Worthy coders and Facebook’s cloning: top stories you should read this week

They say skilled developers are an asset to up-and-coming startups — but is Silicon Valley society assigning too much value to one skill set? But programmers are key when running an online service, whether it’s simple but efficient (like read-it-later bookmarking tool Pocket) or spawning into a social networking giant (like Facebook). But is Facebook becoming a titan that just wants to be your everything all the time — even if it has to copy others to do that?

These questions, along with a dose of opinion and analysis, make up our list of some of the top tech stories on the web.

Are coders worth it?

They’re offered crazy salaries to work casual hours and be showered with perks and free gifts: but is all the wooing worth it? This is an honest and thought-provoking piece about the value of programmers in the age of startup booms and billion dollar tech acquisitions — and it’s written by a developer.

Facebook announces that it’s out of ideas

Instagram’s announcement that it would now support video can be read as the latest in a long line of copy-cat actions by Facebook: from Poke to Messenger, it’s cribbed off a few competitors to continue to give its rising user base something to do. But the question is: do people really want more Facebook?

Inside Pocket: how a startup beat its rivals to build the ‘DVR for everything’

One of the best and most beautiful read-it-later services on the web, Pocket has slowly been gathering a small but addicted following on everything from desktop to iOS. After turning down an acquisition offer from Evernote, it went on to raise venture capital and reach 9-million users. But can it make money?

Sizing up Big Data: broadening beyond the internet

It’s the trend that has marketers all excited about the potential for targeted campaigns — but how else can Big Data be put to work? The New York Times investigates the growing desire for data scientists and fewer instinctive actions, the potential use data can have in medicine and points out the problems that can arise when inferring too much from figures.

Is Mark Zuckerberg the new Bill Gates?

Well, yes and no. From Facebook’s increasing user figures to the Harvard link, Pando Daily discusses Zuckerberg’s recent moves and draws some parallel’s to the man behind Microsoft.