Mark Zuckerberg wants us to run a mile a day in 2016, but he's doing it wrong

It's a commendable goal for anyone who doesn't run and wants to get a little healthier: Run 365 miles in one year.

That is what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is challenging his billion-plus users to do in 2016. "This is a lot of running, but it's not a crazy amount," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. "It's a mile a day, and at a moderate pace it's less than 10 minutes of running per day."

He's right in one respect: A mile a day is not a crazy amount, and you'd be surprised how quickly you can get used to it and build up your mileage. (Personally, I started running by training for my first 5K in 2010, when a mile seemed like a long distance; two years later, I ran my first marathon).

But he's wrong in another important respect: A "less than" 10-minute mile is nowhere near what a beginner would call a "moderate pace." It's quite fast, even for many experienced runners.

If you're going into this challenge expecting to run anything less than a 12 or 13-minute mile, you're not only going to be sorely disappointed, you're also going to be extremely sore, out of breath and unlikely to keep it up for a year.

As any seasoned runner will tell you: The first mile always sucks, so take it easy if you can.

There's yet more wrongness in the photo that Zuckerberg posted of himself running in Delhi last year with a couple of fellow Facebookers. We're not just talking about the fact they're all fine physical specimens — perhaps too fine to encourage the beginner runner that anyone can do this.

Nor are we talking about the fact they're all holding their smartphones rather than wearing them on armbands or in fanny packs. (Someone's going to be guaranteed a cracked screen running like that.)

No, we're talking about what is quite clearly a heel strike in Zuckerberg's running form. This is a fancy term for landing on your heel instead of the ball of your foot, and was thought in the 1970s to be preferable because it gave you a longer stride.

Since then, heel striking has been fingered in a large number of running injuries because it sends a dangerously large jolt up through your skeleton that can damage bones and joints over time. See for example this landmark study [PDF] from Zuckerberg's alma mater, Harvard, which found forefoot runners get way fewer injuries.

Zuckerberg has started a Facebook group dedicated to the 365-mile challenge called A Year of Running, so hopefully he'll introduce more tips and nuance as the year goes on. But here's what we'd advise: If you're a beginner, start out really slow — so slow that it almost feels like cheating. Accept that your body is going to take some time to adjust to running, but also that just about anyone can and should do it — the health rewards from even a moderate amount of running make it one of the most efficient exercises around.

And you don't need fancy shoes, you just need proper forefoot running form, which you can practice by imagining how you would run uphill. (If you tried landing on your heels, you'd fall over.)

For more information and a tremendous dose of inspiration, read the excellent Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. And stay safe out there.

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Amazon Says It Added 3M Prime Members In The Week Before Christmas

Amazon is a company famous for press releases that are devoid of actual information. (As we saw after Thanksgiving this month.) But, in a moment of selective truth-telling, the company just revealed that it signed up over three million members for its Prime program during the week before Christmas.

There are caveats, of course, as ever.

Amazon confirmed to Geekwire that this figure refers to new trial and paying members. So the actual number retained as ongoing, paying members may prove to be lower. (This is the case with over services that offer free trials, such as Apple Music.)

The company just gave a figure for the third week of December — which, in case you forgot, is right before Christmas falls — so we’re unable to gauge how much more popular the service was than a more normal week. Offering free shipping is clearly most appealing during last-minute Christmas shopping time.

(Fwiw, last year, Amazon said it added 10 million new Prime members over the entire “holiday period.)

And finally, in typical Amazon fashion, there is no word on the total number of subscribers that the service has, although it was apparently a “record-breaking holiday season.”

“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and there are tens of millions of members worldwide,” the company added.

But the three million figure does give a small glimpse into the service’s popularity.

The $99 per year Prime service gives Amazon customers free-shipping for Amazon.com products, other shopping perks and access to its Prime video service.

Netflix, which rivals Amazon on the latter, has 69 million customers across 60 countries worldwide. Amazon Prime Video is only available in the U.S., UK, Austria, Germany and (recently added) Japan, however, though Prime membership services are supported in more countries.

That’s the most meaningful part of Amazon’s holiday announcement. Other carefully selected metrics — some of which include no actual, raw figures and therefore give little to no insight — include:

• Nearly 70 percent of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday — last year that was approaching 60 percent, but we don’t know how many went beyond browsing and actually bought items via mobile
• Prime members made The Man in the High Castle the most watched TV season on Prime Video this holiday by 4.5x and doubled their total viewing hours of Prime Video titles, compared to 2014
• Biggest holiday ever for Amazon Devices – up 2x over last year’s record-setting holiday


• Over 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday season
• Prime Now has busiest day ever on Christmas Eve
• • Amazon shipped to 185 countries this holiday
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Social Commerce Startup Carousell Is Raising $50M To Expand In Asia

Carousell, a three-year-old mobile marketplace that enables social commerce, could emerge as the next big e-commerce player in Southeast Asia. That’s because, according to multiple sources in to the investor and e-commerce communities in Southeast Asia, the Singapore-based company is currently trying to raise a whopping $50 million Series B to expand its footprint across Asia.

Carousell did not reply to multiple requests for comment or confirmation of its fundraising plans.

Founded in May 2012, Carousell’s app is a peer-to-peer commerce marketplace, much like a Craigslist for mobile. Users post items that are for sale, those interested in buying them then initiative a conversation to finalize a price, payment (which happens outside of the app, for now) and a place to meet/mailing options to deliver to goods. The company’s tagline — “Snap to Sell, Chat to Buy” — emphasizes the focus on social commerce made easy. (Developing its tech — and potentially adding an in-app payment system — could also be on the cards for such a big round, but that’s us speculating as this has not been confirmed by sources.)

Timing would certainly suggest that Carousell is out in the field raising new capital. It’s been more than a year since it closed a $6 million Series A led by Sequoia in November 2014. It previously took an $800,000 seed investment led by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten.

At the time of that Series A, we reported that “eventually, Carousell’s founders hope to take it further into the Asia-Pacific region” and that’s exactly what this round — which we understand that the company has been talking to investors about for around a month — is aimed at doing.

The Carousell service is currently available in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan, where it can be access via iOS and Android apps as well as its website. The exact scope of the startup’s planned expansion isn’t clear, but more markets in Southeast Asia — such as Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines — are likely to be priorities, in addition to reaching other parts of the wider Asian continent.

While Carousell has spawned a dedicated following and gone beyond early adopters — as the existence of parody Tumblr “Carouhell,” which documents some of the stranger stories from the service, shows — its mission is challenging. Most e-commerce happens on larger, well-backed sites like Rocket Internet’s Lazada and Zalora, SoftBank-backed Tokopedia in Indonesia, and social networks like people’s Facebook and Instagram pages. Building out the Carousell marketplace/platform is an addition challenge beyond encouraging people to sell their goods via a P2P system.

That said, the genre seems to have plenty of potential in Asia — and Southeast Asia, in particular — where many people are thrifty and private sales of unwanted or no longer used items are commonplace offline. In the emerging peer-to-peer commerce space, there are few sites with the calibre of investors or size of funding of Carousel. Another $50 million in the kitty would certainly help to move things forward.