How Jumia and Facebook are competing, even though they’re playing different games
Tiffany* sells makeup, and is evaluating a new display shelf where her product would be at eye level with passing shoppers. That visibility could lead to new customers, but she’s not convinced it’s worth the trouble, because almost all of her customers currently find her on Instagram. And actually, that shelf isn’t even in her store — it’s in the front of a retail locker space where she rents a container in the back to hold her inventory. Tiffany keeps some of her most popular products on hand here so that customers can easily drop by and see the merchandise…
This post is based on a report by Caribou Digital, with support from Mozilla Foundation. You can download the full report from our website.
Actually, Facebook makes a lot of money. More than $8 billion in just the last quarter of 2016, almost all of it (~98%) from advertising. Those revenues have helped Facebook become one of the largest firms in the world (currently #7 by market cap), and it, along with Google, so dominates the digital advertising industry that some analysts estimate 85% of all new ad spend in the U.S. will go to the duopoly.[1]
Maybe Facebook. Maybe a firm you’ve never heard of. Maybe yourself.
This post discusses a few of the themes from a recent research project at Caribou Digital. You can skip the post and just download the report.
There are a lot of organizations competing for our identities. Governments have long held monopoly power over official identity, using their authority to document and record their populations as the fundamental first step in exercising state control.[1] Government-issued identity credentials — whether national ID card, driver license, or simply a unique number — are rigid, static, and outside the control of the individual, but the fact that they come from the state grants them…
Hint: Where you live matters
This post discusses a few of the findings from a recent research project I’ve done at Caribou Digital, with supported by the excellent team at Mozilla Foundation. You can download the full report, free of charge, from the Caribou Digital website.
The buying and selling of apps is becoming a big business, with Apple and Google paying out a combined $17 billion to developers in 2014.[1] But aside from a few public announcements by a handful of app developers, we really don’t know much about where all that money is flowing. The ubiquity of mobile technology and networks means there…
Bryan Pon
Co-founder, Caribou Data. Analyst with Caribou Digital.
