Computers

Twitter has announced it is deploying a long-awaited security measure: two-factor verification. The move comes about a month after The Associated Press' Twitter account was hacked. Twitter is late to the game with this security tactic. A number of companies already feature it. However, the company must have scrambled to get it in place after hackers sent the stock market reeling last month. Using the AP's Twitter account, the hackers falsely reported that the White House had been bombed and that President Obama had been injured in the attack.

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Soitec has seen cash resources fall by 50 percent as it made net loss that was 80 percent of sales in financial year to end of March 2013.View the full article HERE.

At the time of writing, Daft Punk’s mega-hit Get Lucky has been streamed on Spotify more than 28 million times around the world, a figure we know because the music-streaming service recently started displaying song play counts. Indeed, Get Lucky was breaking streaming records from its very first day of launch back in April. The album it appears on, Random Access Memories, is following suit (as expected) and is already breaking streaming records since it was made available on Spotify on Monday. Though the new Daft Punk album actually started streaming (legally) on iTunes a couple of weeks ago ahead of its full launch, it has already set the record for the most streamed Spotify album on its first day ever – this includes the US, UK, France, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico. Now, Spotify has revealed it is on track (if you’ll pardon the pun) to have the biggest first week for an album in Spotify’s 5-year history. If the current trajectory holds firm, Daft Punk’s new album will surpass Mumford & Sons ‘Babel’ as the most streamed album ever in the first week of release, though it says this is in the US only. Mumford & Son’s Babel blew past 8 million streams in its first seven days Stateside last year, so Daft Punk has a few days left to smash it. Given the success it saw on its first day in many countries, it’s difficult not to see this coming out tops in other territories too.

Over the past two decades, corporate America has become obsessed with "shareholder value." This narrow measure of company performance, which evolved into a religion in the 1990s, holds that what's good for a company's stock price is also what's good for the company, the company's customers and employees, and the economy. So, today, the performance of companies and CEOs are judged primarily by their stock prices. Capitalizing on this theme, Bloomberg has put together a list of CEO "underachievers"--big company CEOs whose stocks have done the worst relative to the broader market since the beginning of each CEO's tenure. Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard sits atop the list, with HP's stock having underperformed by a startling 30 percentage points since she took the job. James Gorman of Morgan Stanley and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America hold the 5th and 6th slots, with both banks having struggled in the past couple of years. And the staggeringly well-compensated CEO of Occidental Petroleum, Stephen Chazen, owns a place in the top 10. Although some CEOs certainly deserve a place on an "underachiever" list (Chazen jumps to mind), the problem with judging CEOs this way is that it encourages CEOs to make decisions that might pump up stock prices in the near term but actually hurt them over the long-term. It also encourages companies to treat "shareholder value" as a much higher priority than the other kinds of value that great companies create: Value for customers, value for employees, and value for society. At most companies, for example, firing employees and cutting research and development expenses will increase this year's earnings per share--something that Wall Street generally applauds. But firing employees and cutting research and development spending this year may also depress growth two or three years from now, when the products that this extra investment might have produced would finally have hit the market. Thus, in the interests of pleasing impatient short-term shareholders, the companies might be shortchanging their long term performance. One of the problems with the U.S. economy, in fact, is that American corporations have become so obsessed with near-term profit growth that they're achieving it by underinvesting in the future. American corporations are currently posting the highest profit margins in history, which they have achieved primarily through cost-cutting and efficiency. At the same time, however, these corporations are paying the lowest wages in history and making capital investments at a strikingly low rate. (See chart below). The record-high profit margins that this cost-cutting and low investment have produced have helped drive the stock market to a record high, but they are also arguably hurting America's long-term economic growth (and stock performance). For companies in the midst of an implosion, meanwhile, as Hewlett-Packard is, judging a CEO by the company's near-term stock performance seems even sillier. HP's business was collapsing when Meg Whitman took over as CEO. The business is still collapsing, but the company has also begun to set appropriate expectations and work its way out of trouble. In HP's case, a successful turnaround will take several years. So to judge Whitman's performance based on the stock price thus far seems myopic at best. A company's relative share price over the long term--5 to 10 years or more--is certainly one of the measures with which a CEO's performance can be judged, especially if the stock price is viewed in conjunction with other measures of corporate value creation. But obsessing about near-term stock performance at the expense of customers, employees, and long-term investment is short-term thinking. And it will just continue to hobble the economy. SEE ALSO: Great Companies Maximize Value, Not Just Profit Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Social Media Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that collects and delivers the top social media news first thing every morning. You can sign up to receive Social Media Insights here or at the bottom of this post. Viewers Are Devouring TV Content On Social Media (Viacom)Mass media company Viacom International Media Networks, has released a study examining the TV-watching habits on social media. The study, which included 5,000 people who use two or more social media platforms on at least a weekly basis, found that viewers average 10 TV-related activities on social media on a weekly basis. The most popular activities included interacting with friends and family around TV (72%) and searching for information and show schedules (66%). Read > Twitter's New Ad Tools Are All About The Second Screen (Twitter)Twitter is pitching its new ad product Twitter Amplify to brands as a way to continue the stories they tell in TV commercials — online and on mobile. Thanks to new analytics, Twitter will automatically know what ads aired on which shows, pair that data with users who tweeted about those same shows or events, and serve those users ads that tie in with the TV commercials that aired during the programming. This strategy is all about leveraging Twitter's mobile usage as a "second screen" companion app to TV. As Twitter itself highlighted in its announcement, "64 percent of mobile-centric Twitter users use it in front of TV at the home." Read > Please see our new in-depth report, the "Social Media Advertising System Explained," for more information about social media ad products. Pandora Enables Facebook Auto-Sharing (BTIG Research)When Facebook launched its open graph initiative in 2011, Pandora was very vocal about not wanting to participate: "It's true that music is a social experience, but it's also a very private experience … We have to be very cautious," said Pandora founder, Tim Westergren. Apparently Pandora management changed its mind: the music service has enabled Facebook sharing with its latest update on iOS. Read > 30 Under 30 In Social Media (Forbes)Social media has a lot of movers and shakers pushing the envelope in all corners, from philanthropy, to mobile, to blogging. Read about the up-and-coming stars in social media. Read > 24 Signs That You Are A Social Media Guru (Digiday) Are "curation," "aggregation," and "amplification" normal parts of your everyday vocabulary? Do you check your Klout score every day? If this sounds like you, you might be a Social Media Guru. Find Out > Infographic: Thirty Overused Buzzwords In Digital Marketing (Mashable)Here's a related infographic: We've probably all been guilty of overusing the word "synergy." But have you ever said "growth hacker" in a conversation? Read > How Much A "Share" Is Worth On Each Social Network (AddShoppers)Consumer behavior changes, depending on your environment, and social media is no different. Pinterest is a popular site for people interested in apparel, whereas Twitter drives the most electronics sales. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

HTC One with plain old Android expected this summer

JackThreads, the members-only clothing site for men, just hit 4 million members. Ever since men's lifestyle brand Thrillist acquired the JackThreads back in 2010, the hip clothing site for men has experienced solid growth (see chart below). At the time of the acquisition, JackThreads had about 150,000 members. Just three months ago, JackThreads hit 3 million members. Last month, JackThreads says it saw its highest sales month ever, and at its highest margins ever. JackThreads expects to see $75- to $100 million in revenue this year, and accounts for more than 45% of Thrillist's revenue. "We're lucky," Ross says. "We're one of the few stories where a company is acquired by another business and the two companies integrate, and it actually works out. Ben [co-founder and CEO at Thrillist] and I over the years have built a trust. He lets me do my thing. It's been great for me and great for JackThreads." But what's driving this growth? "We spent so much time last year across all of the key teams really building out the data infrastructure so we could analyze and understand what was driving the business," JackThreads founder Jason Ross tells Business Insider. Ross says the JackThreads marketing team did extensive work building an infrastructure to better analyze the results from different marketing channels. "Any time you can be a more data driven business, especially in e-commerce, gosh it goes a long way," Ross says. Mobile has also played a huge role in JackThreads's growth. Its smartphone apps account for 50% of its daily sales. Just last week, JackThreads launched an iPad app, which is already accounting for 5% of its daily sales. "We’re very much a mobile-first company," Ross says. "Every single thing we do going forward as it relates to product development, we think about it first as it affects mobile. I feel like it’s a thing that a lot of companies haven't figured out yet."SEE ALSO: Top Silicon Valley Advisor Explains The Key Rules Behind Every Great Startup Idea Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

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The BBC has decided to abandon its Digital Media Initiative, after spending £98.4 million (roughly $148 million USD) to try to create a more integrated and digital workflow for its employees. The decision follows an operational review of the project, launched in October last year, which found that the project was failing to achieve its current targets. Tony Hall, Director-General for the BBC, said the Digital Media Initiative had wasted “a huge amount of Licence Fee payers money.” “I saw no reason to allow that to continue which is why I have closed it,” he said. “I have serious concerns about how we managed this project and the review that has been set up is designed to find out what went wrong and what lessons can be learned. “Ambitious technology projects like this always carry a risk of failure, it does not mean we should not attempt them but we have a responsibility to keep them under much greater control than we did here.” What went wrong? The project was set up in 2008 to bring the BBC up to speed with modern technology and television production processes. The original work was contracted out to Siemens and would help move the BBC to an all-digital, tapeless system. The estimated cost was £81.7 million, although the BBC suggested it would save them roughly £18 million overall. The BBC terminated its contract with Siemens in 2009 following rising costs and was later criticized by the National Audit Office for the way that it handled the project. The Digital Media Initiative was then used to develop a new system called Fabric, which would give employees access to archived BBC footage through a “seamless digital chain.” The project will live on An email sent out by Hall to BBC employees, obtained by The Drum, sheds further light on what went wrong. “It’s struggled to keep pace with new developments and requirements both within the BBC and the wider broadcasting industry,” he said. “There are now standard off-the-shelf products that provide the kind of digital production tools that simply didn’t exist five years ago.” Hall added that the BBC’s need to produce content digitally “hasn’t gone away” and that the Fabric database would continue to be used throughout the company. “However, we will stop developing our own in-house production tools, and instead use the industry-standard production systems that are now available,” he said. Image Credit: NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/GettyImages