Mike Elgan

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new feature yesterday called Graph Search. Graph Search magnifies everything good and bad about Facebook. It’s Facebook on steroids. To the extent that Facebook is good for connecting with family and friends, Graph Search makes Facebook great for that purpose. To the extent that Facebook is an invasion of […]

It may shock you to learn that Kenya is far ahead of the United States in the use of mobile wallet technology. Kenya uses a system called M-Pesa, run by a company called Safaricom. Nearly every consumer purchase in this country, from utility bills to groceries, is paid for with a cell phone. How did […]

Reports say Intel will announce in February a new smart TV platform and set-top box. Surprisingly, Intel is not just making hardware; they’re reportedly wheeling and dealing in Hollywood to ink deals with studios that would enable Intel to “unbundle” shows from their networks, so that people could order TV shows without subscribing to a […]

I watched the future happen right before my eyes on Christmas morning. My 17-year-old nephew Walton got an iPad for Christmas. I had shown him Google Voice Search previously, so he downloaded the app immediately. For the rest of the day, whenever some question arose, he asked Google on the iPad by speaking out loud […]

New reports suggest that Facebook will soon unveil video advertising – basically TV commercials on Facebook. Unlike TV’s 30-second standard for ads, Facebook’s would be capped at 15 seconds. The ads will be “autoplay,” meaning they’ll play without any action by the user. While 15 seconds is short compared with TV, it’s long compared with […]

Rumors and speculation about a possible TV set made by Apple are overwhelming the rumorsphere, re-ignited by three events. The Wall Street Journal reported today that Apple is testing TV prototypeswith Asian suppliers. Everybody is quick to say this fact doesn’t mean Apple has decided to build a TV. But still, it’s an interesting development. […]

In the early 1960s, fast-food chain McDonald’s hit upon a massively profitable long-term strategy: Get ’em while they’re young. The company started using the Ronald McDonald character in the early 1960s to attract very young children to the McDonald’s brand. It was something of a marketing revolution at the time. Today, Ronald McDonald is the […]

Since the dawn of the PC revolution, antitrust regulators, including the US Department of Justice, the attorneys general of the 50 states, the EU and all their peers around the world have failed to fairly or reasonably apply existing anti-trust law to consumer electronics companies. The poster child of anti-trust regulation was Microsoft, action against […]

I think I’ve finally found a way to understand what Google is. For years, the company has been almost impossible to understand. What started as a search engine company became an online advertising company, which became a media delivery company, a mobile phone platform company and many other things. At some point, Google went off […]

A plethora of “smart glasses” products hit the market next year. They’re designed to augment reality, make mobile computing instant and hands-free and turn you into a cyborg. There’s absolutely no question that such technology has a future. But will consumers embrace these gadgets? Googleappears to think so. And, in fact, the company seems to […]