics and interface designer and he’s getting a position in the new parent company which is an app development house while a contributor gets to be chief editor.

In no situation can I expect this deal to make sense. The reason given? Shared vision of growing and reaching out to the Indonesian Mac and iOS communities. That’s bullshit. Come on. Sure it’s a shared vision, sure both parties would like those communities to grow (clearly for very different reasons) but giving that as a reason is purely press talk.

If the acquisition was by an investment or a holding/parent company who happened to have a stake in the other, there’d be no problems with that. It’d be exactly like Disney owning both ESPN and the Mighty Ducks, or like East Ventures owning Apps Foundry and Penn Olson. Oh wait.

Will the blog survive and maintain its course? I don’t see why not. Will it remain an independent blog? I doubt it, after all, it’d be run by an app company instead of by itself. So congratulations on the pile of cash, commiserations on the acquisition.

*Reposted and revised on DailySocial

Between writing more and writing longer

Felix Salmon:

If you want to get to half a million pageviews, you’re always much more likely to get there with a thousand blog posts than you are with a single swing for the fences.

Between writing more and writing longer

Apple CEO Tim Cook Spoke at Length About The Company

While DailySocial isn’t about gadgets, there’s always a discussion about our favorite fruit company, especially now that Apple is arguably the largest mobile devices company in the world with the most prominent developer and application ecosystem. With Tim Cook now at the helm, the company has taken an unusual step to stream his talk at the recent Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.

This represents a divergence from how Apple had been conducting its public appearances in the past and perhaps offers a peek into how the company will address the press as well as the public through its executives.

While this is news in itself, the real discovery is what Cook said during his hour-long session. If you’d rather read than listen, Macworld has put together an excellent transcript of his talk.

Cook talked about a very wide range of topics including opportunities in developing countries, the distribution and sales performance of the iPhone and iPad, the recent controversy about working conditions at Foxconn’s factories, product pricing, and lots more.

Speaking of US blogs talking about Asian assets of US companies

What I said yesterday still holds true (yeah right, like I’m gonna change how US blogs see things overnight) . As @joonian pointed out, East Asia perhaps is where the real money is being made. It certainly is where most of the focus is on as far as US companies are concerned. After all, it remains technically correct, so for the journalists and bloggers, it’s a lot easier to just say Asia than East Asia. Nevermind the fact that Asia is much bigger than just CJK.

Speaking of US blogs talking about Asian assets of US companies

“If you want to get to half a million pageviews, you’re always much more likely to get there with a thousand blog posts than you are with a single swing for the fences.”

shortformblog:

Reuters’ Felix Salmon discusses the changing nature of Web journalism, where the SEO-friendly days of yore are starting to get a bit more social, which is good for high-quality but much-more-expensive reporting. Salmon’s point? The commodity approach, which has the side effect of diluting quality brands, is still easier, though it’s far more me-too in nature. (ht Matt)

“If you want to get to half a million pageviews, you’re always much more likely to get there with a thousand blog posts than you are with a single swing for the fences.”

laughingsquid:

iOS ‘86

Asia to US Tech Media Usually Means East Asia

Whenever I read US publications referring to Asia, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that they forget about countries other than China and Japan. Sometimes they include South Korea but often they leave out Southeast Asia where more than 600 million people live, or South Asia in which India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and their neighboring countries are home to more than one and a half billion people.

What they often refer to as Asia is actually no more than East Asia. The center of Asia? That’s around Azerbaijan.

Why does it bother me? Because I live in Southeast Asia and apparently we Southeast Asians don’t count. 

When an article talks about Yahoo selling off its Asian assets, most of the time they mean Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, not Yahoo Southeast Asia which is based in Singapore.

When somebody talks about Apple’s Asian operation, that’s their Foxconn factories. Apple’s Asian market? China and Japan. Apple South Asia, headquartered in Singapore, which covers South and Southeast Asian markets, isn’t even in the radar of these bloggers and journalists.

Why do they do it then? Laziness. They assume people would immediately link those East Asian countries to the points they’re trying to make because apparently in the grander scheme of things, Asian operations outside those countries don’t matter. Rather than be correct, they’d rather be lazy. Why? Because it’s more work. It’s four more letters to type every time.

20 common grammar mistakes

Linguistic intricacies have always been a pet subject of mine since high school and perhaps formed the foundation of what I now do for a living, and that is being a writer and editor. Reading an article like this one helps people (including myself) discover the proper ways to use particular words and identify context more correctly.

My favorite among the 20:

Impactful

It isn’t a word. “Impact” can be used as a noun (e.g., The impact of the crash was severe) or a transitive verb (e.g., The crash impacted my ability to walk or hold a job). “Impactful” is a made-up buzzword, colligated by the modern marketing industry in their endless attempts to decode the innumerable nuances of human behavior into a string of mindless metrics. Seriously, stop saying this.

20 common grammar mistakes

dailylicious2:

A really funny positioning for tech blog readers. Which one are you?

source : The Next Web

60% of Indonesia’s Consumption is Domestic

From the BBC:

However, analysts said that Indonesia has benefited from the fact that a huge part of its growth is driven by domestic consumption.

“Indonesia is one of the least exposed economies in the region, with a vast domestic market and a relatively small share of exports to gross domestic product, so it is insulated from volatility in the global economy,” said George Worthington of IFR.

Domestic consumption accounts for nearly 60% of Indonesia’s economy.

Businesses should take notice.

60% of Indonesia’s Consumption is Domestic