Independent software publishers that have created widgets for the Facebook platform are being embraced by its users at a rapid rate, according to new figures produced by Quantcast Corporation and reported in Marketing Charts.
Facebook holds itself out as an open access platform for the internet and allows independent software companies to build and deploy applications, or widgets, on its site. Widgets range in sophistication from minor novelties to more elaborate applications that allow you to review and discuss favourite movies or music.
Since Facebook’s open platform initiative began on 25 May 2007, the three leading widget publishers have seen amazing growth in daily unique visitors.
Slide, which helps you order online pictures and make slideshows, the leading personal media network, grew global daily unique visitors from approximately 753,000 to more than 2.3 million, an increase of 207%.
HOTorNOT, which allows you to rate people who post their pictures as hot (or not) grew global daily unique visitors from approximately 289,000 to more than 722,000, an increase of 152%.
RockYou, which has a main widget that allows you to add music and video to a user’s Facebook wall, tripled global daily unique visitors from approximately 286,000 to more than 1.3 million, an increase of 339%.
Migrants are better educated, more law abiding, generally healthier and less dependent on welfare than the average Australian-born citizen, according to research by the University of New England.
The study, conducted over 18 months, found that the costs of migration were mainly low and associated with migrants adjusting to their arrival. Nearly 90% of the 106,495 immigrants entering Australia in the 2005/06 financial year were skilled migrants.
Dentistry graduates start on wages more than $15,000 higher than other graduates, according to Graduate Careers Australia figures reported in The Australian Financial Review.
On average, newly minted dentists earn $68,000 in their first year of full-time employment, way ahead of graduates in the next highest paid disciple, optometry, on $51,200.
Graduates of computer science, law and social work were in the middle of the pack with average starting wages of $42,000, while vets and accountants were at the bottom on $38,000 and $37,000 respectively.
Interestingly, however, graduate salaries have declined against the average weekly wage over the past 10 years. In 1995 the average graduate salary across all degrees were equal to the average weekly wage for male full-time employees, but in 2006 graduates earned 79.7% of the average.
Full-time employees without degrees earned an average $36,500 in 2006, 5% up on 2005. Graduate average wages grew at a slower pace. The 2006 average of $40,800 in 2006 represented a 2% increase on the previous year.
The Indian art market is up 485% in the last decade, reports Fortune magazine.
A half dozen art investment funds are betting on next-generation artists in their 30s and 40s, allowing fund managers to do the work for investors who want to get in on returns that have driven the Indian art market up and turned it into the fourth-most-buoyant art market in the world.
The funds identify up-and-coming artists and their undervalued art, and sell their work at gallery shows, exhibitions and auctions in India, Europe and the United States.
One of the first such funds opened in New York in 2004, the Arts India Fund 1 run by Prajit Dutta, owner of the largest Indian arts gallery in the United States, Gallery Arts India. The fund has grown from $4 million to $9.5 million and expects to pay out an annual return of 50% to more than a dozen investors at the end of this year. “The returns have been embarrassingly high,” Dutta told Fortune.
“Have you got a problem? Do what you can where you are with what you’ve got.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Smart Company is the leading online publication in Australia for free news, information and resources catering to Australia’s entrepreneurs, small and medium business owners and business managers.
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