The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions
- How to Build Engaging One-of-Kind Facebook Fan Pages
- This Is Apparently How You Quit Yahoo [Video]
- Miso Gets Big Brand Love. Check-In To The Hot Tub Time Machine
- A Conversation With Brad Garlinghouse, AOL’s President Of Consumer Applications
- Facebook To Launch Meebo Bar Clone On Its Quest To Take Over The Web
- Foursquare Goes Dark Too. Unintentionally.
- Sharpen The Pitchforks. It’s Almost Time For Facebook’s Privacy Wake-Up Call
- Turn Your Lights Off, Bing Needs Extra Power Today
- iThink Apple Still Has Plans For Those “iSlate” And “Magic Slate” Trademarks
| Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions Posted: 28 Mar 2010 03:08 AM PDT
We’ll look back on the good old days when your reputation was really only on the line with eBay via confirmed, actual transactions and LinkedIn, where you can simply reject anyone who leaves bad feedback on your professional life. Today we have quick fire and semi or completely anonymous attacks on people, brands, businesses and just about everything else. And it is becoming increasingly findable on the search engines. Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, etc. are the new printing presses, and absolutely everyone, even the random wingnuts, have access. That picture of you making out with two guys in college up on Facebook. Or perhaps doing a bong hit after winning a few Olympic gold medals. The random slam against your restaurant anonymously left by the owner of the competitor around the corner. The Twitter flame about how bad a driver you are, complete with a link to a picture of your license plate. And it’s about to get a lot worse. Next week a startup is launching that’s effectively Yelp for people (look for our coverage in a few days). If someone has something good or bad to say about you, they’ll be able to do it anonymously and with very little potential legal or social fallout. We’ve seen services like this in the past. Rapleaf and iKarma come to mind. But they were flawed – Rapleaf now collects and sells data about people, and iKarma seems to be little more than a realtor focused service. Another service, Gorb, has vanished completely. But something tells me this new service, or some other one, might succeed where the others have failed. We’re primed and ready now and have lots of experience publishing all those random opinions about people and things on Twitter, Yelp and Facebook already. It’s time for a centralized, well organized place for anonymous mass defamation on the Internet. Scary? Yes. But it’s coming nonetheless. This has been on my mind for a long while now. Our minds haven’t evolved much over the last few thousands of years, but the spread of quick fire opinions is now moving at the speed of light and forever findable on the Internet. We’re still wired to think of gossip as something that spreads quietly behind the scenes, and relatively slowly. But we’re already in a world where it’s all completely public, there are few repercussions to the person spreading it, and it is easily searchable. No wonder people freak out. We’re fish out of water. Sure, we’ve evolved a legal infrastructure to deal with libel, slander and defamation. Those laws worked well in an era of the printing press, and sort of stretched to cover radio and television. But they are as ineffective against the Internet as copyright laws are in battling music piracy. Other services like Reputation Defender have launched to try to help people manage their online reputations. It can be somewhat effective unless your name gets into the press, which doesn’t back away easily from the stuff they publish. It’s relatively easy to bully someone into taking down that Twitter rant, or even that Facebook photo, with an official looking email or letter threatening legal action. But it’s much harder to get that stuff off of services that exist to publish that information. Businesses freak out over a bad Yelp review but can do little to stop it. Imagine how you’ll feel when the top result for your name is a site that includes “reviews” of you by anonymous people who know you. Sure, lots of feedback will be positive. But piss someone off at work and you’ll have “Sketchy and unethical in the workplace” pop up about you. And it will be there forever. Heck, your great-great-grandchildren will be reading it long after you’re gone. So What Happens Next?We’re going to be forced to adjust as a society. I firmly believe that we will simply become much more accepting of indiscretions over time. Employers just won’t care that ridiculous drunk college pictures pop up about you when they do a HR background search on you. Anyone who rises quickly in a corporate environment will have people complaining about you all the way up, and it will be easily findable via search. Basically, if someone doesn’t like you, even just for a moment, they’ll have the chance to hit you with an ambiguous but damaging anonymous statement. And it will be vague enough to stop any lawyer dead in her tracks from trying to get it removed, or from even learning the identity of the person who left the comment. So what will matter? Hard proof of being a bad person. Criminal records. Non-anonymous and clear statements of wrong doing that need to be addressed. Perhaps a picture of you actually committing a violent felony. That kind of thing. But the nonsense we’re all worried about today? I just don’t think it will carry the same weight in a few years. Because if there are pictures of the person hiring you smoking pot in college online, and there are pictures of every other candidate smoking pot in college online, it just won’t be a big deal any more. And the kind of accusations that can kill a career today will likely be seen as a badge of honor, and a sign of an ambitious individual who has pissed off a few people along the way. At least that’s what I hope will happen. Because there are a few pictures of me in high school and college that I’m tired of trying to keep off the Internet. Let’s just get it all out there sooner rather than later, and move on.      
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| How to Build Engaging One-of-Kind Facebook Fan Pages Posted: 28 Mar 2010 02:02 AM PDT
It’s not an insurmountable task either. But it requires planning, time, some kind of HTML knowledge, design skill, and imagination. Originality doesn’t hurt either. There are great tools and tips available that will help you create an outstanding page for your brand without an immense amount of time or capital invested. I’ve been working to improve our own Go2web20 fan page and I have some tips from my experience that I’m more than happy to share. Let me start off by saying, Facebook itself is the only true obstacle in the whole page creation process. If they accepted all code formats, it would be much easier to create any page. It would open up the space to immeasurable possibilities and we would see a wider variety of amazing, unique pages. But unfortunately, this isn’t the case so you have to find ways to work with what you’ve got and then take it up from there. Fan Page Profile PicturesYou might not know this but you can use a picture for your profile page as large as 200 x 600 pixels. The good thing about this is a larger picture offers better visibility of the campaign itself, which may include your company logo or a promotional banner of any kind. The downside to this eye-catching stunner is that it shifts the focus away from the rest of the page. This is why you need to plan your page first. Decide where you want the eyes of your visitors to go: on your image or on the rest of the page’s elements. You can play and preview your ideas, change them back and forth, and see what’s ultimately best for goals, your page, and its users. Example: Diverse TabsFacebook allows you to change the traditional boring tabs to be more exciting, original, and relevant. If you want to change your page’s tabs, you will first need to add this FBML application to your page. Then, go to your page manager, find the FBML tab, and click ‘edit’. Within the box that opens, you will be able to change the tab name, and add HTML code. What I’d suggest that you do is to first create a main landing tab that will welcome visitors to your page. Here’s what I did:
Page Dashboard: Landing Page: Now, since this is the tab you want new visitors to see and experience first, you need to set it this way on your admin page. Go to your page and click on ‘Edit Page’ > ‘Wall Settings’ > then on ‘Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else’ chose the tab which you want to present first when new users enter your Facebook page. People who are already fans of your page, will see the ‘wall’ first when they enter the page. The whole point of this landing page is that you make a informational welcoming page for new visitors that is interesting enough to be an incentive to fan this page. In a sea of fan pages this is important in terms of standing out and being innovative. If you want you can also add even more FBML tabs, but keep in mind that overall, Facebook only allows you to display and offer up to six tabs maximum, including the first two that you can’t change. So make sure you chose your tabs wisely. If you don’t want to mess around with FBML tabs, here are some alternatives (you can also add them as extras): Twitter Tab – This application lets you bundle your ‘Twitter Updates Tab’ into your own profile or Fan page. The process is pretty easy: just add the application and follow the instructions. This is the end result: Flickr Tab – Same application but for Flickr photos. I found it more relevant to put this tab on my personal Facebook profile, but it is really depends on your brand’s goals and needs. Example: Foursquare Tab – I actually really like this tab, despite the fact, that I’m a Gowalla girl myself… If you are creating a page for your company and want a Foursquare tab, here’s what you can do:
And, that’s it. You now have a new tab on your page, Foursquare, and everyone can see how popular your spot is and read the tips visitors have left, furthering user engagement in a new way and offering visitors a chance to appear on your Facebook page and add their own tips. Example: Spotlight the People on your Team If you go through all the trouble of creating your own brand page, make sure you spotlight your team’s players and say something about the people behind the curtain. It adds a personal touch to your page and builds a connection between fans and the people involved in the project. Again, with the help of the FBML tab, I’ve created a tab that tells more about my team at Go2web20 (it is was pretty easy since we’re just two people). But even if you have lots of people on your team, it is important to give some background about company management and staff accomplishments or to at least name one contact person that can be reached easily. Example: Participate on your stream – that’s the whole point I have to admit that I’m not as active on my own Facebook fan page (insert shame here) as I should be. I blame both Facebook and myself. First, I take accountability for not checking the page as often as I should. But, I also blame Facebook for not providing the right tools to track comments and conversations on pages like the ones available for our own profiles. It is really up to you how often you check your fan page activity. But, don’t think you can now sit back and put your feet up. This is not one of those “build it and they will come” scenarios. Don’t take it for granted that you have a page available. No matter how great you’ve made it, if you aren’t active, it defeats the whole purpose of having one. A fan page requires maintenance. You have to be there for your page visitors. You have to talk with your fans. You have to answer questions, absorb feedback, and overall, make the conversation flow with consistent fresh content. I really think Facebook never predicted the volume of pages people would create and the effect of these pages on businesses/brands. Obviously, Facebook isn’t currently providing the right type of support and tools for pages builders. Until Facebook reconciles these changes into their Facebook pages concept and tunes into the importance that pages have garnered over the last few months, we’ll end up with somewhat crappy looking pages that we’re creating with just about any and every tool we can muster up.      
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| This Is Apparently How You Quit Yahoo [Video] Posted: 27 Mar 2010 07:50 PM PDT Paul Tarjan had been at Yahoo for three years. That was enough. Yesterday, to commemorate his last day at the company, Tarjan released a video on YouTube (embedded below) that he says sum up his 1,032 days at Yahoo. In “White & Nerdy,” he raps about PHP, SearchMoney, and YUI — all things his hands were heavily involved in at the company (he was one of the creators of SearchMonkey and was serving as the Tech Lead for the project) — among other nerdy things. In case it’s not clear, this is a parody of Weird Al Yankovic’s “White & Nerdy” which itself is a parody of Chamillionaire’s Grammy-winning song “Ridin‘”. Like many Yahoos before him (but not all), Tarjan is leaving Yahoo for greener pastures. He’ll be starting at Facebook shortly. Says a Yahoo co-worker, “Paul’s a sharp guy.”      
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| Miso Gets Big Brand Love. Check-In To The Hot Tub Time Machine Posted: 27 Mar 2010 06:29 PM PDT
Miso is an iPhone app that incorporates the “check-in” idea with watching movies and television shows. So, for example, if you’re watching that NCAA Tournament this weekend, you can check-in to let your friends what you’re doing. You can then send these check-ins to Twitter, Facebook, or yes, Foursquare, checking you in there in the process (assuming you’ve also attached an actual location to your movie/TV show check-in). But plenty of other services now are predicated around the check-in idea. What makes Miso the Foursquare for entertainment viewing, is that you earn badges for your check-ins. The idea has already attracted the interest of big-time brands, such as MGM Studios, which decided to strike a deal with Miso for its new movie Hot Tub Time Machine. Miso has made a special badge for the movie that you’ll get if you check-in to the movie. This is similar to the deals Foursquare has been signing with big brands, such as Starbucks, which gives users a special barrista badge if they check-in at Starbucks. Currently, there is nothing special beyond the badge you get for checking-in at the movie, but eventually the plan is that these types of check-ins could unlock special content from films, for example. There could also be sweepstakes you could enter by checking-in. Other apps, such as Hot Potato, also incorporate the idea of checking-in to events rather than just places. Miso is the latest app by Bazaar Labs. Their first app, FlixUp!, a sort-of Rotten Tomatoes for movie talk on Twitter, launched at our Realtime Crunchup last Fall. You can find Miso in the App Store here. It’s a free download.      
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| A Conversation With Brad Garlinghouse, AOL’s President Of Consumer Applications Posted: 27 Mar 2010 03:52 PM PDT Last week I sat down with Brad Garlinghouse, a former Yahoo executive who now runs all of AOL’s social and mobile products. You can meet Brad, who joined AOL six months ago, at our upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York. Brad spoke about his product plans for AOL mail, saying that it’s time we reinvented the inbox to aggregate all of the different ways people communicate with each other online today.
Aggregation of social streams seems to be a big part of what his team is up to. AOL Lifestream, a new product that launched two weeks ago, is clearly part of this strategy:
Brad also spoke about Yahoo and it’s chances for success (something I spoke with another former Yahoo exec, Caterina Fake, about recently). Specifically I asked him about Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s recent statement that AOL was little more than a “mini Yahoo.” Our exchange:
And later:
The full transcript is below, care of PhoneTag: Mr. MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Hi, Brad Garlinghouse, the president of Consumer Applications at AOL. Hi, Brad. Mr. BRAD GARLINGHOUSE (President, Consumer Applications, AOL): Mike, how are you? Mr. ARRINGTON: Thanks for letting me come by your office. You’ve been here for 6 months now almost exactly. You started in September 2009. Wanted to ask you how things had gone over the last 6 months, looking forward a little bit just getting your things and other things going on in Silicon Valley. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Fabulous. Mr. ARRINGTON: What is it that you own at AOL? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: So my responsibilities here are what we call the Consumer Applications Group. It’s a mixture of AOL’s mobile efforts, mail, AIM, and ICQ as well as the client bits if you will. That includes everything from our toolbar efforts as well as the traditional AOL client which has, you know, close to 10 million people still using AOL client, in the United States. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, there’s a big overlap from what you did at Yahoo and what you’re doing here at AOL. There's additional pieces you own here, mobile for example is one of those. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Right. Mr. ARRINGTON: But what have you done in the last 6 months? Some of these are housekeeping items. Some of these are brand new products including Lifestream which you released earlier this week. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yup. Mr. ARRINGTON: You told me, you know, what have you done so far and what the plan is for the future? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I realized, a couple quick highlight of thoughts. One of the things – at the most macro level, I mean, AOL is changing. It's changing dramatically and that's like… Mr. ARRINGTON: Really or like, you know, you say that because that's what you say? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: No. Mr. ARRINGTON: Because I hear the same thing from Yahoo which we will talk about maybe later. But, I mean, I think AOL is changing dramatically how. They got spin off what's different, really like cutting through all the bullshit. What's different? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I think at the end of the day when you completely change, you may ask your team, culture starts from the top and the culture here, I mean, you and I walked… Mr. ARRINGTON: (unintelligible) management team has completely changed. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: You and I walked around this office and I think, we both observed and agree that this is a very different place. It feels different. If you go to our offices in New York, it feels different, you know, you still have… Mr. ARRINGTON: The morale is high, is what you're saying. I mean, there's a real feeling here what you're doing is something important. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: Which wasn't in AOL, I mean, you're too good at AOL but it wasn't that feeling. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I think there's – I fundamentally believe that we can win as I fundamentally believe that we are better poised today and that they comfort at heart(ph) for taking risk for focusing on the consumer experience. And I think, you know, over time, AOL increasingly was focused on let's just do more to monetize, monetize, monetize. I don't have a history and understanding exactly other things came to pass, whether there's Time Warner pressure or what have you, but you see a company stepping back, and you know, one of the things we did two months into my tenure is we did a refresh of AOL mail. We took 65% of the ads, the ad units in the AOL mail out. You know, that’s a big change, it impacts the user experience and there's a commitment to the consumer experience, I think it has changed. And that’s a part of culture. Mr. ARRINGTON: Have you been able to measure the impact of that since then? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: You absolutely can tell. And it's partly in just customer satisfaction. There's partly increased registrations. People are – you know, as people start to hear how AOL is changing and how the products are changing, they step back and they say how much of this is expected from AOL. Mr. ARRINGTON: How many people use AOL now? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I think, accounts grow, I’d say somewhere around 25 to 30 million, a number of 32 million accounts per se. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK so and what else should be done? What was that project hygiene we talked about that earlier? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Project hygiene, it's very much how do we clean up some of the basics of what we’re doing. Mr. ARRINGTON: We also haven't been shy about integrating with other third party services like you integrated Facebook directly into AIM… Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yup. Mr. ARRINGTON: …a month ago, a few weeks ago and then the Lifestream, which we wrote about is an aggregator and publisher to social networks. You see more of that? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: One of the things that I think is part of the change at AOL is an understanding and focus about what we are and what we are not. AOL isn’t confused about the idea, ‘hey, we’re trying to be a social network.’ We’re not. We're trying to create more social experiences by partnering with players who are very, very good at what they do. I don’t think all our competitors have gotten that same message that, hey there’s some very powerful and very good at what they do players, and I mean, particularly Facebook and I think we take a point of view as evidenced through AIM that, great. How do we partner with Facebook? How do we help Facebook? And how does that help AIM and how does that help the user? Lifestream clearly is another example of that. In analysis of Lifestream even more so is an example of us going from playing defense to other company to playing offense. That's part of that cultural shift where we want to innovate, we want to identify new segments that address core consumer pain. And I think, you know, you, I, we have a lot of touch points on the web and the online consumer experience is getting more confusing. Lifestream is the solution and takes away consumer paying and that category is going to continue to grow and I think we have a very – the data, external data which suggest, we have by far the largest social aggregation play in the market today. Mr. ARRINGTON: If you take away AOL's dialup business which is still, I think is decreasing a third a year but still 700 million dollar a year in free cash, right, or something like that. AOL isn't today a profitable entity. You talked about winning earlier. Is winning getting in the point where AOL is truly a profitable sustainable long term company or winning means something different to you and how do you get there without that dialup business which goes away? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: You know, depending upon which analyst reports you look at, some of that may not be exactly the same. That being said, you know, it’s very… Mr. ARRINGTON: I thought you have great numbers on your laptop. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I think it’s very clear that we want to focus on building out a fabulous web service in the business and that is primarily an ad supported business. You know, that business today is – you know, I don’t know what the analysts say in sizes, but it's – you know it’s quite large relative to most competitors and we are focused on growing that business. How do I focus on winning? I mean, look, you know me a little bit. I’m a very competitive person. I want to win. You know, in the immediate term, winning is probably measured by demonstrating to consumers and as well as Wall Street analysts that we are engaging users and getting them to come back and check out our services and have great experiences. That is what we talked about earlier. Lifestream is a great example of that. People they're like, wow, I didn’t expect this from AOL. Mr. ARRINGTON: Let’s talk about the future. Specifically, what to expect out of your group over the next, say 12 months, things you have planned that you're willing to talk about in broad strokes. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Things that we should start getting excited about now. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: You know, the first broad highlight is, we are clearly re-investing in AOL mail and… Mr. ARRINGTON: How do you get excited about e-mail these days? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Actually, the reason why, there hasn't been much innovation in e-mail in a long time. I mean, listen I’ll pick on a different competitor. You know, Gmail was profound when Gmail came out. Gmail hasn't done as much in the last 5 years. The interesting about this is there continues to be pain in the consumer experience, right? When you think about the inbox, it has proliferated and there are more and more inboxes in my life. And that actually – that consumer pain is you know not a… Mr. ARRINGTON: Is the solution what Buzz has done with moving like the social stuff into the Gmail inbox because that seems to be a pain for people as well. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: You know, I don't – I think Buzz is hard to…I think… Mr. ARRINGTON: I noticed you didn't integrate Buzz into Lifestream. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: At its core… Mr. ARRINGTON: I mean, you even integrated MySpace into Lifestream but not Google Buzz. That's such a recent product in regard to… Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: At its core, e-mail is definitely I think, there remain opportunities to innovate around e-mail and if you could deliver about these experiences… Mr. ARRINGTON: What’s an easy, easy big thing to do to fix my e-mail, to make it better, substantially better? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I do think that there are opportunities around inbox aggregation that have not been well executed more in the industry… Mr. ARRINGTON: Aggregation of like Facebook inbox. What are other inboxes? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: How many inboxes do you have in your life? You know, you have Facebook inbox. You have a Linkedln inbox. You have a Twitter inbox. Mr. ARRINGTON: Text messaging. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: SMS, you know, these are still – I mean granted that these are the things in the industry to talk about 15 or 20 years in unified messaging. And some intentionally not, like say, hey, we have a better unified messaging experience. My point is more to say when people talk about this, there’s a very funny Wall Street Journal article in the last six months. Well, since I’ve been here at AOL, talked about, you know that kind of the death of e-mail. You know, the rumor has since demised, have definitely been exaggerated. I think the most humorous part of that Wall Street Journal article is it concluded with one of the research reporters e-mailed her ad, you know. And it said that, you know, social networks have grown – are now larger than e-mail. Every social network I know requires an e-mail used to log in. There is actually data amongst the people – Nielsen did some very interesting research about the heaviest social networking users who are actually using e-mail more now in part because so much of the activity around social networks end up in your e-mail box. Mr. ARRINGTON: So do you think, by the end of this year, we are in 2010, you think by the end of this year, we'll see substantial products being released around mail that may convince people – people like me to use AOL mail as their mail provider? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I think… Mr. ARRINGTON: Was there another time frame to get there? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: No. Mr. ARRINGTON: First, let me – before you had Oddpost, right? You bought Oddpost at Yahoo. It was such a game changer. Is there something when you acquire a bill that you think can be a game changer this year for AOL mail? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I think yes. I think that, Michael, this year for AOL mail, is for people to take another look. If the people come back and say, interesting, I'm impressed this is from AOL. We started to demonstrate some of that with the AIM Facebook announcement. We started demonstrating that with the Lifestream announcement and I think we can continue to do that, not just within mail but across a number of things we're delivering at AOL, mobile, the number of interesting things going on that I think, at the end of this year, if the world steps back and says, this management team – this new management team actually is living up to its expectations, I'll be very happy. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, before you joined AOL, you were briefly at Silver Lake Partners? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: As a – what were you? An adviser, we think you're joining full time Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I was technically called a senior adviser. You know, private equity firms don’t do EIR Programs per se with respect to EIR and Silver Lake at that time had not had as much depth in the internet space. I mean, obviously, I've a fabulous track record and due to Harvard et cetera. They've done a little bit more in the internet space and certainly have been more interested in that space. So they brought in account people who were more from the web environment. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, they were the big money in the Skype acquisition. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Did you work on that deal at all? Were you looking at it? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Tangentially, you know, most of the stuff I was looking at was in the Silver Lake Sumeru Fund which is in the mid-market fund looking to spend 50 million to $150 million checks as part of the whole $1.2 billion fund. Silver Lake Partners is a larger fund that actually did as kind of semantics in details but they did the big check and it’s, I think, a $9 billion fund. But obviously, it was a resource working at Silver Lake Partners as well as the market fund. Mr. ARRINGTON: So before that, you were at Yahoo. Right (unintelligible) you left Yahoo in the middle of 2008. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Actually, now (unintelligible) departure in the middle of 2008 stuck around for a while helping the transition items but then left Yahoo and joined Silver Lake. Mr. ARRINGTON: And so at Yahoo, you were head of – what was it called? Your Mail Flickr, Mash and Yahoo Instant Messenger. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: What else? What was it called? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: The group for different incarnations was CCF, Communications Community Front Doors. Then it evolved where Front Doors which is the homepage, My Yahoo came out and then it (unintelligible) ran that group very effectively. But that was a core Flickr Mail Messenger… Mr. ARRINGTON: Mash… Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Exactly. Mr. ARRINGTON: That the social network with Darth Vader and a banana, with a guitar. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yeah. The idea behind Mash which, you know, I think… Mr. ARRINGTON: Have to take a look at it. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Actually, the idea behind Mash I think is very interesting. It’s really the wikification(ph) of people’s profiles because even now for me to go and just plain(ph) edit other people’s stuff, you can’t really do. I think you can make a richer experience make other people- particularly trusted people participate in it. Mr. ARRINGTON: Maybe we can schedule additional times so we can go to more detail of Mash. Let’s talk about some of the other things beside Mash that you accomplished at Yahoo! So you joined Yahoo, when? You were there before three years. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Early March of 2003. Mr. ARRINGTON: So at that time, mail was your huge product, Mail Messenger, right? Yahoo! Mail was, you know, number three player, number four player and you knew(ph) about Oddpost. Tell me a little bit of like the first steps you took there to sort of make Yahoo the number one player in mail. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it’s actually I think it wasn’t that long. Well actually, people forget like how much has changed in the e-mail space these years. Really, the first thing we focused on was anti-spam. In 2003, there you know, Bill Gates came out and said, he's going to solve spam and there’s a ton – it was increasingly a huge problem that the industry has gotten more of their arms around. So we were better than our competitors at that time. It was usually Hotmail and AOL and we clearly had gotten a better handle on anti-spam and we did a lot from a marketing point as to take advantage of that. We bought Oddpost in the spring of 2004 which really, for my part it was the best deal that I was involved with during my Yahoo tenure. And it was, I think a mixture of the right people there, the right technology bed and that really became the foundation for the all new Yahoo! Mail, internally at that time we called Candygram and… Mr. ARRINGTON: It was the first mail application online that worked sort of like a desktop application. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Job descriptor way before – that gave Web 2.0 and all these new start ups came out. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: And it was a really nice sort of interface. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: People loved. They continue to use. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: It was incredibly well done and I… Mr. ARRINGTON: It's (unintelligible) help how to grow. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Well, it really differentiates us in a pretty commoditized market. It puts Yahoo! Mail as doing interesting different innovative stuff and you know. The number one reason why even today people adopt various e-mail products is based on word of mouth their friends recommend. And when you get people coming in, trying a product and service they like, wow, that’s great. They tell their friends about it. And started to see increasingly a nice trajectory as people band and other players join us at Yahoo at that time. Mr. ARRINGTON: You can later write me a note, unlimited storage. Tell me about the storage at Yahoo! Mail. Was that unlimited or… Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: It actually is an interesting- I mean, I will admit strictly now this is, you know, a couple handful of years later. Gmail launched, I think, around April 1, 2004, and you know, not surprisingly, internally at Yahoo!, you know, it got a lot, a lot, a lot of attention. And I give the team at Yahoo! a ton of credit for reacting very quickly and change the dynamics as could as we could for our users and you know, it’s easy to launch the gigabyte storage when you don't have users. It’s harder when you already have tens and millions of users to just line up a gig of storage. Mr. ARRINGTON: And that's when you move on unlimited storage? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: It took us about, I don't know, a year. We mainly moved to a hundred megs, we went to 250, we went to a gig. Within a year, we went to unlimited storage and we were just like, we're taking this off the table. And, you know, it is again, it’s unbelievable to really sit back and I think six years ago when you got a Hotmail account, you got two megabytes of storage for free. When you got Yahoo! account, you have four megabytes of storage for free. Mr. ARRINGTON: So much spam. Can’t store much spam in four megabytes. Three weeks ago, two weeks ago, Carol Bartz defined Yahoo!, sorry to find AOL as a mini Yahoo! Is she right? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: You know, if you step back and left the industry, I think this is true broadly. I thought a million to believe the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yahoo! admitted they have a problem? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: One of the things that is very clear at AOL is there’s no confusion with the management team that we have challenges and we have identified those and we have been very aggressive about calling them out and working to fix them. I don’t see our competitors universally- yeah, I think some of them have said that, you know, the language I hear is that yes, there are problems but I don’t see the actions demonstrating that in fact, here is how we are getting better as a company. You know, I guess, Yahoo! is a very, very strong company. And they make a lot of money. And I guess Carol- you know, I think AOL has been very aggressive about defining a very clear strategy of where we’re going. When I hear Yahoo! saying that AOL is a mini Yahoo!, I cannot feel flattered that they are going to follow us in our strategy. Mr. ARRINGTON: Oh, come on. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I think there’s no question if you look back… Mr. ARRINGTON: Carol Bartz called AOL a mini Yahoo! The first thing that pops in your head, I’m flattered. I thought we were going to cut all of the BS out of this interview with you. So I think we’re still warriors saying, I’m sorry, no. Like, we have a strategy, what's Yahoo's strategy? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: But I think, you know, you were seeing the world ask that question. That question has been asked for a long time at Yahoo! and I think that is still – and it’s not clear to me. I was actually very helpful when the search deal was announced. Mr. ARRINGTON: Should it be clear? I mean, shouldn’t Yahoo! strategy be clear to the world? They’re a private company. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: It should be – maybe I’m not giving as much attention to Yahoo! these days. Mr. ARRINGTON: I do. I don’t know what it is that there- you know, search (unintelligible). I’ll do that – I'll set my rant for the post but I think as an ex-senior executive at Yahoo!, you have some idea of what it is their strategy is. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yahoo! was a fabulous experience for me. I totally enjoyed my experience there. I also made a decision to leave based on lots and lots of factors. I fundamentally… Mr. ARRINGTON: What’s the number one factor? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I fundamentally believe that in a company like AOL, that’s more willing to take risks and more willing to say, we’re going to be aggressive in some areas, it’s very difficult. There’s a classic innovator's dilemma… Mr. ARRINGTON: Is that when it comes down to you as AOL is clearly taking a risk? I think everyone would agree. AOL exceed with all the staff, that you’re hiring a thousand journalists on the other side of business that worked New York, the stuff that you’re doing out here in California although I think you're also bi-coastal. Clearly risk had been taken here. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: Risk is a- as far as I can tell, Yahoo! is taking less and less risk overtime. Is that really the fundamental difference you think? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: Well, I admit I'm not day-to-day involved with Yahoo! at this point. So I don’t claim to have… Mr. ARRINGTON: Interesting enough (unintelligible) search they've hedged with Facebook complaining (unintelligible) finding pointing to a little more detail here than we have to in Yahoo! but I don’t see whether there really, like the big answer being placed, if any. Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: The question was actually, I think, if you step back, the 12 step process, first you must start by admitting you have a problem. And a lot of things should go from that. And I give the management team at Yahoo! credit for making some decisions they have. Obviously, they’ve solved HotJobs, something else, they solved, I can’t remember right now. You know, and there are, I think, continue the opportunities to focus on a handful areas that they want to be the best in the world, and that is, I think, directionally good. MR. ARRINGTON: What are those areas? Mr. GARLINGHOUSE: I don’t know. Let’s go ask Carol.      
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| Facebook To Launch Meebo Bar Clone On Its Quest To Take Over The Web Posted: 27 Mar 2010 03:47 PM PDT In the last few days, we’ve uncovered some major new features that Facebook is going to announce at its f8 developer conference, including its plan to offer a Like button for the entire Internet and a creepy auto-Connect feature that will share your data with sites you never signed up for. Now we’ve heard from multiple sources about a third major product the company plans to unveil: a persistent Facebook toolbar that third-party sites can integrate that sounds a whole lot like the Meebo Bar. Details on Facebook’s toolbar are still scant, but we hear that it will rest at the bottom of the browser window using AJAXy technology, the way Meebo’s Bar does (and the way the chat bar previously integrated into Facebook.com did before it). We can expect the Facebook bar to include sharing features and chat, just like the Meebo Bar. It’s unclear if Facebook will be launching its bar with advertising but we can almost certainly expect it to come eventually. These three new features — a webwide Like button, auto-Connect, and a persistent toolbar — make it abundantly clear that Facebook is looking to extend its reach to as much of the web as possible, and it won’t be an opt-in experience. Instead, Facebook is looking to become a ubiquitous, integrated feature of these sites — a sort of backbone for the web designed to facilitate sharing with friends. With everything leading back to Facebook. Below, a shot of the Meebo Bar on one of its partner sites.      
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| Foursquare Goes Dark Too. Unintentionally. Posted: 27 Mar 2010 02:49 PM PDT
Yesterday, Foursquare had some downtime. That’s nothing new, startups have downtime all the time — see: Twitter, that was their M.O. for about a year — but the reason for Foursquare’s appears to be a little humorous. While the site is back up and running now, it appears that Foursquare forgot to renew their domain name, which expired on March 25. As a result, GoDaddy, the registrar, pulled the site and put up their own landing page. Which some people noticed on Twitter and other tipped us about. Luckily for Foursquare, registrars like GoDaddy tend to give you several notices before they pull down your domain and actually put it back up for sale. It looks like Foursquare was able to grab it quickly and get it back up there. Still, this seems like a rather large oversight from a company supposedly raising a new $10 million round of funding that would put its valuation near $80 million on paper. Let’s hope some of that money goes toward a new position: master of the domain. Interestingly, after its first round of funding, the first thing Foursquare did was purchase the foursquare.com domain. Previously, the service was found at playfoursquare.com. So what happened here is probably that the team forgot to change the email notifications from whoever owned the domain originally to one of their email addresses. At least, I hope that’s what happened. Also worth noting: co-founder Dennis Crowley originally wanted to name his first startup Foursquare, but couldn’t obtain the domain, so he went with Dodgeball instead (which later sold to Google). You’d think that Crowley would at least cherish the domain a bit more. [thanks TJ]      
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| Sharpen The Pitchforks. It’s Almost Time For Facebook’s Privacy Wake-Up Call Posted: 27 Mar 2010 02:40 PM PDT
Imagine what will happen the first time Joe Facebooker visits a third-party site he’s never been to and is greeted by the smiling faces of his friends, his most recent shared updates, and content tailored to his gender, location, and age. There’s a decent chance he’s going to assume something has gone terribly, terribly wrong — maybe he’s been hacked or phished. Or maybe he’ll realize that the privacy wizard he went through last December wasn’t as benign as he thought. For those that haven’t been keeping score, Facebook’s ‘Everyone’ setting lets users share their content with the entire Internet, which includes search engines and (apparently) third-party sites. It was originally released last June, when it was buried deep in Facebook’s labyrinthine settings, but it wasn’t until December that it was used on a wide scale. The reason for the mass migration toward sharing data with Everyone instead of with just your friends on Facebook? As part of an ostensibly easier-to-use privacy overhaul, Facebook decided to make it the default setting. As part of that same overhaul, Facebook also decided to make data like your friends list, gender, and current city publicly available when it previously wasn’t.
Which brings us to today. I’m still firmly of the opinion that the vast majority of Facebook users do not fully understand their privacy settings, nor do they grasp what “Everyone” means in this context. Facebook may have gotten users’ consent, but it certainly wasn’t informed consent. Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd, who studies this sort of thing for a living, has come to the same conclusion: during her keynote at SXSW, Boyd revealed that she’s been asking “non-techie” users what they thought their privacy settings were, and then walked them through what they actually were on the site. Not once have the settings matched the user’s expectations. So why haven’t Facebook users started unleashing a Beaconesque wave of fury over this? There’s a good chance that they simply have no idea that there’s been a significant change. From a functionality perspective, the Everyone setting changed almost nothing — it’s easier to find content in Facebook Search, and now some of the data is being shared with Google and Bing, but that’s about it. Likewise, the expanded definition of “General Information”, which now includes your social graph, hasn’t had much impact yet either. That’s going to change with this forthcoming version of Facebook Connect — or whatever Facebook plans to call it — which will apparently give “trusted” partners access to your data as soon as you visit them, whether or not you opted-in to share it. Facebook will be sharing what it calls “General Information”, which includes profile photos, your gender, social graph, and — you guessed it — anything you’ve ever shared using that Everyone option. Facebook hasn’t outlined exactly how it will work, but a spokesman told ReadWriteWeb the following:
Facebook is hoping, of course, that users will embrace this — they’ll effectively have a personalized Internet experience that automatically draws from their social graph and demographic information, like age, sex, and location. It could make the web at large smarter and more social, which is actually a pretty exciting idea. Thing is, Facebook is shoving that dream down its users’ throats, and it’s the one deciding which sites are trustworthy enough to swap your data with. If the inevitable backlash does lead to users raging against the Everyone setting, that could have a major impact on Facebook’s future. For over a year now, the site has been gradually evolving to leverage its data beyond Facebook proper so that it could better compete against Twitter and Google. This, in some senses, will be the moment of truth — will users be okay with sharing their data beyond Facebook’s walled garden, or will they feel like they’ve been duped?      
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| Turn Your Lights Off, Bing Needs Extra Power Today Posted: 27 Mar 2010 01:01 PM PDT
And just like Google two years ago, it’s an interesting gesture to support the cause, but it is akin to beating a baby seal to death to support a ban on seal clubbing. Or Al Gore taking a private jet to a conference to wag his finger and tell us not to drive our SUVs. Or Pepsi doing this. Or California doing this. That’s because it uses more power to show black on a flat panel screen than it does to show white. Microsoft knows this, but I’m guessing the marketing people said it’s good for their image anyway. Says Microsoft: “While a darker version of our page doesn't save any energy over the regular version, we wanted to do our part to help spread the word.” Why do it, Microsoft? Why club the baby seal?      
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| iThink Apple Still Has Plans For Those “iSlate” And “Magic Slate” Trademarks Posted: 27 Mar 2010 10:42 AM PDT Go to Apple.com. See that search box, top right? Type “iThing” or “iStuff” and you’ll find that there are no shortcuts to product or related pages – evidently because there are no Apple products called iThing or iStuff to find on the website. Now, run a search for the term “iSlate”. Interesting, isn’t it? At the end of last year, MacRumors discovered that Apple once owned – and likely still owns -the domain name islate.com, after which we ran a search for U.S. and European trademarks related to the term. Applications for the marks existed indeed, only they were filed by a company called Slate Computing, more than likely a shell entity set up by Cupertino in order to hide the associated documents from public sight. Later, MacRumors found that Slate Computing also applied for a trademark for “Magic Slate”, further fueling rumors that Apple’s tablet device – which was still unannounced, unconfirmed and thus unnamed at that point – would be given the name iSlate. Apple CEO Steve Jobs went on to unveil the device in January 2010, named it iPad, and everyone sort of forgot about those other trademarks. This morning, we took another look at them. On the 24th of February 2010, Apple’s Senior Trademark Specialist, Regina Porter, signed off on a 6-month extension request for the “iSlate” trademark application. The applicant (Slate Computing) in the extension request says it maintains a “continued bona fide intention to use or use through the applicant’s related company or licensee the mark in commerce” in the United States and highlights ongoing efforts in “product or service research or development”. It was the third time Apple (sorry, Slate Computing) requested this Request for Extension of Time to File a Statement of Use, and it was approved by the USPTO on March 26. So far, so interesting. But there’s more. Slate Computing originally filed a trademark application for “Magic Slate” back in June 2009, and apparently amended it to more accurately describe the products and services associated with the name less than two weeks ago (March 15). I’d cut and paste the amended description in full, but it is so broad that it would take a huge amount of space. If you want the full details, go here and click ‘Response to Office Action’. Again, the applicant contends to have a “bona fide intention to use or use through the applicant’s related company or licensee the mark in commerce” and this time the company also asserts a claim of priority based on the fact that it has successfully registered ‘Magic Slate’ as a trademark in the EU. Sure enough, the European community trademark for ‘Magic Slate’ was approved and published at the beginning of this month (1 March). In conclusion: Apple is holding on to those iSlate and Magic Slate trademarks real tight, and I think it’s safe to assume we’ll be seeing new products or services by those names at some point. Could iSlate be the name of that larger Mac OSX powered tablet we’ve been hearing rumors about? Is the Magic Slate the name of a nifty touch-screen peripheral currently in the works? Update: commenter Ryan Wood suggests that maybe ‘iSlate’ would be an alternative name for Apple to use in case Fujitsu did not hand over its ‘iPad’ trademark (which it actually did about 10 days ago). Definitely a possibility. Your guess is as a good as mine, but I have a feeling there might be some surprises at the next WWDC (which will likely be held in June/July 2010).      
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Trying to control, or even manage, your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. And much like the fight by big labels against the illegal sharing of music, it will soon become pointless to even try. It’s time we all just give up on the small fights and become more accepting of the indiscretions of our fellow humans. Because the skeletons are coming out of the closet and onto the front porch.
Don’t let anyone tell you it is easy to create a successfully engaging Facebook Fan Page. It is not.
For the past few years, being the “Twitter for FILL-IN-THE-BLANK” has been a popular trend among startups. Now, we’re starting to see a shift. Several new startups are launching as the “Foursquare for FILL-IN-THE-BLANK.” And big brands are actually starting to take notice.
He also talks about the impact of relatively small changes – a removal of 65% of the ad units on the mail product, he says, resulted in higher new signups and user satisfaction.
Earlier we 
Yesterday, Facebook 
Press, bloggers, and numerous privacy organizations 
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