What I’m Reading

There’s been a lot of hype surrounding social commerce — the idea that posts and ads on sites like Facebook and Pinterest would generate lots of immediate sales on e-commerce sites.

Today only a fraction of retailer’s online sales are actually generated directly through a referral from a social network. But the volume of social commerce is growing quickly, in the triple digits in many cases. Overall, social commerce sales grew at three times the rate of overall e-commerce last year.

In a new report from BI Intelligence we break down how social media is impacting retail sales throughout the purchase process — whether a social media user clicks directly from a retailer’s Facebook ad to make a purchase, or sees a pin on Pinterest and ends up buying the product in-store a week later. We look at the varied metrics that underscore social commerce performance at the different networks, including conversion rates, average order value, and revenue generated by shares, likes, and tweets.  We also outline the latest commerce efforts by leading social networks.

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Here are a selection of the key points from the report:

• Social commerce is growing quickly: The top 500 retailers earned $2.69 billion from social shopping in 2013, according to the Internet Retailer’s Social Media 500, up more than 60% over 2012, while the e-commerce market as a whole grew only 17%. 
• Social commerce is even larger in terms of revenue generation when looking not at traditional direct referrals, when the last click before purchase happens on a social-media site, but when looking at where consumers began their purchase process, i.e., the first click.
• Growth is sure to accelerate and conversion rates should improve as Twitter and Facebook roll out “Buy” buttons, which will allow social-network audiences to initiate an e-commerce purchase by clicking on a retailer’s post or tweet. Facebook’s tests began in July, Twitter’s in September. 
• Facebook is the clear leader for social-commerce referrals and sales: This is due in large part to the sheer size of its audience — 71% of US adult internet users are on Facebook. A Facebook share of an e-commerce post translates to an average $3.58 in revenue from sales, according to AddShoppers. On Twitter, a share or retweet is worth only 85 cents. 
• But other sites are gaining, and even leading on, specific metrics, like average order value (AOV): Polyvore, for example, sees $66.75 in AOV from social referrals, according to Shopify. Pinterest sees $65. That’s compared to Facebook, which sees $55 AOV.  Pinterest also drives more social sharing of retail content than any other network including Facebook.

In full, the report:

• Sizes social media’s role for retailers compared to other major referral sources
• Looks at how the different social networks stack up in terms of conversion rates, share of social-generated retail sales, and average order value
• Examines why Facebook alone plays such a massive role for e-commerce companies, driving a huge share of referrals and still beating out other social networks for conversions
• Points to the metrics that still make other, smaller social networks compelling for retailers, including sites like Polyvore, Pinterest, and Instagram
• Outlines the latest major commerce moves by Facebook and Twitter, which could help drive up conversion rates directly from social
• Notes retailers that have built whole businesses on Facebook, showing the very real opportunity for  social and commerce to work together

For full access to all our reports, downloadable charts, and daily briefs on the digital media industry, sign up for a free trial.

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For those who are concerned about their privacy post-Snowden, there are various ways to boost online privacy such as using the anonymizing Tor browser. Browsing the internet anonymously is something that scares the authorities — there were reports just a couple of months ago that Comcast was threatening to cut off customers who chose to use Tor — but now Facebook has opened up to the idea.

The social network — often criticized for its own privacy policies — has lifted its bans on using Tor, and has created a secure URL (https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/). This can be used to visit Facebook using any Tor-enabled browser and adds a few extra layers of protection for those looking to stay secure. While the idea of anonymity on Facebook may seem oxymoronic, there is a degree of logic.

One of the key benefits of using Tor is that it enables users to bypass locally enforced censorship and blocks, but until now Facebook has blocked access via Tor. The fact that Tor traffic bounced around the internet multiple times in a bid to disguise its origin, it was often flagged as suspicious by Facebook for appearing like botnet activity. This is no longer the case as the new URL opens up access to the security-minded.

Software engineer Alec Muffett explains that, “Facebook’s onion address provides a way to access Facebook through Tor without losing the cryptographic protections provided by the Tor cloud”. Accessing Facebook viaTor using the .onion address means connecting directly to Facebook’s Core WWW Infrastructure (hence the URL). This allows for direct communication with Facebook, effectively sidestepping browsing restrictions that may have been put in place by local governments, and avoiding any surveillance that might be carried out on traffic that is permitted.

Facebook’s Tor-friendly TLD is the first .onion address to be granted SSL certificate. Muffett says:

We decided to use SSL atop this service due in part to architectural considerations – for example, we use the Tor daemon as a reverse proxy into a load balancer and Facebook traffic requires the protection of SSL over that link. As a result, we have provided an SSL certificate which cites our onion address; this mechanism removes the Tor Browser’s “SSL Certificate Warning” for that onion address and increases confidence that this service really is run by Facebook. Issuing an SSL certificate for a Tor implementation is – in the Tor world – a novel solution to attribute ownership of an onion address; other solutions for attribution are ripe for consideration, but we believe that this one provides an appropriate starting point for such discussion.

Despite what some news reports say, this is not a way to stay anonymous on Facebook. You still log into your regular account and use it in the same way. What the .onion URL does is ensure that nothing happens to your data as it travels from your computer to Facebook and back.

Former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs is regarded as one of the greatest visionaries in the technology industry. Few people know this side of him better than the employees who worked directly under him.

Ken Rosen, a managing partner at consulting agency Performance Works that previously worked with Jobs at Apple and NeXT, described Jobs’ ability to come up with solutions to problems almost instantly.

Rosen worked most closely with Jobs at NeXT, the company he started in 1985 when he was temporarily ousted from Apple.

People would frequently ask NeXT employees why they would put up with someone like Jobs, who had a reputation for being harsh on his workers.

“The answer for me always went back to these meetings at NeXT,” Rosen told Business Insider. 

The meetings would usually consist of between six and eight people, and would take place every several weeks or so.

“Steve would walk in the door and say, ‘Alright, what’s going on?'” Rosen said. “Somebody in the room would say we’re trying to figure this out, maybe go to a whiteboard, and say we couldn’t figure out what to do.”

Jobs had a talent for immediately finding an answer to the problem.

“And [Steve] would say, ‘What about doing this?'” Rosen said. “And you could look around the room and you could just see people dumbfounded, their jaws dropping, because it was a really good idea.”

Often times, other employees were annoyed because they couldn’t come up with such a great idea on their own.

“You’d have this instant mixed reaction from people,” he said. “First of all, they were really pissed that they didn’t have the idea. I just always said, being able to hang out with someone like that and being near that decision making process is worth a whole lot of problems.”

SEE ALSO: Working With Steve Jobs, Summed Up By A Former Apple Employee

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Ever since its release in October 2013, IE11 has been unable to pass IE8 in market share. It made steady gains, but then plateaued before it could become the world’s most popular browser. Now, Microsoft’s latest and greatest has finally done it.

Between September and October, here is how the browser market changed, according to the latest figures from Net Applications:

• Internet Explorer: Up 0.12 points to 58.49 percent
• Chrome: Up 0.06 points to 21.25 percent
• Firefox: Down 0.27 points to 13.91 percent
• Safari: Up 0.09 points to 5.10
• Opera: Down 0.03 points to 0.83 percent

Let’s break these figures down further to see the good news for Microsoft’s browser. IE11 gained a huge 6.92 percentage points to hit 17.13 percent. IE10 gained 0.51 points to 6.09 percent while IE9 slipped 0.66 points to 8.68 percent. Most importantly, IE8 fell 4.94 points to 17.31 percent.

So, what caused such huge changes? Well, Windows 8.1 saw big gains last month, while Windows XP took a massive hit. We believe this was mainly caused by back to school sales in September, which are better reflected in the data after students use their new machines for a full month.

IE11 has mainly been stealing market share from IE10 and IE9 because Windows XP users can’t upgrade past IE8. With XP finally losing significant share, and Windows 8.x gaining share, the pieces were in place for IE11 to finally dethrone IE8.

The positive changes for Microsoft don’t end there. In the really old versions, IE7 dipped 0.16 points to 0.52 percent and IE6 fell 1.55 points to 1.68 percent.

See also: Windows 8 and 8.1 finally pass 15% market share, Windows XP drops below 20% mark

While Google’s Chrome didn’t see many gains this month, its built-in upgrade system continues to work wonders. Chrome 38 was released at the beginning of October, meaning it didn’t have a full month of availability, and it still managed to capture 6.75 percent share.

Meanwhile, Chrome 37 lost 3.76 points to 6.30 percent. All other previous versions of Chrome also slipped, as is quite typical for Google’s browser numbers.

Mozilla’s Firefox is having a very bad year, and it just got worse. It hasn’t seen the 13 percent mark in years. In fact, we can’t tell you exactly how long it’s been because Net Applications’ data only goes back as far as November 2007, when Firefox still had over 15 percent market share.

Nevertheless, Firefox’s built-in upgrade system continues to work well. Firefox 33 was released in mid-October, meaning it didn’t have a full month of availability, but it still grabbed 2.19 percent share. Firefox 32 managed to continue growing 1.67 points to 7.61 percent, while all previous versions of Firefox fell.

Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month by monitoring some 40,000 websites for its clients. This means it measures user market share.

If you prefer usage market share, you’ll want to get your data from StatCounter, which looks at 15 billion page views. The operating system figures for October are available here.

Microsoft Corporation is a public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through … read more »

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet. Mozilla is best known for the Firefox browser, but we advance our mission through other software projects, gra… read more »

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major glob… read more »

DARPA has successfully taken the crown for the creation of the fastest solid state chip, clocked in at one terahertz, or in simpler terms; 1000 gigahertz. Don’t go looking for this chip in your next computer, DARPA will use the chip to create T-rays.

DARPA has been interested in terahertz chips for a long while now — not so much for super-fast computers (though they are being looked at), but for creating radio waves in the sub-millimeter-wave terahertz range

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