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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LinkedIn Rival Viadeo Exits China

Viadeo, the French rival to LinkedIn, is to exit China in order to focus on becoming a profitable business. In a further cost-cutting move, it will also shutter its data center in California and migrate to the cloud.

The company moved into China eight years when it acquired local professional social network Tianji.com, but that site will cease to exist once it is closed down on December 31. Viadeo claims that Tianji has 25 million users, but it has struggled to attract the “very considerable development resources” necessary to drive it forward in “China’s fiercely competitive market”. Viadeo had planned to use one-third of the proceeds from its 2014 IPO to develop Tianji.com, but the listing didn’t raise enough capital and the firm wasn’t able to pull in money from private investors.

“In the first half of 2015 the company went looking for an investor, buyer or local partner, who could guarantee stability and commitment to support it in this market,” Viadeo said in a statement. “However, China’s changing economic conditions marked by a historical slowdown in growth, a major financial crisis in the summer of 2015 and repeated devaluations of the nation’s currency dashed hopes of identifying such a partner.”

Post-China, Viadeo said it will refocus on its home market of France and other French-speaking countries, while putting great emphasis on its B2B sales model.

Viadeo’s foray into China was a fascinating one, since it doubled down on the country in 2011, a time when Twitter and Facebook were heavily linked with opening local operations there. The company two-sided play — having a global site (Viadeo.com) and a China-only one (Tianji.com) — was a model that both of the U.S. social networks had reportedly shown interest in.

In contrast to Viadeo’s troubles in China, LinkedIn seems to be finding some success there. The U.S. social network opened a joint-venture with Sequoia China last year. LinkedIn China isn’t a totally separate site, but it does block some content from Chinabased on the country’s web censorship regulations.

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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Twitter’s Fiscal 2015: Up, Flat, And Down

Twitter did not have a lovely 2015. The world-famous social company saw its revenue rise, its usage flatten, and its share price fall.

The company failed to change the arc of its own narrative during the year: Strong financial performance, but continued failure to grow its user base, the latter of which the market appears to weight more strongly. It brought in a new CEO to turn things around, but so far it still hasn’t found a way to really do a better job of building its audience.

The result? Share price declines that have put Twitter near all-time lows as the year concludes.

Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Stock Price - 1 Year | FindTheCompany

The numbers speak for themselves. After its IPO, Twitter shot to more than $60 per share. The company then spent time in the $30 range, the $40 range, and the $50 range. This year, Twitter has seen its value fall further, bouncing around the low $20 range.

For employees who have options priced at a far higher levels, the declines are not theoretical. They are material. And there is a rot that can set in when it comes to falling share prices — the public equivalent of a down round, in some ways — as it becomes more difficult to hire, retain key talent, and keep morale up.

So, what’s happened this year? Let’s take a look.

Twitter’s financial performance

Key to Twitter’s success story — and it has been a success story — is its financial performance. The company has posted strong revenue growth, beaten expectations, and impressively monetized its user base. To its former critics that decried it as a fad, or financial impossibility, Twitter can drop the following revenue figures and saunter away:

• First quarter, 2015: $436 million, up 74 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Second quarter, 2015: $502 million, up 61 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Third quarter, 2015: $569 million, up 58 percent, compared to the year-ago period.

If you were curious as to how to monetize social services, Twitter has blazed a trail worth studying. The company’s monetary performance is a credit to its management team.

However, there is a cap on Twitter’s future financial performance. While it has done yeoman’s work extracting more value from its existing user base, the firm is still dependent on user growth. That, in the long-term, is necessary to generate new revenue. The argument is simple: If Twitter can’t grow its cadre of active users, it cannot eventually further grow its revenue.

You can only squeeze a rag so hard, in other words.

And, where Twitter has been precisely brilliant regarding its improving top line, it has seen difficulty convincing the masses that using Twitter is what they should do.

Twitter’s stalling user growth

In the second quarter this year, new CEO Jack Dorsey pretty much summed up a significant challenge for the company in a single statement: “Our Q2 results show good progress in monetization, but we are not satisfied with our growth in audience.”

This statement serves as a microcosm for the company. Its financials looked good, but its number logged-in users did not grow as much as the company had hoped. The company’s monthly active user growth had essentially stalled — and for a company whose performance is dependent on its audience, that demonstrated a massive problem for investors.

Twitter MAU Over Time | SoftwareInsider

Still, that doesn’t mean Twitter’s total user base isn’t growing. There’s a whole swath of users that may simply be logged out — which is difficult to track, and something Twitter is working on. The company is also actively experimenting with new products in order to increase engagement among its users. But the best advertising targeting Twitter can do is on users that have built an interest graph, which involves signing up, logging in and following others to get a sense of what the user is looking for.

“One other thing to note, we also are monetizing logged-out users across the network,” COO Adam Bain said on the last earnings call. “This is the first time that we’ve been doing that. It’s going to come in handy as we also begin to run a pilot here in Q4 for on-Twitter logged-out monetization. So we’re going to take some of that learnings and apply it back on Twitter logged-out [advertising] products.”

But while Twitter’s financial performance continues to beat expectations, slowing logged-in audience growth serves as a limitation for the upside for the company. There are a couple of ways to increase its bottom line — it can improve its advertising products and come out with new ones, or acquire its way into new venues of advertising, for example. But in the end, if it’s going to really explode to new heights and impress investors, it needs to re-ignite its user growth as well.

In sum, while Twitter’s revenue has grown, and its user growth has stalled, its shares have fallen.

It’s up for you to decide if the investing classes are being too hard on Twitter. The firm still has a strong cash position, and is worth billions and billions of dollars. The proper question, perhaps, is how Twitter will manage to bolster its larger consumer appeal, without losing the interest of its key content creators.

In the end, Twitter is still a bit of a confusing company. It continues to improve and develop new advertising products, and bought its way into a brand-new kind of video format in the case of Periscope. That’s something that should impress investors, but Twitter’s finding that challenging — particularly because these kinds of bets are, in theory, long-term ones.

And for Twitter to be a long-term safe bet, it has to be firing on all cylinders, which includes finding ways to do a better job of building, measuring, and monetizing its audience.

A representative for Twitter directed us to the company’s 2015 Q3 earnings call when we requested comment.

Pinterest Launches A New Way To Track Price Drops On Buyable Pins

Pinterest has a new way to entice users to come back and buy things: keeping tabs on the price.

That comes in the form today of a new tool that helps Pinterest users monitor price drops on products they’ve pinned. When users save pins, they’ll get a heads up when a price drops in the form of an in-app notification and an email. They can then jump straight to that pin and make the purchase.

The tool was driven by some user behavior the company expected to see in the shopping experience, Pinterest product marketing manager Sarah Shere said. Often when users are shopping, they are also waiting for the price to drop to the right point before finally making a purchase — which is something the company wanted to ensure it could enable as part of its shopping experience.

“I don’t think it’s a unique psychology to Pinterest, but we tried to build a shopping experience that worked for that customer experience — discovering a product, waiting for the right moment, and then completing the purchase in a seamless way,” said Shere. “In this case one of those right moments is waiting for the price to drop.”

Pinterest launched buyable pins earlier this year, which lets retailers add a “buy” button to pins and enables users to buy those products straight through Pinterest. After putting in a credit card and an address, a user can purchase products that have that buy button on them. Users can make purchases from anywhere on the app, like boards and through search.

In the end, this is likely about getting Pinterest users to come back and buy products on Pinterest. Though the company might not treat commerce as a strong monetization channel just yet alongside its advertising business, it helps get users to come back to Pinterest over and over again. That, in general makes the service more sticky — giving it an opportunity to better monetize its user base.

Still, commerce is becoming increasingly important to Pinterest, which is still rolling out new products that could one day drive additional revenue for Pinterest. According to an earlier report, Pinterest is forecast to make around $169 million in revenue this year.

Google Updates “Now On Tap” To Let You Track Packages, Flights And Find Related Articles

Google is expanding the capabilities of its clever mobile feature, “Google Now on Tap,” which offers additional information about what you’re looking at within a mobile application without having to exit and then perform a Google search. Before, the feature supported the ability to find restaurants and points of interest, learn more about songs or artists in music apps, get movie details and reviews, and find out more about celebs and other notable people being mentioned. Today, Google says that “Now on Tap” will also pull up flight status information, package tracking details, and surface related news articles.

The company is also introducing new sharing features and support for more languages.

In case you’re unfamiliar, “Now on Tap” was introduced earlier this year as one of the flagship features in the latest version of Android, aka Android Marshmallow. The idea with the feature is to extend Google’s search strategy on mobile by making it easier to use Google’s service without having to leave your current application.

Instead, by holding down the Home button on their device, mobile users are able to get more contextual information about what’s on their screen. That means if you were playing a song in Spotify, for example, you could press and hold the button to get more info about that song. You could also do a voice query, and ask questions like, “who is the lead singer?”

With the update, “Now on Tap” can also identify things like flight numbers and package tracking info. In practice, that will allow you to quickly check the status of a flight – like, say, right in your text messaging application where a friend just sent you their flight details – by pressing the Home button on your device.

You can also press the button while in an order confirmation email to track your package’s progress – handy, especially during this busy shopping season.

Another interesting addition, and one that stands out as something that’s going a bit further than offering “context” alone is the new “related articles” function. In fact, this is almost more like an alternative to searching Google for a given topic than just a way to learn more about what you’re currently viewing. Instead, when reading an article, you can press and hold your Home button to see a list of related articles appear on the same subject. You can then navigate to a new article with just a tap.

Plus, there’s now a new share icon that will allow you to share what’s on your screen without having to exit your application.

Google says this and the other features will roll out “over the coming days.” In other words, if you’re not yet seeing these things now, you will soon.

Also worth noting: “Now on Tap” has expanded beyond English to include support for French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Korean, the company says, with more languages planned for the future.

While “Now on Tap” is an interesting glimpse at the Google Search’s mobile future, unfortunately, the majority of users don’t have access to Android’s latest OS update, or “Now on Tap,” at this time. According to Google’s own data, Android Marshmallow is only installed on 0.5% of Android devices at present.

Facebook Makes Changes To Its Real Name Policy Enforcement Process

After over a year’s worth of controversy around Facebook’s real names policy, Facebook has announced a couple of changes to its process in order to better serve all of its members, including those in the LGBTQ community.

Last October, Facebook promised it would make changes to its real name policy after a number of false account flagging incidents led to the suspension of LGBTQ members’ pages. Facebook requires people to use the names their friends and family know them by. For many drag performers, for example, their drag names are the names people know them by, but that didn’t prevent the suspension of their accounts.

While Facebook is not getting rid of its real names policy, it is starting to test new tools to improve the policy in order for it to work better “for everyone, especially for communities who are marginalized or face discrimination,” Facebook VP of Global Operations Justin Osofsky and Product Manager Todd Gage wrote on Facebook’s blog.

For one, Facebook’s new reporting process requires people to provide more information and context around why they’re reporting that name in the first place. Before, reporting a potentially fake name was as easy as the click of a button.

Secondly, Facebook is testing a new tool for people to defend and verify their name if someone else flags it. So, if your account gets flagged, even though you’re using your drag name, or are using a different name in order to protect your privacy out of fear of abuse, harassment or stalking, you’ll have a week to be able to describe your situation before Facebook suspends your account.

“SF Pride is committed to our diverse community and is encouraged by the positive steps Facebook has both taken, and continues to work on, in addressing the reporting tools associated with their Authentic Names policy,” George Ridgely, Jr., executive director of SFPride, told TechCrunch in a statement. “We appreciate all of the engaged community leaders and Facebook for their contributions in this effort. It has been our priority to work closely with all parties to facilitate ongoing working-group meetings, as well as a forum that will bring together members of the community and Facebook to discuss these changes.”

Facebook has also received criticism around requiring people to provide forms of legal identification, which don’t always reflect someone’s preferred name.

Facebook has since expanded the options and documents that people can use to verify their name, and early next year, Facebook will look at ways to “reduce the number of people who have to go through an ID verification experience, while preserving the safety of other people on the site. We will also continue to work on making the experience itself more compassionate and easier to navigate.”

Lightsaber Yourself With Facebook’s Star Wars Profile Pics

Show you’re down with The Force this week then hide your Jedi ways with Facebook’s new Star Wars temporary profile pictures.

Just in time for the release of The Force Awakens, click here then hit the Try It button and Facebook will let you add a scary red Dark Side cross-guard lightsaber or a benevolent blue over one of your photos. Then you can make it your profile pic and set an expiration date for when you want to go back to your normal profile from this galaxy.

You can also find the option in the Star Wars Facebook Page’s timeline.

The temporary profile pic feature is the same one Facebook used to let people celebrate Pride, rep their college football squad, and root for other sports teams. Facebook seems to like the idea of Snapchat’s branded selfie lenses.

Is this shameless way for Facebook to cash in on all the Star Wars buzz? Absolutely. But it’s still fun. And at least since they’re temporary, you won’t have friends stuck as Sith Lords.

Amazon Beats Flipkart as the Most Visited eCommerce Site; Gifts Vouchers to All Users

After two and a half years of setting foot in India, Amazon.in has claimed to have become the most visited e-commerce site in India. In order to celebrate this occasion, Amazon has decided to give away a gift voucher worth Rs 200 to every buyer who will buy anything worth a minimum of Rs 500 today.

Jeff Bezos said that “We have built a vibrant marketplace with tens of thousands of sellers offering everyday low prices on India’s largest selection of over 30-Million products and bringing alive our promise to the customers. We will keep growing our investments in India and continue to work hard for our Indian sellers and customers.”

The terms of the offer limit the beneficiary to one gift card. The Gift card will be automatically added to your account on or before January 20 2016. The offer will be valid only till 12AM today and it will hold good for all modes of delivery including COD.

In October, a time when e-commerce companies battle out to sell make the most of the festive season Amazon.in topped the comScore list with a cumulative visit of 200-Million while its arch rival Flipkart attracted a lesser 164 million visitors. Amazon also seems to have achieved the largest growth rate in visitors from the mere 85-Million in October 2014 to 200-Million in October 2015.

Interestingly, although Amazon.in saw 7- percent of its sales from the mobile app it still witnessed a sizeable 30-Million visitors on its desktop site. All the while Flipkart had been busy forcing out its App only strategy literally barring buyers from using their desktop site, a much controversial move which was sort of redacted later. Amazon has always been bullish when it comes to the Indian markets it is infact heavily investing on the Indian front, first the $2-Bn warchest and also the recent promise to invest a total of $5-Bn for the Indian operations.

Chennai rains: Narendra Modi mocked and Jayalalithaa heckled after Chennai floods

Yet, within hours, Modi became the object of mockery on social media after his press office released a doctored photo of him inspecting flood damage. For both him and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the image of strong leadership created by their publicity machines was undermined.

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One of India's most powerful politicians, a former movie star called "Amma" or "Mother" by her followers, is being heckled and abused for going missing in action after floods swept the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which she rules.

It's a salutary lesson for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who at first drew nods of approval when he rushed to Chennai last week, promising to stand by its people in their hour of need.

Yet, within hours, Modi became the object of mockery on social media after his press office released a doctored photo of him inspecting flood damage. For both him and Tamil NaduChief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the image of strong leadership created by their publicity machines was undermined.

Until the floods that ravaged the city of 6 million, the lofty remoteness of Jayalalithaaadded to the aura around a leader with an almost hysterical following. Devotees of the 1960s screen idol have immolated themselves in her defence in the past.

Now, she faces a backlash from residents fed up with the sight of her image on billboards, aid packets and her own Jaya Plus TV channel. She has been since in public only twice during the crisis - once with Modi.

Angry youths heckled a state minister and officials in Jayalalithaa's north Chennai constituency, where people were sitting on the roadside amid sludge and mountains of garbage, their shanties swept away by the worst rains in a century.

"Forget about Amma coming here, there was no sign of the party cadres," said one of them, called Dorairaj.

About 280 people have died across Tamil Nadu since torrential rains on Dec. 1 submerged tracts of Chennai under up to eight feet (2.5 metres) of water, trapping people on rooftops with no communication.

There was further revulsion after a party legislator put up a poster of Jayalalithaa lifting a baby above the floodwaters, in a scene from a blockbuster movie. "Adding salt to the wounds," said one Twitter post.

Avadi Kumar, a spokesman of her ruling AIADMK party, said there was anger among the people but the administration was doing all it could to bring relief: "It is impossible to reach all areas immediately or be present everywhere at all times."

GOOD DAYS 

Modi's own promise to voters of good days to come for India is also starting to face disenchantment, 18 months into his five-year term, with key reforms stalled by bureaucratic inertia and political gridlock.

Ambitious initiatives, such as a "Clean India" campaign, have made little headway - even as Modi has built up huge followings on social media and addressed enthusiastic diaspora Indians at packed stadiums on his many trips overseas.

"If today he appears to have lost control over his own narrative, it is his own fault," commentator Tavleen Singh wrote in Sunday's Indian Express, urging Modi to hire a professional media team. Modi does not have an official spokesperson.

Jayalalithaa, 67, in the past considered as a possible prime ministerial candidate backed by regional groups, faces an election in Tamil Nadu next year.

Modi's nationalist party has little presence in Tamil Nadu, a state of 70 million. It would rather the iron-fisted Jayalalithaa stays in power, believing she is more inclined to back his reform agenda in parliament than her rivals.

But there are concerns around her health and that she may have to curtail her campaign.

Earlier this year a higher court acquitted her in a graft case for which was briefly jailed which had caused an outpouring of anger from her supporters. Some lay down on roads and tried to persuade bus drivers to go over them.

"She is supposed to be a fantastic administrator. But this time there was no presence of government at all. Ordinary people did all the work that government and police were supposed to do," said S. Raja, one flood-hit resident of Chennai.