iStrategyLabs

This setup is certainly rare. At my company (http://istrategylabs.com) we've done our best to at least feed this desire and tie it back to revenue. 1. Everyone in the company can work on R&D projects. 2. There's budget set aside for this work. 3. Everyone can pitch new ideas for new projects/products. 4. If something get green-lit you can join that project if you desire and have value to bring to it. It's really challenging to assign dedicated "20% time" or some other formal allocation. We've tried serval times and failed. Instead, now, we just setup hackdays/internal innovation days where the entire company can work on whatever they want. It's great for morale and produces new things we can pitch to our customers.

Over the past few months, I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with Vivek Kundra in his job as the CTO of Washington, DC. Today he was today he was appointed to the new position of CIO of the Federal Government. He's a visionary -- a leader in the field of eGovernment who understands that technology can be used to change the way government operates, can be used to save money, as a way to inform citizens -- all for the sake of our democracy for its citizens. From my interactions with him it is clear he believes in three things: 1. Using Alternative Market Models to Reduce Cost A great example of an alternative market model is [Apps for Democracy](http://appsfordemocracy.org), the project that he did with [iStrategyLabs](http://istrategylabs.com) to get lots of ideas and applications developed for the District of Columbia for a pittance. While Kundra didn't invent the contest model, he was the first person inside the Government to use it, and it was a smart move. Not only does it reduce the cost of building early apps, it raises awareness and identifies talent. While I suspect the operations of the Government will not be supplanted by running a bunch of contests, I suspect we'll see some significant cost savings through contest models and open source development. 2. Data driven decisions Kundra's into [using markets](http://www.nascio.org/awards/2008Awards/portfolioManagement.cfm) to make data driven decisions. I took a tour of his DC CTO office a few months ago…

I went to school in DC for four years and moved to Manhattan with my roommate (now co-founder) to start our company. At the time, the tech scene wasn't really alive and well (this was 2006-2007), but I've seen more of my friends enter the field with more consumer-facing companies - rather than those startups that siphon into the government. It's a good time to be in DC now. Here's some resources you want to check: - Social Times (DC based tech blog that covered a lot of DC companies) - http://www.socialtimes.com/ - iStrategyLabs (interactive PR/ad agency; Peter holds a ton of meetups in the area and practically knows everyone; feel free to email me for an introduction) - http://www.istrategylabs.com/ - Anyvite (DC/MD social invitation/events startup; a YC company and all around cool guys) - http://anyvite.com/home

It's worth exploring and discussing, and if academia wants to get involved, their contributions are welcome. I just think that they shouldn't be surprised when the lede is about "Princeton researchers" by mass media. > I think there is general consensus that in North America we have likely reached peak Facebook engagement I disagree. There are signs that US teens are decreasing engagement or maybe not even registering: http://istrategylabs.com/2014/01/3-million-teens-leave-facebook-in-3-y… However, other age groups are apparently doing well, and there's no sign that 80% of users will leave by 2017. On the whole, they continue to grow. The question is whether the teens are an early indicator that will apply to all demos/geos and that they will all decline, or if there's maturation in the product and that it better fits an older demo and the teens will grow into FB in later years. Or maybe something else.

if you just look at age demographics of facebook users: http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009/01/2009-facebook-demographics-and-st… 40% of facebook users are 18--24. now compare to people with iphones in 2009 (different to people who queued, admittedly, got stats on this? but still earlyish adopters since 2009 data) http://gorumors.com/crunchies/age-demographics-of-iphone-users/ whilst for the iphone, very few are in the 18--24 range: just 13%. most people are 35-54. it seems from this 2009 users of the iphone tend to be older than users of facebook. perhaps because the iphone is an expensive device.

Well, here's some studies. Twitter's demographics: http://www.istrategylabs.com/twitter-2009-demographics-and-statistics/ Facebook's demographics: http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009-facebook-demographics-and-statistics… Twitter does slant older. 52% of Twitter users are over 34, whereas only 8.5% of Facebook's users are over 34.

While I want them to be true, the claims that Facebook is dying don't seem to be supported by data. Facebook's recent engagement report (also posted on HN) showed that the percentage of users 25-31 has grown by 32%. The percentage of people 35-51 grew by 41%. And the percentage of those over 55 grew by 88%. What other commenters probably mean to say is that Facebook is dying among teenagers. Even so, the website still has over 13 million teen users. And the users in the older groups are arguably more valuable from a financial standpoint because they have direct access to more disposable income. Maybe you're skeptical of the report because Facebook helped generate it. Okay, I can understand that. But even if the numbers have been inflated to benefit Facebook's platform, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find any legitimate, large-scale study that doesn't show significant growth in the 25+ demographic. Uncool? I think so, and a relatively small demographic of young people agrees with me. Dying? Definitely not. http://istrategylabs.com/2014/01/3-million-teens-leave-facebook-in-3-y…