Top Ten Technology Events That Affect Small Business

July 10, 2012 - PRLog -- It’s been an eventful summer already in the small business world. From the new version of the Internet (IPv6) being turned on in early June, Pinterest ads that stretch the imagination, to Facebook “Want” button speculation, there’s a lot you could’ve missed if you’ve been laying out by the pool this past month. ChooseWhat.com, a small business resource has teamed up with FaxCompare, an online fax comparison site to accumulate some of the top business events and their effects on small businesses and startups to help you get the highlights. Here are the top 10 most important recent happenings that affect you.
1)   A Whole New Net: A new version of the Internet has been switched on. Known as Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), this new Internet is said to have a significant effect on our lives in the not too distant future. Although you may not notice a difference right now, this version will mean a total overhaul of IP addresses in the coming years. The reason for this update is because the current Internet has run out of IP addresses and many of us are sharing them. The old/current Internet, IPv4 can accommodate 4,294,967,296 addresses, while the IPv6 has a whopping 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 IP addresses available. (via Business Insider)

2)   You Say You “Want” -- A Revolution: In late June, Facebook released a “Want” button in its Javascript SDK code. Although the functionality isn’t public yet, the addition is speculated to work similarly to Facebook’s famous “Like” button. If actualized, the “Want” is set to improve the way advertisers use Facebook to reach potential customers, since up until now companies marketing on the social network have only a vague notion of a user’s intent being that it’s nearly impossible to know what a “Like” means. A “Like” could signify that a user already owns it, just simply likes the product and its presentation but has no intention of getting it for themselves, or actually wants to buy it. The “Want” button would help easily express the user’s intent which would make it possible for advertisers to focus on their most valuable audience. (via Inside Facebook)

3)   Silicon City: CornellNYC Tech, a tech-centered extension of Cornell University has been announced and is to be built on Roosevelt Island in New York City. The campus will not only be geared towards fostering technological advancements but also to train students in the realm of entrepreneurship. Since 2007, The Big Apple has seen an explosion of nearly 500 tech startups, and with the creation of this combination graduate school and startup incubator, NYC hopes to bypass Silicon Valley as leader in tech innovation. (via The Huffington Post)

4)   Census Survey Shutdown: The U.S. Senate is poised to cut Census Bureau funding which could eliminate certain surveys of the general population. Although this may be inevitable in order to constrain the budget deficit, there are alternatives to the data the Census Bureau surveys provide. Google’s keyword search tools (Adwords and Trends) can be very useful as well as survey tools like Google’s Consumer Surveys and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Also, Facebook now allows businesses to measure the effect of their marketing campaigns by counting “likes,” comments, shares, and re-shares into a new “People Talking About This” metric. (via Small Business Trends)

5)   Squared Up: The mobile credit card reader Square has more than doubled its availability in US retail stores since the beginning of the year, up from around 10,000 to about 20,000 locations nationwide. This card reader is now available in retail outlets such as Walgreens, Staples, and FedEx Office in addition to Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Target, and Apple Stores.

6)   VC Jumps Ship to Build His Own: Former investor and venture capitalist Jordan Elpern-Waxman has traded in his position at Genacast Ventures, a startup investment firm, to become an entrepreneur himself. Jordan explains that the startup equity market is “a seller’s market, and you want to be on the right side of it.” Over the past few years entrepreneurs have had the upper hand in the equation. It’s no longer startups pitching to investors, it’s the opposite. A co-founder of Branch, Josh Miller received an investment proposition of $500,000 after a 15-minute meeting over coffee. (via Business Insider)

7)   Dell Bets on Small Biz: In June, Dell announced the creation of a $100 million credit fund for startups called the Dell Innovators Credit Fund. Job creation statistics show that technology savvy small to midsize businesses outperform those with less technological expertise at more than a 2:1 ratio. This statistic prompted Dell to create the fund to be used as an IT advisor or as Ingrid Venderveldt puts it, a “CIO in a box.” Not only will the credit be used to buy infrastructure, but they will have consultants work with the companies in order to create scalable technology solutions. (via Dell)

8)   Girls Who Know… Code: Several tech industry titans including Twitter, General Electric, Google, and eBay have recently announced support for a program aimed at bringing more females into the tech world called “Girls Who Code.” Reshma Saunjani, a former New York City deputy public advocate created this project because only a small number of women are prepared to enter this industry out of college. She says that although women make up 57 percent of college graduates, only 14 percent of computer science and engineering degrees are obtained by women. The program is to comprise of an 8-week course with a focus on young women of middle school and high school age. (via The New York Times)

9)   Pin-tastic!: Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing brand has stretched the bounds of advertising on Pinterest with its unique interactive, scrollable ad campaign called the “Uniqlo Dry Mesh Project.”  The ad puts a twist on scrolling the way mid-2000s chain emails did with scrolling text animation, this time with images of their products, logos, and sweat drops to create the animated effect. When scrolling through the pins they form an interactive commercial directly on the Pinterest page, and are supposed to wake Pinners out of their “scrolling slumber.” Creating the scrolling hack wasn’t an easy task, as they had to set up a simultaneous pinning event from several team members to make sure the images were ordered correctly. (via Brand Channel)

10)   Almost Everyone is Within Reach: A very new startup called Reachable launched in the last week of June and has created one of the most comprehensive (and creepy) projects for businesses known to this date. Reachable scans public information on various social networks to build an enormous database that shows how the entire world is connected. It sells companies access to this database who in turn add in their own information about their employees like email addresses, HR records, etc. and receive a corporate social graph from Reachable showing how each of their employees are connected to the rest of the world.  (via Business Insider)