Techmeme: Problem for advertisers: more than half of online video ads go unwatched below the fold, in tiny players, or played simultaneously with other ads (David Segal/New York Times)

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May 5, 2014, 7:25 AM

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Fred Wilson / AVC:

Square and Box face a combination of high valuations, equally high burn rates, and a disappearing IPO market — The Valuation Trap — There is a long article on Square and Box in TechCrunch this weekend. I am not sold on the arguments the author makes about the commodity nature of both products.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @karaswisher, @bgurley, @davidmarcus, @howardlindzon, @bhorowitz and @dannycrichton

Danny Crichton / TechCrunch:

With IPO Hopes Fading, Square And Box Face Reality Of Commodity Products — Square and Box would seem to be the very epitome of every startup founder's dream of reaching the pinnacle of entrepreneurial success. Take a kernel of an idea and turn it into a massive, multi-billion-dollar company that publicly debuts in an IPO.

Tweets: @trengriffin

Will Oremus / Slate:

Twitter isn't dying: active users and timeline views don't capture the platform's vast reach — Twitter Is Not Dying — Well, that's it folks: Twitter is dead. It had a good flight. A short flight, but a noisy one. Sadly, it is now headed the way of Flappy Bird.

More: The Atlantic Online, Vox, TIME, Reuters, TechCrunch, ReadWrite and BuzzFeed

Tweets: @dannysullivan, @nickbilton, @fromedome, @glennf, @lorenb, @nickbilton, @meryn, @hornokplease, @eric_andersen, @digiphile and @mikeisaac

Thanks:@anprtweets. See also Mediagazer

Ben Thompson / stratechery:

Twitter's problem: the initial idea was so great that they never needed to learn their market — Twitter's Marketing Problem — Twitter's unconventional path is well-documented at this point. From failed podcasting company to playground sketch (actually, probably not) …

More: Trends. Tweets: @simonowens, @carnage4life, @joshelman, @lorenb, @hershberg, @norrisnode and @monkbent

Donnie Berkholz / Donnie Berkholz's Story of Data:

GitHub language trends and the fragmenting landscape — A while ago, I wanted to get a little quick feedback on some data I was playing with, but the day was almost over and I wasn't done working on it yet. I decided to tweet my rough draft of a graph of GitHub language trends anyway, followed later by a slight improvement.

More: RedMonk and tecosystems. Tweets: @hnshah, @merv, @mojavelinux and @jimpresley63

Mike Isaac / Re/code:

Facebook Woos Mobile Developers, but Is It Too Late? — Not so long ago, the key to building a successful app business required piggybacking on an existing big network like Facebook. — But relying on Facebook for your paycheck also meant being subject to the whims of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Tweets: @qthrul and @bokardo

TechCrunch:

Everything Facebook Launched At f8 And Why

More: Wired, Mobile Opportunity and The Digital Letter

Harry McCracken / TIME:

Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal — Knowing how to program a computer is good for you, and it's a shame more people don't learn to do it. For years now, that's been a hugely popular stance. It's led to educational initiatives as effortless sounding …

More: Gizmodo, TechCrunch and MSDN Blogs. Thanks:@srikardr

Carmel DeAmicis / PandoDaily:

17-year-old Michael Sayman on building 4Snaps, meeting Zuckerberg, his Facebook internship, and appearing at F8 — How a Florida kid's “stupid app” saved his family's home and landed him on the main stage at Facebook — Michael Sayman is not your average tech entrepreneur.

Stephen Shankland / CNET:

Nokia investing $100M in smart-car technology — The Finnish technology company aims to make money off the profound transformation of driving made possible by the combining automobiles with computing and networking technology. — Fresh after selling its mobile-phone business to Microsoft …

More: Nokia, BBC, Tech in Asia, Tech.eu, The Next Web, Reuters, NextBigWhat, Webrazzi and Bloomberg

David Segal / New York Times:

Problem for advertisers: more than half of online video ads go unwatched below the fold, in tiny players, or played simultaneously with other ads — The Great Unwatched — Some of the biggest names in Internet media have been gathering in New York City at the third annual Digital Content NewFronts …

More: Beyond Search and Beet.TV. Tweets: @zimbalist, @rafat, @simonkhalaf, @pkafka, @rafat, @fredbenenson and @carr2n. See also Mediagazer

Christopher Beam / The New Republic:

Why Chinese URLs use Arabic numerals over Mandarin characters or Latin letters — Chinese Number Websites: The Secret Meaning of URLs — Decoding 4008-517-517.com — An American friend living in Beijing once said she refused to communicate with anyone whose email address consisted …

More: Gizmodo and TheDomains.com

Michael J. De La Merced / New York Times:

Peer-to-peer lending marketplace Prosper raises $70M at around a $600M valuation — Prosper, a Peer-to-Peer Lender, Raises $70 Million — As peer-to-peer lending — in which borrowers connect with lenders directly online — takes off, one of the biggest players in the field is taking advantage by raising more money.

More: TechCrunch, TechCrunch, Re/code and PE Hub Blog

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