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As the U.S. limps back from recession, the tech industry has been hailed as a boon for growth and job creation.

But upon closer inspection of multi-billion dollar valuations and scrappy startups on their way to profitability, you might notice that the revenues these companies command are wildly disproportionate to the number of people they employ.

Facebook, which some have valued at $100 billion after filing for an IPO last week, employs a mere 3,000 people. Compare that with General Motors, which raised the biggest IPO in history in 2010. Its estimated market cap at the time of this writing is only $41.4 billion, and they employ a whopping 202,000 workers to create that value.

This should come as no surprise. It takes a lot more people to build a car than to build an app.

We thought it might be interesting to parse all these billions in relation to the actual people who work for these companies. How much money and value is being pulled in per employee? And which tech companies are getting the biggest bang for their payroll buck?

Our friends at research and analysis firm Statista have put together these handy charts to show which companies are maximizing employee return.

Are you surprised to see the results? Do you think these kinds of numbers are sustainable? Have your say in the comments section.

 

 

 

Charts courtesy of Statista.com.

More About: apple, Business, charts, Facebook, features, infographics, Revenue, tech companies, valuation

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A 16-year-old accepted into Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched her admissions letter 91,000 feet to space and videotaped its journey.

Erin King of Georgia used a weather balloon, GPS-equipped ham radio transmitters, a GoPro Hero camera and a helium tank to turn her letter into a fun science project.

She launched the balloon on Jan. 16 in Lumpkin, Ga., and two hours later it landed more than 75 miles away near Cordele, Ga. After the balloon released, King and her father jumped in the car while they tracked the letter to its landing place, which was in low trees near a cotton field. The letter was secured inside the tube and King was able to keep it after all.

SEE ALSO: Father and Son Launch iPhone Into Space [VIDEO]

MIT sends acceptance letters to students in a cardboard tubes. Then students are asked to do something creative with the tube and post the final product on MIT’s Hack the Tubes blog.

“2012 is the anniversary of an old MIT balloon hack, so we put a letter in all of the Early Action admit tubes telling them we wanted them to hack the tubes somehow,” said Chris Peterson, head of web communications for MIT Admissions, on BoingBoing.

Several other students submitted entries, but King’s was the best, Peterson told BoingBoing. She uploaded a video of the tube reaching the edge of space. King has done several balloon watches during high school, but this is the first MIT has seen. Now she plans to join the MIT class of 2016.

What other fun ways can universities send admissions letters? Let us know your ideas in the comments.

Photo Courtesy of Erin King

More About: space, Video, weather balloon

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When a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck the Philippines Monday, residents and local media outlooks used Twitter and Facebook to alert residents and quell tsunami-inspired panic.

But they’re not the only ones using social media to sound a digital alarm when disaster strikes. Officials in the U.S. do that too.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a scientific agency of the U.S. government, is tasked in part with researching natural disasters and getting the word out when they hit. They’re doing much of that information sharing online. Scott Horvatt, Web and Social Media Chief at the USGS, says the organization uses a combination of Facebook and Twitter to spread information about “any significant earthquake event.”

“On Twitter, specifically, our @USGSted account automatically tweets out these significant events,” says Gerber (TED stands for Twitter Earthquake Dispatch).

@UGSGted tweets are sent out with the hashtag #quake. Once they’re tweeted, Horvatt’s system monitors tweets per minute with that hashtag. TED tweets are also automatically picked up and retweeted by the main @USGS account to its more than 186,000 followers.

Next, Horvatt and the USGS start crowdsourcing and responding to followers’ questions. They send out a “Did You Feel It?” message with a link to a form that collects first-hand reports of major earthquakes, helpful to seismologists while they turn raw data into plain English. Gerber says his team tries to respond as quickly as possible to questions during and after a quake.

On Facebook, the USGS cross-posts all earthquake information it tweets along with the same “Did You Feel It?” links. That’s breaking one of the first rules of social media (don’t cross-post), but in the case of emergencies, it’s best to get information out on all channels.

The USGS system isn’t limited to the United States. Through an international partnership called the Global Seismographic Network, the USGS can learn and distribute information about events across the world.

Is the USGS planning any kind of social media-based early warning system? Not at the moment, says Horvatt. But social media does give the USGS a leg up when scouting for seismic trouble. By monitoring social chatter about a possible earthquake, Horvatt’s team can alert seismologists to focus in on what may be happening in a certain geographic area.

“One of the goals behind the @USGSted account is that we have seismometers placed around the country, and in some areas they’re less dense in terms of numbers,” says Horvatt. “The account lets us measure and take a look at the number of tweets coming across about an earthquake. It has the potential to give a bit of heads-up about something possible happening, but it’s not meant as an early warning detection system.”

What do you think the future holds for social media and disaster alert systems? Sound off in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Claudiad

More About: Earthquake, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

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Google Chrome, the search giant’s signature browser, has arrived for Android mobile devices — or some of them, at least.

In an official Google Chrome blog post published Tuesday, the company emphasized that the mobile browser is all about speed and simplicity. The new browser boasts seamless sign-in and sync to ensure a personalized experience across devices.

But there’s a catch: the Android Beta is only available for Android 4.0 devices. The vast majority — that is, 99% of Android devices that have accessed the market in the last two weeks — don’t run Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

Out of roughly 200 million active Android devices, it is estimated that just 2 million run Ice Cream Sandwich.

Tabbed browsing, a beloved staple of Chrome on the desktop, will also be the highlight of the mobile browser. The blog post also notes that the browser loads search results as you type to guarantee speedy searches.

Chrome is available for download in the Android Market for users in the U.S., Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

The mobile browser had only received a handful of reviews when we wrote this post, all of which give it either four of five stars.

Chrome, first launched in 2008, has taken an increasing chunk of web traffic each year. In December 2011, it jumped ahead of Mozilla Firefox to become the world’s number two desktop browser. According to Google’s numbers from October 2011, the browser has more than 200 million users worldwide.

Do you have Ice Cream Sandwich? Let us know if you’ve tested Google Chrome’s first mobile browser. Do you like the tabbed browsing? As for other Android users, are you disappointed that Google isn’t serving up Chrome for you yet? Let us know in the comments below.

Chrome for Android

YouTube and Google Maps are both integrated into the new Chrome for Android.

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More About: android, chrome, google chrome

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When Jeff Clavier founded SoftTech VC there weren’t too many investors doing small, seed-stage investments in next generation web companies. Many traditional venture capitalists just didn’t find the new breed of capital efficient web startups very intriguing. A small group of investors, including Clavier, thought otherwise, and began to invest their own money as angels. They’ve been wildly successful in doing so, and today Clavier’s SoftTech VC firm has investments and holdings in some of the web’s most successful startups, including Bit.ly, Get Satisfaction, Ustream, Twitter, Groupon and Facebook.

Clavier just closed SoftTech VC’s mammoth third fund — a whopping $55 million, which is more than three times larger than the firm’s successful second fund. The new fund will allow Clavier and company to invest in 60 to 65 new companies with an initial investment averaging $400,000.

Watch our interview with Clavier to find out what he looks for in new investments, why VCs do whatever it takes to help their portfolio companies succeed and why there is no pride in venture capital.

This Venture Studio Classic was originally released on May 16, 2011, after the launch of SoftTech VC Fund III, but prior to it closing.

Follow Venture Studio, in association with Mashable. The show is hosted by Dave Lerner, a 3x entrepreneur and angel investor. To join Venture Studio’s Facebook page, click here.

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More About: investing, mashable video, Startups, Venture, venture capital, venture studio, Video

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Klout‘s mobile initiative is starting to take shape with its first-ever acquisition. The San Francisco-based startup has acquired BlockBoard, an app that gives people a way to communicate with neighbors.

Klout told Mashable the acquisition is an investment into local and mobile. The BlockBoard app will continue to exist, but the team behind it will be integrated into Klout’s staff.

“To keep driving toward our mission of unlocking every user’s influence, we need to make Klout useful and accessible wherever they are — whether they’re at home or on the go,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez says in a blog post. “Blockboard has built an amazing local-mobile app that connects neighbors to build stronger communities through technology.”

Klout — which measures a social media user’s online influence from 0 to 100 on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Foursquare — announced a new round of funding in January, saying it now has the resources to dive into the mobile world.

“The money is going to be used to really drive accuracy, transparency and utility,” Fernandez told Mashable last month. “We want to measure influence every place it exists and make sure Klout users are recognized for their influence every place they go.”

Previously, Klout had hinted in a tweet that mobile could become a reality.

@BAHjournalist we have some really cool ideas for it.

— Joe Fernandez (@JoeFernandez) January 1, 2012

 

Soon after that exchange, he confirmed Klout’s mobile endeavor. And Tuesday’s acquisition is part of that.

“With their experience, Blockboard brings an awareness of how social media can be meaningfully woven into the fabric of a local community, as well as a killer mobile app development team,” Fernandez says.

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What Else Does Klout Have in Store for 2012?

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Looking ahead, Klout is still building scoring models for seven more services (YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress.com, Last.fm and Flickr) that have already been integrated onto Klout users’ dashboards. Klout also plans to add Quora, Yelp, Posterous, Livefyre, Disqus, bit.ly and other services.

SEE ALSO: The Remarkable Story of How Klout Got Started [VIDEO]

Klout likely will continue improving its Topics feature (see screenshots below) and Klout Perks platform. The Topics feature, which rolled out in September and lets you gain insights on top influencers and +K recipients for specific content areas, most recently got a visual update in December with a “sashes” and an “Add a Topic” button.

More brands are offering perks based on the topics they influence and their Klout scores. The Perks platform is an integral part of Klout’s business model.

Clickable Topics on Your Dashboard

On your Klout dashboard, you can click on a topic to open its Topic Page.

Update: In December 2011, Klout rolled out sashes and an "Add a Topic" button. A blue sash goes to users with the most +Ks for any topic, while a gold sash is given to influencers based on Klout's algorithm. People who fall into both categories receive a blue-and-gold sash.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: acquisition, apps, BlockBoard, klout, Mobile, mobile apps

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Your accountant can email a specialist for advice about a specific issue in your tax return. Your doctor, however, doesn’t necessarily have the same access to easy collaboration. There may, however, be a Facebook-like solution in the wings.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) prevents doctors from sharing patient information without “reasonable safeguards.” For the most part, this shuts down the instantaneous email exchanges through which other professionals collaborate. Physicians can consult with each other about a patient’s condition via email, but they can’t involve medical test results or a patient’s medical records in the discussion.

While it’s good that patient privacy is protected, these restrictions have contributed to the fax machine’s mainstay as a major form of communication between doctors. The rest of us are bouncing messages between us instantaneously while doctors are receiving faxes. One medical center estimates it receives roughly 50,000 and sends another 10,000 fax pages each month.

A new doctors-only network called Doximity wants to free doctors from the fax machine and bring social media into the field. The company started as a LinkedIn for doctors, and it quickly grew to 30,000 members. Recently it added a Newsfeed feature that, like Facebook, allows doctors to post messages to colleagues with whom they are connected on the platform.

Doximity Founder and CEO Jeff Tangney says the idea of the feature is to give doctors a safe place to collaborate.

“You can get fired for being a physician on Facebook,” he says. “It becomes really difficult to collaborate all of these things when you can’t send a patient photo or any discussion of a patient legally over email.”

A doctor in California, for instance, has a teenage patient who recently came down with an uncommon infection, so he contacted another doctor in Texas who had led studies on a treatment for that infection. Another specialist from Boston chimed in, and together the three came up with a new way to treat the patient.

In the digital age, this kind of collaboration makes a completely underwhelming story. But in the medical field, it’s something of a difficult task to pull off. On Doximity, Tangney says these doctors could freely exchange details because the communication is HIPPA-compliant.

While there’s no official HIPPA-compliant certification, the company says it has worked with independent consultants to ensure it isn’t violating the law. There’s a three-step verification process for doctors to establish a profile on the site that involves a credit check and a verification of credentials against the American Medical Association database. There is also a multiple-step sign-in process similar to one you may have encountered at your bank’s website.

Tangney didn’t say how many doctors were currently enrolled in the program, but he did say that it was more than 7% of physicians in the U.S. That should put it at about 40,000 doctors.

That participation fuels Doximity’s business model — locating health specialists for non-medical advisory roles and billing for their time — but it also opens up the possibility of social media shaping medicine as it has other professions.

 

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, pixdeluxe

More About: Doximity, health

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A rep for a Taiwanese company that claims to own the rights to the term “iPad” in China says Apple is about to be hit by a $38 million fine for continuing to use the name.

Four years before Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, it bought the trademark “iPad” from a Taiwanese display manufacturer, Proview Electronics, but the rights to use the name may not extend into China.

Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a unit of Proview International in Hong Kong, now claims to own the rights to use “iPad” in China, Apple Insider reports. Proview sued Apple last December for $1.6 billion. A Chinese court ruled in favor of Proview, but Apple is appealing the decision.

According to The Global Times, the Chinese government has launched a probe into Apple’s possible trademark infringement as it considers the case. Proview Shenzhen’s lawyer, Xie Xianghui, told the publication that a court in the Xicheng district of Beijing had planned to “slap Apple with a 240 million yuan ($38 million) fine,” but suspended the fine after Apple objected. Apple claims that a Proview Shenzhen sold the iPad trademark rights to a UK-based company called “IP Applications,” which sold the trademark to Apple in 2010.

A rep for the Xicheng district administration, meanwhile, told the publication that the court had never announced any such fine.

In addition to the fine, Xie told China Daily that the company will demand an apology from Apple over the issue.

Reps from Apple could not be reached for comment.

This isn’t the first time a high-profile Apple product has run into trademark issues. Apple and Cisco both fought over the iPhone name before settling the issue in 2007.

More About: apple, china, ipad, trending

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Collaborative consumption, peer-to-peer marketplaces, the sharing economy — it’s been called a few names by now, but no one is denying that the idea of accessing rather than owning is controversial — and it’s taking the Internet by storm.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces, of which Airbnb is the beloved poster child, have been popping up for the past few years, but 2011 was an explosive year for the sector. Whether you wanted to borrow or rent someone’s apartment, bike, car, parking spot or random household good, you could find a marketplace to do it.

This is only the beginning, though; 2012 looks to be a promising year for those involved with the sharing economy. Super angel Ron Conway recently identified it as 2012′s hot area for angel investment in The Economist. And Fast Company deemed 2012 the “year of peer-to-peer accommodations,” thanks to the emergence of Airbnb clones that hinged off of the company’s outstanding growth.

Collaborative consumption services are getting a lot of attention, yes, but I couldn’t help but notice that only a small percentage of my contacts — even my super techie friends — have tried any of them. So, what gives?

On a mission to understand what motivates users to participate in the sharing economy, and eager to learn how we can take this idea mainstream, I interviewed a number of users and founders behind some of the most buzzed about peer-to-peer marketplaces. Read on to see what they had to say about the current state and future potential of the space.

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It’s All About Value

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The common theme across every interview I held is that collaborative consumption is, for the most part, about value. While there are a number of non-financial reasons for participating in the sharing economy, most of the people I spoke with agreed that the number one driver is cost savings.

Real estate expert Roberto Gonzalez says Airbnb is a “better and much more profitable way” to rent out his extra bedroom than the old Craigslist go-to. Citing Airbnb as his favorite website ever, Gonzalez uses it as a pillar of his popular Skillshare class on “How To Live Rent-Free in NYC.” He’s definitely on to something — Airbnb hosts in New York City make an average of $21,000 annually through the system, according to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.

Knodes and SnapGoods founder Ron J. Williams advises other startup founders to focus on value when marketing peer-to-peer marketplaces, something he says he would prioritize more if he were to launch SnapGoods again. “[Peer-to-peer marketplaces] are not driven by the ethos of sharing, but by the fact that people are making real money,” he says, cautioning startup founders from pushing the hippy-dippy movement message. “Most people are talking about this as a movement, but most people don’t care about movements. They care about convenience — people use ZipCar because it’s convenient.”

For those renting out their cars on WhipCar, “it’s less about needing the money and more about being smart with what you own,” says marketing director Jonathan Clark. “Collaborative consumption is common sense. A car can cost almost £7,000 a year to run, and the majority of car owners don’t drive their car every day. WhipCar enables them to earn money during this idletime — it’s even possible to totally offset the cost of owning a car by renting it to neighbors when it’s not being used.”

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Renting vs. Borrowing

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While it’s called the “sharing economy,” not everything is free. Some peer-to-peer marketplaces are transaction-based, while others only encourage sharing free-of-charge. It seems the exchange of money has an effect on the culture that forms around a site.

Photographer and videographer Adrian Manzano is a power user of a number of peer-to-peer marketplaces, including SnapGoods, Couchsurfing, Airbnb and Craigslist. He offered his thoughts about the differences in cultures between Couchsurfing and Airbnb: “People on Couchsurfing tend to be very open-minded, hippy, free, Burning Man type of people. With Airbnb, you get more ‘regular’ people, just looking to make a buck or save a buck. So, ‘normal,’ whatever normal means.”

The collaborative consumption space is young, though, so we’ll have to wait and see whether the cultural differences between transaction-based and borrowing-based marketplaces survive.

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Fostering a Lifestyle

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Will Dennis, founder of peer-to-peer bike rental marketplace Spinlister, says that he sees “collaborative consumption in the long term as the most efficient way to get what you want when you want it.” It is a shift in consumer behavior brought about by the emergence of social networks and real identity online. “The social web results in trust, access to what you need quickly, and in the long run, a more authentic and interesting experience,” he says.

While all of these peer-to-peer marketplaces offer a more convenient way to share goods and services, the problem is that they don’t currently communicate with each other.

If you want to book a trip on Orbitz, you can browse hotels, flights, car rentals and activities all in one place. With the current peer-to-peer markets, though, the experience between one type of good and another is fragmented. If you want to rent a car, you go to GetAround or RelayRides; for apartments you have Airbnb and Wimdu; for others’ goods, you can try SnapGoods or NeighborGoods. Wow, that’s a lot of work, right?

Launching this week, Uniiverse is a new collaborative consumption platform attempting to solve the fragmentation problem. Calling itself “the world’s marketplace for collaborative living,” it aims to be the place you go for any of your peer-to-peer needs. In Uniiverse’s words, “Users can share their interests, resources, time, space, skills and knowledge in real life – for free, or to make a little bit of money.”

McGill University student and Uniiverse user Stéphanie Domagalski says Uniiverse helps her live on a tight budget and has improved her life. “I can make money, doing things I enjoy. I’ve met awesome people. I can borrow things instead of buying them,” she says. “I’m connecting to my community, enjoying what my city has to offer, sharing my passions, and I feel like I’m making a difference.”

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One Neighborhood at a Time

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One of the difficulties of kickstarting some of these peer-to-peer marketplaces is the fact that, in some cases, you need an entire community to be on board for the idea to work.

Park Circa, for example, is a private network of micro-shared parking spaces. Co-founder Chadwick Meyer says that for its relaunch, the Park Circa will target neighborhoods one by one to get entire localities signed up. “As we build up enough inventory, we’ll then have a launch party in that neighborhood to release it,” he says.

Entrepreneurs looking to enter the collaborative consumption space, take note — if you don’t have users living nearby each other, it’s simply not going to work. Plan accordingly.

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The Trust Factor

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For those building peer-to-peer marketplaces, one of the biggest pain points is figuring out how to communicate trust between users — Airbnb experienced a number of PR setbacks in that area last year, and therefore launched a Trust & Safety Center, which included a $50,000 host insurance guarantee.

Sites like Airbnb and homeswapping site Love Home Swap have focused on integrating a user’s social graph in order to better confirm identity and convey trust to users. Through Airbnb’s Social Connection feature or Love Home Swap’s Social Circle feature, users can rent or swap homes with people from their personal networks. This same functionality is also available through both company’s Facebook apps.

Startup TrustCloud aims to empower the social economy by developing a portable reputation system for the Internet. The company calculates a user’s reliability, consistency and responsiveness by measuring his social presence across other sites, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Love Home Swap founder Debbie Wosskow says that her startup will be taking peer-to-peer marketplace trust to the next level soon. Love Home Swap has teamed up with British insurance market Lloyd’s to develop bespoke home and travel insurance for site users. A product that covers the full costs of a host’s home, as well as a traveler’s flight, does not currently exist. However, Wosskow believes that the entire industry will head in this direction.

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Spreading Resources

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“If you own something, it owns you,” Manzano says.

Whether collaborative consumption is truly a shift in consumer behavior or just a glitch on the radar, at the very least, it has shifted the mindsets of a small subset of our population. People have a new space in which to reallocate resources and lessen waste. Don’t get me wrong — people have been sharing for ages now, but online peer-to-peer marketplaces are making it dead simple.

“Society is simply better when we pool our resources and skills together,” says Domagalski. “There is no need for the pursuit of more when everything we need is all around us.”

Images courtesy of Flickr, carlos_maya, 401K

More About: AirBNB, collaborative, features, peer-to-peer marketplace, Startups, trends

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Warms Gift Toy Options

 

Click here to view this gallery.

Millions of people will send their beloveds flowers this Valentine’s Day, but what if they could send a baby in a box — no, not a real baby. Imagine a tiny stuffed baby toy holding a bright red heart. That’s only part of what you get when you send a Warms gift. Inside is the toy and on the underside of the lid, a QR Code. Point your phone at it and you’ll arrive at a personalized video message from your loved one.

I got one of these boxes, but it didn’t come from my wife. Warms, a Montreal-based Kickstarter project, sent it to me to promote the new gift idea and highlight the startup’s Valentine’s Day special.

The Warms gift box concept is really quite simple. You visit the site and choose a Warms baby. There are 12 themed toys, ranging from graduation to a Get Well baby. Each comes with its own — in the company’s own words — “endearing – or even unnerving – message” that plays as soon as you open the box. Senders enter the recipient’s address and then record their own personalized video message. Recipients access the message either right on their phone, by scanning the QR code on the box lid, or by visiting the GiveWarms site and entering the ID code.

The boxes usually cost $29.95 to send, but Warms is running a Valentine’s Day special. For $69.95 premium, you can send a baby with a heart and it will arrive on Feb. 14.

The boxes, which arrive in a cardboard wrapper that promises it “may contain smiles,” are well crafted and offer just enough instruction — even how to untie the securing string — to ensure no recipient gets frustrated or confused. The stuffed toy is designed to spring out of the box as you open it—and as the sound plays. It’s a nifty effect, but the clincher is the video message. Warm Ventures co-founder Steve Hardy says Warms’s goal is to “Send smiles and to bridge curious, tangible physical gift object with a compelling curious digital video and e-gift experience online and on mobile. Really kind of stretch out that unboxing experience.”

When the box arrived I noticed how the presentation is nothing if not intriguing. Would you want to send a Warms gift box or, perhaps, receive one yourself? How does the ability to add online video change the gift giving experience? Does it make a Valentine more personal, or add too much pressure to look and sound good on camera? Let me know in the comments.

More About: kickstarter, valentine's day

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