Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch.
Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology.
Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University in 2009 with a Master’s degree in Cybersociology, examining the influence of technology on social interaction. He researched the impact of privacy controls on the socialization of children, meme popularity cycles, and what influences the click through rate of links posted to Twitter.
Constine also received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Stanford University in 2007, with a concentration in Social Psychology & Interpersonal Processes. He became fascinated with social networking theory after joining Facebook as a freshman a month after the service first launched.
Josh Constine has spoken at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, and has been quoted by TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Atlantic, MSNBC, ReadWriteWeb, and more.
Only about 5% Facebook gamers pay to play freemium games. If Facebook could up this percentage, it and its third-party app developers could make a lot more money. That’s the idea behind a new promotion Facebook announced today where those who’ve never bought Facebook Credits virtual currency before will be offered $4 in free Credits when they buy $1. This gets users to set up their credit card and experience the rush of paying for an enhanced gaming experience. → Read More
When you listen, read, or watch through a Facebook Open Graph app, a few of your friends hear about through the news feed, Ticker, or Timeline. Starting this week, Facebook is allowing advertisers to pay for more exposure of listen, read, or watch stories that mention them by turning the stories into a new form of Sponsored Story social ads.
Open Graph action Sponsored Stories could further Facebook’s goal of turn all ads social, and boost revenue by filling the new inventory from Facebook now permitting Sponsored Stories ads in the news feed. → Read More
It won’t stop with Google Search Plus Your World. When asked if we should expect more integrations of Google+ into Google products, G+ director of engineering David Glazer said at today’s Inside Social Apps 2012 conference, ”Yes, where it’s good for the user. I think there’s more places to make people happy by showing them content they care about.” At the first major speaking engagement about its social network, Glazer also discussed user acquisition, monetization, and support for brands. → Read More
Television is in trouble. Americans streamed 43.5 billion videos in December 2011, up 44% since December 2010, according to comScore’s 2012 US Digital Future In Focus report released today. The study also showed that 105.1 million Americans now watch videos online each day, up 43% from 73.7 million in 2010.
comScore says YouTube is largely driving this, and that average minutes per video view, average videos watched per user, and total ads streamed are way up as well. TV and film studios should take notice and consider how they can create companion content to engage this growing audience. → Read More
In a few months time, here’s what the world will be fighting to get its hands on, or get rid of depending on your confidence in Facebook’s business plan. The image of a Facebook stock certificate was included in the amended S-1 Facebook filed today with the SEC. It’s sure to become coveted by Scripophiliacs, or people who collect historic stock certificates, along with those from Google, Apple, and Pixar pictured within. → Read More
Facebook has just filed an amendment to its S-1 that exhibits the agreements between it and Zynga. These 2 developer agreement documents are the same as those filed in Zynga’s own S-1 amendment from last year and don’t include significant new information.
The exhibits do spell out how Facebook has promised to help Zynga with advertising on Zynga sites such as FarmVille.com, and share revenue from such a partnership. This should not be confused to mean sharing ad revenue from Zynga’s games on Facebook.com. Facebook also included its 2005 stock plan, and employment letters to key executives. → Read More
All smartphones do not depreciate equally. 18 months after purchase, iPhones can be sold for 53% of their original price, while Androids can only be sold for 42% and BlackBerries for 41% on average according to a study by Y Combinator second-hand price guide startup Priceonomics. The study also offered tips on memory upgrades and models for maximizing your phone’s resale value.
→ Read More
During the lackluster moments of this year’s Super Bowl, we turned to our second screens. A study released by Flurry today shows that during great ads and the half-time show we kept our devices stowed, but returns from commercial breaks, boring ads, and waning interest in the 3rd quarter caused spikes in mobile app usage.
This means advertisers and TV producers need to get flashier, because every viewer has a wildly engaging device in their pocket. Subtle, conservative, slow-building ads just don’t cut it any more. → Read More
The TechFellow Awards is the Oscars of high-tech entrepreneurship. As selection committee member Sean Parker puts it “We’re shining a spotlight on individuals who are on the cusp of bringing us something revolutionary.” On February 22nd at the SFMOMA, 20 innovators will be presented with $100,000 grants to invest in startups of their choice. Nominations are open through February 17th at the TechFellows website.
Today, the TechFellow Awards announced that Emmy-winning nerd hero Jim Parsons, star of hit tv show The Big Bang Theory, will host the awards ceremony. Marissa Mayer, Dave McClure, and Terry Semel will also join the all-star selection committee, which includes Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Ron Conway. → Read More
It’s beautiful, it’s addictive, and now Pinterest is having its glorious hockey stick moment. TechCrunch has attained exclusive data from comScore showing Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history.
In fact, users are spending so much time sharing their favorite images that now only Facebook and Tumblr have more social media time on site than Pinterest. Who’s propelling its rise? 18-34 year old upper income women from the American heartland. Maybe we should call it blow-dryer growth. → Read More
If you want to slay orcs and elves, there’s plenty of options, but the millions of car racing gamers out there have few places to chase the checkered flag. That’s going to change because today, Ignite Game Technologies closed a $5 million Series C round from private investors bringing it to $17.5 million in funding. It will use the cash to speed up development of its recently launched Simraceway freemium game, as well as its skill matching technology.
Ignite plans to hook users with high-profile licensed content, accurate physics, and addictive gameplay to get users paying to race or buy cars. → Read More
Yelp built its ad business by attracting users that know what they want, just not who to buy it from — exactly when ads are most effective. That’s why I find today’s VentureBeat piece by Rocky Agrawal titled “Yelp advertising is a rip-off for small advertisers” to be ridiculous. His sources say Yelp charges a $600 CPM, or 1,000-times the standard online CPM rate.
Yes, these ads are expensive, especially for low-end restaurants. But for lawyers, dentists, jewelers and mechanics with a high lifetime average revenue per customer, turning someone searching for their services on Yelp into a loyal customer is no rip-off, it can drive huge ROI. → Read More
Want to win some extra visibility for your brand on Facebook? Post about current events. Brands grabbed 99.7% higher engagement on their Page posts by talking about the Super Bowl yesterday, and 60% higher engagement over the past 6 weeks compared to the average post.
The data from a Buddy Media study of 1,400 of the world’s largest brands indicates they should make sure to post about holidays, sporting events, breaking news, and other trending topics. Here’s how this strategy works: → Read More
Facebook’s late-comer HTML5 mobile app platform lags way behind the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace. Yesterday I spotted Facebook’s latest effort to catch up — a test showing bookmarks for third-party applications at the top of the mobile news feed. Currently, Facebook buries HTML5 app bookmarks at the bottom of its mobile site’s pull-out navigation menu, and only shows them in the iOS or Android Facebook app’s search bar.
Placing them much more prominently atop the mobile home page could increase engagement — the first step in attracting developers to the platform and earning money on in-app purchases. → Read More
Want to watch the big budget Super Bowl commercials, but can’t wait till Sunday or don’t care about football? Facebook and USA Today have just launched Ad Meter, a Facebook app where you can watch many of the TV spots right now. Then from kickoff until Tuesday night you can vote for your favorites. Traditionally an offline poll done live with handheld meters, USA Today has finally brought Ad Meter online so you can judge ads both in real-time and post-game. → Read More
Temple Jump, Tiny Birds, Numbers With Friends. These are not the apps you love. They’re fakes designed to scam you out of $1.99 when you go to buy Temple Run, Tiny Wings, or Words With Friends. Today Apple took a stand against plagiarism, kicking these rip-offs out of the US App Store. Good riddance, but how can platform owners stop these developers before they rob users of thousands or even millions of dollars? → Read More
Facebook is testing a new photo viewer layout that mounts engagement buttons and comments to the right rather than beneath images. See, Facebook doesn’t want you to just view comments, it wants you to start a conversation. Apparently the company doesn’t care about being accused of copying Google+, since the viewer’s layout is very similar to that of its competitor. → Read More
Say what you will about The Huffington Post and AOL, their merger has given HuffPo the resources to conquer the online news aggregation business. Today HuffPo dropped some big stats about the year since its acquisition, most importantly a 47% growth of monthly unique visitors to 36.2 million. Next it’s aiming to take down CNN and the cable news industry with The Huffington Post Streaming Network, which will stream content live on the web for 12 hours a day. → Read More
For those not from Silicon Valley or Wall Street, there’s only 1 thing you really need know about Facebook’s plan to become a publicly traded company: Your Facebook won’t be suddenly overrun with ads. Facebook bluntly warns greedy investors “Our culture emphasizes rapid innovation and prioritizes user engagement over short-term financial results”, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaims, “Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”
This is a huge win for the user base, which depends on Facebook as a communication utility. → Read More
Facebook’s $5 billion S-1 IPO filing includes a detailed assessment of business risks. These include: its lack of mobile monetization and the fact that it doesn’t own a mobile platform, government censorship and privacy scrutiny, inability to maintain its growth rate, and competition from Google+ as well as Twitter and Microsoft.
Here’s a closer look at these risks, followed by the full text of the risk summary, and you can see the whole Risk Factors section starting on page 10 of the S-1 filing to the SEC. → Read More
