Paypal opened its platform

This is the thing I loved about Internet. Open, open, open, even for payment. Seems a lot of opportunities.

http://finance.bnet.com/bnet/?GUID=9518883&Page=MediaViewer&Ticker=%24CNET

oday PayPal announced plans to open its payment platform to third-party developers with the release of new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow developers to embed PayPal’s secure global payment system into their applications and platforms.

In opening up the PayPal platform, developers can now create new ways to send and receive payments for services beyond traditional e-commerce. According to a recent McKinsey report, the global payments market represents a $30 trillion opportunity.

PayPal has spent over a decade creating a secure, global payments network for e–commerce and person-to-person transactions, which seamlessly integrates 27 financial networks, 15,000 local banks, 190 global markets and supports 19 currencies.

What Facebook should learn from Twitter, and in reverse?

I have been using the app from twitter and facebook on my blackberry for a while. It's very interesting to see their difference, and in fact, they can learn from each other to improve the service.

What Facebook Can Learn from Twitter:

(1) shorter summary on the highlights of friends status, so that users can see more updates from friends just by scanning
(2) Remove the add friends button since people will rarely use phone to add friends.
(3) Also reduce the refreshing time. Twitter is much better on this.

What Twitter can learn from Facebook:
Facebook Mobile integrates into blackberry much better by having "facebook" on the navigation panel, and then it stopped sending me msg via email. While for twitter, it still sends me msg via email though I can get it from the twitter app.

GSB former dean to join Citi's board

Finally, this gave me some confidence on Citi as an investor.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090724005298

Citigroup Board Names Three New Outside Directors and Announces Other Governance Actions

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Citi's Board of Directors today announced three new outside directors. In addition, the Board announced a new, non-executive Chair for Citibank, N.A., a new oversight committee for Citi Holdings and a new Chair of its Audit and Risk Management Committee.

The three new outside directors are:

• Diana L. Taylor, the former Superintendent of Banks for the New York State Banking Department, and current Managing Director of Wolfensohn Capital Partners, a fund manager.
• Timothy C. Collins, Chief Executive Officer of Ripplewood Holdings L.L.C., an investment firm that invests in financial services and other sectors.
• Robert L. Joss, Ph.D., Dean and Philip H. Knight Professor of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and former Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Westpac Banking Corporation Ltd.

The new directors, who will stand for election at Citi’s next Annual Meeting, bring the total on the Board to 17 members – only one of whom (Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Vikram S. Pandit) is a member of Citi management.

China's shares to exceed U.S. in three years

Bloomberg has an interesting article citing a fund manager with Templeton on China's stock market will exceed U.S. in three years. Beyond the size, I am more interested on opening access for global investors as well as foreign companies who want to list in China. Size is important, as well as globalization.

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- China’s stock market may surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest by value in three years as state- owned companies sell new shares and the nation’s 1.4 billion people put more of their money into equities, Mark Mobius said.

“The Chinese population is just dipping its toe into equities and they’ve got a long way to go,” Mobius, who oversees about $25 billion of emerging-market assets as executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management Ltd., said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London. State-owned companies are “coming up with more huge” initial public offerings, he said.

I wish Baidu would be more like Google

I read a very good article from Keso, a famous Chinese blogger, on the questions that if Baidu only exists for the purpose of marketing. It was deleted later, and I guess, because of the pressure from Baidu. But i still want to share it because it is the weakest part in China's Internet world now, and people have to face the problem.

Keso said the innovation will not naturally grow because of the increasing number of Internet users in China. Unfortunately, Baidu believed the other way, he said. "That's why Google is almost like half of the Internet, and changed the way people and enterprise work, while Baidu still positions itself as a marketing tool. It worked well in the past eight years, but Baidu is losing its edge in the impact on China's Internet. It's more about population business, and it's risky. He said Alibaba, instead, is doing something interesting to have enterprise more efficient.

Having been in silicon valley, it's amazing to see how a few big companies such as Google and Cisco pushed the whole industry. A lot of start-ups already planned to be bought by them in the future, while in my opinion, is a good thing. Big companies are not good at innovation, and buying small companies is an efficient way to go. Looking at Baidua and a few other big Internet companies in China, not a lot of them actually did merger and acquisition. They all believe they can do it themselves, while losing touch with the industry trend.

Baidu is safe for now, with the good financial numbers; but safe shouldn't be enough for this no.1 internet company in China. They should go further and set up a vision for China's Internet. Only until then they can be called a great company.

The Michael

He is still a super star on the stage




He loves climbing trees(while that stupid journalist wasn't dare to), and he adores kids(while that stupid journalists kept asking stupid questions). He was hurt after opening himself so much. Sigh！！！