If you want a quick analysis of why Facebook would pay $1 billion for popular photo-sharing service Instagram, please ignore the obvious financials that just don’t add up at all and have most of the typically unshockable digerati shocked by the sheer amount of the price.

Actually, it’s pretty simple: Photos. Photos. And, oh yes, mobile photos — lots and lots and lots of them.

Astonishingly, Facebook users already upload an average of more than 250 million images daily, making it the most popular photo-sharing service on the Web.

But it’s not the best by far and not the most mobile, which is Facebook’s biggest weakness — that has been accomplished many others, especially Instagram, the favorite of power users who scoffed at Facebook’s weak tools. (The horror of no filters!)

Now — instead of all those billions of juicy digital photos snapped by an ever-growing legion of smartphone users loading up to the beautifully designed Instagram mobile app and living on the servers of the small San Francisco-based start-up — Facebook has now captured all these memories for its massive social networking site.

And while $1 billion seems an awful lot to pay for that privilege — Twitter is quaking with “OMG!” and “Wow!” and “WTF!” tweets about the acquisition — this is apparently priceless for Facebook in a deal that went down quickly and quietly in recent weeks.

That and the fact that the huge sum prevented Instagram from being scooped up by Google.

It’s a clear signal from CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — who rules all product efforts at the company — of his intent to dominate all innovations that have to do with owning the social experience.

Because while many Instagram photos quickly made their way onto Facebook — sharing on the service, as well as on Twitter, was a big part of the app’s offering — the future of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is tied to having control over key elements of the user experience.

Of all of those — communications, status updates, content linking — it has been photos that have become perhaps the most important part of Facebook, almost since its beginnings.

Photos are what allowed Facebook to grow so quickly and what made it more than just a blue sea of text and links to consumers. Its new Timeline depends on big, pretty photos, and Facebook even recently announced that it would allow full-screen viewing of high-resolution photos on its Web site, a pricey endeavor.

So, perhaps it was inevitable that Zuckerberg would pay up for Instagram, too — he knows a good entrepreneurial success when he sees one and apparently has the power to convince start-ups that he can make their bigger dreams come true.

Whether or not Instagram ever makes money is perhaps beside the point at this moment in time, as Facebook is poised to go public at 100 times the amount it forked over for Instagram.

But that it considers such a purchase worth as much as one percent of its expected valuation says a thousands words. And most of those words are “mobile” and “photo.”

As Ben Jacobs noted on Twitter: “Kodak goes bankrupt and Instagram is worth a billion dollars. 2012, y’all.”

Indeed. And, I have no doubt if Zuckerberg could figure out a way to shove all those Kodak moments from analog snapshots onto Facebook easily, he’d have paid up for that, too.

According to sources, AOL will be announcing that it is making cuts of up to 40 employees in its communication products teams, specifically its AIM instant messaging and AOL Mail units. As part of the changes, its SVP of business operations, Eric van Miltenburg, and AIM head Jason Shellen will be leaving.

[UPDATE: AOL confirmed those moves to be several hours after this post appeared.]

Shellen is a particularly high-profile departure, having sold his start-up Thing Labs, maker of the Brizzly family of Web-based social software, to AOL in 2010. The Thing Labs team, headed by the Google and Blogger vet, had been integrated into AOL’s AIM and other similar offerings.

Van Miltenburg, a former Yahoo exec, had headed up business operations for the now-shifted consumer applications unit.

The departures are among a number of exits by AOL execs who had come to the New York-based Internet company, which has struggled to turn itself around in recent years under CEO Tim Armstrong. The company is now facing a challenge from an activist shareholder, one of the reasons for a renewed focus on cost-cutting and other restructuring.

And that’s why some are wondering if — especially given the still dicey economic situation and the continued turmoil in the markets — the Chicago-based social buying company might delay or even pull its IPO.

Not so. Yet, at least. But that could change quickly.

Several sources close to the situation said that while Groupon’s management and board have not ruled out such a scenario, they will not make any determination about such a drastic move until after the landscape becomes clearer and also after the summer is officially over tomorrow.

“Clearly, the markets are much different than when Groupon started this public offering process,” said one person who is familiar with the internal debate within the company. “But no one can get a real sense of whether it gets better or worse for the next few weeks — that’s where the real questions begin.”

It’s not a bad thing for Groupon to be asking.

While gaming start-up Zynga, in comparison, ferrets away quietly on its way to an IPO, Groupon has been getting a daily smackdown on one of the many issues that seem to have captured the — mostly negative — attention of investors and the media.

Among the topics most mentioned: Groupon’s controversial accounting called ACSOI, or adjusted consolidated segment operating income; questions about its growth prospect in more mature markets; worries about whether the company can cut its marketing costs and still retain customers; and whether it will garner the giant valuations, once upward of $15 billion, that have been bandied about.

Aside from defending itself in a recent email sent to employees from its CEO Andrew Mason, Groupon cannot give complete public answers to these questions until after its IPO, due to regulatory rules.

While Mason’s damn-the-torpedoes missive seemed to be trying to communicate a strong confidence in the company, it’s clear that all the attacks on the company have become frustrating for him.

His internal communication, which was published here first, has also attracted more controversy, and some have suggested it violates regulatory rules.

So far, although it seems likely, the Securities and Exchange Commission has not commented on the email.

As CEO of IronPort, I wanted to be completely transparent with my entire team but my board of seasoned industry veterans was sharply opposed. They raised several serious issues: do you want to leak critical weaknesses to your competitors? Do you want to panic your employees? Do you want to completely reconstruct your culture when you go public? It was just a bad idea. However, the more that I thought about it, the more I believed that sharing absolutely everything would create massive advantages and that we should live with whatever consequences resulted.

So, after board meetings, we would assemble the company and go through every board slide. How much cash in the bank? What’s our burn rate? What are the biggest problems we are facing? Did we decide to build, buy or acquire a critical component? The first couple of go-rounds, there was dead silence. No questions — just heads nodding and a couple of blank stares. After some probing, we realized that people needed to feel comfortable speaking up, that it didn’t just come naturally. We brainstormed a bunch of different ways to get over this hurdle and here were some experiments that ultimately worked:

• We amped up the frequency of communication to all employees. Different members of the leadership team would send out weekly emails to all about customer trips, conferences attended, schedules slips and customer issues. These were written very off-the-cuff, informal and in the voice of the different leaders. I suppose we’d be all be tweeting or blogging these days.
• When an employee would reply to an email with a comment or question, we treated it like it came from a customer who deserved an immediate, detailed and thoughtful response.
• After the weekly staff meetings, we’d send out a summary of the decisions and issues to all of the directors/managers who would then share it with their teams.
• We emphasized “speaking up” as a core value at every opportunity. Our employee orientation, performance reviews and leadership training all emphasized everyone having an obligation to dissent.
• We would leave 30 minutes for questions after every all-hands meeting and then press, often uncomfortably, for no fewer than five questions from the group.

Over time, the benefits of transparency coupled with an emerging cultural norm of speaking up became more apparent:

I thought we would surface creative answers faster. When everyone had a clear understanding of the hard problems, their collective brains were on the table for parallel processing. The best information rarely sat with the senior executives but with the employees who were closest to the product and closest to the customers. And the best answers would often come from the most unlikely of places. For example, some of our most innovative features came from customer support reps identifying customers trying to use the product in ways it wasn’t intended.

Initially, it worked better than we expected. IronPort experienced zero voluntary turnover for the first three years. Because we let everyone’s head under the tent, we implicitly trusted them and it worked both ways. For instance, it wasn’t a shocker when we stopped hiring as we were raising money. Everyone knew exactly what was going on: we were running low on cash and had no idea how long the process would last.

Lastly, nobody was confused about what was important and people would point out any inconsistencies and solve them in the background. I remember standing up at a company meeting talking about how excited I was that IronPort anti-spam was working and we’d finally be able to drop our partner Brightmail. After the meeting, the accounts receivable clerk knocked on my door and said, “I thought you should know that two customers are withholding payment because IronPort anti-spam isn’t performing.” Oh crap. But much better to know about it and fix it than go on believing there wasn’t a problem.

As we were preparing to file our S-1, we hired a CFO with public company experience who insisted that we start “practicing” as a public company. Hmm — I knew that our level of transparency would have to change but what did that mean exactly? “You can’t tell everyone how we did this quarter at midnight quarter-end” and “You can’t go through all the board slides like that — too much sensitive information.” So, we started editing, putting shrouds on issues because we were afraid that the information would leak. I remember our first all-hands during the “practice” time. I felt muzzled and cautious, trying to strike a balance between our wonderful transparent culture and an intricate set of Sarbanes-Oxley rules. As it turned out, the practice was critical in working out the kinks. Here are a few things we did:

• Our CFO and I listened to dozens of public company earnings calls to get a sense for the dynamic and what information was typically shared. The best duos had the CFO as the play-by-play man and the CEO as the color commentator.
• We then staged mock earnings calls with the employees as the analysts asking the questions. This proved to be a very useful format for reining in my over-sharing and was instructive to the employees as they saw us struggle with what we could and couldn’t reveal.
• We prepared a mock earnings press release a few weeks after the quarter closed. This helped us practice keeping the numbers quiet, which was difficult because everyone wanted to know how we did at quarter-end.

Although we eventually opted for an acquisition by Cisco versus an IPO, I came to believe that our type of total transparency was a competitive weapon that applied primarily to private companies. In the end, my board members were right — we did have to limit what we shared with employees on the way to going public. That said, I believe it was much healthier to set the default to full disclosure while we were private. When you prepare for an IPO, it’s definitely a high-class problem to have to work backwards with concrete reasons to withhold information from the employees. And when that time comes, they totally understand.

Scott Weiss is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He most recently was vice president and general manager of the security technology group for Cisco Systems. He also co-founded and was CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco Systems for $830 million.

Yesterday, AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group got into hot water after the top editor at its Moviefone unit sent a memo to freelancers it was in the midst of firing, offering them an opportunity to “contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system.”

Today, that exec–Moviefone Editor-in-Chief Patricia Chui–was fired by the company, which is in the midst of drastically rejiggering its stable of writers.

Many of those were freelance bloggers under contract to AOL, who are now getting the boot in favor of reallocating staff back to largely paid journalists.

Thus came the controversial email from Chui, which read, in part:

“We will, indeed, be moving away from a freelancer model and toward one relying on full-time staffers. Sometime soon-–this week, I believe–-many of you will be receiving an email informing you that your services as a freelancer will no longer be required. You will be invited to contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system; and though I know that for many of you this will not be an option financially, I strongly encourage you to consider it if you/d like to keep writing for us, because we value all of your voices and input.”

Oh dear. Really, oh dear, especially since the Huffington Post has had its own share of controversies over not paying some bloggers (although it never quite ever offered up a doozie that this letter was).

Sources said Chui was terminated by John Montorio, the HuffPo Media Group’s culture, entertainment and lifestyle editor. Arianna Huffiington is head of all content at AOL, which recently paid $315 million to buy the Huffington Post.

Since she took over, Huffington has tried to stress a return to journalism over more algorithmic content creation. The unloading of its freelance writers was part of that effort.

Thus, Chui’s missteps did not help matters.

But it was not the first time recently that she had made an ill-advised editorial judgment.

Sources said the firing is also due to an incident several weeks ago, in which Chui appeared to defend a marketing employee who sent an email to TechCrunch writer Alexia Tsotsis, asking her to soften a review of “Source Code” due to studio relationship considerations.

AOL bought TechCrunch, a well-known tech news site, last fall. At the time, its CEO Tim Armstrong promised editorial independence and no meddling over advertising concerns.

Instead of taking this minion to task, on Moviefone’s own blog Chui said, in part:

“The reality of our situation is that, as a movies site, we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them. Staying on good terms with studios means that we will relay information if asked. It does not mean that we would ever force a writer or an editor to edit their work for the sake of a studio–or anyone else.”

Even with the last line, it is not exactly a profile in courage, because it was clear violation of the traditional separation of church and state in force at most media organizations.

Typically, editors are supposed to come down on any such communication. That has certainly been my experience in journalism over the years at the Washington Post and Dow Jones–including during its News Corp. ownership. In fact, I have often been shielded from such requests to pass such complaints onto me and only found out much later of advertiser discomfort about my reporting.

At the time, TechCrunch quite clearly called for Chui’s firing and that happened today.

Here is Chui’s full memo to freelancers, as well as the one about TechCrunch, neither of which were apparently cleared with higher-ups:

From: Chui, Patricia
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 11:26 AM
To: MoviefoneWriters
Subject: Moviefone/Cinematical–Status of Writers

Dear Moviefone/Cinematical Writers,

I know there’s been a lot of uncertainty regarding the future of freelancers and your status as a writer for the site. I personally apologize for the lack of communication, but I’ll tell you what I can.

We will, indeed, be moving away from a freelancer model and toward one relying on full-time staffers. Sometime soon–this week, I believe–many of you will be receiving an email informing you that your services as a freelancer will no longer be required. You will be invited to contribute as part of our non-paid blogger system; and though I know that for many of you this will not be an option financially, I strongly encourage you to consider it if you’d like to keep writing for us, because we value all of your voices and input.

Some of you have indicated interest in applying for full-time writer and editor positions, and the status of those positions are also part of discussions that are ongoing right now. I cannot at this point, however, tell you how many positions there are, or what the exact nature of those positions will be.

Despite the move toward a full-time staff vs. freelancer model, I’m told that there will be room for “exceptions”–for example, in the cases of writers who specialize in certain subjects. Again, what these exceptions are for Moviefone, and what the budget for them would be, is still being discussed.

As for Cinematical, the resignation of Erik Davis is certainly a loss. But I am continuing to have conversations with the editorial leadership here, and I am hopeful that we will still be able to maintain the Cinematical brand and voice going forward. Again, I will share with you any pertinent information as I have it.

In the meantime, those of you who already have assignments, please do continue to work on them unless you hear otherwise. If you’re uncertain of the status of your assignment, check with me. It may take me a while to get back to you, so please be patient–but I will respond.

I am sorry that I don’t have more specific details to give you, but I promise that I’ll keep you as well-informed as I possibly can. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or concerns.

Best,

patricia

By now you may have read the recent post in TechCrunch regarding that site’s SXSW coverage of the film “Source Code.” A representative from Moviefone, who set up the interview with Summit Entertainment, received some feedback from the studio and passed it along to TechCrunch (our sister site here at AOL). That email has now caused something of a Internet kerfuffle.

Here is the email–reprinted in the post–that was sent to the TechCrunch writer.

Hey Alexia,

Hope you’re having a good time at SxSW and that it’s not been too crazy busy for you!

First wanted to thank you for covering Source Code/attending the party, etc. But also wanted to raise a concern that Summit had about the piece that ran. They felt it was a little snarky and wondered if any of the snark can be toned down? I wasn’t able to view the video interviews but I think their issue is just with some of the text. Let me know if you’re able to take another look at it and make any edits. I know of course that TechCrunch has its own voice and editorial standards, so if you have good reasons not to change anything that’s fine, I just need to get back to Summit with some sort of information. Let me know.

Thanks!

TechCrunch’s issue with Moviefone is that by sending this email, we, in their words, “asked us to change our post. It’s not just sad, it’s wrong.”

I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a few things.

1) The person who wrote that email was not acting in an editorial capacity. That person’s job is to act as an intermediary between the studios and editorial–not to dictate content, nor to weigh in on the content of Moviefone or any other AOL site. In fact, the presence of a person with that role is just one means we have of ensuring editorial integrity on Moviefone.

2) This is important: We never told TechCrunch to change the post in any way. A publicist at Summit reached out asking if we could convey the studio’s feedback to TechCrunch. We did so. If the editors had responded that they declined to edit the post–which, naturally, is entirely their call–we simply would have conveyed that information back to Summit.

The reality of our situation is that, as a movies site, we work with movie studios every day, and it is in our best interests to stay on good terms with them. Staying on good terms with studios means that we will relay information if asked. It does not mean that we would ever force a writer or an editor to edit their work for the sake of a studio–or anyone else.

We take editorial integrity seriously at Moviefone, and it’s painful to be depicted as a pawn of the studios when that is emphatically not the case. You may think it unseemly for a studio to request changes in an article; that’s certainly your right. But the accusation of pandering on our part or crossing an editorial line is, to my mind, completely unfair, and I would hope that a reasonable reader would be able to recognize the situation for what it is–overblown and unwarranted.

Patricia Chui
Editor-in-Chief, Moviefone

The company asked 500 people at 300 companies, many of them large companies with 10,000 or more employees, about the benefits they were seeing from using social business software, which in this case is Jive, naturally, though an independent firm did the survey itself.

Some of the results were a little vague. For instance, respondents reported a 39 percent increase in “employee connectedness.” Others were more concrete: Jive users generated 32 percent more ideas, sent 27 percent less email and found answers to questions 32 percent faster

And there were benefits for customers. For one thing, employees spent 42 percent more time communicating with them, which in turn led to a better rate of customer retention, 31 percent, while the volume of support calls dropped by 28 percent and sales to new customers jumped by 27 percent.

The survey also found that 83 percent of companies in the survey are preparing to deploy some kind of social enterprise solution across the entire company this year. That finding is at least validated in part by a Gartner study that forecasts spending on enterprise social software will grow a little more than 15 percent this year to reach about $770 million.

Jive, you’ll remember, is the company that landed a $30 million venture capital investment from Kleiner Perkins last summer, and hired former Mercury Interactive head Tony Zingale as its CEO.

BoomTown’s Kara Swisher visited its offices last August, and her video interview with Zingale and Ted Schlein–Kleiner partner and Jive director–is below:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110131/in-case-you-needed-reminding-social-enterprise-software-is-going-to-be-big/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110127/internet-service-disrupted-in-egypt-before-planned-protests/ http://allthingsd.com/20110127/internet-service-disrupted-in-egypt-before-planned-protests/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 02:17:21 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2926 In Egypt, many forms of Internet access–as well as other forms of communication, such as text messaging–have reportedly been taken down in advance of anti-government rallies on Friday. While it’s understandably hard to get details out of a country where citizens are being prevented from organizing and talking to each other online, some tweets and updates through mobile apps are getting out, and Facebook has confirmed a drop in traffic from Egypt. Other sites, such as Twitter, have been blocked in Egypt since earlier this week, when protests broke out calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110127/internet-service-disrupted-in-egypt-before-planned-protests/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/salesforce-buys-small-contact-management-startup-etacts/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/salesforce-buys-small-contact-management-startup-etacts/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 19:59:28 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=1526 Salesforce has bought Etacts, maker of a contacts management tool, according to a source familiar with the matter. Etacts informed users today that it will shut down as of January 31 in order to “pursue other opportunities.”

Etacts, which participated in the Y Combinator program earlier this year, offered a free Web app and plug-ins that helped Gmail and IMAP users manage their email relationships by showing information about their contacts’ social Web activity and communication history.

The start-up, co-founded by recent Duke grads Howie Liu and Evan Beard, had raised $650,000 in funding from Ron Conway of SV Angels, Eric Hahn of Inventures Group, Jim Young from Hot or Not, Lorenzo Thione and Barney Pell from Powerset, Joshua Schachter from Delicious, and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim. And I believe Ashton Kutcher was involved as well.

Etacts will no longer accept user sign-ups as of today and will delete all user data effective January 31, it said in an email sent to users.

Etacts’s product was quite similar to that of another Y Combinator company, Rapportive. Salesforce also just bought another YC company this month, Heroku, for $212 million in cash.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/salesforce-buys-small-contact-management-startup-etacts/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101118/dell-mobile-boss-bails/ http://allthingsd.com/20101118/dell-mobile-boss-bails/#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:15:15 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=52838 Ron Garriques, president of Dell’s communication solutions group and the guy who led the company’s recent forays into the smartphone and tablet spaces, has resigned. His last day is Jan. 28, 2011, though he’s been retained as a consultant for the remainder of the year.

So why is Garriques, whom Dell recruited from Motorola in 2007 and subsequently tapped to run the company’s communications products division, leaving? Evidently that division’s being shuttered and rolled into other units. Seems new devices like the Streak–Dell’s Android tablet–and smartphones like the Aero and Venue Pro aren’t quite performing the way Dell had hoped. Said Dell spokesman David Frink, “He made a decision to look at other opportunities as we integrate the former communications solutions group into our core operating structure.”

Garriques leaves Dell with a $1.44 million severance payment and a promise of $6.3 million for future consulting services.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101118/dell-mobile-boss-bails/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101108/ibm-offers-faster-chips-thanks-to-the-memory/ http://allthingsd.com/20101108/ibm-offers-faster-chips-thanks-to-the-memory/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:09:26 +0000 Don Clark http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32154 Chip makers use many techniques to make their products do more while using less energy. IBM is preparing to share more of its tricks, particularly an unusual type of built-in memory it had previously limited to Big Blue’s own computers.

The technology giant has seemed more interested in software and services lately, but still manufactures servers and the microprocessor chips that power many of them. That strategy requires billions of dollars to operate semiconductor factories and develop chip production processes. IBM helps defray those costs by operating a foundry service that makes chips for other companies.

IBM this week is announcing the latest production recipe it will offer foundry customers, promising big benefits for companies designing chips for devices such as routers and switches used in high-speed communication networks. The new offering comes with blocks of pre-designed circuitry-–including microprocessor technology from ARM Holdings, the favorite in cellphones–so that customers can mix and match features to handle particular communications or computing chores.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101108/ibm-offers-faster-chips-thanks-to-the-memory/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101012/parents-turn-to-ipad-for-speech-therapy/ http://allthingsd.com/20101012/parents-turn-to-ipad-for-speech-therapy/#comments Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:15:48 +0000 Jennifer Valentino-DeVries http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30979 The rise of mainstream tablet computers is proving to have unforeseen benefits for children with speech and communication problems—and such use has the potential to disrupt a business where specialized devices can cost thousands of dollars.

Before she got an iPad at age two, Caleigh Gray couldn’t respond to yes-or-no questions. Now Caleigh, who has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, uses a $190 software application that speaks the words associated with pictures she touches on Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) device.

“We’re not having to fight to prove to people that she is a smart little girl anymore, because it’s there once they see her using the iPad,” said Caleigh’s mother, Holly Gray, who said her daughter can use the tablet to identify colors or ask to go outside.

The software, called Proloquo2Go by a company called AssistiveWare B.V., is one of a growing number of apps aimed at people with speech difficulties developed for Apple’s gadgets. Some of the apps offer images that users can press to make the sound of a word; others lead students through stories to teach them basic speech patterns. Companies are also planning such apps for upcoming tablets that run Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Android software.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101012/parents-turn-to-ipad-for-speech-therapy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101006/motorola-sues-apple-over-everything/ http://allthingsd.com/20101006/motorola-sues-apple-over-everything/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:12:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24220 Motorola has filed a patent complaint against Apple that covers…a lot.

In Motorola’s (MOT) words, the 18 patents in question concern “key technology areas found on many of Apple’s core products and associated services, including MobileMe and the App Store. The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless email, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization.”

They don’t seem to be upset about Ping, though.

We’ve asked Apple (AAPL) for a response. Here’s Motorola’s release:

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that it’s subsidiary, Motorola Mobility, Inc., has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iTouch and certain Mac computers infringe Motorola patents. Motorola Mobility also filed patent infringement complaints against Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) in the Northern District of Illinois and the Southern District of Florida.

Overall, Motorola Mobility’s three complaints include 18 patents, which relate to early-stage innovations developed by Motorola in key technology areas found on many of Apple’s core products and associated services, including MobileMe and the App Store. The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless email, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization.

Motorola Mobility has requested that the ITC commence an investigation into Apple’s use of Motorola’s patents and, among other things, issue an Exclusion Order barring Apple’s importation of infringing products, prohibiting further sales of infringing products that have already been imported, and halting the marketing, advertising, demonstration and warehousing of inventory for distribution and use of such imported products in the United States. In the District Court actions, Motorola Mobility has requested that Apple cease using Motorola’s patented technology and provide compensation for Apple’s past infringement.

Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said, “Motorola has innovated and patented throughout every cycle of the telecommunications industry evolution, from Motorola’s invention of the cell phone to its development of premier smartphone products. We have extensively licensed our industry-leading intellectual property portfolio, consisting of tens of thousands of patents in the U.S. and worldwide. After Apple’s late entry into the telecommunications market, we engaged in lengthy negotiations, but Apple has refused to take a license. We had no choice but to file these complaints to halt Apple’s continued infringement. Motorola will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its R&D and intellectual property, which are critical to the company’s business.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101006/motorola-sues-apple-over-everything/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20101005/docomo-looks-to-rescue-long-distance-relationships/ http://allthingsd.com/20101005/docomo-looks-to-rescue-long-distance-relationships/#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 14:50:47 +0000 Daisuke Wakabayashi http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30659 Maintaining a long distance relationship can be tough but modern technology–mobile phones, Skype, instant messaging–has made things a little easier. NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan’s biggest mobile carrier, thinks it can take things to the next level by helping long-distance couples share “non-verbal” communication.

In a product demonstration in its booth at this week’s Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, also known as CEATEC, DoCoMo exhibited a device and mobile application called the “Taion Heart”, translated as the body temperature heart. The white plastic heart fits in the palm of your hand and when squeezed, it registers a pulse reading as well as the pressure with which you are squeezing the device.

That information is relayed by a wireless Bluetooth connection to a mobile phone running the application and is passed onto your partner’s phone, which in turn beams the information to their corresponding Taion Heart.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101005/docomo-looks-to-rescue-long-distance-relationships/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100908/brain-drain-claims-yahoo-finance-head/ http://allthingsd.com/20100908/brain-drain-claims-yahoo-finance-head/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:12:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33550

Another significant departure from Yahoo: Steve Schultz (pictured here), who was GM of its important and powerful Yahoo Finance unit, has left the company to become COO of Pageonce, an online personal-finance “assistant.”

Yesterday, the editor-in-chief of Yahoo’s Shine women’s site, Brandon Holley, left Yahoo to run Lucky magazine for Condé Nast.

Also recently gone from Yahoo (YHOO): Social platforms head Neal Sample to eBay (EBAY) and Jason Titus, who ran its communications products unit and whose next job is unknown.

Schultz, though, is landing at a Palo Alto, Calif., start-up that has raised $8 million in venture funding. Pageonce collects online financial information and displays it on a unified and personalized page.

Schultz, who has been at Yahoo five years, was, according to his company bio, “responsible for business and content strategy and oversees business development, partnerships, marketing and sales. Prior to this role, Steve led product efforts in Yahoo!’s personalization products group, where he launched Yahoo!’s unified user profiling platform and managed personalization strategy and implementation efforts for Yahoo.com and My Yahoo!”

In the interests of fairness, BoomTown lobbed an email into PR at Yahoo tonight for the name of the person taking over for Schultz and also a list of major execs the Silicon Valley Internet giant is hiring.

Yahoo said no one has been named yet to replace Schultz.

Here is the press release on his new job:

Pageonce Names Steve Schultz New Chief Operating Officer

Company Strengthens Executive Team with Recognized Leader in Consumer Finance

Palo Alto, Calif.–September 9, 2010–Pageonce, the award-winning personal finance assistant, today announced that the company has named Steve Schultz, as its new chief operating officer. Schultz is a demonstrated leader in the consumer finance category, and brings a wealth of experience in product development, strategic partnerships, and business strategy.

In this role, Schultz will lead Pageonce’s business and sales strategy, distribution partnerships, business development and help guide the company’s strategic development into mobile personal finance. Schultz joins Pageonce from Yahoo! where he was the head of Yahoo! Finance, the #1 financial news website, and Yahoo! Real Estate businesses.

“Steve’s leadership and experience will be an invaluable asset to Pageonce as we continue to develop products and increase market share within the personal finance category,” said Guy Goldstein, Pageonce CEO and Founder.

During his tenure at Yahoo!, Yahoo! Finance doubled its market share attracting more than 40 million unique visitors according to Comscore. He led its business and content strategy, business development and strategic partnerships which included relationships with Intuit, Fidelity Investments, Dow Jones, ScottTrade, Bankrate and Bloomberg.com. He was also responsible for Yahoo! Finance’s original content strategy, oversaw the site’s push into mobile applications, and entered partnerships with dozens of new content providers. With Yahoo! Real Estate, Schultz helped lead the site from the #10 to the #2 real estate destination on the Web, was named one of the 100 most influential leaders in the real estate industry by Inman News in 2009, and architected a strategic partnership with Zillow.com in 2010.

“Pageonce shares my focus on developing and delivering forward-thinking personal finance products that fit the needs of today’s on-the-go consumers. Today that means focusing first on mobile,” said Schultz. “We have a very promising future and I’m looking forward to being a part of it.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100908/brain-drain-claims-yahoo-finance-head/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100831/apple-the-angelina-jolie-of-tech-steps-into-the-spotlight-again-tomorrow/ http://allthingsd.com/20100831/apple-the-angelina-jolie-of-tech-steps-into-the-spotlight-again-tomorrow/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:55:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33148

For a secretive company, Apple sure has had a lot of events, launches and communications with the people in 2010.

Such as tomorrow’s music-focused event in San Francisco, where oodles of announcements around the iPod and iTunes are expected.

In a lot of ways, the company kind of reminds me of Angelina Jolie, the glamorous global celebrity who claims to vigorously guard her privacy, while at the same time carefully doling out an awful lot of information about her life, her many kids, her thoughts, her tattoos and, of course, Brad Pitt.

BoomTown is not meaning to disrespect Apple (AAPL) with this comparison, because no one loves a dose of Jolie news more than me.

The same is true for Apple, which has had a plethora of very noisy and very public activity throughout all of 2010, from its January 27 iPad announcement to the June 7 iPhone 4 launch to the July 16 Antennagate event.

That is not even including the many spontaneous emails of CEO Steve Jobs to the masses or his well-aimed barbs at both Google (GOOG) and then Adobe (ADBE).

And, of course, his energetic interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June.

Tomorrow, of course, will likely be more of the same, and the crack All Things Digital team will be there to chronicle it all, along with 38,467 other members of the media.

Given all this–now that I think about it–Angelina needs to step up her efforts if she wants to keep up with the Silicon Valley icon.

Until tomorrow then, here are some videos BoomTown made in 2010 at various Apple confabs, as well as the full video of Jobs at D8 in June:

iPad Look-See

Walt Mossberg and Jobs Talk iPad

iPhone 4 Palooza

Jobs at D8

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100831/apple-the-angelina-jolie-of-tech-steps-into-the-spotlight-again-tomorrow/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20100713/facebooks-russian-investor-gets-an-south-african-investor/ http://allthingsd.com/20100713/facebooks-russian-investor-gets-an-south-african-investor/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:38:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30598

Naspers, a South African international media group said one of its subsidiaries was taking a nearly 30 percent stake in Digital Sky Technologies.

Russia-based DST has made a splash in Silicon Valley by investing massive gobs of money in high-profile, social-focused U.S. Internet companies, such as Facebook, Groupon and Zynga.

Both Naspers and DST are already close, as co-owners of Mail.ru, a large Russian Web firm with email, social networking, gaming and entertainment businesses.

Naspers said it will be contributing its 39.3 percent stake in Mail.ru into DST, as well as investing $388 million in cash in it.

In April, another international multimedia giant, China’s Tencent, invested $300 million in DST, giving it just over a 10 percent stake in it.

And, drum roll…Naspers owns 35 percent of Tencent.

It’s not clear what to make of this developing international spiderweb of digital and media companies, except to ask: What will DST do with all that new money now?

Until all is revealed, here is an interview I did at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference about a year ago with DST’s partner Alexander Tamas and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg about the firm’s aspirations:

And here’s the official press release:

NASPERS MAKES STRATEGIC INVESTMENT IN DIGITAL SKY TECHNOLOGIES (DST)

DST to assume full control of Mail.ru upon share swap with Naspers

Johannesburg and Moscow, 14 July 2010–Naspers Limited (“Naspers”), the broad based international media group, and Digital Sky Technologies Limited (“DST”), one of the largest internet companies in the Russian-speaking markets, announces today that Naspers’s subsidiary Myriad International Holdings B.V. (“MIH”) will take a 28,7% stake in DST. The transaction will be effected by Naspers contributing its 39,3% stake in Mail.ru into DST and investing US$388m in cash. Concurrently, Mail.ru management and other minorities will also convert their shares into DST.

Upon the close of this transaction, DST will own over 99,9% of Mail.ru. Mail.ru is the leading communication and entertainment platform in the Russian-speaking internet world, with over 50m registered email accounts, leading market share in MMO games and one of the leading social networks in Russia.

Naspers and DST have worked closely together over the past three years as co-owners of Mail.ru and today’s transaction will enable them to further strengthen that relationship.

Chief Executive Officer of DST, Yuri Milner, said, “Naspers’s strategic insight has already proven to be valuable in our partnership and we welcome the expertise they will bring to DST. We are delighted to this transaction and look forward to creating further value through our relationship.”

Antonie Roux, head of Naspers’s internet operations, commented: “We have known DST and its management for years and we share a similar view and approach. We are excited to strengthen our partnership. This opportunity further expands our exposure to emerging markets and the fast-growing internet sector.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100713/facebooks-russian-investor-gets-an-south-african-investor/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100611/att-responds-to-boomtown-privacy-breach-via-email-oh-the-irony/ http://allthingsd.com/20100611/att-responds-to-boomtown-privacy-breach-via-email-oh-the-irony/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:53:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29397

Earlier today, I wrote a piece about how I was one of the 114,000 AT&T customers whose email and device identity numbers had been easily exposed earlier this week via a flaw in the way the company registered the Apple (AAPL) iPad 3G for cellular access.

In my post, I complained that I had yet to hear from the telecom giant about the security snafu and release of my personal email address, which AT&T (T) had yet to acknowledge to those impacted.

Well, the company does read tech blogs, so this morning, this communication from a PR honcho was sent to my work email, which is available on this site publicly.

Regrets? AT&T has a few:

Hi Kara:

I am writing to apologize that your personal e-mail address was made public. As you know, we fixed the flaw that caused this almost as soon as we heard about it from one of our business customers. But that doesn’t change the fact that your personal information was exposed without your permission. That is something we truly regret.

Nothing is more important to us than protecting the privacy of customer information. You should know that in this case, the only thing compromised was your email address and not, for example, the contents of your email or any other personal information. And as you also know, the problem only affected iPad 3G customers. No other mobile devices or customers were involved.

Thanks very much for your patience. Please let me know if there is anything we can do for you or if you have any questions.

Mark Siegel
Executive Director-Media Relations
AT&T
[Address redacted]
[Work phone number redacted]
[Mobile phone number}
[Email address redacted]

As you can see, I used my crack security system–DELETE!–to save Siegel any incursions into his privacy.

And while I do appreciate the reaching out, I still want to hear–as do others affected–officially from AT&T about exactly what’s what.

Siegel told me in a follow-up email: “We are finalizing our plans for communicating with customers.”

(Suggestion to make us happy: A free iPhone 4 might be a sweet gesture. Only kidding!! Sort of.)

In addition, I am not sure, as he wrote in the initial email, whether it is comforting or not that it was only my email and only my iPad 3G that were violated.

That’s sort of like telling me that only one room of my digital house was broken into, although nothing good was taken, so not to worry.

Actually, if that happened in real life, I would still call the police. That is, if the call on my iPhone didn’t drop.

Again, I kid! Sort of.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100611/att-responds-to-boomtown-privacy-breach-via-email-oh-the-irony/feed/ 17 http://allthingsd.com/20100504/netairus-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20100504/netairus-apple/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 17:33:23 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=39790 In 1999, a company called NetAirus Technologies applied for a patent on a “wireless handset communication system,” and though laughably broad, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted it in 2006. Now, four years later, the company is using it to come after Apple (AAPL). On Friday, NetAirus filed suit against Apple, alleging that the iPhone–as a concept–infringes on its intellectual property.

Given the breadth of NetAirus’s patent, it’s hard to disagree. As best I can tell “Wireless Handset Communication System” describes all smartphones and ultraportables. From the patent abstract:

A small light weight modular microcomputer based computer and communications systems, designed for both portability and desktop uses. The systems make use of a relative large flat panel display device assembly (2), an expandable hinge device (10), battery power source (9), keyboard assembly (16), and wireless communications devices (32, 51). The systems are capable of bi-directional realtime communications of voice, audio, text, graphics and video data….

An objective of this invention is to provide for full Internet access on a wireless mobile platform, where the user can access the World Wide Web and execute most of the available Internet browser functions and plug-ins. The computer system would be capable of performing most of the Internet data access, download, upload and conferencing functions.

Quite the blanket description, no? How a patent so overly board could have made it through the USPTO is beyond me. The agency’s mandate is to protect and promote innovation, isn’t it?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100504/netairus-apple/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100331/kpcb-doubles-down-on-ifund-200-million-for-iphone-and-ipad-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20100331/kpcb-doubles-down-on-ifund-200-million-for-iphone-and-ipad-apps/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:42:03 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=37799 Add Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to the list of companies funding iPad app development. At an event this morning, the storied venture capital firm said it is doubling the $100 million fund it established to provide seed capital for iPhone apps to fuel development of apps for Apple’s (AAPL) new device.

“This Saturday the iPad arrives and we believe it’s going to rule the world,” said KPCB partner John Doerr. “I’ve touched it, I’ve carressed it and I hope to sleep with it this Saturday night. It feels gorgeous. It isn’t a big iPhone, but it is a big deal. It’s the future….We’re heading into a brave new world. From our old interfaces to touch. From WYSIWYG–what you see is what you get–to WYTIWIS ‘what you touch is what is.’”

A number of apps built by iFund companies will be available when the iPad launches this Saturday, among them seven games from ngmoco, as well as Doodle Buddy and Star Smash from Pinger, textPlus from GOGII and Shazam from Shazam Entertainment. Not announced today but headed to market soon: iPad apps from Zynga, Shopkick and Cooliris.

KPCB’s Bing Gordon closed the presentation segment of today’s event by reading a poem. Sadly, I missed most of it because of connection issues, but it began with this salute to the iPhone: “Welcome to the world; My new friend and pocket master.”

Tech Trader Daily and TechCrunch, which attended the event in person, have more detailed notes here and here.

Below, a few screenshots from the WebEx presentation, and the official announcement:

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Doubles iFund to $200 Million

iFund Companies to Deliver More Than a Dozen New iPad Applications by May

MENLO PARK, Calif., March 31, 2010 – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced the doubling of its iFund to $200 million of venture capital for applications for Apple’s revolutionary iPhone OS family of products, including iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Established in 2008 as a $100 million investment pool, the original iFund is now fully committed across 14 companies. iFund companies have been supported by an additional $330 million from follow-on investors.

KPCB also announced iFund-supported companies have more than 20 applications in development for the soon-to-be-released iPad, with 11 available at first ship on April 3. KPCB noted the iPhone has created an inflection in mobile content consumption and the iPad will lead the next wave of innovation in mobile computing. The iFund is increasing its investment dollars to back entrepreneurs and build companies that focus on these areas. Particular areas of interest on iPad include entertainment, communication, social networking, commerce, health care, and education.

“Welcome to the brave new post-PC era where a swoosh of fluidity replaces the traditional mouse-bound GUI. A new, truly revolutionary platform is rare, and a prize for entrepreneurs,” said John Doerr, KPCB Partner. “We expect all ventures to have an iPad strategy. We will fund many more ventures for iPad, and the iFund will accelerate their success.”

“Kleiner Perkins has done a terrific job at finding, funding and supporting great iPhone app developers,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are thrilled that they are doubling the size of their fund, along with expanding it to now include iPad developers too.”

Matt Murphy, Partner at KPCB and leader of the iFund, reported that KPCB’s iFund ventures have achieved significant success, including:

More than $100 million of 2010 mobile revenue
More than 100 million aggregate mobile downloads
An amazing 18 titles reached the Top 10 on the App Store

“We’re ecstatic to be doubling down on the iFund after two short years,” said Murphy. “The success of the App Store and its impact on consumers has been 10 times faster and bigger than we expected. Kleiner Perkins and iFund companies have enjoyed an incredibly helpful and unwavering partner in Apple.”

Recent milestones for iFund companies include:

GOGII’s 5.5 million users have sent 2 billion messages through textPlus
ngmoco’s titles are installed on over one-third of iPhone OS devices and played 20 million minutes each day
Pinger launched 10 apps into the App Store Top 100 in a single month
Shazam’s 50 million worldwide users are tagging over 2 million songs per day
Booyah’s MyTown has over 1.6 million users doing 4 million location check-ins per day

The 11 applications available this week from iFund companies include seven games from ngmoco including We Rule, GodFinger and WarpGate, as well as Doodle Buddy and Star Smash from Pinger, textPlus from GOGII, and Shazam from Shazam Entertainment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100331/kpcb-doubles-down-on-ifund-200-million-for-iphone-and-ipad-apps/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091209/live-from-new-york-tim-armstrong-makes-one-last-pitch-for-aol/ http://allthingsd.com/20091209/live-from-new-york-tim-armstrong-makes-one-last-pitch-for-aol/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:15:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13757 AOL is about to cut ties to Time Warner (TWX), and CEO Tim Armstrong has been making his case to current and potential investors. Here’s one last pitch, delivered to the crowd at the annual UBS (UBS AG) Media and Communications Conference in New York.

Note to readers and/or Engadget editors: This liveblog is not an official transcript. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one. Cool? Cool.

Q: Why leave Google, which is awesome, for AOL, which is not?

A: The Internet is still at an early stage. AOL is a global brand, and that’s hard to build. We have a unique set of assets. AOL can be core and central to where the next $50, $100 billion are going. And we have unique talent to make a run at it.

Q: Please explain your strategy.

A: “Content, ads and communication.”

Q: Why is this turnaround different than other AOL turnarounds?

A: I can tell you whatever, but you need to see metrics move to believe me. But we have a good strategy. “You have to maniacal about the piping,” and in the past AOL wasn’t. We had terrible integration of acquisitions, systems. You want to be able to take $25, $40 million ad deals and run them through the piping and we haven’t been able to do that.

Q: Please explain AOL’s content strategy.

A: We launched our content platform last night. A single platform. It uses data, helps scale to content producers and will work with thousands of partners. It differs from Demand Media et al in that we already have scale for production and scale for advertising. We can snap those two platforms together. [Note: No mention of robots yet.]

Q: Is AOL interested in video or other self-produced stuff?

A: Sure. Video’s important to us. We’re also interested in what we would call “niche at scale.” As a collective whole, we have 70 or 80 properties and will go up to 100. We want to aggregate uniques that will be attractive to advertisers. We want to own the equivalent of the top 80 or 90 cable channels on the Internet. We’re also very interested in local, via Patch [which Armstrong invested in before AOL bought it].

Q: How do you market all this content?

A: By the way, everyone thinks our traffic comes from the access business. That’s not true. It’s a minority of our traffic. Also, when you produce your own content, you can distribute it and get traffic back. You also need to make this stuff shareable on the Web. We’re getting mass scale distribution from platforms like Twitter and, of course, search.

Q: There’s a big gap between your monetization and Yahoo’s (YHOO). How do you change that?

A: I can’t tell you! It’s how I got my job. Ho ho ho. Okay: AOL went to a network-based strategy a couple of years ago, which cut into the pricing yield, and that is now changing. We addressed this in the summer and fall. Also, AOL, shockingly, had under 1,000 customers on ad platforms when I showed up–700, actually. At Google (GOOG), we had millions. So we had a clear dialogue about what had happened. Also, the salesforce needed to be restructured, different tiers of the salesforce. And we also needed a self-service option you can use with a credit card. “Look, this is why they hired me….If we can’t make that business work, I think we have big issues.”

Q: What’s up with search?

A: We like Google and are still talking to them. We’re also talking to “other partners.” Last time, the deal was done “purely for money,” and that had benefits and some downside. This time, the pricing may be different, but it’s not the only thing that determines value.

Q: Please be more specific.

A: Okay. We’re really big on music. But if you go to AOL search for music, you get a subpar version of Google’s search for music. There are too many ads on the page. So why don’t we set up a onebox-like search box and send people to AOL music? For example, let’s think about trading search dollars for display dollars. We want to make money on ads in a much more natural and healthy way.

Q: What about investments in content?

A: Sure. We’re making nominal investments in content and a putting a lot of money in technology and infrastructure. In terms of M&A, we will sell off stuff that doesn’t make sense and do tuck-in buys.

Q: How does your local strategy differ from others?

A: We do real local, not quasi-local. We put editors in communities to actually get the stuff and monitor and update platforms. “It’s a risk, it’s a bet,” but early results are promising.

Q: Your ad business is much less profitable than that of your peers. What up?

A: Our hamburger stand says “really cheap burgers at really cheap prices,” but we’re actually serving sea bass, and we should be charging for that. We told customers, via Platform A, etc., that they could buy us really cheap. Also, cost structure: We’re taking out a third of the business. Access was making money, and things “kind of got loose” at the rest of company. But advertising can be nicely profitable with content and we can do that.

Q: Okay, but when do ad biz profits become self-sustaining?

A: Not in 2010, but sooner than five years. I own two percent of the company, and I want it to work. Morale is already better than when I got here.

Q: Are you removing all premium inventory from Ad.com?

A: Don’t believe what you read! Internet! Bad! An analyst said we might do it. What we’re going to do is “sell Superbowl product at Superbowl pricing.” [i.e., a nonanswer]

Q: What’s up with the access business and the traffic it generates?

A: We have 100 million users. Five million people get “paid services” from us. Half of those are dial-up users. But people think that 70, 80, 90 percent of traffic comes from access. That’s not the case.

Q: What’s up with mobile?

A: We want to increase consumer mobile traffic. We have lots of Apple Store downloads. We’ll do more consumer downloads/traffic. And we’ll build our mobile ad business after that, probably in 2011.

Q: What do Federal broadband access plans mean for your business?

A: All of us believe that there will be some “tail” of dial-up access for some time. But it’s not going away, and the decline is actually moderating [which makes sense--if you're still on dial-up now, what are you waiting for?]

Q: Please reiterate profitability plans for display/content/ads.

A: In reality, we’re “marginally” profitable now, but that’s not good enough.

Q: If you reprice ad business profitability, what does that mean for you?

A: I don’t want to set goals, but we’re not off by single digits. It’s significant.

Q: Talk about your communications business, please.

A: We have AIM, ICQ, email–all big opportunities. We need to clean up current products and services. Communications products “were recipient of problems” in the past. AOL tried to jam Bebo and AIM together, which didn’t work. We also slammed our stuff with way too many emails. I tried AOL email when I started and got 15 to 20 ads. Not a great user experience. It’s “project hygiene.” We also believe people want a unified platform across devices and we’re working on that.

Q: Talk about compensation.

A: I had the money options at Google, which got moved into AOL options at market value. Plus salary blah blah. I didn’t take a bonus this year “because I don’t think I should have gotten paid for laying off a third of our employees.” [All of this is discussed in the proxy, no?]

Q: Here’s a softball about your management team. How awesome is it?

A: Totally awesome. We’ll add more over time. On the engineering side, I was surprised that we weren’t chasing good engineers when we got here. “We have spent a lot of time and energy on the subject matter.” Culturally, our “internal mojo turned around,” and now the engineering community gets that we “have a big-hair problem” but that we have tons of use so things they do here have a big impact.

Q: Brand strategy: How do you extract brands people don’t know about while promoting the main site and vice versa?

A: We think about this like Disney (DIS), I think. By the way, there are two brands. The financial media brand is battered–worst merger in history, etc. But consumers like the AOL brand. Tomorrow, we’re giving AOL users a a 50 percent promotion via Target (TGT) on “very good toys.” So in the Disney way, there’s the brand people like, and we have other brands people like, just as Disney has ESPN. So we’ll have non-AOL brands launching, and we’ll refurbish the AOL brand itself.

Q: Whither MapQuest?

A: MapQuest is still Top 20 search term. It has a large market share. The technology has not been focused on in a number of years. We’re changing that. Partners are inquiring about MapQuest, and I think what we’ll do is an operational partnership with them. We feel like its a “very, very valuable property.”

Q: What are best metrics to evaluate AOL’s turnaround/growth?

A: Unique visitors [which is what everyone says now]. We need a turnaround in domestic display, which you should see in 2010. And then we need to generate cash, because that’s what healthy companies do. In terms of that cash: No more “hail Marys” where we take cash from access and make big bets on things that we don’t know about [i.e., Bebo]. We will want to fund the Web services business with cash from the Web services business.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091209/live-from-new-york-tim-armstrong-makes-one-last-pitch-for-aol/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091014/the-cliq-storm2-join-long-parade-of-iphone-threats/ http://allthingsd.com/20091014/the-cliq-storm2-join-long-parade-of-iphone-threats/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:02:09 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20091014/the-cliq-storm2-join-long-parade-of-iphone-threats/ (See Correction & Amplification below.)

It’s raining smart phones. No, make that super-smart phones, the type of hand-held computer, like Apple’s iPhone or the models powered by Google’s Android software, that browse the Web well, have sophisticated communication functions and are made to run a wide variety of modern third-party apps. This holiday season, new super-smart phone models seem to be appearing weekly.

So far, the king of this new field, in my view, remains its pioneer, the iPhone. Apple’s phone has its limitations, but its design, usability and versatility have kept it ahead. There’s a well-equipped iPhone model available for as little as $99, and the platform offers a staggering 85,000 downloadable apps. By comparison, there are around 10,000 apps for Android, 3,000 for the newer models of the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry, a few hundred modern apps for phones running the latest versions of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile software, and even fewer than that for Palm’s (PALM) Pre and its soon-to-be released little sibling, the Pixi.

But nobody is conceding the game to Apple (AAPL). A flood of new Android models is upon us, and RIM, which has a fanatical following for its BlackBerry models, is still potent despite the disappointment surrounding its first touch-screen model, the Storm.

Motorola CLIQ

I’ve been testing two new contenders, and both represent second chances of sorts. One is the revised version of the BlackBerry Storm, called the Storm2, from Verizon (VZ). The other is the first super-smart phone from Motorola, the fading former phone leader. It’s an Android-based model called the CLIQ, which will be offered by T-Mobile.

Here’s a quick look at these two new pocket computers.

Motorola CLIQ

The CLIQ is a hefty slider phone, with a touch screen on top and a slide-out physical keyboard underneath. It has a smaller screen than the iPhone or Storm, and comes with just two gigabytes of memory versus 16 gigabytes for the $199 iPhone. But the CLIQ claims six hours of talk time, an hour more than Apple’s device, and, unlike the iPhone, it has a removable battery and expandable memory. It also has a higher-resolution camera—five megapixels versus three megapixels.

It boasts all of the standard Android features. But what sets the CLIQ apart is that it’s built around the idea of consolidating all your communications and social networking, and making them easy to access. Motorola (MOT) does this with special software called Blur, part of which exists on the device itself and part on a special Motorola-run server.

Blur takes the form of special on-screen widgets. One constantly displays your own status on various services, such as Facebook and Twitter. Another, called Happenings, shows your friends’ latest updates on social-networking services, without requiring you to enter separate apps. A third, called Messages, offers a quick snapshot of current emails and text messages from all your accounts. Each entry in your address book also displays the person’s social-networking status and information.

In my tests, all of these Blur features worked nicely and proved handy, except that I couldn’t get it to consolidate both of my Gmail accounts.

My biggest gripe was with the physical keyboard, which I found cramped and hard to use. The top row is too close to the bottom of the screen and, on the bottom row, I kept hitting the symbols key when I was aiming for “M” or “N.” So I found myself constantly resorting to the virtual on-screen keyboard, which worked pretty well.

BlackBerry Storm2

The original Storm, RIM’s first phone without a physical keyboard, didn’t convert droves of traditional BlackBerry lovers. This was partly because it had an odd typing mechanism where the whole screen moved with each tap on the virtual keyboard. Also, the phone lacked Wi-Fi and, when held vertically, the device offered only a cramped on-screen keyboard with multiple letters on each key.

BlackBerry’s Storm2

The Storm2 fixes all those flaws. The screen now stays still when tapped, providing tactile feedback electronically instead of mechanically. This allows for faster, smoother typing. The new model also has Wi-Fi. And you can now use a full, albeit squeezed, virtual keyboard in vertical mode.

In addition, while the dimensions haven’t changed, the Storm2 looks sleeker and has a few user interface refinements, like an on-screen Send button.

Overall, I found the Storm2 worked well in my tests. Battery life was decent, with 5.5 hours of claimed talk time, and typing was much improved, though I doubt it will satisfy lovers of physical keyboards.

The browser is still inferior to Apple’s, Google’s and Palm’s. And the traditional BlackBerry interface cries out for a major overhaul in a touch device like this, especially when you add a lot of apps. RIM’s menu and folder metaphor seems tired on this device.

Verizon hasn’t set a launch date or price for the Storm2, but it’s likely to appear in November at around $200.

The super-smart-phone war is still in its early stages. There are more and even better devices on the way, and Apple will have plenty of clever competition.

Corrections & Amplifications

The Motorola CLIQ comes with two gigabytes of memory and the $199 iPhone comes with 16 gigabytes. A previous version of this column incorrectly expressed these figures as megabytes, not gigabytes. An earlier version of this column also mistakenly stated, based on a BlackBerry fact sheet, that the Storm2 will ship with two gigabytes of memory. Wednesday night, after the column was published, the company said the Storm2 will actually ship with 18 gigabytes of memory.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091014/the-cliq-storm2-join-long-parade-of-iphone-threats/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091013/how-many-emails-did-you-send-yesterday/ http://allthingsd.com/20091013/how-many-emails-did-you-send-yesterday/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:17:15 +0000 Jessica E. Vascellaro http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=16546 A Journal article yesterday on the end of email’s reign has generated more than 170 comments from readers agreeing and disagreeing with its points.

The argument of the article was that, while email is still growing, new forms of messaging and interaction are changing how we communicate.

Readers repeatedly stressed that email was not “fading into the sunset,” in the words of Joe from Texas. “If this were a ‘tweet’ I would only have room to say: “You are full of it”!”

A few were keen on the other extreme. “I haven’t had a personal email address since I joined Facebook in 2005,” remarked one reader in an email response.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091013/how-many-emails-did-you-send-yesterday/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091012/why-email-no-longer-rules%e2%80%a6/ http://allthingsd.com/20091012/why-email-no-longer-rules%e2%80%a6/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:50:07 +0000 Jessica E. Vascellaro http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=16491 Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.

In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold–services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate–in ways we can only begin to imagine.

We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet–logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091012/why-email-no-longer-rules%e2%80%a6/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090916/for-1-9-billion-you-get-majority-interest-in-skype-and-all-associated-litigation/ http://allthingsd.com/20090916/for-1-9-billion-you-get-majority-interest-in-skype-and-all-associated-litigation/#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:20:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=24908 EBay’s plan to sell a 65 percent stake in Skype to a group of private investors is going to be a bit more difficult to pull off than expected. This afternoon, Joltid, a company owned by Skype’s founders, filed a copyright suit against eBay and the consortium of investors that just paid $1.9 billion for a majority interest in it.

The suit, over Joltid-owned peer-to-peer technology used in Skype’s software, seeks an injunction against Skype as well as damages that Joltid claims “are amassing at a rate of more than $75 million daily.”

A nasty surprise for Skype’s new owners: Silver Lake, the Silicon Valley-based private equity group; Index Ventures, the London-based venture capital firm; Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen’s new Andreessen Horowitz fund; and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Though, really they should have seen this coming. After all, Skype and Joltid have been sparring since earlier this year.

From an eBay Securities and Exchange Commission filing earlier this year:

As previously disclosed, Skype has been in a dispute with the licensor of certain key technologies and had terminated a “standstill” agreement that had been entered into between the parties, permitting either to take action against the other with effect from March 2009. On March 12, 2009, Skype Technologies S.A. filed a claim in the English High Court of Justice (No. HC09C00756) against Joltid Limited, a BVI company.

In connection with the license agreement between the two companies, Skype licenses peer-to-peer communication technology from Joltid, and Joltid has claimed that Skype has breached the terms of the license agreement. Following the filing of the claim, Joltid purported to terminate the license agreement. In particular, Joltid has alleged that Skype should not possess, use or modify certain software code (the “Code”) and that, by doing so, and by disclosing the Code in certain U.S. patent cases, pursuant to orders from U.S. courts, it has breached the license agreement.

On the basis of, among other things, the parties’ mutual dealings since the execution of the licence agreement, Skype is asking the English High Court for declaratory relief, including findings that:

(i) Skype is lawfully accessing, in possession of, using and modifying the Code so that Skype is not in breach of the license agreement with Joltid and accordingly Joltid’s notice of breach and subsequent notice of termination are invalid;

(ii) Skype lawfully disclosed the Code in the U.S. patent cases so that Skype is not in breach of the license agreement with Joltid and accordingly Joltid’s notice of breach and subsequent notice of termination are invalid; and

(iii) Joltid has certain indemnity obligations in relation to the U.S. patent proceedings.

Although Skype is confident of its legal position, as with any litigation there is the possibility of an adverse result if the matter is not resolved through negotiation. In such event, Skype would be adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely not be possible.

Perhaps this is why we saw so few bidders for Skype?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090916/for-1-9-billion-you-get-majority-interest-in-skype-and-all-associated-litigation/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090831/the-carol-bartz-is-mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore-memo-the-hypoglycemic-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20090831/the-carol-bartz-is-mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore-memo-the-hypoglycemic-edition/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:10:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17940

BoomTown promised a Yahoo internal memo upon our return from vacation today and we will not let you down.

Thus, here’s a doozie Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz recently sent to her troops.

It’s actually from mid-August, although it took me this long to get my hands on it, as people at the company are justifiably a little memo-leaking shy after this missive that complains of the sugar-low mood of the staff.

One in a series of weekly Friday communications from her, some of which I have posted before, this one got a lot of attention internally, especially among the down-in-the-dumps engineering staff, who were less than pleased with the damn-the-torpedoes-stop-yer-whining tone of the memo.

Whatever the reaction, it is certainly a classic Bartz times 10–a definite back of the hand for those Yahoos who perhaps dwelled too much on whether or not they liked the recent search deal she struck with Microsoft (MSFT).

Here’s the basic gist of it: Fie on naysayers, stop bellyaching, Yahoo rocks and get back to work!

And here’s the memo–referencing the tough week, her knee surgery and the need to focus, people!!!–with the email address section omitted:

I’ve had one! All the work, all the explaining, all the opinions!

I wanted to crawl into a hole and eat chocolate (and of course my knee boo-boo made me feel even sorrier for myself). Making the search decision and driving this much change for us was hard, but it is done.

So I am out of the hole, ready to attack the future. We are Yahoo! 581 MILLION PEOPLE came to us last month. Our audience increased 1.9% month-over-month, faster than the overall Internet population (1.2%).

Our job is to keep growing that audience with a great homepage, great media properties, great communications products and a great search experience. Match that with a compelling advertiser program and voila! We are the largest media property on the Internet.

So get out of the sugar low–we have work to do. Stop staring at our navels, stop arguing with each other. Stop debate, debate, debate, and let’s focus on the competition.

Let’s focus on a great Yahoo! Our average user is just trying to get through the day…looking to find out what’s going on in the big world and their own world. They want their Internet site to be great, and to work. They don’t care about how or about deals. They care that we are a trusted dependable site.

That is our simple mission. Focus on it!!!

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