Business

Hip hop mogul Russell Simmons weighed in on the presidential race yesterday, penning a piece about how Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are the two men “who will destroy our people and laugh all the way to the bank.” In picking Ryan, Simmons wrote in a blog post on the Global Grind, Romney made his campaign message clear: “EVERYTHING’S FOR SALE! And all of the money that is made on everything that is sold will be made on the backs of the poor and the working class.” Picturing a Romney/Ryan administration, Simmons wrote that it would be one in which you get what you can pay for. And in their case, that’s everything. “I have a feeling that one of my rich friends will just buy the government and paint the White House green and make Mitt sleep in the basement,” he wrote. Citing his support for the Occupy movement, Simmons said the Ryan pick should be a “wake up call.” “I will ring the alarm as loud as Beyonce ever could and will fight to stop the literal destruction of poor people in this cou...

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... ? Learn More Doug Purdy, Facebook’s Director of Developer Products, just announced that 230 million people played games on Facebook.com in the past 30 days and that 8 of the 10 top grossing iPhone apps are integrated with Facebook. This is an interesting bit of news when thinking about actual user interaction with the service and what third party developers could expect to see when building for the platform. Facebook offers games directly on Facebook.com as well as an SDK to push data from standalone apps on Android and iPhone to Facebook. Both of these traffic sources are obviously quite sticky and quite valuable. Considering, ac...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More There’s a staggering new statistic in Facebook’s 10-Q SEC document today: 102 million people accessed Facebook solely from mobile in June, a massive 23% increase over the 83 million mobile-only users in March. 18.7% of its 543 million monthly mobile users don’t even visit its desktop site. That means if it can’t make its mobile advertising generate a lot more money within the next year, revenue could plummet like its stock price, down 6.2% today to $21.71. Another dead-serious new stat is that Facebook only grew 10% to 168 million in the US this last year, compared...

Billy Gallagher is a writer for TechCrunch. He is also the president and editor in chief of The Stanford Daily. Billy previously worked at The Stanford Daily for two volumes as a managing editor of news. He has also worked in sports and staff development at The Daily. In March of 2012 the Friends of The Stanford Daily awarded him... ? Learn More Mozilla announced today that they are expanding the size of their San Francisco office and will add 125 employees to the office’s current staff of 150 by early 2013. Mozilla currently occupies the seventh and part of the third floor of the Hills Brothers Building at 2 Harrison St. and will expand to include the first two floors. “We are targeting early 2013 to move into the space, and our overall space plan ties to our overall growth plans,” Mozilla CFO Jim Cook tells me. “This space should serve our needs well for the next few years.” Mozilla’s nearby Mountain View office will remain at its current size, as the San Francisco office will swel...