The warp and weft of wearable electronics

 3Q: Zijian Zheng

One of today’s challenges for materials scientists is wearable electronics — smart materials that monitor ailments, harvest energy, track performance or communicate. These remain expensive and hard to produce in bulk, and are often unattractive. Polymer scientist Zijian Zheng takes inspiration from his designer and business colleagues at Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Institute of Textiles and Clothing. His solution: lightweight electronic yarns that can be made into textiles by adapting existing production processes.

 How do you create wearable electronics?

People need to feel like they’re not wearing electronics, so the materials must be lightweight and flexible. They must also be high-performance, as devices have to charge rapidly, last for a long time and be sweat-proof. Applying all these criteria, we create electronic textiles in which the fabrics themselves form the sensors and devices – from light-emitting diodes, photovoltaics, organic transistors and supercapacitors to batteries. We can make a supercapacitor using conductive yarn, made by coating cotton with nickel, and penetrating it with a form of graphene oxide. If you put a pair of these strands together in parallel, and fill the space between with an electrolyte gel, you can make it work as a supercapacitor storing energy as positively and negatively charged ions collect at the different wires. You could use that to power other devices, such as sensors, or store energy generated from photovoltaics. We’re working on making lithium batteries using the same principles.

When integrating different materials together in an electronic textile, the interfaces create the biggest problems. You can get mismatches between mechanical and thermal expansion properties, and in a flexible system the weakest points are where the device twists or bends. In my group we focus on using polymers to address these issues. For example, we make new polymers that add texture to the surface of textiles, allowing them to be coated in copper at low temperatures for durability. To ensure scalability, our goal is to make textiles that can be integrated with the technology the clothing industry has used for the past 200 years. Our composite yarns can be used in sewing machines, and complicated patterns can be created from them using machine embroidery. From there, you start to add active materials to make devices in ways that are compatible with textile processing. For example, we’re now making photovoltaic cells printable via textile colour-printing technology and encapsulating them with textile-finishing technology. And we are set to make a radio-frequency identification tagging device within a garment, powered by a supercapacitor. We’ve designed it to hide the supercapacitor as an embroidered pattern, like camouflage. We also have a student working with local textile company EPRO Development, trying to put the metallic, conducting textile into real production. Devices will come a bit later as they are ten times more complex to make. Cost is a challenge too: the textile industry cares about every penny. In introducing functional elements into garments such as a breathable section, you might only be allowed to increase production costs by around 10 cents.What are your biggest challenges?

One hank of copper-coated cotton yarns used for making wearable devices and circuits.

KA-CHI YAN

How do the different disciplinary strands in your institute work together?

My institute covers the whole chain of production for textiles and clothing – with materials science and chemistry groups sitting alongside business and design. So we have three streams of students and teaching is totally different for each. The major challenge when I lecture is how to deliver my engineering or scientific-based content to a bunch of artists. We tend to give them an overview to help them understand first, with lots of examples, before we come down into the fundamentals. It’s very different from the physical science students, where we take them through a logical sequence from beginning to end. The artists ask so many questions. Generally they want to know if they can do something with a material, and don’t care about why it functions. They seldom ask “Why does this electron go through there?”

Show home for the Red Planet

A big red igloo with a towering antenna seems a little overblown for a London show home. And so it proves. The object squatting outside the Royal Observatory Greenwich is actually a life-sized mock-up of a Mars habitat, billed as the imaginary dwelling of a second wave of settlers from Earth. That is, those who might live on the Red Planet in their thousands by around 2037, if the ambitious plans of space entrepreneurs such as SpaceX’s Elon Musk bear fruit.

The mock-up, in London this week to 16 November, promotes the National Geographic channel docudrama MARS, by director Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Launched on 13 November, the mini-series charts the 2033 journey of a fictional first crewed mission to Mars by a blissfully collaborative International Mars Science Foundation, and subsequent attempts to establish a settlement.

As Earth’s second-nearest neighbour after Venus, Mars is widely seen as the best candidate planet for human colonization. But it lacks Earth’s thick atmosphere and global magnetic field, and is extremely inhospitable in myriad other ways. Colonists would need to be protected from temperatures that plummet to -70 degrees Celsius at night at the equator, as well as the high-energy cosmic particles and ultra-violet solar radiation that pummel the planet’s surface.

The Martian igloo, the work of display and model-making company Wild Creations, is a fun way of exploring what constraints the environment would put on design. The walls are a whopping 60 centimetres thick — just an eighth of the almost 5-metre depth they would need to be capable of protecting colonists from the radiation, said Stephen Petranek at the show-home opening. His book How We’ll Live on Mars inspired the series, and he consulted on the show home alongside the observatory’s public astronomer Marek Kukula. Moreover, Petranek notes, it would need to be built of bricks made by microwaving a mixture of polymer granules with Mars’ clay mineral-based soil. And an igloo is just one possible design. The same bricks could easily make bigger structures, even a large Gothic cathedral, he says. Or homes on the Red Planet could be built in the natural underground hollows that once housed lava, or in the side of craters.

Daily life for the 10,000 people Petranek imagines might some day dwell in this kind of shelter does not look appealing. Accessed via an ‘airlock’ stuck into the igloo wall, the dome’s interior is claustrophobically small — just a few paces across. Features would have to include an exercise machine to combat muscle wastage in the low-gravity environment, and an indoor farm. The small potted plants I spot on a mezzanine near the building’s ceiling hardly look substantial enough to sustain a hungry Martian for more than a few weeks — in contrast to the heaps of potatoes ingeniously grown by fictional astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) in Ridley Scott’s 2015 film The Martian. Settlers would also need access to water, which (assuming it is there) may only exist in liquid form dozens of metres down in the planet’s concrete-hard ground.  

The message here seems to be about thinking big to encourage ambition, as with the MARS mini-series. That uses an innovative format: the drama unfolds amid “flashbacks” to interviews with actual scientists and space pioneers, such as Musk. These highlight how real progress often initially involves failure, but  also serve to make the dramatised scenes seem even more fictional.

Petranek notes that plans such as Musk’s are “much more realistic than people give them credit for”. And whether or not they succeed, SpaceX is driving all space exploration in the direction of human missions to Mars, he argues. But for now, most planetary scientists still see living there as science fiction, and that’s not just because of unfeasible costs or optimistic technology projections.

Many researchers don’t actually want to send people to the Red Planet yet. It could well have harboured life billions of years ago, and finding that would tell us that life on Earth was not a one-off fluke. NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the China National Space Administration all plan to put rovers on Mars in the 2020s to scour it for ancient life. But while rovers can be carefully sterilised to prevent contamination, sending humans would almost certainly contaminate the planet, and could mean we never find out. From that perspective at least, there is no hurry.

The making of science

Scientists are makers. The specialized skills they hone in the lab over many years – from assembling robots and circuits to growing microbes and cells – mirror the practices of artisans such as seamstresses and potters. Chemists may melt, stretch and snap a glass tube to make a pipette. Jewellers rearrange silver atoms each time they warm the metal to anneal or soften it.

Bringing together makers of all stripes to innovate was the focus of MAKE:SHIFT, a two-day biennial conference this month in Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, home to Charles Babbage’s loom-inspired computing machines. Scientists and designers explored in talks, panel discussions and demonstrations how joint working can advance sustainability, healthcare and communities.

Across smart materials, biodesign, wearable electronics and more, the speakers showed how such collaborations have led them to think and work differently. They explored emerging trends, such as 3D printing and small-scale production. And they asked big questions, such as how the concepts of craft and making have become lost in today’s digital world of instant gratification, yet remain central to hatching new models and cultures of innovation. The following insights and individuals stood out.

Tools and workshops are increasingly accessible, linked and powerful. Fabrication labs or ‘fab labs’ – where members of the public and skilled experts recycle furniture or even edit genes – are proliferating. There are now 700 around the world. And 16 cities (including Barcelona, Boston in the US and Shenzhen) have signed up to become ‘fab cities’– aiming to produce locally 50% of what they consume by 2054. Online networking and exchanges of experience between make spaces is increasing, linking know-how in California with needs in Cape Town, for example.

Small-scale manufacturing is on the rise, aided by the Internet and cheaper production technologies such as 3D printers. Digital blueprints allow anyone with such means to construct furniture or even houses locally. Generic designs can be customized. Garment patterns that can be tweaked and knitted on demand avoid wastage. Customers increasingly care where their products come from, and value sustainability, social good and ethical work practices.

The nature of materials is being rethought. Bio-materials such as fungal webs (mycelium) can be used to ‘grow’ bricks, pots and even dresses on wood-chip, clay or textile frames. Amsterdam-based eco designer Maurizio Montalti of Officina Corpuscoli described how, after working with University of Utrecht microbiologists on scaling up these fungal creations, his studio began to look more like a lab. University College London materials scientist Mark Miodownik invoked a future devoid of roadworks if self-healing asphalt becomes reality.

The Anthropocene offers new geologically inspired materials. ‘Fordite’, or ‘detroit agate’,  is made from fine layers of hardened car paint and can be cut and polished like semi-precious stone. We may one day dig up deposits of ‘bone marble’, retrieved from the metamorphosed skeletons of culled farm animals. The fashion industry is the second most polluting in the world, but sportswear company Adidas is scooping waste plastics out of the ocean to make its knitted footwear.

Crafts people are sensitive to people’s emotional responses to materials and objects. Yet few designers are included in research teams examining interactions between robots and humans, for example. Caroline Yan Zheng from London’s Royal College of Art is using soft robotics to make wall panels and accessories that swell or reshape in response to facial emotions. People tell her they find them comforting; one day they might be used to promote calm in hospitals.

Surgery is a craft – you don’t want your operation done by someone who has only read a book. Richard Armfrom Nottingham Trent University brought in gorily realistic models of parts of the thoracic cavity that he has been making in silicone for surgeons to train on – complete with slimy finish, spurting arteries and the slash across the chest for you to dig your hand into. But introducing design innovations into the healthcare sector is difficult, Jeremy Myerson from the Royal College of Art noted; the sector is risk averse. His redesigned ambulance interior reduces the time it takes for paramedics to treat a patient’s wounds, by giving them better access to the patient and equipment. Yet, despite running it through ‘clinical trials’ successfully, it has yet to be taken up.

For making to drive innovation, many challenges need to be overcome. Craft has an old-fashioned hobbyist image, and many courses are closing as universities struggle to attract students. Yet jewellers and textile and industrial designers are open to new materials and technologies as never before, while few scientists are trained in metalworking or AutoCAD. And it is hard even to define what tacit skills and knowledge are

That said, some technologies are overhyped. 3D printing remains expensive and impractical with many materials, such as porcelain. While printing is useful to make a detailed prototype, traditional processes like casting are often better for mass production. Also, the software needs to become more intuitive. Ann Marie Shillito of Edinburgh College of Art showed how she is using touch-sensitive ‘haptic’ computer design software to form organic shapes.

So how far can this model of local production be scaled? Ways must be found to promote collaboration between workshops, and optimize who makes what, where. And new business models are needed so that small-scale manufacturers can make a living; most workspaces depend on government grants. Nonetheless, MAKE:SHIFT was a heartening experience that highlighted what science and design have in common rather than, as is too often the case, what divides them. After all, even graphene (carbon that is 1 atomic layer thick) has been linked to traditional craft: the Japanese paper-cutting art of kirigami have been applied to graphene sheets to make stretchable electrodes, hinges and springs.

Lust and the Turing test                                                        

Deckard’s final act is a recognition of these creatures’ essential human-like nature: he leaves his life behind and flees with Rachael, a more advanced replicant who believes herself to be human. Deckard crosses a line, at least implicitly endorsing the belief that replicants have feelings of regret, of pity, possibly even of love. (The question of whether Deckard is himself a replicant remains one of the more tantalizing in movie history.)

Tried and tested

In that sense, Batty, Rachael and their companions pass the Turing test. Introduced by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1950 to answer the question “Can machines think?”, it replaces this metaphysically loaded query with a pragmatic imitation game. If an agent can’t be distinguished from a human being, the agent passes the test.

The Turing test remains alive and well in philosophy of mind and in the annual competition for the $25,000 Hugh Loebner prize — albeit less so in university computer science departments.

WARNER BROTHERS

Consider a version of the test focused on the question “Can a machine be conscious?” That is, does it feel like something to be this artifact? My washing machine has no feelings, but an android might well have – such as pity over the impending death of a human pursuer or pride in its own accomplishments. How would we know?

How do we know that anybody else but us is conscious? By interacting with them — asking them, “Tell me about your feelings.” Variants of this are used with non-linguistic competent individuals, whether aphasic patients, infants, or monkeys or other animals.

So, if what a machine tells us sounds plausibly human, we may act as if it too were sentient. Going by Deckard’s action in saving his beloved from doom, Rachael has passed the Turing test.

Fast forward to the 2013 romantic SF comedy Her, directed by Spike Jonze. In it, the anodyne writer Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) downloads a new applet, Samantha — essentially an advanced version of iPhone’s Siri. It is a plausible storyline for our digitized age: a lonely guy speaks incessantly to his smartphone, who answers in a seductive voice and knows everything about him, his emails, his likes and dislikes, even his dating history. They joke, have intimate discussions; he takes her everywhere. Samantha is the last thing he speaks to before he goes to sleep and the first upon awakening.

Her eschews any significant discussion of the extent to which a computer program can have conscious feelings. Twombly doesn’t worry about such philosophical speculations; he behaves like any lover. Indeed, his passion for Samantha, who ‘lives’ in the cloud, cools after she confesses that she is simultaneously interacting with 8,316 other customers and is in love with 641 of them.

All about Ava

Enter Ex Machina, directed by Alex Garland. This intelligent and thoughtful mix of psycho-drama and SF thriller centers on a strange ménage à trois. Ava is a beauty with a difference (a phenomenal performance by Alicia Vikander); Caleb is a nerdy young programmer (Domhnall Gleeson); Nathan is a beastly, brilliant inventor and immensely rich tech-entrepreneur (Oscar Isaac).

Caleb is selected by Nathan, a recluse, to spend a week at his live-in Arctic laboratory. He introduces Caleb to Ava, an advanced cyborg whose semi-transparent skull and body reveal inner workings, including a brain that is quasi-organic in some unspecified way. It’s a twist on Blade Runner: if Caleb interacts with Ava as he would with an alluring woman – while seeing clearly that she is not flesh and blood – that would testify to Ava’s ability to convince him she has real feelings. Ava and Caleb hit it off at first sight.

Unlike Her, Ex Machina soon becomes a game of smoke and mirrors.  Ava hints to Caleb that she doubts Nathan’s purely scientific motives; there are bizarre scenes such as Nathan doing a synchronized dance routine with a mute servant. Nathan’s lab becomes Bluebeard’s Castle, complete with locked rooms and heavy psychosexual undertones. Ex Machina’s ending, invoking the trope of the femme fatale, is logical, surprising and darker than Blade Runner’s.

All three films showcase how the psychology of desire can be exploited to forge a powerful empathic response in their protagonists, sweeping away doubts about the object of their longing having sentience. It’s a Turing test based on lust, each movie an excursion into human social psychology and the attendant gender power politics. Unfortunately, the movies don’t inform us whether or not Rachael, Samantha and Ava are conscious or not. Simply that the men in these movies behave as if they were.

Leaving all that aside, I have little doubt about the essential scientific veracity of these movies. Within this century, we will create artifacts that will behave to all intents and purposes as if they too shared the gift of conscious experience with us. They will pass the Turing test. Blessing or curse? Only time will tell.

Google, Twitter Forge Open Source Publishing Partnership

Google and Twitter are collaborating on an open source project that focuses on helping publishers bring instant articles to mobile phone subscribers, Re/code reported Friday, citing multiple sources.

Facebook launched its Instant Articles feature earlier this year.
Apple and Snapchat reportedly have similar tools in development.
The Google and Twitter team-up "is a very important development," said Zebra Social CEO Jordani Sarreal. "While Facebook is keeping the traffic on their site with Instant [Articles], Google and Twitter are trying to be more appealing to content creators in that they can keep their website data with their content," he told LinuxInsider.

The Open Source Factor

The rumored project sounds like the best of both worlds in open source, Sarreal observed.
"Many of the people who have not jumped on Facebook's instant publishing are likely to jump on this trend to hopefully not miss out, and establish themselves in the forefront of Google and Twitter publishing," he added.
The introduction of another platform could add to the burden for content marketers and publishers. Once it is launched, they will have to determine which kind of content does better on which new publishing platform, how to layout the information, and how to incorporate keywords, Sarreal noted.
"Google and Twitter will be looking for different things within an article. It will take time to understand what those differences are, and how to adjust our content accordingly," he pointed out.
"Although it is early, it is easy to assume the publishers will benefit more from Google's publishing integration if their website has a great library of information and strong calls to action," said Sarreal.

Better for Brands

Assuming the rumors are true, most publishers likely will react positively to the news, noted Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
Apple and Facebook already dominate many of their markets. While they themselves are highly profitable, the revenues flowing to the content creators who work with them often are fairly modest, he told LinuxInsider.
"It is easy to see why publishers and authors would prefer a model that offers them more autonomy, attention and potential revenues," King said.
Arguably, content creators and publishers would prefer an open source approach to speeding user access to online content to a proprietary platform such as Apple's or Facebook's. Using an open source system would help preserve and reinforce their own brands.
"It hopefully leads readers to investigate other content on their sites," said King.
The publishers and authors likely to benefit most are those who understand how to drive search results, noted King.
"That will be fairly easy for well-known folks, but a tougher road for unknowns and people whose careers are just beginning. Then again," he added, "starting out has never been an easy task for writers and publishers."

Playing Catch-Up

Google will be coming late to the publishing party, having failed to challenge Facebook with its own social media platforms -- the short-lived Google Buzz and the faltering Google+, noted SEO researcher Joshua J. Bachynski.
"Google needed a way to combat competitors such as Facebook and get timely and relevant social media posts into its search results to reflect that growing cultural interest," he told LinuxInsider.
Google's inability to understand its user base has forced it to form an uneasy partnership with Twitter and others, he noted.
"Unsatisfied with relying on the Web information sources they have had for years," Bachynski said, "Google now wants to get unmitigated informational control."

At Home With Open Source

Google reportedly took the lead in forging the partnership deal with Twitter, and it's likely that the project is more in Google's comfort zone.
"It is Google's business model to be open source by nature," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
"It might very well be that Google is worried about being left out of the publishing traffic," he told LinuxInsider, but "with its size, any space it enters gets filled by them."
Google and Twitter declined to comment for this story
.

Can Jack Dorsey Save Twitter?

Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, who has been running the company as interim CEO for the past three months, has taken the reins for good, the company revealed in a document filed with the SEC last week.

Former CEO Dick Costolo has left Twitter's board of directors, and Adam Bain has stepped into the chief operating officer role.
Dorsey will continue to lead Square, the mobile POS company he founded, as well.

Desperate Times

Dorsey's challenge now is to lead out of the quagmire it's in.
Twitter's move "seems like an act of desperation," remarked Mike Jude, a research manager at Frost & Sullivan. "They originally ruled him out of the running for CEO because of concerns about his ability to run two companies."
Square itself is fighting fierce competition.
"Jack Dorsey may be a lot of things -- talented, visionary, hardworking -- but being the CEO of two public, fast-growing, game-changing companies is deeply unwise and will be detrimental to both," predicted Barry Randall, chief investment officer at Crabtree Asset Management.
Twitter did not respond to our request for further details.

What's Bothering Investors

Twitter has lost considerable ground to rival Facebook, whose worldwide membership had grown to nearly 1.5 billion as of August, according to Statista.
At 316 million, Twitter ranked No. 7 among social networks, and its growth has been tepid.
In Q1, it gained a mere 4 million new members. Twitter initially claimed it had added twice that number, blaming the lower figure on a faulty iOS 8 integration. Later, however, it acknowledged there was no bug, and the 4 million count was correct.
Social TV engagements on Twitter -- meaning people who comment about TV programs -- had fallen by 25 percent over the previous seven-month period, Ring Digital reported this spring.
Twitter "has an unhealthy fixation with user growth," Randall told the E-Commerce Times, that is "driven by Silicon Valley DNA: Growth is paramount until all opposition is vanquished."
That approach is "nonsensical" because Twitter "created and now dominates the microblogging space," he pointed out, and the slowing growth indicates market saturation rather than failure.
Nevertheless, Twitter's stock price reportedly was down by 50.7 percent from a year ago, as of Monday, lagging the S&P 500 index.
Although TheStreet rated Twitter stock a sell, that analysis "is formulaic and doesn't take into account Twitter's unique status," suggested Crabtree's Randall.
The company's revenue grew 61 percent year over year, and it has 7 percent operating cash flow margins, he pointed out, "a problem a lot of other public companies would love to have." Also, Twitter has twice as much cash as debt.

Follow the Money

Twitter's main problem is monetization, Frost's Jude told the E-Commerce Times.
"How do you monetize short text sound bites?" Jude asked. "At some point, there will have to be some sort of pay-to-play arrangement, either through acceptance of advertising or personal information sharing for the purposes of advertising, but that might not sit well with subscribers."
Further, there are mounting suspicions that Twitter's subscription figures are "highly gamed -- lots of fake subscribers, for example," which has begun eroding confidence among advertisers and politicians who want to use Twitter, Jude pointed out.

There Can Be Only One

Meanwhile Square, which is gearing up for an IPO, is facing stiff competition from the likes of PayPal and Intuit and a host of other players, Jude said.
"One could argue that [Dorsey] is taking on two very demanding jobs, either of which would fully consume a regular CEO," he said.
Twitter is a publicly traded company, and "there's a significant opportunity for lawsuits if he's not successful," Jude pointed out. Shareholders "would argue that his split loyalty violated his fiduciary responsibility to the corporation, and they would be right."

Facebook Tinkers With M-Commerce Tools

Facebook on Monday added several new features designed to encourage m-commerce. One of them, Canvas, aims to improve mobile ad delivery.

It isn't that people flat-out dislike ads on Facebook -- controls are available to keep the ads in check and on target. However, Facebook's ad delivery service has suffered from the derailing effect of the redirect.
Canvas is designed to plug the conversion leak.

Just a Sketch for Now

When consumers come across a compelling ad in their News Feed, they now have to wait for their browsers to launch a new tab and then for the assets from the merchant's website to squirt out of their wavering WiFi, or drip out of their mobile broadband connection.
With Canvas, however, the content is native and specific to the associated Facebook ad. A click produces a fast-loading assortment of the merchant's products, which they peruse before deciding whether to head to the company's website to make a purchase. It's that sort of service that turns whims into wins for merchants.
Canvas is just one of several new tools that could be critical to Facebook's mobile commerce push. Despite the continued uptick in mobile shopping on Facebook, the experience could be better, admitted Matt Idema, Facebook's VP of monetization product marketing.

"What we're doing -- with proven products like carousel ads and new products we're testing -- is making it easier for people to discover products on mobile and businesses to drive sales," he said.
It may sound good in theory. But beyond speed, Facebook will have to deliver on presentation, noted Karma Martell, president of KarmaCom.
"Facebook does not have a stellar reputation for understanding user experience, despite its adoption numbers," she told the E-Commerce Times. "That aside, this makes perfect sense for Facebook to offer to all the boutique retailers out there."
Ease of use will be critical, noted brand consultant Evan Carmichael.
"Most entrepreneurs aren't programmers," he told the E-Commerce Times. "They are experts in their products and services, and use Facebook as a means to an end. If it's too complicated to set up, then they won't get the mass adoption."

Mobile Moves

Canvas follows Carousel -- an ad format Facebook introduced last year -- which packs more content into posts.
Tools like Canvas and Carousel are game-changers for Facebook, according to Carmichael.
"It's where YouTube is going with their interactive cards too," he said, "and wherever you can take friction out of the buying process, reduce the number of steps, make it easier ... you make more sales. It's a no-brainer."
For many merchants, Facebook's mobile commerce improvements may be too little too late. The company's efforts up to now haven't made much of a dent, said KarmaCom Martell, and the usefulness of a tool like Canvas is limited.
"As for the larger retailers, I can see using it for special sales, but what large brand wants to drive traffic to Facebook instead of their own website?" she asked.
Facebook just can't compete outright with big-box portals Amazon and Alibaba -- e-commerce in general just "isn't its core value proposition," said Martell.
"However, as an alternative hybrid of eBay and Etsy -- allowing individual users to sell a few items -- there is potential," she said.
However, "even that activity may have to live in another section," suggested Martell, "as users may balk at what could seem like ceaseless hawking of wares."
There's another way that Facebook already has been serving merchants, according to Carmichael.
"A lot of entrepreneurs are already opting to have a Facebook page before they even launch their own website," he noted, "and the more Facebook makes it easy to run all the aspects of marketing a business, the more adoption Facebook will get.
"