Products on a list to be sunsetted–whatever that means–include MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Picks, AltaVista, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Buzz and Delicious. Some of those properties came from acquisitions and others were internally generated.

The news of the Yahoo plans first came out via a screenshot of the Webcast posted on Twitter by Eric Marcoullier that included a slide with a list of impacted products next to an image of Irving, along with EVP of the Americas Ross Levinsohn, announcing the news.

Marcoullier was founder of MyBlogLog, which created one of the products being shut down. (MyBlogLog was bought by Yahoo in 2007 and has been pretty much neglected ever since.)

The slide also shows plans to merge additional products, including Fire Eagle and Yahoo People Search, and make features out of many others, including Yahoo! Alerts and Yahoo! Calendar. (If you have better eyes than I do, please help identify some of those logos in the comments.)

Marcoullier is no longer at Yahoo, although the validity of his Webcast screenshot was confirmed, after he was quickly criticized on Twitter by various current Yahoo employees who didn’t appreciate it getting out, including Irving himself, who insinuated he would fire whoever leaked the Webcast. (Click on image here to enlarge.)

While the layoffs and shutdowns obviously indicate a de-emphasis of technology products by Yahoo, they aren’t necessarily unwarranted. Some of these products were the same as those mentioned on then-SVP Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter Memo way back in 2006 as candidates for streamlining.

Update 12:21 p.m. PT: Yahoo’s statement on the matter just came through:

Part of our organizational streamlining involves cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products to put better focus on our core strengths and fund new innovation in the next year and beyond. We continuously evaluate and prioritize our portfolio of products and services, and do plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo! Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others. We will communicate specific plans when appropriate.

In response to a follow-up question about Delicious, which seems to be the “sunsetted” product people are most upset about, the spokeswoman replied:

“We continue to operate Delicious today, and will communicate specific details when appropriate.”

For its new compact Lexus, Toyota Motor Corp. is enlisting people with a strong following on Twitter and other social media to create buzz around its products.

Its new campaign includes online videos that show actress and comedian Whitney Cummings interviewing an array of social-media heavyweights as they take the Lexus CT 200h for a spin around their hometowns. The stars of the campaign include Baratunde Thurston, Web editor of satire website the Onion; Brian Solis, a marketing guru and social-media expert; and Richard Quitevis, or DJ Qbert, a well-known disc jockey.

“If we have people that are active in social media, then they can bring followers with them,” says Dave Nordstrom, Lexus’s vice president of marketing.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

It’s just a post on the popular entertainment blog “Deadline Hollywood.”

But it’s a clear indication the makers of the movie about the origins of Facebook are gunning for maximum attention and Oscar buzz with only a few weeks to go before its debut.

In fact, awards columnist Pete Hammond was pretty much channeling the marketing plan of Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin for “The Social Network,” which has its premiere in New York on September 24 and its wide rollout on October 1.

Rudin–the volcano of a producer about whom I would like to see a biopic like the one he is sticking it to Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with–has apparently been personally inviting every online chatterbox (not me!) and their mother to screenings of the film from the Sony (SNE) movie unit, Columbia Pictures, in recent weeks.

Writes Hammond:

It’s a smart strategy but even without a personal invitation from one of the film’s producers this is already the current must-see movie on every Oscar watchers list. As an example of that, one blogger actually got on a plane from Toronto to New York just to see Social Network, then headed immediately back to Toronto. His subsequent review was a rave declaring it the one to beat for Best Picture (a little premature on that I think). That’s just one example of the praise now starting to hit the Internet from Hitfix to Slashfilm to Chud and all cyber points inbetween.

A little premature perhaps, but it seems to have worked with Hammond:

I saw it at the first opportunity on Monday and would have to say fairly objectively that The Social Network is Sony’s best shot at Best Picture in years, a lock for Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards. And most importantly, Oscar nominations in every major category including Director for David Fincher, Writing for Aaron Sorkin, lead actor for Jesse Eisenberg (playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg), Supporting Actor for both Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, editing and so on. It also looks like it will be a major box office hit, hitting a nerve with the young demographic that are on the front lines of moviegoers…

Despite its high-tech bones, what Fincher and Sorkin have managed to do is tell a time-honored very human story, a social document for a generation that has as much relevance now as movies like On The Waterfront, Network, All The President’s Men, and The Graduate did in their time.

Expect more of the same from those who get sucked up into the marketing machine for “The Social Network” in the next weeks, even though it appears it will be devastating to the real-life version of its main subject, Mark Zuckerberg.

And really, really unfair, according to MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, by taking one aspect of his personality–awkward arrogance or perhaps arrogant awkwardness–and twisting it into a much deeper malevolence.

I have no doubt in my mind that Zuckerberg pulled an epic geek sandbagging on the clueless Winklevoss twins by promising to work on their goofy concept for a social networking site at Harvard University, then not doing so and working on his own ideas instead.

And, for sure, he had a painfully typical start-up falling-out with his own early partners.

But let’s get real here–they all got paid off plenty for being present at the creation of something they themselves never could have created.

Does anyone honestly believe the Winklevii were capable of making Facebook, or any reasonable facsimile, any more than Zuckerberg was capable of rowing in the Olympics?

While hitting some right notes about Zuckerberg’s mannerisms–conversations with him can be very perplexing–the Mark of “The Social Network” is largely fictional.

Certainly, he has some glaring faults (and so do I!).

But they are no worse that other tech leaders’, from Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT) to Steve Jobs of Apple (AAPL) to Silicon Valley’s own twins, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google (GOOG).

Interestingly, the night before what turned out to be a very difficult onstage interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June, at a dinner just south of Los Angeles, Zuckerberg fretted to me about the film.

“It’s what a lot of people will think I am like, because it’s a movie and that has impact on their perceptions,” he said with a lot of concern in his voice.

I pooh-poohed his complaints and told him not to worry about it too much.

“It’s just a movie,” I said. “No one believes what they see at the movies anymore.”

But as this film chugs along–gaining Oscar velocity right onto the stage of the Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard on February 27, 2011–I can now see Zuckerberg might have been right all along.

BoomTown is very much intrigued by the clear freakiness of the ballet thriller–yes, you read that right–apparent in this trailer for “The Black Swan.”

Opening in December, the buzz around the movie–starring Natalie Portman as an increasingly unbalanced dancer with a rival doppelgänger and what appear to be feathers sprouting out of her back–has been growing both online and off at big film festivals, such as in Toronto this past week .

Here is the first trailer:

Where rivals like Facebook have succeeded in capitalizing on social relationships and interactions online, Google has largely failed. While “big in Brazil,” the company’s social network, Orkut, doesn’t have much traction anywhere else–it certainly can’t be considered a rival to Facebook. And after its privacy-violating launch, Buzz–Google’s latest social networking service–doesn’t appear to be much of a play in the social space, either.

No surprise, then, to learn that Google (GOOG) is looking for someone to refine its social strategy and perhaps better leverage the social network that already exists in services like Gmail. From GigaOm comes word that the company is recruiting for a new “Head of Social” position, a senior post charged with:

1) building an innovative offering specifically in this area; or 2) developing the capability and integrating social into Google’s existing portfolio.

A wise move, I think, if it’s not too late–and I don’t think it is. After all, the company has some big social assets, Gmail and YouTube, for example. It just hasn’t yet been able to leverage them with the decentralized social network that it’s clearly angling for. Perhaps, some new blood will help Google do that.

In a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, privacy commissioners from France, Germany, Canada, and the U.K., among other countries, slagged the search giant for failing to take adequate account of privacy considerations when rolling out new services.

“We are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world’s citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications,” the commissioners wrote. “We were disturbed by your recent rollout of the Google Buzz social networking application, which betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms and laws….”

Mincing no words, they added, “It is unacceptable to roll out a product that unilaterally renders personal information public, with the intention of repairing problems later as they arise. Privacy cannot be sidelined in the rush to introduce new technologies to online audiences around the world.”

While the first few lines of the statement largely repeat criticisms we’ve heard before, the last two really get at the crux of the entire debacle. If Google (GOOG) didn’t recognize the privacy flaws in Buzz before it released it to the public, it should have. And if it did recognize them and released the service anyway figuring it would address them later–well, that’s just plain reckless.

“Sorry we didn’t get everything right” doesn’t absolve the company from its misstep, though Google clearly seems to think it does, according to the statement it issued on the letter.

“We try very hard to be upfront about the data we collect, and how we use it, as well as to build meaningful controls into our products. Google Dashboard, the Ads Preferences Manager and our data liberation initiative are all good examples of such initiatives,” the company said.

“Of course we do not get everything 100 percent right–that is why we acted so quickly on Buzz following the user feedback we received. We have discussed all these issues publicly many times before and have nothing to add to today’s letter–instead we are focused on launching our new transparency tool which we are very excited about.”

[Image credit: Asaf Hanuka, Tropical Toxic]

Instead, it is trying to prevent a mass freak-out, brought on by Twitter’s apparent change in strategy last week: Rather than depending on outside developers to build out the service, it will compete with them, at least in some cases.

Twitter’s shift has worried enough of the messaging service’s top third-party developers that they’ve hastily scheduled their own summit for Tuesday. That’s a day before Twitter’s official “Chirp” conference kicks off.

The loosely organized gathering, assembled over the weekend via email, doesn’t have an official agenda. And Laura Fitton, the de facto ringleader, takes pains to describe it as something akin to a group therapy session (that’s my description, not hers).

“Nobody’s angry or irrational,” says Fitton, the founder of Twitter app directory oneforty. “People are just looking to gut-check each other, and see, if this worries you, what is it that worries you? And if it does worry you, what do you want to do about it?”

But other developers I’ve talked to who are planning to attend the pre-Chirp gathering are more explicit: They’re definitely worried.

“It’s a total mess. People just feel that the trust was broken,” says a developer who wants to remain anonymous.

“It’s very clear. The playing field is not going to be level,” says another, who also wants to keep his name out of print.

Twitter’s moves have even prompted some developers to sketch out a scenario in which they leverage their combined user bases to create a sort of alternative Twitter, based on an open platform. That one seems like an awfully long stretch, because it depends on convincing Twitter users–not just developers and their investors–that there’s a compelling reason to move.

A more likely scenario is that agitated Twitter developers take long looks at the advantages of  working with other “real-time” platforms–Facebook, Google’s (GOOG) Buzz, etc.–while continuing to work with Twitter. That won’t help them with their core problem–they’re always going to be dependent on someone’s platform. But, in a best-case scenario, it gives them more options.

In the meantime, Twitter doesn’t have to wait till Wednesday to soothe frayed nerves. Ryan Sarver, who oversees Twitter’s platform team, plans on visiting the pre-Chirp gathering. And Fitton says the group will be happy to hear from him–once they’re done venting in private.

Among the many Gmail subscribers to have their private contacts exposed in the Google Buzz privacy fiasco was Andrew McLaughlin, the Obama administration’s deputy chief technology officer and Google’s former head of global public policy.

“So I see a big default privacy flaw in Buzz,” McLaughlin wrote in a Feb. 10 Buzz post uncovered by Breitbart’s Big Government (click on image below to enlarge). “By default, Buzz adds the people you e-mail most as your ‘followers’, and then lists them on your public Google Profile Page. In other words, Google exposes the people you e-mail most, by default, to the world. That violates my sense of expectations–I expect the list of people I e-mail most to be kept private. What should I do? I guess I don’t really have an option other than turning off Buzz. Any other ideas?”

Sure. Here’s one: How about no longer using your former employer’s email service to communicate privately with the folks you once worked with as a lobbyist for Google?
Certainly seems unwise given the mandate of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

[Buzz image credit: Breitbart's Big Government]

Little more than a month after the bungled launch of Buzz and the company has already accumulated quite a pile of complaints over breaches in consumer privacy that went along with it.

In February, the Electronic Privacy Information Center asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Buzz, claiming it violates federal consumer protection law.

A few weeks later, outgoing FTC commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour publicly decried Buzz’s rollout as “irresponsible” and accused Google of attempting to “stretch the privacy envelope.”

Now, a group of eleven U.S. lawmakers from the House Energy and Commerce Committee is calling upon the FTC to investigate Buzz as well.

“We are writing to express our concern over claims that Google’s ‘Google Buzz’ social networking tool breaches online consumer privacy and trust,” the group said in a letter to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “Due to the high number of individuals whose online privacy is affected by tools like this–either directly or indirectly–we feel that these claims warrant the commission’s review of Google’s public disclosure of personal information of consumers through Google Buzz.”

The letter continues by suggesting the FTC ask the following four questions to Google:

1. How will Google revise the Gmail privacy policy, notify consumers, and obtain consent for this change in the company’s privacy practices?
2. Since Google Buzz was launched on Feb. 9, 2010, how many consumers are deactivated or opted out of the Google Buzz services?
3. To what extent does Google use the consumer information collected through Buzz and other Google services for the purposes of delivering online advertising?
4. If the Commission approves Google’s acquisition of AdMob, to what extent will the combined entity use the consumer information collected through other Google products and services for the purposes of delivering advertising?

The answers to these questions would, I’m sure, be quite telling. Not that Google (GOOG) is particularly interested in answering them. Why would the company when it seems so confident that it has already resolved the issues in question?

Said a Google spokesperson: “User choice and transparency are top of mind for us. When we realized that we had unintentionally made users unhappy, we worked quickly to make immediate changes.”

[Image credit: Asaf Hanuka, Tropical Toxic]

Sources tell me that the mobile social network, which lets you tell your friends where you are, is lining up a new round of financing to bolster the $1.35 million it raised last August. CEO Dennis Crowley declined to comment.

I don’t know how much the year-old company intends to raise or the valuation it’s looking for. But speculating about both is a fun pastime for venture capitalists, who agree on one thing: The company won’t have any problem attracting suitors.

“Everybody and their mother is humping their leg,” says a VC who readily admits to Foursquare infatuation. So many investors are besotted that the chatter can get feverish. Another VC passes along a rumor that an investor offered to buy into the company at a $100 million valuation.

A more reasonable guess: New York-based Foursquare will wind up bringing in a West Coast-based VC, who will lead a round in the $10 million range that will value the company at something like $40 million. Foursquare’s first round valued the company at more than $6 million.

So what’s the appeal? Like plenty of other social media start-ups, Foursquare has minimal revenue. But it has a great story, which contains plenty of allusions to Twitter.

Like Twitter, Foursquare was founded by an entrepreneur who already built a start-up and sold it to Google (GOOG). And like Twitter, Foursquare launched at South by Southwest to some fanfare, and has seen its user base increase at breathtaking velocity.

When Crowley raised his first round of financing from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Union Square Ventures in August, Foursquare had some 50,000 users. That total is now approaching 600,000, boosted by a burst of 100,000 sign-ups over the last 10 days.

And while Foursquare, like Twitter, doesn’t have real revenue to speak of, it does have a notion of how to get some. It is working on tie-ups with local merchants, who can reward users who “check in” at restaurants, bars, etc.–and by doing so, provide free advertising for those establishments.

Foursquare still doesn’t do anything for me, but the service is doing just fine without buy-in from a middle-aged dude who doesn’t go out at night. And because Foursquare is a fun, buzzy story to write about, it gets written about a lot.

The real question for Foursquare: How will the start-up keep Twitter and Facebook from rolling over it? Twitter added its location feature this month, and Facebook is reportedly adding its own in April.

Both these companies have plenty on their plate, so it’s possible they won’t spend much effort chasing Foursquare’s niche. Still, it’s hard to see room for three social networks that let you broadcast your whereabouts to your pals. But that’s not dissuading guys who can write big checks.

The way Google (GOOG) handled the Buzz rollout was “irresponsible,” said Harbour. “Google constantly tells the public to ‘just trust us,’” she said. “But based on my observations, I do not believe consumer privacy played any significant role in the release of Buzz….When Gmail users created their accounts, they signed up for e-mail services. Their expectations did not include social networking.”

Indeed, they did not, as evidenced by the breadth and volume of the outcry over the service. And while Google, to its credit, quickly adjusted Buzz to address privacy complaints, the fact that it had to do so at all is cause for concern. Publicly exposing user data first and addressing questions about the exposure later is poor form and sets a lousy precedent.

Said Harbour: “Technology companies are learning harmful lessons from each other’s attempts to stretch the privacy envelop. Even the most respected and popular online companies, those who say they respect privacy, insist on launching products where the guiding privacy policy seems to be, ‘Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.’”

Tough to argue with this given what we saw with Buzz, though I’m sure Google will try. I’ve asked the company for comment and will update here if I hear back.

UPDATE: Google spokesman Brian Richardson just called in with the following statement: “User choice and transparency are top of mind for us. When we realized that we had unintentionally made users unhappy, we worked quickly to make immediate changes.”

[Image credit: Asaf Hanuka, Tropical Toxic]

But you may still end up watching the awards or find yourself in conversation with someone who cares about them. Or just making small talk, or whatever.

So here are a couple of data points you can bruit about, if you’d like. They come via Nielsen, which is trying to measure online “buzz” about the films and actors up for awards.

What is “buzz”? In this case, Nielsen is monitoring user-generated chatter about the Oscars over the last month. Whether it’s Twitter, blog comments, discussion boards, etc. Note that Nielsen is just reporting on volume here, not sentiment. So it’s possible that many of the people talking about “Avatar” hate it.

But they are talking about it, more than anything else (see chart below; click to enlarge).

Go ahead and draw your own conclusions. Mine: Not at all interesting that “Avatar” is generating chatter since it’s the most popular–or at least the highest-grossing–movie of all time. But barely anyone has seen “The Hurt Locker”–at least compared with, say, “The Blind Side.” So that’s interesting. Right?

And here’s Nielsen’s assessment of the Best Actor and Best Actress categories:

Again, many more people saw George Clooney saunter in and out of airports than saw Jeff Bridges getting drunk, so that means…I don’t know. Maybe they’re talking about Jeff Bridges because all the Oscar TV shows and articles are predicting a win for Jeff Bridges. That would make sense, right?

Meanwhile, an update on the three million New York-area TV watchers who may not be able to watch the Oscars on ABC if Disney (DIS) and Cablevision (CVC) can’t work out their spat: There is no update.

At the moment the two companies are still sending out press releases that are supposed to be incendiary. But they are, in fact, very dull.