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"Medium, the new self-publishing platform from two of Twitter's co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, promises to eliminate the need for bloggers to also be marketers. "We want to help the best ideas and stories have the biggest possible impact," Williams said in an email. "For the vast majority of people, Medium will have a higher return-on-investment for writing than publishing one's own blog.""

""If you're a Web publisher, you're primarily paying attention to page views," he said. "But whether people are actually reading your stuff, whether they're on the page for five seconds or five minutes, is something we're looking to measure.""

eMarketer:  The research firm estimates that the total transaction value for mobile payments in the U.S. will be $640 million this year, but that will grow to more than $62 billion in 2016 as a bigger segment of the population uses their phones to buy medium-ticket items, including fast-food restaurants. The average user of mobile payments will spend $62 a year with their phones in 2012, but that grows to $1,294 in 2016, according to eMarketer's estimate.

For both companies, Pinterest is a godsend: It's the only social medium in which domestic product content has built-in relevance and an audience that wants it. Expect the P&G/Unilever takeover of Pinterest to continue apace.

Smartphones are on a fast track to become the primary device for both creating and consuming digital content. According to the Pew Internet for the American Life Project, already a full 31% of Americans who own internet-capable phones browse the web primarily from their phones. These numbers are actually higher in emerging markets. What's more, there are at least three other factors at work here. First, images are global. They eschew all language and cultural boundaries. Photography is the only true universal medium. Nothing comes close. Second, images are distributable. The bandwidth required to transmit photos is minimal, yet the opportunities for quick, creative expression are plentiful. As of this writing, Apple's App Store alone has over 10,000 iPhone apps in its photo category -- many of them for editing. Photoshopping has been democratized. Finally, images are digestible. You can glance at a picture for as short or as long as you want. Photos are a non-linear, shared consumption experience. The same can't be said for video or even text.