The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. The Financial Times reports that Web 2.0 fails to produce cash.
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The BBC wrote a great article on Chine plc. A must read if you’re interested in emerging markets at large and Chinese emerging giants and its challenges in specific.
Chinese companies remain in a hurry to expand abroad.
“Chinese firms are saying we want to be world-class and we want to do it tomorrow,” says Edward Tse, head of Booz Allen Hamilton’s Chinese management consultancy practice, who has been advising leading Chinese companies for 15 years.
But their hunger has not always been matched by their capacity to get what they want. Among the challenges that China plc needs to grasp, experts argue, is how to use “soft power” to its advantage.
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Beyond Blogs, a BusinessWeek Cover Story by Stephen Baker and Heather Green
Sphere: Related ContentWe’ve spent years talking about the value of the water-cooler conversations,” he says. “Now we have the ability to actually understand what these relationships are, how information and decision-making migrate. We see how people really work.” Why does this matter? The company can spot teams that form organically, and then can place them on targeted projects. It can pinpoint the people who transmit ideas. These folks are golden. “A new class of supercommunicators has emerged,” he says.
The OECD published the yearly report on Broadband utilisation within OECD countries. Denmark is ranking on top with respect to broadband penetration rates. Please find the full report here and the top ten ranking composed by BusinessWeek here.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the agreement that launched the single currency. However, residents of the first 12 EU states that adopted the Euro didn’t begin using Euro banknotes and coins until 1 January, 2002.
When the euro was launched there were plenty of people who thought it would crash and burn. Ten years on, its role as a global currency is secure, even if it hasn’t achieved everything its founders hoped such as higher living standards (per capita income) and less divergence between national economies. But it has achieved macroeconomic stability and financial stability when reflecting to the recent credit crunch.
There are now 15 European countries who are members of the Eurozone, with a common currency, the Euro, and a single interest rate set by the European Central Bank (ECB). They make up 72% of the EU’s GDP. Click here for the Eurozone in figures.
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The International Monetary Fund has come out with its latest set of forecasts of the world economy. The report says at one point:
“The IMF staff now sees a 25 percent chance that global growth will drop to 3 percent or less in 2008 and 2009—equivalent to a global recession.”
Since when is 3% growth equivalent to a “global recession”? According to my textbook, periods of negative GDP growth are called recessions.
By this “new’ definition, the world economy has been in recession 1980-83, 1990-93, 1998, and 2001-2002. In other words, 11 out of the last 28 years. There are no negative years of world growth.
Here are the IMF’s latest world growth numbers, and forecasts out to 2013.
On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, a new report from Oil Change International, entitled A Climate of War (pdf) quantifies both the greenhouse gas emissions of the Iraq War and the opportunity costs involved in fighting war rather than climate change. At the webpage A Climate of War at oil Change you can find some facts on the war and warming.
Backgrounders on
BBC | Analysis: Microsoft without Yahoo
BusinessWeek | Microsoft Drops Bid for Yahoo
Financial Times | Yahoo under pressure after deal collapse
Bloomberg | Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo After Fight on Price
CNBC | As Deal Unravels, Pressure Is on Yahoo to Perform
Reuters | Investors eye Yahoo’s alternatives to Microsoft
The Economist | Microsoft throws in the towel
The New York Times | Microsoft-Yahoo: What Everyone’s Talking About
The Wall Street Journal | Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price
Dutch designer Greetje van Tiem (Graduate Design Academy Eindhoven) has an intriguing idea.
Turning old newspapers into yarn that can be woven into carpets, curtains and upholstery. A great example of maximising value!
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Business 2.0 has identified 15 companies as true gamechangers for the upcoming years. These game-changing startups are likely to upend existing industries - and spawn new entrepreneurial opportunities into the business community.
The 15 startups can be categorised into four spheres: Social Media, Hi-Tech, Energy, and Business Services. A slideshow on all 15 startups can be found here and you can read the full backgrounder here.
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