On Wednesday the social network announced several updates to its governing policy that may ultimately limit the community’s ability to overturn future policy decisions. In a blog post authored by Elliot Schrage, its head of communications, Facebook said it will remove a voting system that gives its users the opportunity to strike down a policy change if a change prompts more than 7,000 comments and if more than 30% of people on Facebook participate in a vote.

Read the rest of its post on its original site »

Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

The pair will apparently say he is departing for “personal reasons.” Sources said that Thompson will be claiming to be leaving due to a serious illness that he recently discovered he had.

But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is the key reason for the abrupt end to his tenure as a CEO.

Thompson’s likely replacement on an interim basis will be Yahoo’s global media head Ross Levinsohn, who most recently also ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales.

In addition to the management upheaval, Yahoo’s board is closing in on a settlement with the man who discovered Thompson’s misstep, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, said sources.

The situation could change, since Yahoo’s full board still has to meet this morning to officially approve the sweeping changes at the long-troubled company.

But, if it is, this development goes a long way toward fixing some of what has been ailing Yahoo recently.

And it’ll also be a stunning victory for Loeb (pictured here), since the pugnacious hedge fund investor is set to get three board seats from a slate proposed by him as part of a proxy fight aimed at Yahoo. The new Yahoo directors will be media exec Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Loeb’s fourth selection — former NBC head Jeff Zucker — will withdraw.

The five current Yahoo directors — who were to step down at the company’s annual meeting this summer — will leave the board effective immediately, sources said, to make way for the Third Point selections.

Finally, Yahoo’s recently added director Fred Amoroso will be named chairman of the board.

Amoroso is the director who has been conducting the investigation into the issues raised by Loeb about how the fake academic credentials got in Thompson’s public bios, as well as in Yahoo’s regulatory filings, and also the hurried circumstances around his hiring in January.

Those mysteries — read, screw-ups — might never be solved now, although Thompson made a convoluted attempt to explain it all in two awkward employee meetings at the end of last week. In those gatherings, according to numerous sources, he blamed a headhunting firm for introducing the mistake when he was being hired for a job at eBay in the mid-2000 timeframe.

That company, Heidrick and Struggles, slapped back last week with an internal memo, noting that Thompson’s claim was “verifiably not true.” Sources said that Heidrick told Yahoo’s board that it was in possession of a resume that Thompson had apparently submitted showing the inaccurate CS degree on it.

That memo, impugning Thompson’s credibility, was one of many that piled on to create an impossible situation for the Yahoo board, related to his leadership ability going forward.

Thompson had also previously issued a Yahoo statement, in which he apologized for the “distraction” caused by the problematic resume, but not for the mistake itself.

And, initially, Yahoo — under his direction — had called the borked resume an “inadvertent error.”

Such fumbling to fix the situation was among the many other issues that the board has been considering relating the ability of Thompson to remain in his job. Also of importance was the sinking morale of Yahoo employees, who had largely rejected Thompson’s excuses in the ResuMess scandal.

Internal message boards at Yahoo lit up all last week, with staffers largely rejecting his explanations. In addition, a number of top execs and engineers approached the board calling for Thompson’s firing.

While that’s not precisely what happened here, it’s close enough to describe Thompson’s departure as inevitable.

All this change comes in the wake of a massive restructuring he was in the midst of at Yahoo, after 2,000 employee layoffs.

Thompson was pushing forward a vision of adding a much more significant data and commerce element to Yahoo’s largely ad-based business.

That is likely to be less stressed under media-focused Levinsohn, who will be essentially trying out to be the permanent CEO.

Well known in the media and advertising communities, he has worked at a number of big online efforts over many years.

According to his bio at Yahoo, where he arrived in 2010:

He previously served as the President of News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media, where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations, strategy and acquisitions that helped transformed the company into a leader in digital media. He also held senior management positions with AltaVista, an early pioneer and leader in search, CBS Sportsline where he oversaw all content and development for the top rated sports site, and HBO where he launched and oversaw a unit developing new programming and revenue streams. Levinsohn also was the co-founder and managing director of Fuse Capital, an investment and strategic equity management firm focused on investing in and building digital media and communications companies.

Levinsohn sits on the board of Freedom Communications and the Bogart Pediatric Cancer Research Program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from The American University.

So far in my checking, Levinsohn’s resume is accurate.

More to come, obviously.

I have emails and texts and calls into everyone for comment, but apparently they are all out at a Mother’s Day brunch (except me).

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

Memo to Flipboard, as well as Pulse, CNN’s Zite and AOL’s Editions: You might want to make some room in the already-crowded news and social reader space, because you’re about to get some bigfoot company.

Next Wednesday, according to sources close to the situation, Yahoo will finally officially unveil its offering, called Livestand.

And perhaps as early as next week or in the weeks soon after, Google will also weigh in with its version of the genre — code-named Propeller — which also might be the product’s name. Another moniker under strong consideration: Currents.

As I have previously reported, Google Propeller is an HTML5 reader for the Apple iPad and Android — essentially a souped-up version of similar apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping users better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies on tablet devices.

Flipboard, the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, is now available only on the Apple iPad.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

According to sources, Propeller will launch with a plethora of media partners, as well as integration into the Google+ social network. The aim of the search giant is to offer media companies easy tools for publishing content on these devices, as well as a better path to monetization.

That is essentially the same plan at Yahoo, which has been working on Livestand with hopes of it being a product that will woo publishers into tight collaboration with the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Livestand was announced by Yahoo’s now-fired CEO Carol Bartz in February, at a speech at the World Mobile Congress in Spain.

At the time, Bartz demoed a magazinelike platform that would allow publishers to put up content easily and give users the ability to personalize their selections based on search history and interests.

Bartz called it “content in context.” (You can see the demo video below.)

But while Bartz promised the product within three months, development has been slowed by its complex technologies, bugs and the need to sign on publishers.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is pushing the product hard as a way for the company to reinvigorate its media products.

It’s not clear how many publishers Yahoo will have at launch, and neither are the distribution plans, beyond flacking it from the Web site and being present in app stores.

Google, on the other hand, has its Android platform to push out Propeller, although it all must work as well on Apple’s iPad, which is the dominant tablet on the market.

But just because both Yahoo and Google are big companies is by no means a guarantee of success — think Yahoo 360 or Google Wave or Buzz — and their lateness might be a hindrance.

And, in fact, other news reader apps are much further along. The leader, Flipboard, has already had four million downloads and 50 partnerships with leading publishers.

It also has started to introduce rich advertising products and, perhaps most importantly, has tight social integration with Twitter and Facebook.

There will be social elements on both Yahoo’s Livestand and Google’s Propeller. But news reading will be stressed more, making them more like Pulse, a tiny but highly innovative start-up.

Each of the existing apps will presumably compete by adding on more features. Pulse recently added cross-platform, cross-device syncing, while Flipboard is close to unveiling an iPhone version it has said it was working on.

Yahoo and Google PR declined comment.

Here is the Livestand demo video from February:

Google+ kingpin Bradley Horowitz has joined the board of Wordnik, which has also just raised another round of funding of $8 million.

It’s the first board seat ever for Horowitz, who has been a bit busy of late launching the search giant’s first successful social networking product.

Wordnik, which claims to have the word’s most complete map of the language you are currently reading, was founded by Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary.

On its Web site, Wordnik notes it has “billions of words, 965,125,300 example sentences, 6,690,770 unique words, 223,693 comments, 168,573 tags, 121,180 pronunciations, 61,144 favorites and 936,294 words in 30,038 lists created by 70,054 Wordniks.”

Its grand aim is to be the company that powers definitions and context for publishers of all kinds around the Web — from blogs to articles to even tweets — much as a mapping company might render navigational information.

The aim of owning the world’s largest word graph is ambitious and innovative, although the effort to create a viable business out of it all will be its next job. Wordnik now has 18 employees at its San Mateo, Calif., HQ.

McKean gave a demo of its Smartwords feature at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in 2010, after it had earlier raised $4.8 million from a number of venture firms and other angel investors.

Here’s an interview I did with McKean, Horowitz and Wordnik CEO Joe Hyrkin, who came on board in March, this weekend outside Buck’s in Woodside, as well as the video of the D8 demo of Wordnik:

And here is the official press release about the new funding and Horowitz appointment:

BRADLEY HOROWITZ NAMED TO WORDNIK BOARD;
WORDNIK RAISES $8 MILLION IN SERIES C FUNDING

Horowitz Accepts First Board Appointment; New and Existing Investors Support Wordnik as it Takes Innovative Word/Context Discovery Capability to the Marketplace

SAN MATEO, Calif. – July 25, 2011 – Wordnik, maker of the most innovative word navigation system, today announced that Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Product Management for Google and longtime Silicon Valley executive, would join its board of directors. This is Horowitz’s first board appointment.

In addition, Wordnik has raised $8 million in its third round of venture capital funding, led by new investor Lucas Venture Group. Mohr Davidow Ventures, FLOODGATE, Baseline Ventures, Roger McNamee and additional private investors also participated in this round, which is earmarked to fund strategic growth as Wordnik builds out a range of new product and service offerings. This Series C investment brings Wordnik’s total funding to $12.8 million.

One of the most highly respected executives in the high-tech industry, Bradley Horowitz oversees product design for Google’s social and communications efforts including Gmail, Blogger, Picasa, and the recently launched Google+ Project. Before joining Google, Horowitz led Yahoo’s advanced development division, which developed new products such as Yahoo! Pipes, and drove the acquisition of products such as Flickr and MyBlogLog. Previously, he was Co-Founder and CTO of Virage, where he oversaw the technical direction of the company from its founding through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Autonomy.

“I’ve devoted my career to finding and working on innovative technologies,” said Horowitz. “In accepting my first Board appointment, I now have the opportunity to help guide Wordnik, a company that started with an incredibly innovative word navigation system, as it continues to offer deeper access to discovery and meaning across digital text. I know it will be a very rewarding experience.”

“Wordnik has changed the way consumers discover and interact with words by providing the most relevant context and meaning available anywhere,” said Joe Hyrkin, CEO of Wordnik. “With this investment from our longtime VC partners and strengthened by the addition of Bradley Horowitz to our board, we enter an exciting new phase for the company, building out our core technology and creating new leveraged offerings for a wide variety of content and commerce partners. Bradley brings us both great product insight and industry expertise, and will work with our founders, Erin McKean and Tony Tam, on future innovation.”

Wordnik was launched in 2008 with the mission to help people unlock the value of words and phrases and to discover what information is most personally meaningful. Wordnik’s technology provides additional access to content and context from a wide range of sources including the world’s most respected dictionaries, Wordnik users, and from unexpected places like Twitter and Flickr.

“Wordnik.com has offered consumers an easy way to gain more meaning and deeper context around words – kind of like a ‘GPS for words,’” said Jon Feiber of Mohr Davidow Ventures. “The next frontier for Wordnik is to bring the power of Wordnik to a wide range of publishers and other content providers by providing the most relevant discovery experience for their users. We think Wordnik will quickly establish itself as a valuable asset to its business partners, in addition to its continuing as an exceptional consumer site.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110725/googles-horowitz-joins-board-of-wordnik-as-online-dictionary-site-garners-8m-more-in-funding-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110428/godspeed-on-that-investing-thing-yertle-but-i-still-have-some-questions-for-your-boss-arianna/ http://allthingsd.com/20110428/godspeed-on-that-investing-thing-yertle-but-i-still-have-some-questions-for-your-boss-arianna/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:19:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=43217

Would it surprise you to know that BoomTown doesn’t really care anymore if TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington sidelines as a blogger while he makes investments in tech companies his tech news site covers?

In a post yesterday, titled “An Update to My Investment Policy,” Arrington made his seemingly cogent arguments that plenty of disclosure made it all “fine,” took one of his typical look-at-me swipes at anyone who dared to question this logic (apparently, we’re crappy “direct” competitors, so we haters have no standing to comment!) and presumably went on his merry investing way.

While I was first irked–because it was an appalling show to many of us cranky standards-insisting whiners–I soon realized Arrington had made a good argument about who he is and, frankly, who he has always been.

In other words, it’s a kind of there-he-goes-again thing, vaguely icky but hardly surprising and completely genuine.

Meanwhile, his new boss, AOL content head Arianna Huffington, pointed me to his post in an email.

When I asked her for an on-the-record comment, as usual, she politely and quickly complied, writing in support of Arrington:

“TechCrunch is committed to transparency. Michael has written about the guidelines he follows–that he rarely writes about companies in which he is an investor, and that, when he does, he clearly discloses this information. The same rules apply when TechCrunch’s writers cover these companies.”

Hold the phone.

Because while I kind of understand where Arrington is coming from, what I don’t understand is how this kind of convenient and on-the-fly rule-making can govern a much larger company whose strongly and repeatedly stated goal by Huffington herself is to create quality journalism.

Since I believed Huffington–whom I like very much as an Internet figure and as a friend–I was confused at what the rules for the whole of AOL content were now.

That’s why I sent her a long new list of questions to answer, which are:

1) What are, if any, the ethical guidelines about making investments for the editorial staff at HuffPo media group properties?

2) Since Arrington now seems to have permission to do so from you, can other editors at AOL properties do the same–that is, make very adjacent investments to what their site covers, as long as they disclose it? For example, can an editor who runs the entertainment site make investments in entertainment companies she/he has coverage responsibility over? (By the way, did you give him permission to make these investments? Did he ask?)

3) Is there anyone who polices what is fair coverage of competitors–i.e. companies competing with companies your editors invest in?

4) If an editor makes investments in a company and someone who works for them writes about that company, does that editor have to recuse himself from the story? Is that even possible?

5) Since you just fired someone for what you called an ethical breach–asking freelancers to work for free and also seemingly defending an attempt to curry favor with an advertiser/client–why is this not an ethical breach?

I had a lot more questions, still unanswered by Huffington, but you can see where this is going.

Simply put, does AOL, which is touting itself as a 21st-century media company, need to have 21st-century rules of the road? Or perhaps not so much?

UPDATE: Now, it is a real clown circus at AOL, with the company declaring that editorial personnel cannot make investments, except Arrington!

“As a rule, in order to avoid conflicts of interests, AOL Huffington Post Media Group editors, writers, and reporters may not have a financial interest in a company or industry that they regularly cover,” AOL said in a statement to Business Insider today, even though I nicely asked for a comment on the issue yesterday. “Arrington operates from a unique position.”

And how! Where do I get such a faboo ethical hall pass from Content Principal Huffington?

I suppose I should go all slouching-towards-Bethlehem here, and wring my hands over this unusual ruling, but what’s the use?

As you might have read: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

How did this all start, especially since I feel like this ridiculous tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot over Arrington’s investment-making might actually be my fault a little bit?

Here’s why:

On Tuesday night around 10 pm (just when I start getting revved up), I wrote a testy email to Arrington’s bosses at AOL–Huffington and CEO Tim Armstrong–as well as the Internet portal’s sharp PR head, asking for a response about what seemed to me to be a glaring conflict of interest at TechCrunch related to new investment activity by Arrington and the site’s coverage of those particular companies he had invested in.

It was all disclosed, of course, but it still felt, as I said, icky.

And, given the recent and loudly stated goal of promoting quality journalism by Huffington–including the recent dismissal of AOL’s Moviefone site editor over what the company considered ethical lapses–it seemed pertinent to ask.

Mostly because I don’t think they actually knew much–if at all–about Arrington’s increasing investing action. Armstrong said as much in an email to me, and Huffington assured me they were going to check it out tout de suite.

But rather than the answer I was waiting on, up popped Arrington’s missive yesterday, which I assume came after his bosses asked for some info on this.

In it, he explained his controversial decision to go back into investing again, in what is clearly a more significant manner.

It was a practice he had abandoned years earlier, apparently after being pecked by detractors for it.

But, dear readers, no more! Let Arrington be Arrington!

And that seems to be a talented blogger with a flare for the dramatic, with a clearly sharply-honed news nose and sassy writing skills, but a scribe who much prefers to be a playah than just an observer and chronicler of that play.

And, after more reflection, I thought: Well, maybe it is a better idea for Arrington to go play with all the boys in Silicon Valley, which would probably be more fun than taking flack for lack of traditional journalistic ethics he never ascribed to in the first place.

I once jokingly nicknamed Arrington Yertle the Turtle after the Dr. Seuss book on one dubious king of one small pond in Sala-Ma-Sond, after he went particularly nuts on the topic of news-embargo breaking.

That diatribe on how he saw news rules–which is to say, there aren’t any that bind him–was vintage Arrington, too. And, after reading his latest post, I suddenly realized that it’s pointless to give a turtle a hard time for not being a fish.

But Huffington is another story. She has put herself in word and deed right into the center of the debate on where news is going on the Web, especially after AOL paid $315 million for her Huffington Post news and opinion site.

Huffington has certainly taken a lot of hits over the years as the HuffPo has grown, some deserved, but she has clearly led an impressive effort.

In fact, I think the cute-kitten and celebrity-loving angle played up by her detractors to dismiss her is silliness, because she and the Huffington Post are clearly more than that and are obviously having a major impact on the future direction of content in the digital age.

But that power she has sought also gives her a responsibility to say exactly what that means on a real and granular and consistent level, beyond the platitudes of wanting to make great journalism that she declares all the time now.

In other words, very specifically: What does Arianna Huffington stand for in regards to journalism? What are her rules and standards and codes? And, perhaps more importantly, what does she not stand up for?

These are questions I hope Huffington–who is really good at smacking back at criticism, too (See: the New York Times’ Bill Keller)–will address in one of her patented blog-xplosions and many times over, too.

Until then, here’s a link to my very long and very detailed ethics disclosure on All Things Digital, which is exactly how our little site thinks it should be in the digital age.

In short, besides signing the Dow Jones Code of Conduct–standard at The Wall Street Journal and other DJ publications–all our editorial staff is required to also pen their own in-plain-English personal and detailed account of disclosures that are pertinent to their job.

(You can read an extensive interview with me on the subject, in fact, which was posted here by Two Bananas Marketing, this week.)

My ATD disclosure is probably the most detailed of all of them, since I gay-married Megan Smith a dozen years ago. She later became a VP at Google, which I cover from time to time, especially related to other companies I focus on more, such as Yahoo.

Most of the time, if you care to read my posts on Google, I am probably tougher and snarkier than not, mostly because I know the search giant from its earliest days.

And, even though I once wrote extensively for the Journal about Google since its founding and before Megan arrived there, I thought it wise to lay it all out in detailed detail.

(By the way, if you want to try to tweak me by asking what News Corp.-owned Fox News’ ethics rules are, I don’t know, as ATD belongs to Dow Jones, which has had them forever. I will say, though, that Roger Ailes often freaks me out.)

In any case, as Arrington preaches, the more disclosure the better, and perhaps I should say even more so here, given the current swirl, by noting explicitly that I garner exactly no financial benefits from my relationship with Megan.

That might seem odd, because she certainly earns more. But I don’t know how much nor do I ask, since we have separate bank accounts and she always pays up–well, almost always–when half the bills are due. While it sounds painfully un-romantic, we only spend overall what each of us can afford equally in an exact 50-50 split.

In addition, I also legally signed away all rights to inheritance–although I had no such marriage rights in the first place, being gay–of Megan’s assets, which are in a trust for her relatives and our sons (for when they are too old to have any fun).

More to the point, I believe this makes me the only person to marry an exec at a hot Silicon Valley company with no prospect of any gold-digging.

Thus, I clearly would make the worst investor ever–not that I ever invest in tech or plan to while I am a reporter covering the sector.

Thank god, I suppose, that Michael Arrington is there to take up the slack.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110428/godspeed-on-that-investing-thing-yertle-but-i-still-have-some-questions-for-your-boss-arianna/feed/ 37 http://allthingsd.com/20110316/100-percent-fresh-exclusive-flixsterrotten-tomatoes-in-acquisition-talks-with-yahoo-and-others/ http://allthingsd.com/20110316/100-percent-fresh-exclusive-flixsterrotten-tomatoes-in-acquisition-talks-with-yahoo-and-others/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:02:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41652

Flixster–the popular social movie site whose brands include the Rotten Tomatoes premium reviews site, as well as BuddyTV–is in early acquisition talks with several suitors, including Yahoo, said sources close to the situation.

The price being discussed for the San Francisco-based start-up is between $60 million and $90 million, said several sources, in talks that are “substantive.”

Nonetheless, any acquisition negotiations could always fail. In fact, Flixster held advanced discussions in late 2007 with IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Along with Yahoo, which is interested in bringing in a strong team to bolster the entertainment offerings of the Silicon Valley Internet portal, sources said several media giants are also eyeing Flixster in order to strengthen their ties to entertainment consumers. Likely candidates in this regard include Disney and Warner Bros.

Interestingly, one of Flixster’s big shareholders is News Corp., which traded its Rotten Tomatoes unit for a 20 percent stake in the combined entity a little over a year ago.

But its minority stake gives News Corp. little influence over Flixster’s fate, although its IGN gaming unit head Roy Bahat is on the Flixster board. News Corp.–which has been shedding Web properties, such as its current effort to sell MySpace–is not bidding for Flixster.

But the interest in the site by Yahoo and others is obvious.

Flixster has attracted a huge online audience, which trades all kinds of recommendations, ratings, news and even post user-generated movie reviews on the Web site and via widgets on social networking sites, mostly on Facebook. Its recent mobile app efforts have been successful.

Co-founded in 2006 by CEO Joe Greenstein and CTO Saran Chari, Flixster has raised $7 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pinnacle Ventures, as well as garnering angel investments, such as from Silicon Valley entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

The combination with Rotten Tomatoes and its more robust Web presence made a lot of sense. It features mostly premium content, including professional reviews, trailer videos and news.

The site is famous for its clever fresh and rotten tomato rating system for movies.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment and I have not received a response from emails sent to Greenstein.

Until he does, here’s my video interview with Greenstein, Chari and COO Steve Polsky, in which they talked about the deal to combine Flixster with Rotten Tomatoes:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110316/100-percent-fresh-exclusive-flixsterrotten-tomatoes-in-acquisition-talks-with-yahoo-and-others/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110217/spotify-signs-on-emi-for-us-launch-at-least-one-more-to-go/ http://allthingsd.com/20110217/spotify-signs-on-emi-for-us-launch-at-least-one-more-to-go/#comments Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:52:02 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29938 It’s getting closer: Spotify has finalized a U.S. distribution deal with EMI Music, multiple sources tell me.

Both EMI and Spotify declined to comment.

Coupled with last month’s Sony deal, Spotify now has the approval from two of the four major music labels for an American launch. But that still doesn’t guarantee you’ll see the streaming music subscription service in America anytime soon.

In order to make a credible offer to U.S. users, Spotify will need to at least get Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest label, on board, and it’s not there yet.

It would also be nice if Spotify could land Warner Music Group, which now seems more doable than in the past, given Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman’s increasingly positive comments about the company.

If and/or when Spotify does come to the U.S., it will also have to contend with new rules from Apple, which will require a 30 percent cut of any subscriptions the service sells through Apple’s iTunes platform. That tariff is going to be a significant problem for many of Spotify’s peers, who are working on slim margins to begin with; I don’t know how Spotify plans to address this one.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110217/spotify-signs-on-emi-for-us-launch-at-least-one-more-to-go/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20110215/googles-schmidt-we-would-have-loved-to-have-nokia-adopt-android/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/googles-schmidt-we-would-have-loved-to-have-nokia-adopt-android/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:15:06 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4216 Google would have loved Nokia to choose Android, and executive Eric Schmidt expressed hope that it might someday decide to do so, its partnership with Microsoft notwithstanding.

“I hope at some time in the future they will be [willing] to choose Android again,” Schmidt said in a roundtable discussion with a small group of reporters following his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Schmidt said that he and Android chief Andy Rubin had talked quite a bit with Nokia and that the company understood its operating system well, but declined to say how advanced the talks with his company had gotten. “We did talk to them,” he said. “I would rather not go into the details.”

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told Mobilized on Tuesday that Microsoft will pay billions of dollars for the right to have the company cast the “swing vote” in favor of Windows Phone 7.

Asked whether he agreed that the Nokia-Microsoft partnership makes the smartphone business a three-horse race, Schmidt said, “They’ll have to deliver.”

Separately, Schmidt said regarding near-field communications that Google intends to build a business, but won’t be getting into the credit card or terminal business, but is interested in delivering offers to NFC-equipped devices.

He also reiterated that the company isn’t looking to get into the media business.

“It’s important not to get into businesses you don’t understand,” Schmidt said.

Rubin did say that, having gotten into the business of selling apps, Google is also exploring what other kinds of digital goods it might sell, but had no comment on whether it would sell music or publications.

Asked by Mobilized whether the company needs to do more on the social front, Schmidt said that the company isn’t as interested in building products to compete with Facebook as it is to have the social signals it needs in its core products. However, he said that the Facebook “Like” button or something akin to it is important because what you and your friends like is a key to delivering personalized search results.

On the EU front, Schmidt said that company has had some conversations with regulators and looks forward to more in order to address any concerns.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/googles-schmidt-we-would-have-loved-to-have-nokia-adopt-android/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110215/june-30-deadline-for-apple-subscriptions/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/june-30-deadline-for-apple-subscriptions/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:30:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57837 Apple’s new subscription plan has a compliance deadline. June 30, according to a memo sent to publishers earlier this year. “For existing apps already in the App Store, we are providing a grace period to bring your app into compliance with this guideline,” it reads. “To ensure your app remains on the App Store, please submit an update that uses the In App Purchase API for purchasing content, by June 30, 2011.”

That leaves legacy apps like Hulu Plus, Netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody and others a little over four months to implement an in-app purchasing mechanism–assuming they can come to terms with the thought of handing Apple a 30 percent cut on subscriptions.

Reached for comment, Hulu declined to give one. Netflix and the others haven’t yet responded to our requests.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/june-30-deadline-for-apple-subscriptions/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20110214/rackspace-is-not-for-sale/ http://allthingsd.com/20110214/rackspace-is-not-for-sale/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:00:20 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=3165 Practically everyone who meets him asks Lanham Napier when his company is going to be sold. He’s the CEO of Rackspace, the Web hosting and cloud computing concern that’s one of several thought to be acquisition targets following the recent buyouts of Terremark by Verizon and NaviSite by Time Warner.

So many people have asked Napier about the possibility that Rackspace might be taken out, it’s not hard to detect that his answer is well rehearsed. Rackspace is not for sale, he says, and he won’t comment on any approaches by larger companies it may be fielding. But he clearly doesn’t mind the speculation.

The market certainly is working on the assumption that an acquisition is coming. I talked with Napier on Friday, the day after Rackspace reported quarterly earnings that grew 50 percent over the same period in 2009, which was enough to send Rackspace shares up by more than $3, or more than 8 percent, closing at $40.07–more than twice what it traded for a year ago.

Rackspace will be a giant all its own, Napier insists, before it gets taken out by one of the lumbering tech giants that might like to drop a few billion dollars to absorb it. Ask him Rackspace’s chances of being acquired in the next several months, and he insists the company is not for sale. It sure sounds like he means it, as the growth opportunity that lies before him is just so good. But it’s also clear that he enjoys being in the position of being asked.

It’s a nice sentiment, but organic growth is only going to get you so far. Rackspace will cross the billion-dollar mark in revenue for the first time this year, and it has only $105 million in cash, so the only acquisitions Rackspace can make without going into a debt are small ones like the one last week of Anso Labs that NewEnterprise reported exclusively. The smart money says we’ll get a chance to see how serious Napier is about remaining independent before the end of the year.

NewEnterprise: Let’s talk about your business against the backdrop of the industry you’re in. In the last few weeks we’ve seen both NaviSite and Terremark acquired by larger companies. Clearly there’s some consolidation going on in the Web hosting and cloud services hosting business.

Napier: There is a shift in technology market around cloud. The market is shifting from one where companies do things themselves to buying technology as a service. We think of it as a world that’s going from buying inputs to buying outputs. We think this is a nascent trend and we’re in the first game of a seven-game series. On a macro basis we see this as the biggest growth opportunity in technology. Our strategy is to win the most valuable segment, which we believe is going to be the service segment. So if you look at how the market is developing, you have players like Amazon that’s offering a do-it-yourself cloud. For people who want the lowest price, and can do the work themselves, Amazon is an incredible pick. What we’re focused on is trying to be a service leader. We want to serve companies that want to run a critical app and who want us to run it for them and take accountability for it so they can sleep well at night. Over the past six quarters or so we’ve found ourselves in a crazy good spot. The growth opportunity ahead of us is expanding.

Let’s talk about growth. You don’t have all much cash on the balance sheet, about $105 million or so. You can grow organically, or you can acquire. You’ve made some small acquisitions recently. Is that going to continue?

We are an organic growth company. We have been since inception. The acquisitions we’ve done have been about technology and talent to improve our portfolio and the way we serve customers. We will remain an organic growth company. There are, I think, really two kinds of companies. Those that can grow organically and those that can’t, and so they grow by acquisition. Some companies are good at growing through acquisition. We’re just not. We’re organic growth folks here, so we’re going to stick to that. But we’ll still buy technology, capabilities and talent that we think is critical. As to the consolidation that’s taking place in the industry, it’s a great validation of the growth opportunity. There are some legacy tech and telecom companies that are behind and are trying to buy their way into the game. There was a similar wave of consolidation eight years ago and a lot of our competitors got taken out.

So let me ask the question you’re getting a lot lately. I’ve had three conversations with different people who have each picked three different large technology companies they think should acquire Rackspace. Have you been approached by anyone?

We have a policy not to comment on anything like that all. What I will tell you is that we’re not for sale. We feel like we have a tiger by the tail. I’ve been lucky to be at the company for 11 years and I think the next 11 years look better than the last. We’re not building the company to flip it. We think the market opportunity is such that new giants are going to emerge, and we want to be one of those giants.

Absent a scenario that someone shows up with eight or 10 billion in cash to buy your company, what are your strategic priorities for the year?

There’s a couple. We are making big investments in our product and service portfolio. That’s one. And then number two, we think we have a chance to improve the fundamental economics of our business model. As we make these investments, we’ll add more services and capabilities on top of our basic compute service. This drives up the average revenue for our basic compute which creates better outcomes for our customers and increases our economics. It’s a virtuous cycle. Our average revenue per server has increased for six consecutive quarters.

What are your biggest costs, and what kind of gross margin do you tend to run?

I think of them as investments, but I know that’s just semantics. Our no. 1 investment is technology and the Rackers [employees] that serve our customers. So if you look at the cost of revenue line, a year ago it was 31.5 percent. As of the end of 2010 it was 31.1 percent. We made some improvement. But we’re more focused right now on developing customer loyalty than we are in driving efficiency. It’s early in the game, and anytime a market is going through a period of rapid growth like this, it’s all about winning as many loyal and profitable customers as we can. When the growth slows down someday we’ll focus more on improving efficiencies throughout the business. Even so, in 2010 we grew faster, increased our margin and and improved our return on capital. Those are all difficult things, and we pulled it off.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110214/rackspace-is-not-for-sale/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/wael-ghonim-egypt-was-revolution-2-0-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/wael-ghonim-egypt-was-revolution-2-0-video/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:57:49 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3498 Wael Ghonim, the Google marketing executive who was detained for his role in organizing the Egyptian uprising on Facebook, was jubilant today after longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak finally capitulated to 18 days of protests and stepped down.

“If you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet,” Ghonim said in an interview with CNN.

Ghonim gives credit to the young Egyptians who organized themselves on Facebook, dating back to last June when activist Khaled Said was killed. Ghonim commented on how a video posted on Facebook (where he is administrator of a page commemorating Said) would be quickly shared by 50,000 people, calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a personal hero.

Ghonim said he plans to write a book on the topic called “Revolution 2.0.”

Mubarak’s government had shut down much of Egyptian Internet access and SMS service for nearly a week during the protests, then made concessions to not run for another term, but protests only intensified until he finally agreed to step down today.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/wael-ghonim-egypt-was-revolution-2-0-video/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/facebook-moves-to-disallow-apps-from-running-google-ads/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/facebook-moves-to-disallow-apps-from-running-google-ads/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:07:46 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3475 Facebook announced this week it will begin enforcing a policy that requires app developers to run advertising from a list of approved providers. The list is not short–it includes 40-some options–but it notably does not include Google’s AdSense and DoubleClick.

Facebook is not necessarily targeting Google specifically, but it’s an obvious omission. The social networking giant said ad providers can join the list if they agree to certain restrictions on advertising, which include a commitment to never utilize Facebook user data.

Facebook and Google have warred over transmitting user data in the past, with a back-and-forth over exporting user email addresses turning nasty in public last fall.

Facebook will start enforcing the whitelist ad provider policy starting Feb. 28. At that point, app developers who run Google ads–which seems a natural thing to do, given so many publishers use Google ads on other platforms–will have to shut them off and find another provider.

A spokesperson for Facebook said, “We are continuing to work with various ad providers and will add them to the list as they sign the terms. Note that the policy doesn’t go into effect for a few more weeks.” Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Google declined to comment.

The CEO of an approved ad provider commented that Facebook’s efforts to “restore control and authority of how third-party companies work within its platform” make sense and are generally good for users. (And also good for him, with Google out of the hunt!)

Image via Flickr user bulliver.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/facebook-moves-to-disallow-apps-from-running-google-ads/feed/ 11 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/videos-the-winklevii-media-blitz/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/videos-the-winklevii-media-blitz/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:00:08 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3379 Though Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss no-commented me and other reporters in a San Francisco court last month, they can’t seem to stay away from bashing Mark Zuckerberg for long. The twins, who are waiting to hear if appeals judges will invalidate a previous settlement with Facebook, offered videos and TV interviews to multiple outlets, which posted them online Tuesday. It’s still the same old Mark-Zuckerberg-stole-our-idea stuff, plus some creative camera work. And hey, at least they’re not outright stalking Zuckerberg like some other people.

Here’s one from CNN. The Winklevii tell Piers Morgan that it’s not ironic that they are now active Facebook users, despite their ongoing legal and moral crusades against the company. “Technically we’re using our idea….It’s really our product and we’re the originators.” (The two grown men, somewhat oddly, make little effort to differentiate from each other, so I’ll just attribute those comments to both of them.)

And here’s one from the Daily, which shot crazy amounts of creative B-roll of the Winklevosses’ rippling muscles and chiseled jaws (they are Olympic rowers, after all). This is part one of a three-part series by the Daily’s Erin Ade, who discloses she’s a childhood friend of the Winklevii. Cameron and Tyler say they want to tell Zuckerberg to “grow up and admit to the world and yourself what you already know is true…because the moment you do that the chapter will be closed and you can move on as an individual.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/videos-the-winklevii-media-blitz/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110208/tello-customer-service-ratings-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20110208/tello-customer-service-ratings-review/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:54:14 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1636 Call it a flair for the dramatic or a love of telling and hearing juicy stories. Whatever the reason, people have a tendency to talk more about their bad customer-service experiences than the good ones.

This week, I tested Tello (Tello.com), a new customer-service website and mobile app that encourages users to chime in on their customer-service experiences, good or bad. Businesses, or specific employees at those businesses, can be rated with a thumbs up or thumbs down and a detailed comment.

Tello was released in the Apple App Store this week, but I got special permission to test it early. It’s currently available for use at Tello.com, on other devices via mobile browsers at m.tello.com or as a native app on Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Tello’s founder and CEO, Joe Beninato, said an Android app is due out this spring.

At first glance, Tello seems to be another location-based service like Foursquare or Gowalla, which encourage people to “check in” while they’re at a specific place to find friends who are checked in there, or to earn badges and titles for checking in there more than anyone else. Broader review sites like Yelp let people comment on various aspects of a place or experience. But people using these services aren’t rating customer service specifically.

On the upside, Tello’s narrow scope means people know they’re reading solely about customer service, without hearing numerous details about other aspects of a business.

Screen for rating an employee

A rating as seen on Tello

The downside to Tello is that it can be hard to sum up an entire experience without considering other factors involved. If someone visits the new Italian restaurant down the street and its ambiance and food are outstanding, yet the wait staff is deplorable, a thumbs up or thumbs down doesn’t tell the whole story. For expert complainers, or people who like more space for expressing their opinions, Tello may seem too succinct. Its app and home page display portions of comments along with user ratings, so if you waxed on for a thousand words about a hotel’s poor Wi-Fi, bad lighting and slow room service, most people wouldn’t see those remarks at a glance.

Part of Tello’s appeal is that it offers a peek in on customer-service experiences around the country, so before I flew to California this week I took a look at Tello to see what businesses are getting good ratings out there. Only a relatively small group of beta testers were using Tello when I was testing it, limiting the number of rated businesses. But this will improve as more people use the service.

The Tello app uses GPS to recognize a user’s location and then displays a list of nearby businesses; nearby, in this case, is defined as within two-tenths of a mile. If people type in the name of a business and search, this broadens the location range search to within five miles.

On a few occasions, including a trip to my Washington, D.C., neighborhood’s independent coffee shop, a Greek restaurant and a Potbelly Sandwich Shop, I came up empty handed when I looked for reviews of these places. Mr. Beninato explained this was because some aspects of the search engine weren’t finalized at the time I was testing, and in one case, I was too far away from the business. Sure enough, after a final update, I had better luck finding businesses. A business can be manually added to Tello by selecting a plus icon and typing in details including the business’s name and address.

The Tello mobile app

As for rating individual employees, on most occasions, I didn’t think to ask the name of the person who helped me at the business so I could comment on their service. I did catch the name of a terrific waitress at the Greek restaurant because she signed the bill with a smiley face. In that case, I was able to make a specific comment about an employee, rather than a general comment about the restaurant. I gave Mara a thumbs up and commented she took time to make useful wine suggestions in the midst of a bustling evening with every table filled. The more I used Tello, the more I started to notice employees’ names.

After using Tello over a period of time, each user builds up a personalized page of ratings, which is helpful for remembering which places are worth a return visit and which ones to avoid. Any Tello rating is, by default, instantly shared on the Tello.com site as well as to users of the app; it can be posted out to Facebook and Twitter in the same step.

Tello aspires to be more than the destination where happy customers go to cheer or wronged customers go to whine. An option on the screen where ratings comments are entered lets users request a reply from a business if they had a bad experience. When someone selects this option, Tello contacts the user via email and asks how he or she wants to be contacted by the business—email or phone—so the business has a chance to fix things.

Starting this spring, Tello plans to roll out new features aimed at businesses that will allow them to claim their business on Tello by going through a verification process. They will then be automatically notified of bad experiences so they can decide how to handle a customer’s problems. And in the future, customers who rate businesses might be able to receive coupons.

Another new feature due out this spring will let businesses add lists of employees for Tello users to see, which may help them remember who served them or how to spell an employee’s name. Employees who receive good ratings could be acknowledged and rewarded by their employers, motivating them to work harder.

Though Tello is just getting started, it could be an incredibly helpful service through which satisfied customers get to tell friends about their experiences—or disappointed customers get to complain with a chance of actually being heard. Just know that Tello’s thumbs up or thumbs down ratings don’t allow for much ambiguity.

Watch a video with Katherine Boehret on Tello at WSJ.com/PersonalTech. Write to her at katie.boehret@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110208/tello-customer-service-ratings-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110205/could-executive-departures-accompany-nokia-strategy-shift/ http://allthingsd.com/20110205/could-executive-departures-accompany-nokia-strategy-shift/#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 22:09:54 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3593 Nokia is widely expected to announce some sort of strategy shift when CEO Stephen Elop meets with investors in London on Friday. A new report suggests, however, that several executive departures could also accompany the shift.

German weekly Wirtschaftswoche reported on Saturday that a number of executives may leave, citing company sources. According to a Reuters summary of the German article, among those who may depart are phone unit head Mary McDowell, markets unit manager Niklas Savander, chief development officer Kai Oistamo and services and solutions manager Tero Ojanpera.

Elop suggested on the company’s recent earnings call that a shift in strategy is needed for the company to better compete at the high end of the smartphone market and hinted the company might be open to adopting a new operating system such as Windows Phone or Android.

“The game has changed from battle of devices to war of ecosystems,” Elop said on last month’s earnings conference call, adding later that “Our industry has changed and we have to change faster.”

Until now, Nokia’s strategy has focused on its homegrown Symbian operating system, with plans to move to a mobile Linux variant known as MeeGo. In recent weeks, though, the company has been said to be weighing other alternatives and has canceled plans to bring a new smartphone to the U.S.

A Nokia representative declined to comment on any potential executive shifts. No major executive departures have been announced since Elop assumed the top post in September.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110205/could-executive-departures-accompany-nokia-strategy-shift/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110203/is-jason-kilar-trying-to-get-fired/ http://allthingsd.com/20110203/is-jason-kilar-trying-to-get-fired/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:05:02 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29246 Is Hulu’s CEO trying to get pushed out the door?

That’s the question of the day for the TV and Web video world, prompted by a blog post Jason Kilar published last night.

It’s a lengthy read about the TV business and where it’s headed, and most people I’ve talked to today think it’s smart and well-written.

Some of them also believe Kilar wrote it so that his bosses–executives at News Corp.’s Fox, Disney’s ABC, and Comcast’s NBCU–will give him the hook.

That’s because a lot of what Kilar wrote challenges the TV networks’ existing business model: He argues that there are too many ads, and that consumers want to be able to watch their shows on demand, not on a linear schedule. And, crucially, he argues that the cable network bundle is on its way out.

In other words, change or become the music labels: “History has shown that incumbents tend to fight trends that challenge established ways and, in the process, lose focus on what matters most: customers.”

And all of that makes perfect sense. Except for the part where he says it in public, while working for a company owned by three TV networks.

Kilar’s post began making waves immediately last night, and the Financial Times’ Matthew Garrahan was able to quickly find several network executives who are agog at the post.

Most tellingly, he got a Disney rep to officially distance the company from Kilar’s post, stating that his views (published on the official Hulu blog) were “personal and clearly not shared by anyone at Walt Disney.”

In fact, his views are almost certainly shared by some Disney executives, and others at Hulu backers News Corp.’s Fox and Comcast’s NBCU. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.) It’s just that they have no intention of changing their business anytime soon. Especially now that they’ve gotten cable providers to start paying them for content they used to give away, via “retransmission” fees.

“80, 90 percent of what he says is right,” says an executive at one of Hulu’s network owners. “But why print that? Does he think we’re going to say, ‘Oh, thank you! You’re right! We’d never thought of that! Let’s give away retrans!’? I can’t see what he thinks will happen.”

So here’s one possibility: Kilar knows he can’t win. And his post is supposed to be his “Jerry Maguire moment”, as Garrahan puts it–a fireworks display you put on because you don’t want to work at your current job anymore.

The other possibility: Kilar genuinely thinks he can win.

Up until now the former Amazon executive has done a marvelous job of building a site everyone was convinced would fail, and then sustaining–and expanding–a joint venture everyone thought would collapse.

Kilar has pulled some of that off with brinkmanship. As last week’s well-reported Wall Street Journal piece notes, Kilar threatened to quit last fall, when he was trying to get the networks to agree to cut their monthly price for Hulu Plus. He didn’t get the 50 percent cut he’d been pushing for, but he still managed to get the networks to agree to cut the price by 20 percent, to $8.

Also note that Kilar’s post quite clearly argues that the path he’s pushing for will be better for the networks in the end: “We believe content owners are in a strong position to make higher returns from TV content distribution in the future than they have historically.”

But if Kilar thought his arguments would carry more force in public, he may well have miscalculated. This could all blow over with time, but for now, at least, he has some very bummed backers.

“Here’s the irony. Jason is probably best to lead Hulu. But he is also too righteous/robot to do it ‘the wrong way’ or a way he won’t agree with,” says an industry executive.

Another reports that network executives are “crazy, angry” over the post. “I’d be stunned if Jason was still there in 60 days.”

I’ve asked Kilar for additional comment. I don’t expect to get it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110203/is-jason-kilar-trying-to-get-fired/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20110202/new-digg-ceo-calls-previous-launch-a-tragedy-commits-to-community/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/new-digg-ceo-calls-previous-launch-a-tragedy-commits-to-community/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:30:10 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3127 Matt Williams was named CEO of Digg late last summer, just a week after the social news service pushed a long-awaited relaunch that went terribly wrong, taking its site down and upsetting users (and when Digg users are angry, they let you know!).

Now, five months into the job, Williams is finding a voice of his own, separate from Digg founder Kevin Rose’s, and trying it out on the Digg community; the longtime veteran of Amazon recently participated in a well-received Digg Dialogg video interview, posted on Tuesday, to answer user questions. (It’s viewable here).

“There was a launch that was in violent disagreement with what our community expected out of the Web site,” Williams told Leo Laporte, who facilitated the interview based on Digg users’ questions. “It’s truly a tragedy of the ages, to some extent.”

But Digg is still a “very vibrant Web site,” with close to 20 million monthly unique visitors, Williams said, and the opportunity to hone a focus on social news that other companies may not have.

(Plus, despite layoffs, a perceived lack of relevancy relative to other social start-ups and multiple leadership changes, Digg still has plenty of money in the bank.)

“It is our top priority to rejuvenate the community,” Williams said.

Digg’s latest launch, called V4, was seen by many as a move to devalue the site’s homegrown community. V4 was the most significant in a string of product changes that took power away from the small body of users that set the agenda for the news site and gave a stronger voice to publishers and Digg’s own curators. And V4 was also an overdue, complete technology overhaul that left out many much-loved features.

In the Laporte interview, Williams quickly tackled precise details about previous features the Digg community wants reinstalled, noting, for instance, that the site has already brought back the “bury” button, allowing users to counteract other users’ votes on submitted stories. He said Digg is also planning future features such as a honing of its news-ranking algorithms for slower weekend traffic, when less-worthy stories may make it to the top.

Beyond those tweaks, Digg will make large-scale efforts to become more personalized, said Williams, and to create communities around specific topics. That’s not necessarily something that the old-time crowd will love, but it may make the site more useful for a broader audience.

Williams encouraged users not just to visit the site, but to comment on and vote up stories with Diggs; those participatory behaviors have decreased as a portion of overall traffic since the launch of V4, he said.

Being the voice of Digg is no small task, and it’s not just because of the company’s hypercritical user base. Digg has long been associated with the founding presence of TV and online video host Kevin Rose. And until Williams joined, Rose had been interim CEO after longtime leader Jay Adelson was pushed out of the company in April. Now Rose is occupied with his many angel investments, a new video show and a newsletter called “Foundation.”

Digg users were uncharacteristically positive in the comments section of the Williams interview entry. (The friendly tone makes me wonder if the old crowd has indeed high-tailed it somewhere else!) “Digg is in good hands,” said one. “I must say that Digg is doing a fantastic job listening to the community and implementing new features,” said another. One user even acknowledged, “I realize changes take time to implement.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/new-digg-ceo-calls-previous-launch-a-tragedy-commits-to-community/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110131/the-facebook-hedgehog-mascot-and-yelp-competitor-that-never-was/ http://allthingsd.com/20110131/the-facebook-hedgehog-mascot-and-yelp-competitor-that-never-was/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:53:19 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3015 Even if it sounds more like a tall tale than it does the truth, a post on Quora from early Facebook employee Ezra Callahan this morning is pretty amazing.

A Quora user asked, “Does Facebook need a pet (Android robot, Twitter bird, etc.) to improve its corporate image?”

Callahan, who joined Facebook in 2004 and was the company’s first product manager, replied that early Facebook president Sean Parker had advocated the company adopt a hedgehog (literally) as its mascot.

At the time, Facebook was working on a Yelp competitor, a would-be revenue-generating product it scrapped after getting venture funding.

Callahan and Matt Cohler (now a Benchmark venture capitalist and Quora’s lead investor) had looked into sending “each participating business a little stuffed blue hedgehog,” and Parker toyed with the idea of buying an actual hedgehog in Nevada, according to Callahan, who insists this is a true story. With Callahan’s departure from the company last year, none of those three are still at Facebook.

Read the full tale here.

I felt a little silly doing it, but I’ve asked Facebook PR for comment.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Image courtesy Flickr user Claus Rebler.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110131/the-facebook-hedgehog-mascot-and-yelp-competitor-that-never-was/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-phone-rumors-make-the-news-feed-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-phone-rumors-make-the-news-feed-again/#comments Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:25:34 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3013 Rumors of the Facebook Phone are once again back in the news, this time with a report that the social network will announce a deal with HTC at next month’s Mobile World Congress that will have the Taiwanese mobile device maker building Android phones with the Facebook name and color.

Previous rumors had the company building a phone with INQ Mobile. One of the challenges is that in addition to any true Facebook-designed phones, there are also a whole lot of phones with deep Facebook integration–including plenty of Android devices and the entire Windows Phone 7 product line. So it’s not clear where exactly the line is between a phone with good Facebook connections and a true “Facebook Phone.” However, I’d say if it is blue and bears the Facebook logo, that would count in my book. For its part, HTC declined comment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-phone-rumors-make-the-news-feed-again/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110126/twitter-nope-were-not-testing-a-self-serve-platform-yet/ http://allthingsd.com/20110126/twitter-nope-were-not-testing-a-self-serve-platform-yet/#comments Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:46:14 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28662 Twitter does indeed plan to roll out a self-serve ad platform, a la Facebook and Google, this year. But it hasn’t done so yet, isn’t testing one and has yet to build the thing.

So says Twitter, which is publicly calling out a MediaPost report published yesterday in which writer Laurie Sullivan said she had gotten a look at a test version of the platform, via Clix Marketing, an online ad buying shop.

Twitter says what Sullivan actually saw was the dashboard tool that Twitter provides all of its advertisers to give them an update on how their ads are performing and allow them to make tweaks to their campaigns. But Twitter ad buyers still have to work with humans, for now, either directly at Twitter or via intermediaries that do so, like Clix.

Here’s the official statement from spokesman Matt Graves: “Reports that Twitter is testing a self-serve ad platform are inaccurate. Our self-serve ad product will launch later this year.”

I’ve reached out to MediaPost for comment.

UPDATE: MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan argues with Twitter over the definition of “self-serve.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110126/twitter-nope-were-not-testing-a-self-serve-platform-yet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110121/is-larry-page-the-consummate-anti-social-ceo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110121/is-larry-page-the-consummate-anti-social-ceo/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:00:44 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2557 Google’s new CEO isn’t much for the social Web. If he has a presence on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, it was created with deep privacy settings or a fake name. I couldn’t even find a fleshed-out Google profile for Larry Page.

There are many other Fortune 500 CEOs in the same boat, and they certainly have plenty else to do with their time than post Facebook photos from Davos.

But non-Twittering CEOs are likely a dying breed, as transparency and authenticity in corporate communications come into vogue, and the younger generations move up through the ranks.

Google’s entire executive leadership is particularly anti-social for an Internet company, although unlike Page, Eric Schmidt, its CEO of the last 10 years, had the gumption to at least try Twitter and post updates every couple of weeks.

That their bosses decline to participate in what many see as the future of the Web is particularly grating for some young Google employees.

While the company circles around launching its own fully fledged social strategy, many Googlers feel that accountability for “getting social” starts at the top by leaders using the products themselves, rather than outright ignoring them.

Certainly, Page is incredibly private in all sorts of situations, both online and off. Here’s a memorable section from Ken Auletta’s book “Googled”:

“Larry Page is aggressively disdainful of marketing and public relations. In early 2008, Page instructed Google’s public relations department, which consisted of 130 people, that he would only give them a total of eight hours of his time that year for press conferences, speeches or interviews.”

That doesn’t seem like an approach that will go over well now that Page will be CEO of a company of Google’s stature, although perhaps he could save some time by crafting short tweets in lieu of full speeches.

While Page seems to be ignoring the social Web’s existence (he said Thursday he thinks it’s at the “very very early stages,” ceding comment on the topic to his co-founder Sergey Brin), the category has already had a significant competitive effect on Google.

The company says social is not yet negatively impacting its search business, but there are other ways it is creeping in: Through a significant talent drain to companies like Facebook, and a tarnishing of the company’s position as a tech leader.

In a way, part of the reason Page took control seems to be in response to the rise of Facebook, although there are clearly many other factors at play).

That’s because Page has now reinstated himself in a sacred position in Silicon Valley: The founder CEO.

One of the most impactful things the social Web has done is raised a new founder CEO to the tip-top of the tech industry: Mark Zuckerberg.

And, according to sources, the rise of Zuckerberg has been especially hard for Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to watch.

Zuckerberg was also just named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, an honor Page and Brin have never received.

And his company also just arranged a deal to raise money at a $50 billion valuation, making his own stake worth $15 billion, which happens to be the approximate net worth of each Page and Brin.

(As for Zuckerberg’s social media presence, he obviously uses Facebook quite actively, and also has a bare-bones LinkedIn profile and a Twitter account that hasn’t been updated in more than a year. And, like Page, he would not be considered a social butterfly in real life.)

So now Page has returned to presumably make Google innovative again with the passion of a founder. But with 10 years elapsed since he last had the job, he may want to go out and do a little personal market research on this whole social thing.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110121/is-larry-page-the-consummate-anti-social-ceo/feed/ 13 http://allthingsd.com/20110119/one-down-spotify-signs-sony-to-us-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20110119/one-down-spotify-signs-sony-to-us-deal/#comments Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:18:03 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28295 This doesn’t get them into the States, but it gets them a lot closer: Music service Spotify has finally signed with Sony for a U.S. distribution deal. Multiple sources tell me the deal, which has been very close since last fall, is now closed.

I’m told the terms call for a U.S. service that more or less mirrors the one Spotify offers in Europe: A certain number of hours per month of free streaming music, with the ability to pay for an ad-free version, or a more popular one that lets users listen on mobile devices like Apple’s iPhone.

Both Spotify and Sony declined to comment.

The deal doesn’t mean a U.S. launch is imminent for the service, which has been trying to make the leap from Europe for a couple of years, and which missed a self-imposed deadline to make it over in 2010. In order to make a credible offer to U.S. customers, it will need at least two of the three other big music labels to sign on.

And practically, at least one of those labels has to be Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music label. So Spotify will need to hammer out a deal with UMG and either Warner Music Group or EMI before we can start talking about a U.S. launch date.

The New York Post reported last week that Spotify was close to a Sony deal.

What’s taking Spotify so long to land in the U.S.? Depends on whom you ask.

Some industry sources tell me the big music labels are genuinely worried that Spotify’s free streaming service will increase the decline of CD sales, which have been dropping for a decade, but still make up the majority of the labels’ revenue.

Others have a more cynical take, though it’s not mutually exclusive: The labels, which have already licensed Spotify in Europe, simply want more cash from the company before they do an American deal. There is also muttering that the labels don’t want to upset Apple, which sells tunes on a track-by-track basis via its iTunes store and dominates the market for digital music.

It’s also unclear how close Spotify is to more label deals. Executives at the service have long been hopeful that getting one deal done would convince the other labels to join up. On the other hand, you could argue that it gives the holdouts that much more leverage.

And in any case, even if Spotify signed two more labels tomorrow, it would still take the company some time to cross the Atlantic, as it prepares a marketing campaign, etc.

It might also be nice for the company to have a new slug of cash on hand, something it would have if it goes through with fundraising talks it has been holding recently.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek talked to me about some of these issues, in a general and noncommittal way, at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference last month. You can see an abbreviated version of our chat below, or you can watch the whole thing here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110119/one-down-spotify-signs-sony-to-us-deal/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20110119/interviewing-jane-mcgonigal-on-gamification-for-good/ http://allthingsd.com/20110119/interviewing-jane-mcgonigal-on-gamification-for-good/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:05:35 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2468 Jane McGonigal thinks the way we can improve the world is to play more games.

Coinciding with the release of her book “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” is McGonigal’s keynote tomorrow at the Gamification Summit in San Francisco, and I’ll be interviewing her onstage afterward.

While there’s been much industry discussion of gamification, it’s often about adding lightweight gaming elements to all sorts of things to entice people to participate. McGonigal, it seems, is talking about something different: Using the motivation, focus and creativity of massively multiplayer online gamers to solve real-world problems.

I’m interested to hear her apply her ideas to social games, the stripped-down mindless diversions like Zynga’s CityVille that are growing so fast and addictive to so many.

What would you ask McGonigal? Email me, comment or tweet your questions, and I’ll be sure to incorporate them.

Here’s McGonigal speaking at TED last year, calling for 21 billion hours of online gaming a week by the year 2020.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110119/interviewing-jane-mcgonigal-on-gamification-for-good/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110113/a-delay-for-the-daily-apple-news-corp-push-back-launch-date/ http://allthingsd.com/20110113/a-delay-for-the-daily-apple-news-corp-push-back-launch-date/#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:18:18 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28059 Turns out you’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s long-awaited iPad news service.

Apple and News Corp. have made a joint decision to push back next week’s planned launch, according to sources familiar with the companies’ plans. The delay is supposed to give Apple time to tweak its new subscription service for publications sold through its iTunes platform.

Plans to debut the iPad newspaper at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next Wednesday have been tabled “for weeks, not months,” I’m told.

The issue isn’t with the app itself, which News Corp. executives and their proxies have been showing off over the last few weeks, but a new subscription feature that Apple is building into iTunes.

As I noted last month, the Daily was supposed “to use a new “push” subscription feature from Apple, where iTunes automatically bills customers on a weekly or monthly basis, and a new edition shows up on customers’ iPads every morning.”

A PR rep from News Corp., which also owns this Web site, confirmed the delay, but wouldn’t comment further. Apple declined to comment.

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