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NYT - Bottling the Magic Behind Google and Facebook ...

NYT - March 16, 2009, 1:38 am

Bottling the Magic Behind Google and Facebook

By Ashlee Vance

Cloudera is the quintessential Silicon Valley story.

Three of the top engineers from Google, Yahoo and Facebook have teamed up with an ex-Oracle executive to tackle the problems inherent in quickly analyzing big piles of data. On Monday, they’re revealing a commercial product based on the open source software Hadoop, which provides the analytical magic behind the world’s biggest Web sites. The team at Cloudera, based in Burlingame, Calif., think they can extend Web smarts to the business world, aiding companies in retail, insurance, bio-tech and oil and gas.

Hadoop is the open-source version of the file system and MapReduce technology developed by Google. Google has used such software to rewire its entire search index, making it possible for the company to run ever-faster searches on cheap servers and to ask questions of its vast data stores and receive coherent answers.

Rather than keeping data locked in a central database, Google spreads information across thousands of servers. Engineers can then send out requests to these servers via MapReduce and gain new insights into peoples’ searching behavior and the relationships between Web sites. Best of all, MapReduce keeps these complicated jobs humming along even when computers fail because of its ability to maintain a cohesive picture of all the systems.

While Google has kept the deep details on this technology to itself, the company did publish a couple of papers describing some of the underlying principles. That gave Doug Cutting, formerly a software consultant and now a Yahoo engineer, enough information to create an open-source take on the code.

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Facebook Founder Finally Finds a Way to Profit

Networking site cashes in on friends

Facebook founder finally finds a way to profit from its 150m members' private data

 

By Rupert Neate and Rowena Mason
Last Updated: 9:45PM GMT 31 Jan 2009

Mark Zuckerberg finds ways to create revenue from Facebook's 150m members

Facebook is planning to exploit the vast amount of personal information it holds on its 150m members by creating one of the world's largest market research databases.

In an attempt to finally monetise the social networking site, once valued at $15bn (£10.4bn), it will soon allow multinational companies to selectively target its members in order to research the appeal of new products. Companies will be able to pose questions to specially selected members based on such intimate details as whether they are single or married and even whether they are gay or straight.

The company, which has struggled to make money from advertising, has been demonstrating the benefits of its new instant polling tool to some of the most influential business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook's global markets director and sister of founder Mark Zuckerberg, 24, said multinational companies had been bowled over by the ability to receive real-time feedback from the site's millions of users.

"I had tonnes of people saying 'this could be so incredible for our business'. It takes a very long time to do a focus group, and businesses often don't have the luxury of time. I think they liked the instant responses," she said.

At the conference, Facebook asked a range of questions to its users around the world, before feeding the answers back to delegates within minutes. It selectively-targeted users in Palestine and then Israel with the same question about global peace, before debating the results at a discussion forum. It also asked 120,000 US members whether US President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package would be enough to save the US economy. Almost 60pc said it would not.

"Davos is really a key place to launch an instant tool like this," Ms Zuckerberg said. "It's beneficial for everyone to see us as a global community of 150m users. The vast majority are not just college students in the US talking about things in their bedrooms. We are showing how we are a serious and insightful community."

Facebook's presence at the economic and business summit is a radical image change for the social network, which is stereotyped as a website used by students or schoolchildren. It now promotes Facebook users as "serious and insightful" adults in an attempt to advertise its members as a useful demographic for marketers.

Marketing experts have said the vast amount of personal information Facebook holds, together with the loyalty of its users, could be worth "untold millions" to companies engaged in market research.

The power of Facebook, and its members, in driving corporate decisions was illustrated last year, when a campaign on the site led to Cadbury reversing its decision to withdraw the popular Wispa chocolate bar. Cadbury has sold 70m Wispas since it reintroduced the bar in October after the Facebook campaign attracted 40,000 signatories.

Facebook has already sold the new polling system, called engagement ads, to CareerBuilder, a global graduate recruitment company, and AT&T, the US telecoms giant, is trialling the system. A Facebook spokesman said the company's advertising department is marketing the new service to thousands of companies worldwide and it hopes the polls will go live this spring.

All the company's previous attempts to monetise the site have failed after members railed against the site's invasion of their privacy. Mr Zuckerberg pulled Beacon, a service that notified users of their friends' purchases on external sites such as Amazon, after members launched a campaign in December 2007.

Mr Zuckerberg said the coming year will be "intense" for Facebook as advertising revenue dries up.

Facebook was valued at £10.4bn in 2007 when Microsoft paid £175m for a 1.6pc stake, but analysts have dismissed the valuation as "ridiculous" as the site has failed to find ways of exploiting its vast membership for commercial gain. Madan Sheina, at technology consultancy Ovum, said: "With the economy spiralling into a downturn, that figure might seem to be exaggerated right now."

The company has denied reports that it is so strapped for cash that it has been forced to approach Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds for emergency funding. It has also cancelled plans to allow employees to sell off their shares early because of the economic climate.

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Long Tail Theory Contradicted As Study Reveals 10M Digital Music Tracks Unsold

From The Times

December 22, 2008

Digital sales figures dent niche market theory

Patrick Foster, Media Correspondent

The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products - and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets.

But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this “long tail” theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year.

The idea that niche markets were the key to the future for internet sellers was described as one of the most important economic models of the 21st century when it was spelt out by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail in 2006. He used data from an American online music retailer to predict that the internet economy would shift from a relatively small number of “hits” - mainstream products - at the head of the demand curve toward a “huge number of niches in the tail”.

However, a new study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits. They found that, for the online singles market, 80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks. For albums, the figures were even more stark. Of the 1.23 million available, only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year.

Mr Anderson told The Times yesterday that he accepted that Mr Page and his co-researcher, Andrew Bud, the head of mobile software company mBlox, had found a dataset in which the “long tail” principle did not apply. But he said further conclusions could not be drawn until the data and its sources were published.

Mr Page and Mr Bud believe, however, that their findings seriously undermine Mr Anderson’s thesis, which came with subtitles such as: How endless choice is creating unlimited demand and Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.

“I think people believed in a fat, fertile long tail because they wanted it to be true,” said Mr Bud. “The statistical theories used to justify that theory were intelligent and plausible. But they turned out to be wrong. The data tells a quite different story. For the first time, we know what the true demand for digital music looks like.”

Mr Page, who carried out the economic modelling for Radiohead’s In Rainbows album, which was released free on the internet, said: “The relative size of the dormant ‘zero sellers’ tail was truly jaw-dropping. Rather than continue to believe the selective claims of ‘here’s another great example of the long tail at work’, we wanted to find out how longtail markets should be analysed, plotted and interpreted.”

However, Mr Anderson named by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people - told The Times: “There is a reason why the ‘long tail’ has become a fixture in the technology world over the past five years - it fits countless phenomena we see every day.

“I respect what Will’s done and have no doubt that he has indeed found a dataset where it doesn’t work, but I’m not sure you can conclude much, if anything, beyond that. If he’s trying to undermine the entire Long Tail Theory, he’ll have to provide a lot more evidence. I welcome the debate, but until Will’s prepared to publish data and sources we don’t have much to talk about.”

Mr Page and Mr Bud found that, rather than following Mr Anderson’s predictions, online music sales followed instead a sales distribution laid down by Robert Goodell Brown, an American economist, in 1956.

Mr Brown, who was an academic at Yale, outlined the theory in Statistical Forecasting For Inventory Control, a landmark tract on inventory control that focused on the sales of industrial items such as rivets and widgets.

Mr Page said: “There is an eerie similarity between a digital and high-street retailer in terms of what constitutes an efficient inventory and the shape of their respective demand curves. I think there’s something more going on there: a case of new schools meets old rules.”

Mr Page and Mr Bud are working on a book of their findings and hope to stage a debate with Mr Anderson in Brighton next May.

The long and short of it

—Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail challenged the “80/20 rule” widely accepted in retailing. This suggests that selling the most popular 20 per cent of products is the way to make a profit as they will account for 80 per cent of sales

—Anderson’s analysis of online music sales suggested that, thanks to the cheapness, simplicity and global accessibility of searching for products online, retailers could make money from more obscure products because they would always find an audience

—An employee of Amazon, a company seen as an example of the Long Tail Theory in practice, once said: “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday”

—Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, described The Long Tail as “brilliant and timely”. Malcolm Gladwell, the writer and sociologist, labelled it a “Truly Big Idea”

—Critics suggest the book is more a projection of an idealised market place than a model of a real one

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SAI - Michael Arrington on Copyright: Wrong!

From: Silicon Alley Insider
by Hank Williams

Michael Arrington's position on copyright seems to be that people are going to steal, no one should do anything about it, and that copyright based businesses are going to die and that's not bad.

In January, Michael wrote:

Personally, I think a new era of free recorded music and paid live performances is a very good thing. Recorded music will become a marketing tool to get people to pay for concerts and merchandise. Overall the music industry will be smaller in terms of revenue. But the artists who are driven to create their art will continue to do so, and many will make a very good living from it.

First, if music goes down, so will every other form of copyrighted material including ultimately books, movies, TV, etc. What we will be saying is in the Internet era, copyright doesn't matter. And this is good?

Second, there is no evidence *at all* that free music on the Internet is an effective (i.e. successful career building) marketing tool. There have been no blockbuster successes that have come from, for example Garageband availability. I don't think you could even count more than a handful -- if that -- internet-based artists making a living from music. I believe several of the American Idol contestants have been on indie music Internet sites, but you cannot attribute their success to the Internet.

Third, if the recorded music industry goes down, concert sales will not grow -- they will shrink. This is because the money that goes into creating concert demand (all from record label marketing) will disappear. People *will* see fewer concerts and they will cost less money because of reduced demand. So not only will the recorded music business disappear, but so will the much of the live music business. So there will be no "live music windfall" to share. Revenue in live music will shrink substantially from where it is today.

In a continuation of the theme, today Mike writes:

My position is that it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior. And watching a clip of The Office, whether it’s legally on Hulu or illegally on YouTube is natural behavior. The only question is whether or not people are getting sued, or going to jail, for doing it.

There are several problems with the above statement. The first is that no one is criminalizing the viewer. In all p2p cases and in the YouTube case, the entity being criminalized or sued is not the viewer but the "facilitator". This means the person who posted or makes available the content, or the service itself. I do not believe there has ever been a case of someone being charged with anything for receiving, watching or listening to pirated content. So on the face if it, this is misleading.

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Financial Times: Web 2.0 Fails to Produce Cash ...

Many members of the Web 2.0 generation of internet companies have so far produced little in the way of revenue, despite bringing about some significant changes in online behaviour, according to some of the entrepreneurs and financiers behind the movement.

The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. Together with the US economic downturn and a shortage of initial public offerings, the failure has damped the mood in internet start-up circles.

“There is going to be a shake-out here in the next year or two” as many Web 2.0 companies disappear, said Roger Lee, a partner at Battery Ventures.

“These are challenging macro-economic conditions,” said Shawn Hardin, chief executive of Flock, a browser maker that raised $15m in venture capital last week.

Yet that has not stopped a continuing round of venture capital fundraising and acquisition activity at high valuations as investors and corporate acquirers hunt for businesses capable of rising above a crowded field.

“If you look at some of the valuations, you wonder what fantasy of revenues they’re based on,” said Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Hummer Winblad.

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Social Network Death Spiral: How Metcalfe's Law Can Work Against You

Metcalfe's Law
Does everyone remember Metcalfe's Law? It was formulated by Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and co-founder of 3Com, who stated:

The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²).

For those that are interested in the math behind it, basically the idea is that if every new node in the network connects with every pre-existing node, then as you gain nodes, you non-linearly increase the number of connections that everyone has with everyone else.

That's pretty neat, and for the social networking folks who are aggregating large audiences and treating their businesses like communication utilities, it's both logical and helpful to think that these social communities abide by network effects like Metcalfe's Law. In fact, it's a DIRECT reason why these networks want to get as big as possible, and have a social graph that's as comprehensive as possible, and why they should ultimately be opposed to Data Portability. And I think we'll see these players' strategies ultimately reflect these strategies.

But Metcalfe's Law can also affect social app creators. Let's discuss how this might play out for folks who are building apps on social platforms, rather than operating the social platforms themselves:

"Jumping the shark" and Metcalfe's Law
In a previous post, I wrote a bunch about how dangerous (and easy) it is to jump the shark in an enclosed space like the Facebook Platform.

Here's the good scenario:
Let's say that you retain users well, and you don't get a sharkfin graph on your traffic. In that case, if you combine the two ideas - Metcalfe's Law and with the viral loops on the social platforms - you can imagine that in the success case, you are creating N^2 value with very large N.

For folks building application on Facebook, Opensocial, etc., it's nice to think that your new app is gaining value much faster than if you built your own destination site. This allows you to get the N^2 benefits of Metcalfe's Law without incurring significant costs of acquisition as you scale N up to a large number. This the best of both worlds.

Here's the bad scenario:
Let's consider the other case, where your app's retention sucks, and you are going through the sharkfin graph of rapidly acquiring users, hitting a peak, and then falling down:

Now all of a sudden, Metcalfe's Law works against you - for this, I will introduce the corollary, Eflactem's Law.

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NYT - In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop ...

By MATT RICHTEL

Published: April 6, 2008

 

SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

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iPhone 2.0, iPhone 3.0 or iPhone Nano - A Clamshell/Flip Phone?

When talking about how Apple is gonna take over mobile phone industry, one of the things that is very rarely talked about, is iPhone form factor. There’s a reason we have mobile phones in tens of shapes and sizes, and a number of form factors. Some people prefer to have a clamshell or slider in their pocket.

And iPhone is just one pretty wide candybar, the phone factor that can appeal to many, but may not be suitable to even more.

So can Apple come up with something as appealing as iPhone, in another form factor, e.g. - clamshell.

Yes:

The drawings above, are Photoshop renderings, based on a device described in a recent Apple’s patent application, called “Dual sided trackpad“.

It shows that Apple may indeed be working on a clamshell iPhone device. But with a twist.

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Google News, YouTube Blocked in China Amid Tibet Riots ...

China has blocked access to Google News and YouTube in an apparent attempt to stop the spread of video footage related the rioting going on in several cities in Tibet, including the capital Lhasa. Demonstrations in the city started on March 10, a day commemorating the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule after which the spiritual leader of the country, the Dalai Lama, fled to India.                                   

China has said the Dalai Lama is to blame for rioting in the country, and puts the civilian death toll at 13, while adding that police and security forces have also suffered casualties.          

The Dalai Lama has denied involvement in the rioting, and said he has "no such power to stop it," in a video of a recent news conference posted on his Web site.                   

"Whether the Chinese government admits it or not, there is a problem," he said "The Tibetan nation, an ancient nation with an ancient cultural heritage, is actually dying."                                      

China's decision to block access to the sites follows similar government censorship of protests by Myanmar. Last September, Myanmar cut off Internet access entirely to block people from viewing pictures and videos or sending them out of the country. Some analysts at the time said the protests likely spread through the help of the Web, in addition to winning global condemnation of the violent crackdown on protesters there.                   

Google said it is aware of reports of users being unable to access YouTube in China. "We are looking into the matter, and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible," YouTube said in a statement.                   

"We believe that YouTube offers citizens the world over a vital window on their cultures and societies and that they should not be denied access to video information," the statement also said. Google did not address additional questions about its involvement in the block or its support of governments that limit access to the Internet. Google only commented on the blockage of YouTube without mentioning any problems with access to Google News in China.

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Google Says Microsoft's Yahoo Buy Might Hurt Internet ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Google Inc, the world's leading search engine, said on Monday it was concerned about the free flow of information on the Internet if Microsoft Corp were to succeed in acquiring Yahoo Inc.

Last month, Microsoft proposed buying Yahoo in a deal originally worth $44.6 billion, but Yahoo's board has rejected the offer, saying it was too low.

"We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft," Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters.

"We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be."

Schmidt pointed to Microsoft's past history and "the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone", but he did not elaborate.

Last year, a European court upheld a landmark 2004 decision that Microsoft abused the near-monopoly power of its Windows operating system to damage competitors, along with a 497 million euro ($695 million) fine.

"We are concerned that there are things Microsoft could do that would be bad for the Internet," said Schmidt.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer pledged earlier this month that his company would gain market share against Google in online advertising and Web searching, even if led to his "last breath" at the company.

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When Social Just Means Another Way To Hype Yourself ...

When Social Just Means Another Way To Hype Yourself

Ever since becoming active on Twitter and FriendFeed I have noticed something that really makes me wonder if in the long run what Robert Cringely wrote the other day might in part be true. In his post Robert equated the clamoring around social networks; and the various offshoots, to the popularity that was enjoyed for a brief time by CB radios. As one who was heavily involved at the time with the whole citizen band radio subculture (who can forget the tweaking to get those bouncing signals from around the world) I can to an extent see the comparison.

While Robert foresees the decline due to the lack of value I look down a different road as to why I think that while social networks might be here to stay they are also creating their own stranglehold that will take much of the life out of them.

The whole purpose; or at least the purpose that is pimped out to the general internet public is that things like Facebook, Twitter and even FriendFeed are a great way to create new friendships, keep in touch with all these new and old friends and to have a conversation with everyone involved. To an extent among the average users this might be the case but in watching these services for some time now I have come to the conclusion that for the early adopter crowd and other A-Lister types conversation is the last thing they are interested in.

For this very large group this whole social engine is nothing more than another way for them to hype themselves and whatever conference/project they happen to be working on at the time. I first got an inkling of this self-gratifying promotionalism as I got involved with Twitter because of my work on TwitBox. Sure there were conversations going on but it was on a two tiered level with very few of the top tier players showing any real interest in the rest of us users. You could see this by checking out the Follower/Following ratio of the people you want to follow.

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WSJ - Stock Sales at Google Send Shivers ...

Stock Sales at Google Send Shivers

Google Inc. insiders have sold billions of dollars of company stock since the company went public in 2004, but one analyst who tracks insider data didn't see those sales as a strong bearish signal.

Until now.

Jonathan Moreland, research director at InsiderInsights.com and subadviser to Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management, is now recommending that Google shares be sold short in the face of continued insider selling, declining share price and concerns that an economic slowdown will hurt Google's advertising revenue.

Short selling involves the sales of borrowed shares, producing profits when prices decline as the short seller replaces the borrowed shares at a lower price.

Mr. Moreland said the nearly constant selling of shares by insiders of the Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant, along with the utter lack of open-market purchases, had always bothered him, but the company's soaring stock price -- until November -- had persuaded him not to short the stock.

"And when that momentum finally starts breaking down, see what the insiders do," Moreland said. "And if they continue to sell, that's when you act on the signal."

Google's share price climbed to a historical high of $747.24 in November, a little over three years after it priced its initial public offering at $85 a share. The company's shares closed on Tuesday at $444.60, down $12.42.

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The 2008 Index of Silicon Valley ...

The 2008 Index of Silicon Valley ...

Silicon Valley experienced a sixth consecutive year of productivity gains in 2007 that surpassed previous highs from the dot com boom, but the growth spurt is offset by economic instability, according to the 2008 Silicon Valley Index released today by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.                

While the region reported significant growth in population, jobs, median income and investment capital in 2007, economic turbulence is bringing pressure to Silicon Valley workers and their families, particularly mid-wage earners, as they move between jobs and work for smaller firms that offer fewer benefits.

“The rapid change imposed by innovation, venture capital investment and globalization among our leading companies keeps Silicon Valley in the world spotlight,” said Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture. “But the volatility of our financial markets, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and fears of impending recession dims the glow for our workforce.”

The Silicon Valley Index, published annually by Joint Venture since 1995, measures the strength of the region’s economy and the health of the community. This year’s index was produced for the first time in partnership with Silicon Valley Community Foundation and coincides with Joint Venture’s annual “State of the Valley” conference, sponsored by the community foundation, to be held on February 22 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. Keynote speakers this year include FDIC chair Sheila Bair and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

“The Index reflects good news for some in Silicon Valley, rough patches for others and heart wrenching choices for many,” said Emmett D. Carson, Ph.D., CEO and President of the community foundation.  “The research is a wake-up call to our community that we must work across sectors to address the intertwined challenges facing our region, especially for families with the fewest resources.”

The Index reports its findings in five major sections: People (talent flows, diversity); Economy (innovation, employment, income); Society (preparing for economic success, early education, arts and culture, health, safety); Place (environment, land use, housing, commercial space); and Governance (civic engagement, revenue).

Highlights among  the sections in this year’s 64-page Index were:

People: Silicon Valley’s population grew 1.5 percent in 2007, with a net increase over 2006 of 38,000 people – the third consecutive year of increasing population growth rates. Together, 35 percent of San Mateo County and Santa Clara County residents are foreign-born and almost half the population in those counties – 48 percent – speaks a language other than English at home.

Economy: Silicon Valley gained 28,000 jobs, a faster growth rate than California or U.S. overall. Venture capital investment was up nearly 11 percent, with the valley receiving 62 percent of the clean tech VC dollars in the state.

Society: Disparities in health and education continue by race and ethnic groups. High school graduation rates dropped and juvenile offenses increased slightly. Child immunizations rates are not improving. Arts organizations in the region are growing in number with decreasing funding.

Place: Water consumption dropped 6 percent, solar and wind systems installations were up 21 percent, transit ridership was up 3.4 percent and Silicon Valley is home to 11 percent of all hybrid vehicles registered in California. The share of new housing approved near transit rose to 55 percent. Foreclosure rates jumped four times over 2006, rents are up 7 percent.

Governance: Nonprofits continue to grow and voters are increasingly independent, with 23 percent of the valley’s registered voters having no party affiliation. City revenues rose 37 percent mainly due to property taxes. Although the region accounts for roughly 7 percent of the state’s population, Silicon Valley residents contributed 15 percent of state revenues from personal income tax.

Download the 2007 Silicon Valley Index (PDF 6.8 MB)

WSJ - Bill Gates Quits Facebook ...

Bill Gates Quits Facebook

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has stopped using the Web site Facebook, the most damning indictment in a week full of bad press for social-networking technology. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has stopped using the Web site Facebook, the most damning indictment in a week full of bad press for social-networking technology.

Social-networking Web sites, which help people share and find information about one another, were supposed to change the way people use the Internet and the way we work. But lately, all we’re hearing about are the problems.

Workers who created profiles on Facebook are horrified to find out they can’t be erased, the New York Times reports. Even if you deactivate your account, Facebook still keeps a copy of all the information you ever posted. And, the Times reports, it’s still possible to contact people through deleted Facebook pages.

And it’s not just older worker who realize they’ve inadvertently given colleagues insight into their private lives that are upset: The MySpace generation is getting sick of MySpace, too, according to MSNBC. They’re turned off by too much advertising on social-networking sites. That’s one reason the amount of time the average person spends on a social-networking site has dropped 14% over the last four months, according to Internet research company comScore.

If that weren’t enough, Computerworld recently regurgitated a handful of reasons why the sites aren’t appropriate for the workplace. The highlights: They use up too much bandwidth; they cause employees to waste time; and there’s a chance that someone will disclose sensitive information.

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GIGA OM - Microsoft Buys Sidekick Maker, Danger ...

Microsoft Buys Sidekick Maker, Danger

Microsoft isn’t sitting idle. They have snapped up Palo Alto, Calif.-based Danger Inc. for an undisclosed amount of money. While they are not giving reasons as to why they are buying Danger, I am guessing that the user experience on Danger is a key factor. Danger, as you might recall, is the company behind T-Mobile’s Sidekick device, and was started by Andy Rubin, now leading the Android charge over at Google. The company raised over $134 million in venture funding from the likes of Mobius and Redpoint Ventures. It had planned for an initial public offering, but the recent downturn in financial markets might have prompted a decision to sell out to Microsoft.

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Guardian - Silicon Valley's Hippy Values 'Killing Music Industry' ...

Silicon Valley's Hippy Values 'Killing Music Industry'

· U2 manager urges artists to fight online piracy
· Plea to technology gurus to take responsibility  

U2's manager yesterday called on artists to join him in forcing the "hippy" technology and internet executives he blames for the collapse of the music industry to help save it.

Paul McGuinness, who has plotted the rise of the Irish group over 30 years, said technology gurus in Silicon Valley such as Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates had profited from rampant online piracy without doing anything to stop it.

"I suggest we shift the focus of moral pressure away from the individual P2P [peer to peer] thief and on to the multibillion dollar industries that benefit from these tiny crimes," he said.

He was speaking at the Midem music conference in Cannes, which has been dominated by talk of new revenue models that might save an industry brought to its knees by piracy and falling sales.

Confusion yesterday surrounded the future of one of those new models, Qtrax, the supposedly legal filesharing service unveiled with the backing of artists including James Blunt on Sunday.

The service, five years in development, was due to launch yesterday and claimed to be able to offer more than 25m tracks legally using a new advertiser-funded model.

But while label insiders yesterday confirmed talks had taken place and were continuing, they were taken by surprise by the launch announcement. They said no contracts had been signed and earlier agreements had expired.

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VPW Archives: Martin Luther King on Meet The Press, 1967

Video: VPW Archives: Martin Luther King on Meet The Press, 1967

"... I refuse to allow myself to fall into the dark chambers of pessimism ..."

"... Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord ..."

RWW - Semantic Web: What Is The Killer App?

Semantic Web: What Is The Killer App?

The Semantic Web has been in the making for some time and people think it is nearing maturity. We have written about this trend extensively, with our two most notable posts being an analysis of the challenges of the classic bottom-up approach and the promise of the new top-down one. Regardless of how the Semantic Web will come about, for it to flourish it needs to hit the mainstream. There is no way that consumers will appreciate the elegance and mathematical soundness of RDF and OWL. People don't care about math, they care about utility and even more, about fun. What the Semantic Web needs, then, is a killer app.

Whatever it is, it needs to layer an understanding of semantics on top of a consumer application. The consumer application needs to be so cool and so viral that people will be open to learning that it is powered by semantic technologies. In that case, it will be possible to further market applications as Semantic Web apps. Consumers will understand that if one Semantic Web application has potential, so might others. In math, this is called proof by induction. In marketing this is called creating a market. In any case, it needs to be done.

In this post, we analyze several existing and potential applications of semantic technologies and look for the killer app.

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TechCrunch - Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup

TechCrunch - Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup

After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

Google and Plaxo joining are a positive, however given that both have previously joined together for platforms such as OpenSocial it’s not that significant, but Facebook is another matter. On January 4 Michael sort of defended Facebook’s stance against Plaxo pulling data from Facebook on the grounds that “Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses - user privacy.” Today, by joining the DataPortability Working Group Facebook is embracing open standards and open access, and that is a huge fundamental change from its previous stance on being locked in to closed standards.

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ZDNet.com - Jerry Yang offers sneak peak of Yahoo’s future: Life!

ZDNet.com: Jerry Yang offers sneak peak of Yahoo’s future: Life!

Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made his inaugural CES appearance, outlining how he plans to evolve his company ahead of the curve and to become an indispensable starting point for consumers’ Web experience, which has become richer and more complex over the last decade. “We call this Life with an exclamation point,” Yang said. “At Yahoo we want to be most essential starting point for your life,” and “take the complexity of the Web and simplify your life through very powerful technologies.”

Yang said that more people use Yahoo as their starting point, via Yahoo Mail, MyYahoo. search and the Yahoo home page. We possess so much of basic tools and services to make life on the Web simpler, he proclaimed.

For the first time, Yang showed what the company has been up to in developing a next generation user experience that unites it various services in a social context. Yang labeled the demo a sneak peak and not a product announcement, but it is very well thought out as a service the integrates email, structured data, social context, tags and a variety of other applications.

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Scobleizer: Facebook Disabled My Account ...

Scobleizer: Facebook Disabled My Account ...

If you are trying to contact me on Facebook, please don’t. My account has been “disabled” for breaking Facebook’s Terms of Use. I was running a script that got them to keep me from accessing my account. I’m appealing. I’ll tell you what I was doing as soon as I talk with the developers who built what I was using and as soon as I talk with Facebook’s support (I sent an email in reply to the one below, but haven’t heard back yet).

I run this stuff so you don’t have to. :-)

UPDATE: Rodney Rumford, who runs the FaceReviews Blog about Facebook says that all traces of me have been already removed from Facebook too.

UPDATE2: Tonight I learned about DataPortability.org and signed my name to that effort.

I am working with a company to move my social graph to other places and that isn’t allowable under Facebook’s terms of service. Here’s the email I received:

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paidContent.org - Coca-Cola Puts Its Facebook Participation On Hold; Also Overstock and Travelocity

Coca-Cola Puts Its Facebook Participation On Hold; Also Overstock and Travelocity

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-coca-cola-puts-its-facebook-partcipation-on-hold/

Coca-Cola, who was one of the charter advertisers when Facebook’s controversial ad program Beacon was announced earlier this month, is taking a rain check for now, even after the social network modified its program yesterday. “We have adopted a bit of a ‘wait and see’ as far as what we are going to do with Beacon because we are not sure how consumers are going to respond,” said Carol Kruse, Coke’s VP of global interactive marketing, in an interview with NYT’s Bits Blog. Kruse said she could see good uses of Beacon, if it is on consumers’ terms.

Other advertisers include Comcast’s Fandango, IAC/i’s CollegeHumour.com, Blockbuster, (NYSE: BBI) Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and eBay. Would be interesting to see if anyone else follows suit…

Updated: Overstock.com suspended the Beacon program on Nov. 21, and as of Friday, hadn’t reinstated it, according to Mediapost. Also Travelocity, although touted by Facebook as a launch advertiser, was troubled enough by the program that it had not started using it as of Thursday.

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NYT - Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking

Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/technology/30face.html

By LOUISE STORY and BRAD STONE
Published: November 30, 2007

Faced with its second mass protest by members in its short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking Web site, is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program.

Within the last 10 days, more than 50,000 Facebook members have signed a petition objecting to the new program, which sends messages to users’ friends about what they are buying on Web sites like Travelocity.com, TheKnot.com and Fandango. The members want to be able to opt out of the program completely with one click, but Facebook won’t let them.

Late yesterday the company made an important change, saying that it would not send messages about users’ Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time.

MoveOn.org Civic Action, the political group that set up the online petition, said the move was a positive one.

“Before, if you ignored their warning, they assumed they had your permission” to share information, said Adam Green, a spokesman for the group. “If Facebook were to implement a policy whereby no private purchases on other Web sites were displayed publicly on Facebook without a user’s explicit permission, that would be a step in the right direction.”

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Read/Write Web - There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere

There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blogosphere_long_tail.php

In 2004 Chris Anderson wrote an influential book called The Long Tail. In it, he argued that the future of business is to sell less of more. The main premise is that collectively, things that are in rather low demand can amount to quite large volumes. This is because there is a large number of people who belong to the long tail and they encompass a wide rage of tastes.

It is often forgotten that money is to be made by leveraging the collective long tail, however, making money while being part of the long tail is very difficult. Specifically, in the blogosphere, the vast majority of blogs have very few readers. It is not realistic to expect these blogs to make money. As the enthusiasm and the incentive in the long tail begin to wear off, what would be the impact on the businesses that depend on them? Likely, the impact is going to be large.

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Henry Blodget - Facebook's "Beacon" Infuriate Users, MoveOn

Facebook's "Beacon" Infuriate Users, MoveOn

Facebook's "social ads" so far appear to be a flop. Not only was the "once in a hundred years" announcement largely a yawn, the complaints of Facebook users and MoveOn about the primal annoying-ness of "Beacon" are right on the money.

Although we can't imagine why MoveOn can't find something better to do than complain about Facebook, we do note the speed with which 1) Facebook responded to MoveOn's complaint, and 2) 2,000 Facebook users signed up to support MoveOn. And we don't blame them. We already hate the idea of bombarding friends with lists of the crap we buy. The fact that Facebook will only let us opt-out of that bombardment on a case-by-case basis (at the virtual cash register at third-party sites) is infuriating.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/facebooks-beaco.html

Facebook should immediately make Beacon 100% opt-in. Not because MoveOn is complaining--because the current system will drive users right out the door. The tiny minority of Facebookers who want to bombard friends with lists of the crap they buy--and friends who are actually interested in hearing about this--can elect to do so. The vast majority who don't should never have to hear about this ridiculous concept again.

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