This week was certainly a busy one in the world of technology and communications. Yahoo created a buzz as it hired Google exec Marissa Mayer as its new CEO and the U.S. House of Democrats adopted new tools to enable more citizens’ reactions. Want to hear more? Here are the top TechZone 360 stories of the week.
Marissa Mayer shocked the media industry this week as she announced her new role as Yahoo CEO. Mayer has a lot of challenges in front of year as Yahoo’s new leader. She is the fifth CEO in five years. Yahoo announced its quarterly revenue this week and has basically remained where it was last year. Revenue was $1.22 billion and quarterly net income dropped 4.2 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, to $228.5 million. At Google Mayer was responsible for search engine, Gmail and Google Maps.
“Bringing in Marissa Mayer gets people’s attention,” David Hallerman, an analyst at eMarketer, recently told The New York Times. “The sheer attention that they are getting because of hiring her will be helpful for a while.”
In other news this week, a study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence found that nearly one-third of mobile device owners said they were likely to respond to ads that related to their current location. The study took in time of day users engage in mobile devices (nearly 20 percent access social media early morning when they first wake up and both general media and social media consumption spike during primetime TV viewing hours), howpeople relate to their devices (70 percent of smartphone users consider the device to be mission-critical for their day-to-day lives), and how many people interact with ads on mobile devices.
House Democrat Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) announced that House Democrats are now using open tools on POPVOX.com that enable citizens and organization to publically weigh in on specific legislation before Congress. Hoyer’s office manages DemCom, the official intranet for House Democratic staff. DemCom hosts all internal documents within the Democratic Caucus including “Dear Colleague” Member letters, Leadership fact sheets and talking points, all organized by specific legislation. Effective immediately, DemCom will dynamically pull all organization position papers on POPVOX, including the 3,700 position letters currently on the site, as well as those added in the future.
In the world of tablets this week, Rob Enderle explored the Nexus 7 and how it matches up to its competition. Google was reported to have delivered significant volumes to retail most of which are gone and likely won’t be refreshed by the next shipment of this tablet until early August, suggesting this tablet is far more successful than Google anticipated and that it is a viable competitor for the iPad. Amazon is rumored to have three tablets coming out at various points, with current market rumors suggesting the new Kindle Fire 2 will come in up to four versions.
Apple’s biggest technology partner was Samsung and those two aren’t getting along at all right now. Samsung has some of the best 7” display technology in market (and they use it in their own 7.7 tablet). This suggests Apple may not be able to get some of the technology they need to bring their 7” offering to market timely and missing the fourth quarter could be devastating for them.
Read more about these stories and other top news this week on TechZone360. Stay tuned each week for more of the top updates in the technology and communications industry.
