Where in the UK have banks extended the highest amount of personal credit per person? The somewhat surprising answer, according to new data, is a postcode north of the Avon in the genteel spa town of Bath. Read more.
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Well, almost. Thanks to DJ Shadow for the beats and happy birthday trip hop. Here is your Furthr-penned birth certificate, from 1994.
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As this table shows, prostitution as a business is in terminal decline. The fact is, most men prefer to have real girlfriends.
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America still has more internet firms than any other country (roughly 60,000), the rest of the world combined now boasts more (about 76,000). And Israel is now the most likely place for people to start a tech firm: the country has an estimated 375 startups per million inhabitants versus nearly 190 in America. Thanks to The Economist.
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Mark Zuckerberg is pouring over this map. It shows basic 2G phone coverage in light blue, and darker/red indicating areas with high-quality 4G coverage and Wi-Fi access. It also shows billions of people in Africa and Asia basically don’t “exist” because they don’t have access to the Web — yet. Zuckerberg’s solution is to persuade wireless carriers to provide basic mobile phone access for free, and to give them coverage with an array of drones, satellites and lasers.
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Everyone knows Detroit’s been through some tough times, that’s why everyone is talking about Shinola — an American company that makes hand-crafted bicycles, watches and leather goods in a former Detroit auto factory. That is a great brand story, and they tell it well. Great name too. (Think about it).
On March 26th, Skytrax, a consultancy, released its list of the world’s 100 best airports. The highest-ranked in America was tiny Cincinnati, at 27th.
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The UK newspaper People closed their website a little while ago, writes Furthr’s Andy Cowles.
Launched with the idea that it would be ‘Buzzfeed for grown ups’, pretty much everything went wrong, according to this excellent reporting from of all places, Buzzfeed.Patrick Smith reports that there was a lack of identity, a lack of focus, and a complete failure to grasp how the native advertising business model works.
This lack of brand benefit is perfectly expressed in the website logo. The way it worked (or rather, didn’t), was that the People logo was preceeded by a rotating series of words; ‘Sporty’, ‘Famous’, ‘Glam’, ‘Funny’ and so on. The story underneath didn’t change, but the context did.
What this did was remove any trace of brand from the content beneath. The stories became entirely generic, no tone, no point of view, no recall.
By way of contrast, this is Buzzfeed’s home screen from the very same day. Which, when you compare the lead stories of ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Wanker’, pretty well sums up why Buzzfeed’s tone is so sharp.
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In 2013, China executed more people than the rest of the world combined. Behind Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. came in fourth for executions, with nearly half of them taking place in Texas.
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American artist Nickolay Lamm created a prototype of a Barbie-like doll last year based on US government measurements for an average 19-year-old American woman and the response was huge. He now wants to produce his doll and is close to crowdfunding the $95,000 (£57,000) he needs to start production.
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