Social Media Insights is a daily newsletter from <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">BI Intelligence</a> delivered first thing every morning exclusively to <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">BI Intelligence</a> subscribers. <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">Sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today</a>. 
<hr />
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><a title_source="Facebook" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/52ce996669bedd3d4a1c32c9-960/1544991_10152134879968415_1189857752_n.png"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/52ce996669bedd3d4a1c32c9-720-491/1544991_10152134879968415_1189857752_n.png?maxX=400" border="0" alt="Facebook Memes" width="400" style="float: right;" /></a>Facebook</div></div>ANATOMY OF A FACEBOOK MEME: Facebook defines a meme as "an idea that is readily transmitted from person to person." It's defined broadly, because a meme evolves over time (e.g., someone takes a photo of their dog, and then other people <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme)">repurpose the image with funny sayings</a>). A team of Facebook data scientists has published a research paper that helps explain what drives the virality of this type of content on the social network. 
Appending the words "please post this" or "copy and paste" to a meme make it twice as likely to go viral, or continue to be shared. 
Furthermore, phrasings that are agreements or easy to identify with, such as "if you love your" or "paste if you agree" also help drive meme virality. See chart above for other phrasings that are advantageous to getting your content shared on Facebook.
The propensity to share content on Facebook makes it a hub for memes. Brands can tap into the social network to start their own memes that help promote their image, or tap into memes that have already gone viral to prove to consumers that they are culturally aware. (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-evolution-of-memes-on-facebook/10151988334203859">Facebook Research</a>) 
PUBLISHERS EXPERIMENT WITH SNAPCHAT: Bloomberg Businessweek is now using Snapchat to send readers previews of its upcoming magazine covers. Seventeen Magazine began using the app to communicate <a href="http://mashable.com/2013/12/18/seventeen-joins-snapchat/">back in December</a>. If you know of other businesses using Snapchat in interesting way, send me an email at <a href="mailto:csmith@businessinsider.com">csmith@businessinsider.com</a>. (<a href="https://twitter.com/BW/status/421020223677149184">Businessweek</a>)
CONFIDE - SNAPCHAT FOR TEXT MESSAGES: A new startup called Confide launched yesterday. The app allows users to send text messages that disappear after they are read by the recipient. Despite the shady use cases that people have already come up with, from cheating on spouses to insider trading, Confide is being branded as a professional tool. The company's founders said the app could be used to prevent the leaking of a press release or terms to a deal. (<a href="http://gigaom.com/2014/01/08/confide-an-app-for-execs-who-want-sensitive-messages-to-vanish-snapchat-style/">GigaOM</a>)
NEW YORK TIMES EXPERIMENTS WITH NATIVE ADS: Among the changes to The New York Times website recently, the publication is now featuring native advertising. Native ads have been a staple of paid online content for years, but The New York Times is just dipping its feet in it now. Dell reportedly paid a six-figure price tag to run the first native ad spot on the publication's site. (<a href="http://adage.com/article/media/york-times-debuts-native-ad-units-dell/290973/">AdAge</a>) 
NEW YORK TIMES WORKING ON NEW SOCIAL PRODUCT: Fresh off the heals of redesigning its website, The New York Times appears to be developing a new editorial product described as "a new, all-day-long opinion experience online and for mobile devices." According to two job listings that are believed to be associated with the project, the new editorial product will include a mixture of tweets and Facebook updates of trending opinion pieces across the Web. (<a href="http://digiday.com/publishers/timess-opinion-section-looking-speed-social-savvy/">Digiday</a>)
GESTURE-RECOGNITION FOR GOOGLE GLASS: A startup called OnTheGo Platforms is building a software developer kit that allows developers to integrate gesture recognition in Google Glass apps. Currently, Google Glass only supports touch and voice recognition. (<a href="http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/08/onthego-platforms-google-glass-gesture-recognition-controls/">Engadget</a>) 
Here's what else BI Intelligence subscribers are reading …
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/user-engagement-growth-on-twitter-2014-1">Twitter's Overall Engagement Growth Slows, Spelling Trouble In The Long-Term</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/forecast-apple-will-sell-18-million-iphones-on-china-mobile-in-2014-2014-1">FORECAST: Apple Will Sell 18 Million iPhones On China Mobile in 2014</a> 
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/kickstarter-projects-raised-more-than-800-million-2014-1">Kickstarter Projects Raised More Than $800 Million In Four Years - With Social Media's Help</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-just-as-much-a-daily-activity-in-europe-as-it-is-in-the-us-2013-12">Facebook Enjoys Impressive Rates Of Daily Activity Among Its European Users</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/post-holiday-tablet-growth-pinpoints-a-broader-global-market-trend-2014-1">Post-Holiday Growth In Samsung Tablets Is A Sign Of The Tablet Market's Fragmentation</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/more-us-adults-use-pinterest-2014-1">Pinterest Leaps Past Twitter In Popularity Among U.S. Adults</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-dominates-messaging-apps-2014-1">WhatsApp Has The Biggest Audience On Android, But Kakao Talk Leads In Time-Spend</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/freemium-apps-brought-in-the-bulk-of-app-revenue-in-2013-2013-12">'Freemium' Apps Accounted For Nearly All App Revenue In 2013</a>

A Facebook Post Is Twice As Likely To Go Viral If You Append It With The Phrase "Please Post This"

Social Media Insights is a daily newsletter from <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">BI Intelligence</a> delivered first thing every morning exclusively to <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">BI Intelligence</a> subscribers. <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">Sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today</a>. 
<hr />
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><a title_source="terrykimura" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/52cbf47d6bb3f77e47c4282d-960/5216369847ac5a411347o.jpg"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/52cbf47d6bb3f77e47c4282d-395-296/5216369847ac5a411347o.jpg?maxX=400" border="0" alt="5216369847_ac5a411347_o" width="400" /></a>terrykimura</div></div>PINTEREST READY TO DECIPHER BIG DATA: Pinterest has acquired an image recognition and visual search startup called <a href="http://www.visualgraph.com/">VisualGraph</a>. With the acquisition, Pinterest reveals that it is working on big data problems - probably in order to improve content relevancy and to better understand its users for advertisers. 
VisualGraph also brings two experienced and talented deep learning experts from the field of big data to Pinterest. VisualGraph CEO Kevin Jing helped build Google's first machine vision application to improve the company's image search. VisualGraph employee David Liu has worked at Google, Facebook, and Palantir. 
Pinterest isn't the only social Web company that is building out its data science team. Facebook recently <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10151728212367143">hired</a> deep learning expert Yann LeCun to run its dedicated artificial intelligence lab. We've heard from a source who is close to LeCun that he was hired specifically to work on image recognition. 
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, have been developing machine learning systems for years to help them improve search and other products. However, now that major social Web properties are building out their own data science teams, the demand for big data experts is more competitive than ever. 
In other news …
NEW TWITTER FEATURE HINTS AT AD STRATEGY: Twitter recently announced that it began testing a new feature called "Nearby," which surfaces local tweets around a user. While the feature is compelling from a user experience perspective, Twitter's real motive is likely to go after location-based ad dollars. In doing so, Twitter would become an even greater competitor to Foursquare, Yelp, and Google. (<a href="http://digiday.com/platforms/twitter-contemplates-entering-local-ad-market/">Digiday</a>)
FACEBOOK RESPONDS TO CONTROVERSIAL RESEARCH PAPER: A Facebook spokesperson now says that "Facebook does not collect or track any content that people have chosen not to post." The statement comes after a Facebook data scientist published a <a href="http://sauvik.me/system/papers/pdfs/000/000/004/original/self-censorship_on_facebook_cameraready.pdf">paper</a> that delved into the topic of "self-censorship" on Facebook. Specifically, the paper outlined how often users type out a post or comment, but then delete it before publishing to their network of connections. (<a href="http://mashable.com/2014/01/04/facebook-unpublished-posts/">Mashable</a>) 
COMPARING SPIEGEL TO ZUCKERBERG: Snapchat's Evan Spiegel and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg appear to have strikingly similar personalities and stories when it comes to starting a company. For starters, both were brought up in relatively privileged families, were visionaries in understanding how people communicate via technology, and both were (Spiegel still is) tied up in legal disputes over the rights to the company they helped launch. It's worth noting, because Zuckerberg proved that with the right people around him, a twenty-something year-old can build a multibillion dollar tech company. (<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2014/01/06/the-inside-story-of-snapchat-the-worlds-hottest-app-or-a-3-billion-disappearing-act/3/">Forbes</a>)
SNAPCHAT HIRES FIRST LOBBYIST: Snapchat has hired Heather Podesta + Partners, LLC - a Washington D.C. lobbying firm. Although Snapchat has come under scrutiny lately for allowing hackers to expose the phone numbers of millions of users, the company has been meeting with the lobbying firm since November, so the two events seem unconnected. What it does signal is that Snapchat has ambitions to turn into a true business, and therefore management wants policymakers to better understand how the app operates. (<a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/194481-snapchat-hires-first-lobbyist">The Hill</a>)
What You May Have Missed On BI Intelligence … 
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-just-as-much-a-daily-activity-in-europe-as-it-is-in-the-us-2013-12">Facebook Enjoys Impressive Rates Of Daily Activity Among Its European Users</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/post-holiday-tablet-growth-pinpoints-a-broader-global-market-trend-2014-1">Post-Holiday Growth In Samsung Tablets Is A Sign Of The Tablet Market's Fragmentation</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/more-us-adults-use-pinterest-2014-1">Pinterest Leaps Past Twitter In Popularity Among U.S. Adults</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-dominates-messaging-apps-2014-1">WhatsApp Has The Biggest Audience On Android, But Kakao Talk Leads In Time-Spend</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/freemium-apps-brought-in-the-bulk-of-app-revenue-in-2013-2013-12">'Freemium' Apps Accounted For Nearly All App Revenue In 2013</a>

Facebook And Pinterest Bulk Up Their Big Data Teams

Welcome to our new Payments Insights newsletter, a morning email with the top news and analysis on the digital payments industry, produced by <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=PINSIGHTSutm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile" target="_blank">BI Intelligence</a>. 
<a href="http://e.businessinsider.com/join/biipaymentsform" target="_blank">Click here to sign up for Payment Insights today, and receive it every morning in your inbox</a>.
<hr />
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><a title_source="AP" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52a0763b6da8114e32734dbd-960/att-7.jpg"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52a0763b6da8114e32734dbd-1200-900/att-7.jpg?maxX=400&amp;maxY=300" border="0" alt="man talking on phone near AT&amp;T store" width="400" height="300" style="float: right;" /></a>AP</div></div>AT&amp;T PROVIDES RETAIL BANKS WITH DATA TO ENHANCE BANKING APPS. Consumer banking is quickly moving towards mobile, and AT&amp;T is looking to aid this transition by providing retail banks with a number of new APIs.
Retail banks can use these APIs to access data on banking customers who are also AT&amp;T subscribers. This data can then be used to add features like geolocation, automatic form filling, and call recording to retail banking apps.
TELECOMS WORK TOWARDS A COMMON DATA STANDARD: The big hurdle for banks that are interested in using AT&amp;T's APIs is that they are only useful for providing data on customers who are also subscribed to AT&amp;T for mobile services.
To overcome this problem, AT&amp;T and a handful of other carriers have been working together to come up with a unified standard for storing customer data so that it can easily be integrated into banking apps regardless of which telecom is the service provider.
At first glance it is a bit strange that these competing telecoms would be willing to cooperate with each other. But with the looming transition to mobile payments, an opportunity to take of a piece of the payments pie has basically fallen into their laps, provided that the telecoms are willing to work together. For example, these companies could easily generate revenue by providing identity authentication services to retail banks. (<a href="http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/179_2/atts-bid-to-intertwine-its-services-with-mobile-banking-apps-1064638-1.html" target="_blank">American Banker</a>) 
In other news...
BITCOIN WINNERS AND LOSERS: Business Insider's Rob Wile has a great summary of which companies are poised to win and lose as more businesses begin to accept Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Winners include IBM and Overstock.com. Remittance services like Western Union and card networks like Visa could be losers. (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/winners-and-losers-in-bitcoin-2014-1" target="_blank">Business Insider</a>)
CHARITY MADE SIMPLER: Digital Processing Solutions has announced a deal to provide its Digital Donations software to merchants who use Global Payments, Inc. as a payments processor. The software allows consumers to make donations directly to charities at points-of-sale in retail locations. (<a href="http://www.charitydigitalnews.co.uk/2014/01/02/digital-processing-solutions-partners-with-global-payments-to-roll-out-digital-donations-software/" target="_blank">Charity Digital News</a>)
P2P IN SPAIN: CaixaBank, one of Spain's largest financial institutions, announced that it will add a peer-to-peer payments feature to its digital wallet CaixaWallet. The feature will allow users to make transfers by email, texts, and by scanning QR codes. At the end of 2013, CaixaWallet and Caixa Virtual Prepaid cards had 600,000 active users. (<a href="http://www.mobilepaymentstoday.com/article/225477/CaixaBank-will-add-P2P-payments-to-digital-wallet" target="_blank">Mobile Payments Today</a>) 
INDIA'S E-COMMERCE BOOM CONTINUES: E-commerce is exploding in India, expanding from $6.3 billion in 2011 to $16 billion in 2013, according to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India. Internet penetration in India is currently less than 10% which means e-commerce should continue to grow at a rapid rate. (<a href="http://www.assocham.org/prels/shownews.php?id=4315" target="_blank">ASSOCHAM)</a>
SHOPIFY ADDS OFFLINE INTEGRATION: Shopify has redesigned its e-commerce app with new features aimed at helping retailers improve their e-commerce and offline commerce experience with new tools for tracking and inventory management. For offline commerce, the new software integrates with the company's Square-like mobile card reader. (<a href="http://TechCrunch.com/2014/01/02/shopify-revamps-its-ios-app-with-a-focus-on-payments-and-store-management/" target="_blank">TechCrunch</a>)
VALUING BITCOIN: Business Insider's Jay Yarrow interviewed Bitcoin investor Charlie Dixon to find out if and what the value of Bitcoin is. (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-bitcoin-has-value-2014-1?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29" target="_blank">Business Insider</a>) 
What subscribers are reading on BI Intelligence ...
[CHART] <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-dominates-messaging-apps-2014-1">WhatsApp Has The Biggest Audience On Android, But Kakao Talk Leads In Time-Spend</a>
[CHART] <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/pinterest-is-enjoying-a-growth-spurt-2013-12">Pinterest Is Enjoying A Growth Spurt From U.S. Desktop Users</a>
[CHART] <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/slower-christmas-app-download-rates-are-a-microcosm-of-the-smartphone-markets-maturation-2013-12">The Slowdown In Christmas App Download Growth Is A Microcosm Of The Smartphone Market's Maturation</a>
[CHART] <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/facebook-pages-enjoy-record-engagement-2013-12">Facebook Pages Have Been Enjoying Record Engagement Levels, But That's About To Change</a>
[CHART] <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/ios-dominates-christmas-day-mobile-commerce-2013-12">iOS Dominates Christmas Day Mobile Commerce Sales In The US</a>

Competing Telecoms Are Joining Forces To Take A Piece Of The Payments Pie

Welcome to our new Payments Insights newsletter, a morning email with the top news and analysis on the digital payments industry, produced by <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=PINSIGHTSutm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile" target="_blank">BI Intelligence</a>. 
<a href="http://e.businessinsider.com/join/biipaymentsform" target="_blank">Click here to sign up for Payment Insights today, and receive it every morning in your inbox</a>.
<hr />
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><a title_source="Zynga" title_caption="Zynga's FarmVille 2" class="zoomin" href="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/52ca191569beddb4044f26d6-960/farmville-2-1.png"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/52ca191569beddb4044f26d6-721-541/farmville-2-1.png?maxX=400&amp;maxY=300" border="0" alt="FarmVille 2" width="400" height="300" style="float: right;" /></a><a href="http://zynga.com/">Zynga</a>Zynga's FarmVille 2</div></div>ZYNGA PARTNERS WITH BITPAY TO ACCEPT BITCOIN. Zynga, a company that builds social games including Farmville, is partnering with Bitpay, a Bitcoin payments processor. The partnership will allow gamers to make payments for in-game virtual goods using Bitcoin.
Zynga announced the deal in a post on the social networking site Reddit, which hosts a large community of Bitcoin enthusiasts.
During the trial, the availability of Bitcoin as a payment method will be limited to FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows, and CityVille.
IT'S A BIG DEAL FOR BITCOIN, BITPAY, AND ZYNGA. The success and value of Bitcoin as a method of payment is highly dependent on the number of businesses that accept it. The fact that large, well-known businesses like Zynga and Overstock.com are making moves to accept Bitcoin is an indicator that Bitcoin may get the legs it needs to become a robust method of transaction.
The deal is a huge win for Bitpay because it will increase the company's brand recognition and help to diversify the types of businesses that use the company's services.
Zynga's daily active users dropped by half in the last year and the company is making moves to plug holes and cut costs. The low cost of processing Bitcoin transactions could help the company achieve this goal, assuming Zynga gamers are willing to adopt Bitcoin as a method of transaction. The move also gains Zynga some much-needed attention. (<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/04/zynga-links-up-with-bitpay-for-a-bitcoin-payment-test-in-farmville-2-cityville-and-other-web-games/" target="_blank">TechCrunch</a>)
In other news...
BITCOIN MINING HARDWARE SALES ARE EXPLODING. Computing components used for mining Bitcoin generated $200 million last year in new sales for the companies that produce these products. Bitcoin mining requires solving mathematical puzzles with computers. There are a limited number of bitcoins that can be mined and as these un-mined coins become more scarce the computing power required to find new bitcoins increases, creating demand for specialized computing components. (<a href="http://www.paymentssource.com/news/bitcoin-equipment-boom-benefits-tech-sales-report-3016500-1.html" target="_blank">Payments Source</a>) 
A PAYMENT CARD WITH A FINGERPRINT READER. A Houston based start-up, Epic One, is hoping to help prevent Target-style data breaches by developing a new payment card. The card will require users to swipe their fingers across a biometric scanner before it can be used to make a purchase. No credit card information will be stored on the card either. Instead that information will be stored in a digital wallet in the cloud. (<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2014/01/03/heres-how-credit-cards-can-thwart-target-style-hacking/?utm_campaign=techtwittersf&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social" target="_blank">Forbes</a>) 
STARBUCKS INTRODUCES GIFT CARDS IN CHINA. Starbucks is introducing gift cards in China. While the Asia-Pacific region only accounts for about 6% of the coffee company's revenue, the addressable market in China is huge and revenue is expected to grow quickly which should also have a positive effect on gift card sales. To give you an idea of how big gift card sales are for Starbucks, consider that during the 2012 holiday season one in ten American adults recieved a Starbucks gift card. (<a href="http://www.paymentssource.com/news/starbucks-introduces-gift-cards-in-china-3016498-1.html" target="_blank">Payments Source</a>)
BUNDLED PAYMENTS SERVICES ARE A HIT WITH MERCHANTS. Independent sales organizations (ISOs), which sell payments services on behalf of processors, are having success selling bundled payments services to merchants. Transmodus, for example, is an ISO that bundles a number of products like mobile payments, online payment forms, email billing, and virtual terminals together. This provides a one-stop solution for merchants. (<a href="http://www.isoandagent.com/news/Bundled-Payment-Services-Attract-And-Retain-Clients-ISOs-Say-3016497-1.html" target="_blank">ISO and Agent</a>)
WELCOME TO PAYMENTS INSIGHTS. We hope you are enjoying our newsletter. Don't forget to <a href="http://e.businessinsider.com/join/biipaymentsform" target="_blank">sign up</a> and get it every morning in your inbox. Please email <a href="mailto:johnh@businessinsider.com">johnh@businessinsider.com</a> or BI Intelligence director <a href="mailto:mballve@businessinsider.com" target="_blank">mballve@businessinsider.com</a> with news and tips.
THE WORLD'S SECOND-LARGEST INSURER IS LAUNCHING A FINANCIAL SERVICES APP. Ping An Insurance Company of China, the world's second-largest insurer, plans to offer a mobile financial services app at the end of January, according to the Global Times. The services will include online payments and social networking services. (<a href="http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/835481.shtml#.UsbbdvRDvTo" target="_blank">Global Times</a>)
COINBASE OFFERS BITCOIN POINT OF SALE SOFTWARE. Coinbase, a Bitcoin wallet provider, released a point-of-sale app that allows merchants to use their mobile devices to accept Bitcoin for products and services. (<a href="http://www.mobilepaymentstoday.com/article/225565/Coinbase-releases-new-wallet-and-merchant-apps" target="_blank">Mobile Payments Today</a>)
WALL STREET IS HUNTING FOR BITCOIN TRADERS. Wall Street recruiting firm Glocap posted a position for a "Junior Bitcoin Execution Trader" last week. The news comes on the heels of the announcement that Fortress Investment Group and Pantera Capital are opening their own Bitcoin funds. (<a href="http://www.thestreet.com/story/12201627/1/bitcoin-trading-wall-streets-next-big-thing.html" target="_blank">The Street</a>) 
What subscribers are reading on BI Intelligence ...
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/a-social-engagement-primer-2013-12">A Social Engagement Primer: A Portrait Of Time-Spend And Activity On The Top Social Networks</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/more-us-adults-use-pinterest-2014-1">Pinterest Leaps Past Twitter In Popularity Among U.S. Adults</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/freemium-apps-brought-in-the-bulk-of-app-revenue-in-2013-2013-12">'Freemium' Apps Accounted For Nearly All App Revenue In 2013</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-dominates-messaging-apps-2014-1">WhatsApp Has The Biggest Audience On Android, But Kakao Talk Leads In Time-Spend</a>

Zynga Is Giving Bitcoin A Test Drive In Its Social Games

Social Media Insights is a daily newsletter from <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">BI Intelligence</a> delivered first thing every morning exclusively to <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">BI Intelligence</a> subscribers. <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=MI&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">Sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today</a>. 
<hr />
FACEBOOK IMPROVES AD TARGETING: The world's largest social network announced a number of changes to its Ads API program, which includes all of its non-FBX ads. Among them, Facebook has improved the logic of its ad targeting method. Previously, when an advertiser selected "parents" and "photography" as parameters for targeting users, the audience contracted to those people "who are parents OR interested in photography." Now, those parameters will be defined as "parents who are interested in photography," which will provide advertisers with a more specific target audience. 
What's more, Facebook claims it has improved demographic targeting for a user's workplace, education, job title types, and relationship status. Advertisers can also now see when a user has added a life event to their timeline, such as telling their network that they bought a house or a car. Facebook began <a href="http://allfacebook.com/add-life-events-timeline_b127567">prompting users in December</a> to add these life events to their timelines, and the motive now seems to be advertising. 
The changes means that advertisers can now target Facebook users based on behaviors. "These categories are specific to a user's particular actions, past purchase behavior, or purchase propensity," according to the company's ad roadmap. Testing of this new targeting type will begin in February. 
Facebook also announced that it is sunsetting sponsored stories. When the social network <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/06/facebook-simplifies-ads/">simplified its ad units last year</a>, one of the major changes was it added social context to page post and page like ads (e.g., a user sees an ad for a company because his friend liked the brand's Facebook page). Previously, advertisers had to purchase an ad such as a page post ad, in addition to a sponsored story. The sponsored story then added the social context to the ad. Now that page post and page like ads come with social context by default, Facebook will be discontinuing sponsored stories after April. (<a href="https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/">Facebook Blog</a>)
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><a title_source="Randy Olson" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52cfe54decad04dc664229cf-960/subredditgrowthovertime-all-time.png"><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52cfe54decad04dc664229cf-1200-800/subredditgrowthovertime-all-time.png?maxX=400" border="0" alt="SubredditGrowthOverTime all time" width="400" style="float: right;" /></a>Randy Olson</div></div>REDDIT IS GROWING UP: Michigan State University PhD student Randy Olson analyzed Reddit posts (which are user submitted) over time to see how the site's content has evolved over the years. 
Between 2006 and 2008, the majority of content on Reddit was related to programming, science, and politics, which reflected the site's roots as a community for technology professionals. In 2011, photo-related content began to take over the conversation on Reddit. Fast forward to today, and photos are still a large share of content being submitted to Reddit, but the topics range from the mainstream to the obscure, representative of Reddit evolving into a mainstream web property, a place for photo-sharing and content distribution. (<a href="http://www.randalolson.com/2013/03/12/retracing-the-evolution-of-reddit-through-post-data/">Randy Olson</a>)
YOU'VE GOT GOOGLE+ MAIL: Google is integrating its social network Google+ with its webmail product on a more intimate level. Users can now email their Google+ contact via Gmail, even if they don't have that person's direct email address. Users can opt-out of the feature by adjusting their Gmail settings under a section called "Gmail via Google+." 
When you begin typing a recipient's name in an email (via Gmail), the service will recommend people who are your Google+ connections. 
Google+ is becoming tightly integrated with all of Google's major products. The social service is helping Google identify the billions of people who use its products every day. (<a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/reach-people-you-know-more-easily.html">Google Blog</a>) 
SNAPCHAT APOLOGIZES: Snapchat posted an apology yesterday, eight days after 4.6 million users had their phone numbers and usernames exposed. The company said it updated the app to allow users to disable the "Find Friends" feature, which was vulnerable enough for hackers to exploit. (<a href="http://blog.snapchat.com/post/72768002320/find-friends-improvements">Snapchat Blog</a>)
SNAPCHAT CHOOSES GOOGLE OVER AMAZON: Amazon's collection of cloud computing services (AWS) are a favorite among top web properties, such as Netflix, Pinterest, Reddit, Airbnb, and Spotify, to name a few. Why? Because Amazon can provide its clients with a lot of computing capacity (read: fast website response times) at a low cost. However, Snapchat built its app on top of Google App Engine, which offers infrastructure services that compete with Amazon Web Services. In an interview last year, Snapchat CTO Bobby Murphy said that he believed, "Google is scaling out and willing to invest in this platform," and that "when it comes to scale, Google could offer more than AWS." 
Amazon is obviously going to continue investing in its cloud computing services as well though, and it would be very cumbersome for a web property the size of Netflix to migrate to a different set of cloud computing services. So, Amazon will continue to support major web properties, but Snapchat is a valuable case study for Google, giving it an opportunity to demonstrate the strong performance of its cloud computing services as well. (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-is-built-on-googles-cloud-2014-1">Business Insider</a>)
Here's what else BI Intelligence subscribers are reading … 
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/linkedin-outperforms-twitter-and-pinterest-among-older-us-adults-2014-1">Among U.S. Adults Thirty Or Older, LinkedIn Is More Popular Than Twitter Or Pinterest</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-cost-of-acquiring-new-users-grows-2014-1">The Cost Of Acquiring New App Users Is Shooting Up As Mobile Markets Mature</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/user-engagement-growth-on-twitter-2014-1">Twitter's Overall Engagement Growth Slows, Spelling Trouble In The Long-Term</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/kickstarter-projects-raised-more-than-800-million-2014-1">Kickstarter Projects Raised More Than $800 Million In Four Years - With Social Media's Help</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-just-as-much-a-daily-activity-in-europe-as-it-is-in-the-us-2013-12">Facebook Enjoys Impressive Rates Of Daily Activity Among Its European Users</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/more-us-adults-use-pinterest-2014-1">Pinterest Leaps Past Twitter In Popularity Among U.S. Adults</a>
<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-dominates-messaging-apps-2014-1">WhatsApp Has The Biggest Audience On Android, But Kakao Talk Leads In Time-Spend</a>

Facebook Announces Major Improvements To Ad Targeting

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51acb861eab8ea043e000015-592-444/whatsapp-iphone.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="whatsapp iphone" width="480" />Kevin Smith/Business Insider</div></div><img src="http://hits.theguardian.com/b/ss/guardiangu-api/1/H.20.3/98867?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Teenagers+say+goodbye+to+Facebook+and+hello+to+messenger+apps+Article+1994751&amp;ch=Technology&amp;c2=53056&amp;c4=Facebook%2CSocial+networking%2CYoung+people+%28Society%29%2CApps%2CSocial+media%2CInternet%2CTechnology%2CMedia%2CChina+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CUS+news%2CUK+news&amp;c3=The+Observer&amp;c6=Parmy+Olson&amp;c7=13-Nov-10&amp;c8=1994751&amp;c9=Article" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /><keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> made a startling admission in its earnings announcement this month: it was seeing a "decrease in daily users, specifically among <keyword id="6524593" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Teens">teens</keyword>". In other words, teenagers are still on Facebook; they're just not using it as much as they did. It was a landmark statement, since teens are the demographic who often point the rest of us towards the next big thing.
Their gradual exodus to messaging apps such as <a href="http://www.whatsapp.com/" title="">WhatsApp</a>, WeChat and KakaoTalk boils down to Facebook becoming a victim of its own success. The road to gaining nearly 1.2 billion monthly active users has seen the mums, dads, aunts and uncles of the generation who pioneered Facebook join it too, spamming their walls with inspirational quotes and images of cute animals, and (shock, horror) commenting on their kids' photos. No surprise, then, that Facebook is no longer a place for uninhibited status updates about pub antics, but an obligatory communication tool that younger people maintain because everyone else does.
All the fun stuff is happening elsewhere. On their mobiles.
When mobile messaging apps such as <keyword id="790242" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="WhatsApp">WhatsApp</keyword> first emerged in 2009, they looked like a threat to mobile carriers. Everyone from Vodafone to Dutch operator KPN was mentioning them in sales calls. Mobile operators are estimated to have lost $23bn in SMS revenue in 2012 due to messaging apps, which host free instant messages through a phone's data connection, which these days is often unlimited. Now these apps are becoming a threat to established social networks too.
WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the UK and on half the country's iPhones, according to Mobile Marketing Magazine, has more than 350 million monthly active users globally. That makes it the biggest messaging app in the world by users, with even more active users than social media darling Twitter, which counts 218 million. About 90% of the population of Brazil uses messaging apps, three-quarters of Russians, and half of Britons, according to mobile consultancy Tyntec. WhatsApp alone is on more than 95% of all smartphones in Spain. The power users and early adopters of these apps, the ones you're most likely to see tapping their thumbs over a tiny screen, are under 25.
Part of the reason is that gradual encroachment of the grey-haired ones on Facebook. Another is what messaging apps have to offer: private chatting with people you are friends with in real life. Instead of passively stalking people you barely know on Facebook, messaging apps promote dynamic real-time chatting with different groups of real-life friends, real life because to connect with them on these apps you will typically already have their mobile number. The trend flies in the face of recurring criticism of young people - that their social lives are largely virtual - when many more are in fact embracing the virtues of privacy and services like WhatsApp, which shun advertising.
"I only use WhatsApp to communicate and send pics these days," said Natalie West, a twentysomething financial sales associate in London. In the last few years she has used Facebook less and less because she doesn't want "the whole world to know" what she's doing. When people set up events and get-togethers on Facebook, West and her boyfriend tend to reply on WhatsApp instead because "it's more personal". For similar reasons, some 78% of teenagers and young people use mobile messengers to plan a meet-up with friends, according to <a href="http://www.mobileyouth.org/about/" title="">research advisory firm mobileYouth</a>.
Another factor is the rise of the selfie, often silly self-portraits taken at arm's length with a mobile. Almost half of the photos on Instagram feeds among people aged 14 to 21 in the UK are selfies, according to mobileYouth. Sending those photos via a mobile messaging service is safer than broadcasting them on Facebook, since they're less likely to be seen by a boss or dozens of Facebook friends you forgot you had. Selfies are even bigger on <a href="http://www.snapchat.com/" title="">Snapchat</a>, the evanescent photo sharing app that deletes a photo several seconds after it has been viewed. With around 150 million active users, the service has inevitably become a favoured way for teens to send sexy or even naked photos of themselves, an ill-advised practice known as "sexting". But teens also love Snapchat because it allows them to send inane photos of themselves without fear of leaving a permanent digital footprint.The California-based app is seen as so hot, with so much potential for growth, that it has already been pegged with a $2-$4bn valuation in the Silicon Valley tech community. Estimates are even higher for WhatsApp, which makes money through an annual subscription; some observers suggest it could be worth $5bn or more.
The final, big reason why young people are gravitating towards messaging apps is that many of these apps no longer do just messaging. They are social networks. The best examples come out of Asia, with messaging platforms KakaoTalk (South Korea), WeChat (China) and LINE (Japan). All have tens of millions of users, with WeChat boasting more than 200 million, and take their services beyond offering straight messaging to games, stickers and music sharing. Before you write off digital stickers as inane, they are a decent moneyspinner for LINE: of the $58m the company made in sales in the first quarter of 2013, half came from selling games and 30%, or roughly $17m, from sales of its 8,000 different stickers. Some are free or, in Spain where LINE has 15 million registered users, cost around €1.99. Often users choose stickers instead of words when they need to express themselves, one LINE executive said; it's known to have helped couples get over fights more easily by offering multiple stickers to say sorry.
Gaming is another money-maker. With KakaoTalk, which is thought to be on 90% of all smartphones in South Korea, registered users can choose from more than 100 games they can play with one another, and games alone helped the company generate $311m in sales in the first half of 2013. A couple of non-Asian messaging apps such as Kik (Canada) and Tango (US) are turning themselves into full-fledged platforms too, inviting software engineers to create games that run on their apps. They will typically let developers take home half the revenue while taking a 20% cut. App stores such as Google Play and Apple's App Store take the remaining 30%. Tango took all this a step further this month when it partnered with music-streaming Spotify to allow its 60 million monthly users to share music clips with one another. Two years ago Spotify launched a similar partnership with Facebook. "What we're seeing in the messaging space is an explosion in growth," said Spotify's vice-president of strategic partnerships, Tom Hsieh, who hinted there would be partnerships with other messaging apps in the future too. "I don't think there's been a clear winner [among them] yet."
It is worth noting that, with so many of these apps getting into games, stickers and now music sharing, it is becoming harder to define them as messaging services. "I think there is some misunderstanding here in how we categorise these apps," says Pavel Durov, who founded Russia's version of Facebook, <a href="http://VK.com" title="">VK.com</a>, and recently launched a mobile messaging service called Telegram. "They are social networks. You have a social graph there; a newsfeed; you have profile pages. Many things that are related to social networks by definition." Social chat apps is another way to define them, says Gartner mobile analyst Brian Blau. "People are sometimes using three or four of these apps."
Many of the Asian chat apps such as Kakao and LINE are struggling to appeal to US users, though, because of the stylised nature of their interfaces - vivid colors, manga-style characters and lettering. "We're used to being a little more subdued," says Blau, who is based in the US.
In the race to become platforms with extra frills, the big exception is WhatsApp. Founder Jan Koum has said publicly that he has no plans for his service to start providing games. Koum and his co-founder Brian Acton, both former Yahoo managers who were one of the first to create a mobile messaging app for smartphones with WhatsApp, see it almost as a pure communication utility that should not be saddled with extra features that might slow things down. "That's what's happened with Facebook now," says Neeraj Arora, business manager for WhatsApp, which is based in Mountain View, California. "It tries to do everything for everyone. Our core is communication."
That is a somewhat conservative approach compared to most other messaging platforms, yet WhatsApp is still quietly broadening out. In the same way Facebook first rolled our Facebook Connect in 2008 to allow people to use their profiles to like or comment on other websites, WhatsApp recently unveiled an instruction set known as an API that lets other mobile apps share content through WhatsApp too. The roll-out is still in its infancy, but after one music streaming service in the Middle East added the WhatsApp sharing button, its was surprised to find its users sharing 50% more songs via WhatsApp than Facebook.
The future for these messaging apps is still uncertain. Some in the industry expect buyouts from big internet companies like Google, which was rumoured to have flirted with WhatsApp earlier this year. Facebook already has its own popular Messenger service, while Apple has iMessage - both are popular, but lack the gaming ambitions of Asian chat apps. Still, it is hard to imagine these players consolidating to create a global social network as big as Facebook.
"If you look at the landscape, it's geographic," says Greg Woock, CEO of the US calling and messaging service Pinger. "We dominate the US, WhatsApp dominates Europe, LINE owns Japan." China's WeChat is trying to break out of that mould. Its executives have talked about expanding internationally, and custom building its app to suit local tastes for how it should look. "We have put a lot of thought into how to take it outside of China," Martin Lau, the president of WeChat owner Tencent, said at a recent conference.
Who dies, survives or thrives may ultimately depend on how well any of these players can make money. Snapchat, arguably a photo-sharing service more than a messaging app, has yet to explain how it will do so.
WhatsApp says it is already profitable thanks to its annual subscription fees; Pinger relies on advertisements; WeChat, LINE, Kakao and Kik sell stickers and games. Some of these services are bound to go out of fashion, and a few business models will fail, and they're still a world away from the $2.1bn in sales that Facebook brought in this last quarter.
But there is little doubt that millions of teens will use these apps more and more, and older demographics will eventually join them. There's a good chance that will continue to be at the expense of Facebook.
Parmy Olson is a technology writer for Forbes magazine in San Francisco. She is the author of <a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780434022083" title="">We Are Anonymous</a> (Little, Brown, 2012).
<h2>Top messenger apps</h2>
WhatsApp Started in 2009 by two ex-Yahoo staff, this smartphone messaging system handles more than 10 billion messages a day and is reckoned to have more than 250m users worldwide. One of the most popular paid-for apps on any platform, and a threat to telecoms companies which charge for texts.
Snapchat Allows users to send "view once'"photos, specifying how long the photo will remain on the recipient's device. "Snap an ugly selfie or a video, add a caption, and send it to a friend (or maybe a few). They'll receive it, laugh, and then the snap disappears," says Snapchat. The company is valued at $800m and users send 350m messages per day, up from 200m in June.
WeChat The Chinese social media app, which handles voice messages, snapshots and emoticons, has more than 200m subscribers. The vast majority of users are in China, though it also has subscribers in the US and UK. It is being tipped as the first Chinese social media application with the potential to go global.
KakaoTalk A Korean messaging app with more than 90m users that generated $42m of revenues in 2012, ending the year with users sending 4.8bn messages a day. The company recently launched KakaoHome in its home country: a similar app that provides "a customised home screen experience on your smartphone" with widgets, notifications and deeper integration of the main messaging service.

This article originally appeared on <a>guardian.co.uk</a>
<img class="nc_pixel" src="http://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT01OTAzMmNiMjI4ZjdlNDliNTMxM2RmNWYzNjc1MTJjNCZvd25lcj01ZGYyMDgwZWQ3Y2QxN2VjMjVhYWU2ZTkwYWU2MzNmMiZub25jZT0zNjNmNTk3OS1jYmI3LTRkZDktYjY4Ny0yZWZiNTQwMTc1MjQmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" />

Teens Are Deserting Facebook, And They're Heading To A Whole New Breed Of Apps Where Their Parents Can't Find Them

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b18c46da811767f818321-836-627/brit-morin-14.jpg" border="0" alt="Brit Morin"><a href="http://www.brit.co/about/team/">Brit &amp; Co</a>Founder, CEO of Brit &amp; Co, Brit Morin</img></div></div></div>In only three and a half years, Brit Morin went from a Google employee to a bona fide Silicon Valley "it" girl.Last week, she announced that her startup, Brit &amp; Co, <a href="https://www.pehub.com/2015/06/intel-leads-20-mln-round-for-brit-co/">raised $20 million in funding.</a>Her home/fashion/crafts site, which combines a blog with e-commerce and online learning, is now serving 12 million people a month. And on Friday, she launched the <a href="http://www.brit.co/announcing-iamcreative-foundation/">#IAMCREATIVE foundation</a>, which will offer grants of $2,500 to $15,000 to people with worthy creative project ideas. The foundation expects to give away between 15 and 20 grants annually. Morin is also an A-list in the Valley social set. She's married to Dave Morin, an early Facebook employee and former Apple employee and founder of Path, a messaging app that was just <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kakao-talk-buys-path-2015-5">bought by Kakao Talk</a> for an undisclosed sum. She's also friendly enough with her old boss, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (whom she worked with at Google) that Mayer became an angel investor in her company, a couple of times over. Morin will tell you that all this began when she was a little kid who loved to make stuff. She says that she got side-tracked with tech when she was a teenager and later had the idea of marrying the two together ... and Brit &amp; Co was born. But the truth is her success is a combination of hard work, serendipity, and a gut feeling that led her to "break up" with former friend and another startup.<h2>Serendipity: Apple recruits on Craigslist?</h2>Morin's stellar career really started when she answered what she thought was a phony ad from Apple on Craigslist, she told us.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b1936ecad040018bbd4c9-608-611/brit-morin-as-a-kid.png" border="0" alt="Brit Morin as a kid">Brit Morin Brit Morin happily making stuff as a kid</img></div></div></div>"I started at Apple with an internship. I saw an ad on Craigslist. I didn't think Apple would ever advertise on Craigslist, so I didn't even think it was real," she tells us.But she answered it anyway. And it was real. She got the interview, and then the internship and then went on to work for Apple in the iTunes unit in 2006.(By the way, we just checked and didn't see any more ads for interns for Apple on Craigslist.)She wasn't at Apple long, not even a year, before she was hired away by Google to work on Google Maps and Google Search. That's where she met and worked with Mayer. She was recruited internally to join the YouTube unit and, later, worked on Google TV.All of that made her realize: "This generation of millennials really looks up to people more than it looks up to brands. That was evident by all the YouTube celebrities during my time at Google, as it was on Twitter and blogger platforms and so on," she said.This insight would become a big deal a few months later.<h2>'Obsessed' with TechShop</h2>During her nearly four years at Google, a few things happened to Morin that would change the course of her life.She caught the entrepreneur bug and decided she wanted to start her own company. She got married, and took a few months off from Google to plan an elaborate wedding, have the ceremony, go on a honeymoon.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b199a69beddb9779dba81-605-605/brit-morin-at-techshop.png" border="0" alt="Brit Morin at TechShop">Brit MorinBrit Morin happily making sutff at TechShop</img></div></div></div>And she became "obsessed with" this new workshop club called TechShop.Before her wedding, "I was actually close to starting a company in the health and fitness space. I even had a co-founder," she told us."After I got married and came back from my honeymoon, we were going to start fund raising. We had built an alpha version of the app and everything at that point," Morin says."While I was working on my new health and fitness company and I was preparing for my wedding and it just so happened that the first-ever TechShop opened in San Francisco. It's like a gym for making things. You pay $100 a month and you have access to all these types of machines ranging from wafer cutters to 3D printers," she describes."It opened in 2011 and I was one of the first members. I think I literally spent every day there. I thought it was like a hobby of mine, like, 'Oh this is cool, I have this new hobby, I can just like make things.' Then I became obsessed with it," she describes.She says she didn't know how to use all the tools in the shop, but her background in tech - albeit software - made it fairly easy for her learn.She was making decorations her wedding, as well as a bunch of other stuff."So I got married and at the wedding, the women were coming up to me and raving about how cool all of my decorations were. They kept telling me they wished they were creative, that they weren't creative. I started getting that more and more, after I would show more people the stuff I made outside of my wedding," she says."I came back from my honeymoon thinking how wrong this was. What happened from that time when we were all three-year-olds who loved to color and build LEGOs, to the time when we're 25 or 30 years and we're really insecure about our creative skills?" she adds.<h2>Breaking up is hard to do</h2>Something in her gut told her that the company she really wanted to build would be all about helping people find their lost creativity."I ended up breaking up with my co-founder of the health company. I told her it wasn't her, it was me," Morin tells us.It was a painful time."We were friends. It was hard. We could have gone out and raised a good seed round and I could be a CEO of a health company at this point. But following my intuition and my gut was the lesson I learned," she says.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b1ccceab8ea177a8b456e-745-558/brit-moran-first-video-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Brit Moran first video">Brit Morin'One of the first videos we ever made at B+C' - Brit Morin</img></div></div></div>In the meantime, "I also had to start from scratch. I didn't even know what this thing was I wanted to go do, I just knew it was a problem and I wanted to go figure it out."Having quit her job at Google, she set up shop in her dining room and launched a website that catered to women with do-it-yourself projects."I was by myself for a month or two, pretending I was a big media company, trying to create a lot of content. Ultimately my next hires were an engineer and another editor, an artist to help create content," she recalls.That first year was a struggle,"as every startup kind of struggles through that first year of what are we going to be? How are we going to hire people that want to take a risk on a three person startup?"So how did she convince people? "Being very convincing ... and equity packages," she jokes.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b1be769bedda90b8b456e-770-577/brit-kits-prototype-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Brit Kits prototype">Brit MorinThe first, tiny prototype of a Brit Kits package</img></div></div></div>But having gone through her own creative rebirth, she truly believed the whole "maker" trend, was about to take off.She didn't recruit through Craigslist, but "we recruited a lot of engineers through AngelList and sold them on the long-term opportunity," she says.She explained this was a tech company that would sit between an ad-supported media company and the $34 billion crafts market dominated by stores like Michael's and Joanne's and Hobby Lobby.The unique thing she was bringing to the table: online education to teach "maker wannabes" how to make stuff, complete with "kits" that included everything they needed to take the class. Eventually, she wanted to help them sell the stuff they made, too."I was convincing VCs and employees: This is a real thing that's happening. Please trust me. Get on the board when the wave is coming, I promise you it's going to hit," she says.<h2>Raised eyebrows</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b1da76bb3f7b0758b456e-640-480/obama-white-house-maker-faire-1.png" border="0" alt="Obama White House Maker Faire"><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/nation-of-makers">White House Maker Faire</a>President Obama hosts the second annual White House Maker Faire</img></div></div></div>"The challenge for me in the early days was getting people to believe me. A lot of people would totally raise their eyebrows when I said I wanted to start a company that was a hybrid of DYI and tech. No one understood how those things go together. Now it's really clear."Today, the "maker" thing is a bona fide trend, complete with an annual Maker Faire at the White House, which launched last year.And Morin is considered one of the female leaders of the trend.The 2015 faire is taking place this week starting Friday. As part of that launch Morin did fireside chat with <a href="http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/national-maker-faire-celebrates-invention-creativity-and-resourcefulness-2029093.htm">White House CTO Megan Smith. </a><h2>$20 million more and an acquisition</h2>Morin is frequently called the "next Martha Stewart" or "Martha Stewart 2.0" and the two do know each other. Morin has appeared on Stewart's radio show, they see each other at social events and their companies generally run in the same circles.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b1df06bb3f7aa758b456c-536-402/susan-lyne-sa100.jpg" border="0" alt="susan lyne, sa100"><a href="https://twitter.com/smlyne">Twitter/@smlyne</a></img></div></div></div>In fact, Morin just added Susan Lyne to the Brit &amp; Co board. Lyne was previously a CEO at Martha Stewart's company and was later CEO at Gilt Groupe. Today she runs AOL's BBG Ventures, a fund focused on women-led tech startups.With the new $20 million investment, Morin made also her first acquisition for an undisclosed amount: SnapGuide, a free iOS app and web service that allows users to create and share step-by-step "how-to guides."SnapGuide has amassed 100,000 of these guides, everything from recipes to make-up tips to techie-projects to automotive hacks.Brit &amp; Co has raised $27.6 to date. Beyond Marissa Meyer, her investors include Jim Fielding, head of Consumer Products and Retail at DreamWorks Animation; Intel Capital; DMGT (the corporate arm of the Daily Mail media company); VC Fred Harman at Oak Investment Partners, (Demand Media. Huffington Post, aQuantive) and other big names.<h2>Morin has achieved fast success</h2>In under four years, Brit &amp; Co has become a phenom and she's become a personality regularly <a href="https://www.brit.co/tag/today-show/">appearing on the Today Show. </a>Her site now hosts about 15 classes with plans to host between 60 and 70 by year's end. Classes include kits of all the materials you need and so far, Brit &amp; Co has sold a combined 15,000 classes and kits.Brit &amp; Co has 12 million visitors a month, between its website, email lists and social media channels. It has about 100 advertisers, with a 74 percent retention rate, Morin tells us.Although she wouldn't share a revenue number, we're told that the "company is doing millions in revenue annually" and in the first half of 2015, hit its revenue grew two times over the year what it was in the first half of 2014.Brit + Co currently now has 50 employees, 70% of which are women, including much of the company's leadership team.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557b20196bb3f75d0c8b4568-1200-750/brit-co-team.jpg" border="0" alt="Brit &amp; Co employees"><a href="http://www.brit.co/about/team/">Brit &amp; Co </a>Brit &amp; Co employees</img></div></div></div> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-rule-job-interviews-lying-tesla-2015-6">How Elon Musk can tell if job applicants are lying about their experience</a></h3> <div> <div> <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="V3d3E2aToOOWPYL9cZeuOnDMMKH3j_6e" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> <script> if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; } RunFunctions.push(function() { var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'V3d3E2aToOOWPYL9cZeuOnDMMKH3j_6e',{ autoplay: 'false' }); }); </script> <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div> </div> <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script> </div>

How a 'fake' Craigslist ad from Apple led Brit Morin to her fabulous career

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51595a9b6bb3f79e07000027-685-513/snapchat-1.png?maxX=400" border="0" alt="snapchat" width="400" /></div>Snapchat website</div>SAN FRANCISCO, March 31 (Reuters) - Create personal profiles. Build networks of friends. Share photos, videos and music.
That might sound precisely like <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword>, but hundreds of millions of tech-savvy young people have instead turned to a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe.
The hot apps include Kik and Whatsapp, both products of North American startups, as well as Kakao Inc's KakaoTalk, NHN Corp's LINE and Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat, which have blossomed in Asian markets.
Combining elements of text messaging and social networking, the apps provide a quick-fire way for smartphone users to trade everything from brief texts to flirtatious pictures to YouTube clips - bypassing both the SMS plans offered by wireless carriers and established social networks originally designed as websites.
Facebook Inc, with 1 billion users, remains by far the world's most popular website, and its stepped-up focus on mobile has made it the most-used smartphone app as well. Still, across Silicon Valley, investors and industry insiders say there is a possibility that the messaging apps could threaten Facebook's dominance over the next few years. The larger ones are even starting to emerge as full-blown "platforms" that can support third-party applications such as games.
To be sure, many of those who are using the new messaging apps remain on Facebook, indicating there is little immediate sign of the giant social media company losing its lock on the market. And at a press event this week, the company will unveil news relating to Android, the world's most popular smartphone operating system, which could include a new version of Android with deeper integration of Facebook messaging tools - or possibly even a Facebook-branded phone.
But the firms that can take over the messaging world should be able to make some big inroads, investors say.
"True interactions are conversational in nature," says Rich Miner, a partner at Google Ventures who invested in San Francisco-based MessageMe, a new entrant in the messaging market. "More people text and make phone calls than get on to social networks. If one company dominates the replacement of that traffic, then by definition that's very big."
Facebook spokespeople declined to comment for this article, citing this Thursday's planned announcement.
Facebook's big challenge is reeling back users like Jacob Robinson, a 15-year old high school student in Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K., who said the Kik messaging app "blew up" among his friends about six months ago. It has remained the most-used app on his Android phone because it is the easiest way for him to send different kinds of multimedia for free, which he estimated he does about 200 times a day.
Robinson said he trades snapshots of his homework with friends while they stay up late studying for their exams - or not.
"We also stay up in bed with our phone all night, just on YouTube searching for funny videos, then you quickly share it with your friends," he added. "It's easy. You can flip in and out of Kik."
Facebook "has really started to lose its edge over here," said Robinson, who found his interactions on Facebook less interesting than his real-time chats.
Waterloo, Ontario-based Kik has racked up 40 million users since launching in 2010. Silicon Valley entrants in the race include Whatsapp, funded by Sequoia Capital, and MessageMe, launched earlier this month by a group of viral game makers. MessageMe has received seed-stage funding from True Ventures and First Round Capital, among others, and claimed 1 million downloads in its first week.
Meanwhile, Asian companies are producing some of the fastest-growing apps in history. Tencent's WeChat boasts 400 million users - far more than Twitter, by way of comparison - while LINE and KakaoTalk claim 120 million and 80 million users, respectively. Both have laid the groundwork to expand into the U.S. market.
MOBILE WAVE
The growth in the messaging apps reflect the dramatic shift in Internet usage in recent years, as Web visits via desktop computers have stagnated while smartphone ownership and app downloads have skyrocketed.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has publicly called Facebook a "mobile company" to emphasize the company's priorities. Last year, he splashed $1 billion for photo-sharing app Instagram, which has remained red hot, while Facebook also launched its own Messenger app, offering a suite of smartphone communication tools.
Still, Facebook has also been forced to play defense. Earlier this year, the company cut off its data integration with a young startup called Snapchat and then mimicked its feature with a new messaging tool called Poke, which sends messages that self-destruct. It has also shut off its integration with messaging apps like MessageMe and Voxer.
At the same time, Facebook has also hired graphic artists to draw emoticons and graphics for Messenger that emulate features of the wildly popular Asian apps like LINE, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Dave Morin, an early Facebook employee who left to found the "private" social network Path in 2010, said he recognized last summer the critical role of messaging functions in smartphone apps, and quickly began working to incorporate them.
Since Path released a new version of its app earlier this month, the number of Path's daily users has risen 15 percent, which Morin attributed to the new messaging features.
"What's the number one reason why people have this thing?" said Morin, holding up his iPhone. "It's to call, to text, to communicate."
Messaging, Morin added, is "the basis for the mobile social network."
PLATFORM THREAT
While established social networks move to incorporate messaging features, the new-wave messaging apps are looking to grow into social networking platforms that support a variety of features and enable innovations from outside developers.
"The tried and true approach for a social network is first you build a network, then you build apps on your own, then you open it up to third party developers," said Charles Hudson, a partner at early stage venture capital firm SoftTech VC.
The moves mirror Facebook's younger days, when its user growth and revenues were boosted by game publishers like Zynga Inc, which made popular games like FarmVille for the Facebook platform.
In the South Korean market, for instance, eight of the top ten highest grossing Android apps are games built on top of KakaoTalk. Tencent announced in November that it would introduce a mobile wallet feature enabling payment for goods with WeChat. And Tencent also makes money in China by using the app's location data to displaying nearby merchants' deals to potential customers.
If the messaging apps reach a certain scale, they could form networks that rival Facebook's "social graph," the network of user connections and activities that enable highly targeted delivery of content and advertising.
"The folks on your address book are very different from your Facebook friends and your LinkedIn contacts, and that's a natural place for a very powerful graph to be created," said Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital.
Ted Livingston, the 25-year old chief executive of Kik, said he developed the capability for his service to support external features in November, and he plans to open the platform to outside developers in the near future.
Livingston said Kik and Whatsapp were "in a race to see who's the first to build a platform."
Whatsapp, which has been the most widely downloaded communication app for both iOS and Android in recent months, according to analysis firm App Annie, has been profitable by selling subscriptions to its service for $1 a year. Although it has remained mum about its platform plans, the company has been rumored to be in talks with Asian game publishers about hosting games, according to news reports in South Korea.
Goetz declined to address the reports, saying only that because it relied on a subscription business model, Whatsapp did not need to sell games or ads to make money.
Still, he said, the Whatsapp team "spends a lot of time thinking about the developer community."
DEAL POTENTIAL
Established social networking giants could also swoop in for the upstarts - and Facebook has demonstrated its appetite for acquisitions.
Indeed, investors are eyeing a round of potentially lucrative buyouts resembling the series of deals involving group messaging applications in 2011.
Facebook acquired group messaging app Beluga in March of that year, enlisting its founders to help build its own stand alone app, Messenger, which launched six months later.
In late 2010, First Round Capital, an early stage venture capital firm, invested in GroupMe, a group messaging startup that was sold to Skype just fifteen months after it launched.
Kent Goldman, a First Round partner who has backed MessageMe, said it was unlikely that the market in the long term could support numerous independent messaging startups, which by their nature become more powerful as they grow larger.
"You don't want to be the smallest one when the music stops," he said.
<div class="nc_footer">
Copyright (2013) Thomson Reuters. <a href="http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/media/brand_guidelines/legal_notice/">Click for restrictions</a>
</div>
<img class="nc_pixel" src="http://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT1hMGExZjJmMWY1ZDMxOTFkODRjMzdkZTM1MDAxZjQ3YSZvd25lcj1lMjI0N2Q1MGI3OThiNGFmYmY4ZWMwMzI0YmY4MDI1YSZub25jZT0xYWU1MjNiZS1jODgzLTRlMGUtYTBiYi01ZmZhOGIwMjE1YTQmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" />

You Searched For "Kakao Talk" and got 8 results

A Facebook Post Is Twice As Likely To Go Viral If You Append It With The Phrase "Please Post This"

Cooper Smith

Facebook And Pinterest Bulk Up Their Big Data Teams

Cooper Smith

Competing Telecoms Are Joining Forces To Take A Piece Of The Payments Pie

John Heggestuen

Zynga Is Giving Bitcoin A Test Drive In Its Social Games

John Heggestuen

Facebook Announces Major Improvements To Ad Targeting

Cooper Smith

Teens Are Deserting Facebook, And They're Heading To A Whole New Breed Of Apps Where Their Parents Can't Find Them

Parmy Olson, The Guardian

How a 'fake' Craigslist ad from Apple led Brit Morin to her fabulous career

Julie Bort

Millions Of Teens Are Skipping Facebook And Using A New Breed Of Flirty Mobile Messaging Apps

Reuters