January 2015

With its ambitions encircling the globe, diversity has become a top priority at Facebook.

As Global Head of Diversity, Maxine Williams is the one charged with making Facebook's workforce better reflect the demographics of its users. "For Facebook, diversity is imperative to our future growth," she said. "If we don't get it right, we risk losing relevance in an incredibly diverse world." To attract more blacks and Hispanics, Williams says Facebook is trying to make it known "that we want you." "I know and care deeply about the difference which opportunity and diversity make to the quality of what we can produce together," Williams said. "It is an honor and a blessing to work on leveraging the power of diversity every day."

Five takeaways from Apple and Ericsson's patent fight:

1) Patent suits are same same: legal disputes over the use of patents and licensing royalty fees is a fairly common occurrence, typically emerging between a mobile device maker and a network technology supplier.
2) But Different: If Apple starts challenging the current stats-quo for wireless essential patents, we are going to enter a multi-year period of uncertainty for all players involved.
3) There's Money In It: It’s hard to tell how much money is swirling around this case, but generally, royalty rates and payment sums involved can be sizable.
4) Device Makers Usually Come Out On Top: Mobile device makers have traditionally agreed to pay for the use of patented technology.
5) But Things May Be Changing: Apple is challenging the notion of the “essentiality” of Ericsson’s patented technology. Device manufacturers have virtually nothing to lose, equipment manufacturers whose profits are strongly supported by licensing revenues do.

Amazon’s e-book subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, has attracted criticism, with some self-published authors complaining that the service devalues their work and chafing at the requirement that they make their e-books exclusive to Amazon in order to participate. But Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s VP of Kindle Content, suggested that the vast majority of authors participating are satisfied with Kindle Unlimited -- and he said that the program is helping them achieve earnings that have doubled since the program’s launch in July.

Authors who want their books to appear in Kindle Unlimited have to enroll in KDP Select, a program that requires them to make their ebooks exclusive to Amazon for three-month periods. “Every month authors have renewed availability of titles on KDP Select in excess of 95 percent before and after the launch of Kindle Unlimited,” Grandinetti said -- suggesting that they are satisfied with the program despite a few high-profile complainers.

[Commentary] It’s beginning to feel like we might be at a similar liminal moment to when the Web exploded back in 1994. Our new contender for the Next Big Thing is the blockchain  --  the baffling yet alluring innovation that underlies the Bitcoin digital currency. Think of blockchain as a way of transferring a digital message from one party to another, where both parties can count on the integrity of the message, even when they don’t trust, or even know, each other.

There is a contingent on today’s Internet -- a minority, perhaps, but influential -- who believe that the industry took a wrong turn over the past decade. That an Internet dominated by a few big companies is an unhealthy one. That the centralized-computing paradigm -- of privately owned data silos housed in giant server farms that harvest our personal data in order to sell ads -- is one that needs to change. The entrepreneurs, coders and crypto experts leading the blockchain charge see this new technology as an antidote to the Inter being dominated by a few big companies, and they are hopped up on dizzying visions of a disrupted future.

[Scott Rosenberg is the author of "Dreaming in Code"]