The deal indicates new directions for Klout, which to date had not been particularly focused on mobile or local.

Blockboard made a neighborhood discussion board iPhone app that had only been available in its hometown of San Francisco. Its team of four had previously been at companies like Delicious and Craigslist. When I covered the company, I noted that it has more of a Twitter approach to a local social network, where competitor Nextdoor requires real identities, a la Facebook.

Klout said that Blockboard’s app would continue to be available, and that its team would work to improve Klout’s local and mobile efforts.

Klout received a rich valuation in its most recent funding round, which closed last November but was only announced in January. Blockboard, meanwhile, had raised $1 million in 2010 from Joshua Schachter, Mitch Kapor, Founder Collective and others.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook:

The internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world. We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet’s development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet.

The world today needs political leaders who are pro-internet. We have been working with many of these folks for months on better alternatives to these current proposals. I encourage you to learn more about these issues and tell your congressmen that you want them to be pro-internet.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.):

The Internet has become an integral part of everyday life precisely because it has been an open-to-all land of opportunity where entrepreneurs, thinkers and innovators are free to try, fail and then try again. The Internet has changed the way we communicate with each other, the way we learn about the world and the way we conduct business. It has done this by eliminating the tollgates, middle men, and other barriers to entry that have so often predetermined winners and losers in the marketplace. It has created a world where ideas, products and creative expression have an opportunity regardless of who offers them or where they originate.

Protect IP (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are a step towards a different kind of Internet. They are a step towards an Internet in which those with money and lawyers and access to power have a greater voice than those who don’t. They are a step towards an Internet in which online innovators need lawyers as much or more than they need good ideas. And they are a step towards a world in which Americans have less of a voice to argue for a free and open Internet around the world.

Legal Team, Red Hat Software:

In a single generation, the Internet has transformed our world to such an extent that it is easy to forget its miraculous properties and take it for granted. It’s worth reminding ourselves, though, that our future economic growth depends on our ability to use the Internet to share new ideas and technology. Measures that block the freedom and openness of the Internet also hinder innovation. That poses a threat to the future success of Red Hat and other innovative companies.

The sponsors of SOPA and PIPA claim that the bills are intended to thwart web piracy. Yet, the bills overreach, and could put a website out of business after a single complaint. Web sites would vanish, and have little recourse, if they were suspected of infringing copyrights or trademarks.

The good news is that there is growing opposition from many quarters to these bills. Just this past weekend, the White House expressed serious concerns, opposing legislation — like SOPA and PIPA — that “reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Lanham Napier, CEO, Rackspace:

In my last blog post on SOPA and PIPA, I explained why Rackspace — along with much of the Internet community — opposes these bills in their current form. They are well-intentioned, but would do more harm than good. Their enforcement provisions could be easily evaded, and they would undermine the security and stability of the Internet.

Since then, I and other Rackers have been working with key lawmakers to fix the bills so that they will (a) actually be effective in fighting online piracy, and (b) avoid disrupting the Internet or imposing unreasonable costs on Internet users and service providers.

We at Rackspace are on the front lines of the battle against copyright infringers and other online criminals. We employ dedicated teams that take enforcement actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as our own strict Acceptable Use Policy every day. We agree that better tools are needed for this fight but SOPA and PIPA do not fit the bill.

Gary Shapiro, President and CEO, Consumer Electronics Association:

“It is increasingly clear that bills causing collateral damage to innovation in the guise of fighting piracy are not politically viable. Now that unreasonable solutions to piracy have been shown not to work, it is time to explore reasonable ones. We urge policymakers to join CEA in support of the OPEN Act — a bicameral, bipartisan and narrowly targeted approach to fighting foreign “rogue websites.”

Paul Hortenstine, Motion Picture Association of America, which supports the bills:

The legislation targets criminals: foreign thieves who profit from pirated content and counterfeit goods. These foreign rogue websites are operating freely today while legitimate American businesses are opposing legislation that would block these criminal websites from the American market.

The Pirate Bay, a site that links visitors to pirated content and would arguably fit someone’s definition of “foreign rogue Web site”:

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.

To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

Ben Greenman, Contributor, The New Yorker:

Dear Spanish speakers, I was only joking when I said you think we’re all protesting soup. Geez: People are so touchy on blackout days

January 18, 2012 8:44 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@bengreenman

Ben Greenman

The Priceonomics Web site, which officially launched on Dec. 21, is aimed at helping sellers and buyers determine the best price for used bikes, cars, phones, TVs and other items, so no one gets ripped off.

But rather than explaining what it does in a press release, Priceonomics wrote an entertaining blog post, entitled “Adventures in Aeron Chair Arbitrage,” detailing its experiments with selling the expensive Herman Miller office furniture in San Francisco.

Trials included finding buyers among its start-up incubator classmates, finding the chairs on Craigslist, borrowing a girlfriend’s car to get them, negotiating a lower price, lugging the chairs back to the office, and then almost losing the sale in the end, when the seller’s $1,800 check didn’t go through.

Priceonomics concludes that a business based on hauling used furniture around won’t scale but that there is a need for a centralized location for pricing information.

From its blog post:

“It’s unlikely Priceonomics could build a massively successful business arbitraging used goods if we have to take possession of them. However, it was clear that having our price guides were really helpful for identifying what were the good deals on Craigslist and how much to pay for them. So for now, we’ll just stick to building better price guides to help other people buy things on Craiglist, eBay, and other emerging marketplaces like Zaarly and TaskRabbit.”

Priceonomics may be on to something here.

Not too long ago, one way to determine the fair value of an item on the Internet was through an online auction. EBay became wildly popular as an easy way for total strangers to agree on a price for an item. More recently, auctions have become less relevant, and even eBay is decreasing the alliance of used items on its site.

That’s due in large part to today’s free flow of information on the Internet, which makes pricing more transparent. After all, you can just Google it.

Still, determining the price of an item can be time-consuming. To get a good sense of the fair value, you have to cross-check prices on a handful of sites — if not a dozen.

Priceonomics’ price guide promises to help users easily find out if they are getting a good deal, by comparing items across eBay, Craigslist and even full-priced retailers that might be offering a deal.

So, how much is a second-hand Aeron chair worth?

In the end, Priceonomics says, the chairs resell for $400 to $600 in San Francisco. The company was able to acquire four, for $375 each; it then turned around and unloaded them for $1,800, representing a $300 profit.

Coffee & Power, which was started by the founder of Second Life, is launching an online marketplace that allows people to buy and sell small tasks with one another — or even to meet up in person at a company-owned cafe in San Francisco.

The site is a little like Craigslist, but focuses on giving people a venue to sell things such as tutoring lessons, software development services, commissioned art or something as random as Hula Hoop lessons.

The concept draws from the latest trend in making small amounts of money from things you may already possess, through a designated community.

Others examples include Airbnb, which assists with renting out a room in your house; RelayRides, which lets you make money by leasing your car; and Zaarly, another online marketplace for people to sell used items or hire someone for their skills.

Coffee & Power was started by Philip Rosedale, the founder and former CEO of Second Life, a virtual world that flourished into a small economy, where players buy and sell items made within the game.

Rosedale explained to me how Second Life overlaps with what he’s doing at Coffee & Power:

“Second Life became more inspiring for me than anything else — not because it was an unbelievable Lego set, but because of what people did economically with the Legos. People were able to use it to create new jobs and inspire themselves to do new things with their skills they weren’t doing previously.”

For instance, Rosedale said, a person might be a software engineer in real life, but on Second Life, they might design women’s shoes and make $2,000 a month selling them to other players.

“We saw that in Second Life, and if we are right about Coffee & Power, we can affect even more people,” he said.

The site first went live in April, but is relaunching today. In that time, Rosedale said that 2,000 people have used it, completing 700 so-called “missions” — which are transactions — for a total of $10,000. The average value has been $15.

Some of the missions include offering to shop at Trader Joe’s for $25, or asking if someone could turn a suit into a zombie costume. Rosedale’s son will bake you brownies or teach you card tricks.

With all of these sites, there’s potential for fraud or deceptive practices. Airbnb had the most public example, when an apartment was ransacked by a renter and the owner’s identity was stolen.

Coffee & Power is employing some of the usual tools to help verify a person’s identity, such as allowing users to link their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles. But the most original part of the company’s concept is funding a coffee shop in downtown San Francisco, where members can meet up to exchange items and drink coffee for free. The cafe at 1825 Market Street is the first site, and Coffee & Power plans to open up additional spaces in other locations as it expands.

Another twist is that Coffee & Power does not let people transact in U.S. dollars. As with Second Life, all missions are conducted in a virtual currency.

Coffee & Power will charge people 15 percent to cash out whatever they earn, which in turn will encourage people to keep the money on the network and spend it on other items in the community.

The company raised $1 million in funding early this year from angel investors, including LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who also invested in Second Life. It has three founders and one full-time employee, and has gotten most of the development work accomplished through hiring software developers online.

Even for a hermit like me, it seems evident that there are local social opportunities beyond deals and check-ins. It’s an area ripe for social Web and app development.

Today, a start-up called Nextdoor launches an authenticated network of social networks for neighborhoods. The service is utilitarian and carefully focused on fostering small private communities.

Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia pitched his site to me like this: You have Facebook for your friends and family, LinkedIn for your business network, and Twitter for your interest graph. But what about your local community?

Nextdoor itself is kind of like Facebook, which started out requiring student users to authenticate with their .edu email addresses, and still requires real names. The Nextdoor site is built to be a safe haven for sharing personal information with a small, relevant audience, and it verifies that users actually live in a neighborhood, using postcard codes and phone listings.

But do you really want to share so much of your identity with your neighbors? And do you want to depend on a site like Nextdoor reaching critical mass so that you can talk to people who live down the street?

Another local social start-up, Blockboard, is taking a different approach. It’s more like Twitter, where users can represent themselves however they want. It’s also focused on mobile, and has so far only launched in San Francisco.

Blockboard’s authentication is much simpler than Nextdoor’s. The first time someone uses the Blockboard iPhone app, it validates via GPS that they are located in a particular neighborhood. (Once they’re registered to that community, they don’t have to be physically there to post.) Users usually use pseudonyms.

Blockboard CEO Stephen Hood — whose team comes from the laissez-faire community sites Delicious and Craigslist — said he thinks real identities aren’t that important to communicating local information like event postings, apartment listings, and lost and found.

Plus, keeping local information private is a bit of a red herring, Hood argued. “People aren’t interested in pretending to be in neighborhoods they’re not in, because the content is not relevant,” he said.

Hood thinks a successful local social network must start on mobile devices in order to become a resource when people are out and about in their neighborhoods.

And maybe someday, if all goes well, those local social network users may put down their phones and actually talk to each other.

As with Jetsetter’s other travel offers, the inventory will target the high end, offering properties ranging from a five-bedroom house in Crete for $310 per night to a palatial 14-bedroom mansion on a private Caribbean island for $53,000 per night.

To date, the New York-based company has focused on selling discounted hotel rooms and other accommodations in exotic places around the world for a short period, or until inventory runs out. It shares the flash sales model with Gilt, its parent company, which is focused mostly on apparel and related items.

With this latest endeavor, Jetsetter will focus on renting out vacation homes owned by individuals, who might otherwise find vacationers through sites such as HomeAway.

HomeAway is one of the dominant players in the space, owning several Internet domains, and is now valued at close to $3.3 billion after going public this summer. But others also dabble in all sorts of niches in the space, including Craigslist and Airbnb, which lets owners rent out rooms in their homes to travelers and just launched longer-term rentals.

Jetsetter will add its own twist by picking five to 10 homes to feature each week and mark down by 20 to 50 percent off.

To start, it will have an inventory of more than 200 homes, which will be available in locations such as the Caribbean, Mexico, California, France and Italy.

Jetsetter will also act as the intermediary, keeping track of when the homes are available, taking photos and getting travel writers to craft unbiased descriptions of the properties, so that renters know exactly what they will be getting into. Jetsetter will also accept the payment.

This is in contrast to other rental sites, which simply connect travelers to property owners, who may or may not respond to inquiries or keep their calendars up to date. Payment is usually sent in the form of a check.

With this approach, there’s no room for haggling, or any awkward chitchats among strangers or surprises when you show up and get the keys — in other words, it’s oh so civilized.

In a release, Drew Patterson, Jetsetter founder and CEO, explained: “As anyone who has researched and booked a vacation home knows, the process is archaic and time consuming compared to hotels, flights and rental cars.”

A couple of other examples to drool over:

• La Maison Blanche in the Loire Valley starts at $1,430 per night for five bedrooms.
• Villa Encantada in Costa Rica starts at $700 per night for four bedrooms.
• Villa Mariposa in Mexico has two bedrooms for $280 per night, while Casa Theodore in Mexico is $1,800 per night for nine bedrooms.

For a limited time, Jetsetter will offer all of the homes for 10 percent off.

Airbnb, the fast-growing online accommodations service, is expanding an offering to allow users to more easily book longer rentals of a month or more.

The San Francisco-based company said in a press release that it had seen a “marked increase in users seeking and booking long-term stays.” So now, after already booking 3,000 monthly rentals, Airbnb said it is improving the functionality and expanding the long-term market on the site.

“Searches for reservations of a month or longer will now display the total monthly price directly in search results,” said Airbnb.

The move will add more competitors to Airbnb, including huge sites such as Craigslist, which specialize in longer-term rentals. Until now, the well-funded site — which has just recovered from a recent controversy over a booking gone bad — has focused on shorter, hotel-like offerings, but at people’s homes.

“Selling something should be as easy as taking a picture on your phone,” said Zheng. And, so, he and a few partners have built a start-up — EggCartel — that does just that. The company’s EggDrop marketplace is designed to allow anyone with something to sell to snap a few pictures with their iPhone or Android device and list it for sale.

The other unique tack that EggDrop employs is a “falling price auction.” Those listing items choose a starting price and a floor, with the price dropping over a 72-hour period until an item is either sold or reaches that lower limit.

That, Zheng said, should allow EggDrop to appeal to both bargain-hunting buyers as well as sellers who are more interested in getting rid of unused items than getting every last dollar.

“It eliminates haggling so you don’t have to argue back and forth,” said Zheng, EggDrop’s CEO.

EggCartel, which has raised $1 million in seed funding from BlueRun Ventures and SV Angel, among others, is launching its Web site on Tuesday and already has the iPhone application in Apple’s store. The company hopes to have the EggDrop app for Android available on Wednesday.

The biggest challenge for any marketplace start-up is, of course, gaining enough scale to make the market work. To address that, EggDrop allows users to post their items to Twitter and Facebook, as well as to Craigslist from within their application.

Zheng also said the scale issue, though a challenge, is not as big a hurdle as one might think.

“What you are going to find, surprisingly, is you don’t need millions and millions of users to get to the point where local marketplace is liquid,” he said.

In general, Zheng said people tend to sell a few key categories of stuff — furniture, toys, games, electronics. “They tend to have a more general appeal compared to collectible items you see on eBay,” he said.

EggDrop also isn’t charging listing or transaction fees, though it might someday offer paid-for premium services.

Zheng points to the alpha test that the company did last year with only a couple thousand users. All the items, he said, were sold, including two cars, which surprised even Zheng.

For now, EggDrop is starting small. There are only seven employees, Zheng said, “including the intern.”

Although users from anywhere in the U.S. can sell items, Zheng said the marketing efforts will center around the company’s hometown of San Francisco and perhaps a few other major cities.

It’s just the latest challenge for Zheng, who worked at Google from 2002 until early last year, working on everything from Android, to paid ads, to Google Video, to building operations in China with Kai-Fu Lee.

“Every year and a half I love to work on something different and challenging,” Zheng said.

(Editor’s note: I misspelled Zheng’s last name in the initial version of this story.)

While the two events are a coincidence, it demonstrates the intense interest to figure out a way to connect shopping more closely to your interests and the people you know.

The company launching its beta site today is Copious, a San Francisco-based start-up that envisions connecting buyers and sellers using information from Facebook and Twitter to strip away some of the anonymity that is found on sites like eBay and Craigslist.

Meanwhile, eBay VP and head of eBay North America Christopher Payne is delivering a keynote today at Internet Retailer in San Diego to talk about some of the features eBay is launching later this year.

So far, eBay’s social efforts have been limited.

eBay launched Group Gifts last year, which helped various people pitch in money using PayPal to buy a gift together for someone, and last month, it hired former Yahoo exec Don Bradford to lead the company’s social commerce efforts.

(Hat tip to All Facebook.)

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the publishing impresario was feeling just a titch…defensive.

But Thursday night, Denton hosted a gathering of 100-plus chitty-chatty newsish media types at his SoHo loft, and there he seemed quite confident again. Midway through his cocktail party, he dimmed the lights, clambered up on a windowsill and toasted his sales team, his technical team and his writers. As well as former New York congressman Chris Lee.

And then he played us this movie, which shows quite clearly what he’s trying to do with his properties. He wants to morph them from “blogs” into something more ambitious, but also older: He wants them to be like TV.

A Day in the Life of Gawker Media – FINAL from source/record on Vimeo.

Just a few days left in 2010, which means you’re seeing a deluge of year-end look back/look forward pieces.

Please: Don’t read them!*

Do something else with your time instead: Spend a few minutes with someone you like. Call someone you haven’t talked to in a long time. Take a nap. Whatever.

Need convincing? OK. Year in review/New Year’s prediction stories are a waste of time because:

We know what happened in the last 12 months. Really. It wasn’t that long ago. No need to remind us.

We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next 12 months. Why pretend otherwise?

When we do pretend to know what’s going to happen, no one’s paying attention anyway. You’re probably not reading this right now! I’m not — I’m off for the rest of the year, and when I do go online this week, I’m going to try very hard to avoid filler pieces like this.

Because no one’s paying attention, no one ever, ever holds anyone accountable for their errant fortune telling. Check out this guesswork/fantasy from five years ago, for example:

Don’t count out the newspaper business–particularly local papers. Yes, eBay and Craigslist are killing off the classified-ads business, and Google, Yahoo! and others are pulling readers away daily. But someone, somewhere will figure out how to take the one thing local papers still do that their competitors can’t–report on what’s happening in readers’ backyards and make money from it.

Still waiting on that one, Nostradumus. Except we’re not. Who cares what Peter Kafka predicted in a Forbes.com 2005 year-end piece? Certainly not Peter Kafka.

All that said, I do have one year-end thought I’d like to pass along for anyone still reading: Thank you. Thanks for reading what I had to say this year, and thanks for letting me know what’s on your mind, too. See you in 2011.

And enjoy the Specials video:

* If you are going to ignore my advice, please do check out the year-in-review/New Year’s pieces coming from my clever colleagues at All Things Digital, who are going to do some excellent work this week.

The company, which launched in April 2005, originally set out to aggregate classified ads from various media outlets to list on its own site, but Craig Donato, founder and CEO of Oodle, said Facebook has now become bigger and is generating 80 percent of its traffic.

Just like with newspaper classifieds or listings on Craigslist, users can post items they want to sell or buy on Oodle or the Facebook Marketplace. Many Facebook users may recognize it from the weekly email the service sends out detailing what items are for sale in their extended friend groups.

Donato said Facebook has become the ideal intermediary to make connections for selling vs. Craiglist, which has gained a reputation for sketchy, or just flaky, behavior among its anonymous users.

“It’s people not showing up, or they show up and say they’ll give you half price. But once we start to introduce an identity, and show how you are connected through mutual friends, or the same college, it introduces social norms. It’s people acting like real people.”

In this scenario, Donato thinks it could even encourage people to recycle items–as opposed to making a profit off them.

Oodle commissioned a survey, which was conducted by Harris Interactive, that found 69 that percent of U.S. adults said they’d rather give away or share unneeded items with friends or acquaintances rather then sell them. In the new format, users can share a “want ad” that’s visible to friends.

To that end, Oodle is mostly scrapping its original business in favor of increasing its relationship with the social network.

It will no longer seek new deals with media outlets, and will push users on Oodle.com to sign up using Facebook Connect. It’s also redesigning the way the listings look, and changing the way emails are designed.

Is it too much reliance on Facebook?

Donato doesn’t think so: “It is the social fabric of the Internet. Facebook has established a social layer and we want to fully embrace it.”

In testimony, Craigslist’s external lawyer, Elizabeth McDougall, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, and William Powell, Craigslist’s director of customer- service and law-enforcement relations, offered the San Francisco company’s first comments on its Sept. 3 move to shutter the adult-services section and replace it with a banner reading “censored.”

Craigslist has no plans to reopen its adult-services category in the U.S., and the company is now employing technical and manual review measures to keep illegal sex ads from migrating to other parts of its site. Mr. Powell said sex ads are moving from Craigslist to other sites, including Village Voice Media’s Backpage.com.

He said no other site had adopted its best practices, which included creating special victim search interfaces for law enforcement and manually reviewing every adult-service ad.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Craigslist first put up a black box reading “censored” on its site last Friday, following a period of increased pressure from a group of attorneys general and anti-prostitution groups. Craigslist hasn’t explained the move, or said whether it plans to permanently shut down adult services listings, which critics say had become an online red light district.

Now the “censored” label, which suggested that Craigslist executives saw adult services as a First Amendment issue, is gone. Craiglist didn’t explain the move.

We may get more of a clue of their view next Wednesday, when the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on domestic minor sex trafficking. Craigslist executives last week told the Journal that they had been invited to speak at the event.

A spokeswoman for the committee said that the witness list hadn’t yet been confirmed. Craigslist’s spokeswoman declined to comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Late Friday, the San Francisco-based classifieds site placed a black “censored” label on its home page over the category that some law-enforcement and other critics said was becoming a virtual red-light district. A Craigslist spokeswoman declined comment on the action.

The move, whether or not it’s permanent, isn’t likely to stem the proliferation of Web prostitution ads. Craigslist executives themselves previously predicted that such ads could gravitate to other sites or elsewhere on its site.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Craiglist CEO Jim Buckmaster let one fly yesterday at CNN reporter Amber Lyon for a report on child sex trafficking she did that focused on the role played by the online-classified giant.

It included using a May interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark that Buckmaster characterized as an ambush, and he accused Lyon of “mischaracterizing your stunt as a serious interview on this subject.”

He ended by noting that if “[CNN anchor] Anderson Cooper would like to come out to SF and sit with us for an interview worthy of CNN’s viewers, we’ll consider it.”

But Lyon’s bio on the CNN site told a different story:

“Lyon also investigated the sex trafficking of minors on Craigslist. In a CNN exclusive, Lyon brought her findings to the ‘Craig’ in Craigslist, founder Craig Newmark. Her interview left Newmark speechless.”

Actually, Newmark wasn’t exactly speechless, as you can see from the video below–he just declined to answer and was silent, which is quite typical of him.

Nonetheless, San Francisco-based Craigslist has been under serious fire of late from state attorneys general nationwide who are seeking to get Craigslist to voluntarily take down its “adult services” section, which is lucrative, but which they allege is a thinly veiled venue for prostitution.

Today, the Boston Globe posted a tough editorial supporting a voluntary takedown, noting:

“While Craigslist should be lauded for having in place stronger safeguards than many other websites–and the classifieds sections of some newspapers and magazines–the site is, at the end of the day, profiting off of prostitution.”

Ouch.

Currently, the company says it now screens every adult ad before it goes up, which Lyon alleged was not being done effectively.

More to come, obviously, but here’s an open invite for Buckmaster to do a video with BoomTown, although I am nowhere near as glam as Cooper.

Until then, here is one of the CNN videos by Lyon:

And here is the Buckmaster blog:

For Amber Lyon, CNN

I see you’ve now gotten around to requesting an interview with me or a company spokesperson, 90 days after you ambushed our namesake and founder, Craig Newmark, following his May 20th talk on veteran’s affairs and other issues unrelated to craigslist, at a conference in Washington.

You knew Craig was not in management or a company spokesperson, but setting CNN’s ethical code aside, you sidestepped company channels in favor of ambushing our semi-retired founder, complete with a misleading “set up” for your surprise questions. Now that CNN has aired your highly misleading piece dozens of times, mischaracterizing your stunt as a serious interview on this subject, and you’ve updated your “bio” to showcase this rare jewel of investigative journalism, you’re ready to try actually interviewing the company itself on this subject.

There is a class of “journalists” known for gratuitously trashing respected organizations and individuals, ignoring readily available facts in favor of rank sensationalism and self-promotion. They work for tabloid media. Your stunt has veteran news pros we know recoiling in journalistic horror, some of them chalking it up to a decline in CNN’s standards, which is unfortunate.

Seeing how you’ve pinned your career hopes on butchering this story, I’ll have to pass. If Anderson Cooper would like to come out to SF and sit with us for an interview worthy of CNN’s viewers, we’ll consider it.

Jim Buckmaster
CEO, craigslist

EBay changed the name of Kijiji.com–its Craigslist-competitor classifieds site–to eBayClassifieds.com in the U.S. While it has seen success in markets such as Canada, Kijiji failed to make much of a dent against Craigslist in the U.S. since debuting here in 2007. According to comScore (SCOR), in February Kijiji had about 3.1 million American visitors–compared to 46.7 for Craigslist.

In addition to the new name, eBayClassifieds.com has a new design and stronger filters to limit fraud and adult content.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

You can’t build a wall around your cubicle using Google News and Craigslist.

Yesterday–in a very precious San Francisco tea cafe of BoomTown’s choosing–Rey Ramsey was unfailingly and politically polite, despite my rat-a-tat questions and the shoving of a Flip video camera in his face on his first visit to California after nabbing his new job as president and CEO of TechNet.

Ramsey better get used to it, though, as he takes over the bipartisan political network of tech types, which is heavy with Silicon Valley power brokers who are often at odds.

They include an executive council with co-chairs John Chambers, CEO of Cisco (CSCO), and mega-venture capitalist John Doerr, as well as Intel (INTC) CEO Paul Otellini and Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt.

Member companies include Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO), Apple (AAPL), Dell (DELL), craigslist, eBay (EBAY) and more.

While they are often wrangling competitively, it will be Ramsey’s job to get them on the same page on a wide range of issues they do agree on, such as visas, the need for more broadband, support for innovation and especially, blocking net neutrality regulation.

With the Obama administration more engaged in digital issues, it might be a good time for TechNet, which was founded in 1997 (I wrote the story about that in The Wall Street Journal, which dates me!). Unusually, it has not had as high a profile over the years as it should have.

But Ramsey, who has deep political ties to the new administration, also has a lot more tech savvy than past TechNet leaders. He co-founded One Economy, a laudable group that tries to bring tech to less privileged parts of society.

How to bridge the digital divide in a way that is more than words is another important issue Ramsey will have on his plate.

Here is the video of my interview with him talking about this and more (in which Ramsey mistakenly seems to say Apple was not a member of TechNet, but was referring to being on its Executive Council):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/new-technet-ceo-rey-ramsey-speaks/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100115/conan-on-craigslist-kimmel-on-leno-craig-ferguson-on-why-none-of-this-matters/ http://allthingsd.com/20100115/conan-on-craigslist-kimmel-on-leno-craig-ferguson-on-why-none-of-this-matters/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:16:20 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=15145 The best/weirdest/most appropriate thing about the late-night wars is that you never have to watch a minute of late-night TV to keep up with them. Which again, is the real story here.

Anyway, here is the Craigslist ad that Conan O’Brien took out last night to put his “barely used talk show” up for sale. The ad keeps popping on and off of Craigslist, but here’s a screengrab (click to enlarge).

Meanwhile, here are the two best late-night video clips I’ve seen so far–again, neither of which I saw on TV:

Jimmy Kimmel making Jay Leno and his audience very uncomfortable (this gets good around the 2:40 mark, if you define “good” as “something that makes everybody a little bit queasy,” which I’m fine with).

And CBS’s (CBS) Craig Ferguson putting all of this in proper perspective:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100115/conan-on-craigslist-kimmel-on-leno-craig-ferguson-on-why-none-of-this-matters/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091214/turnabout-is-fair-play-boomtown-decodes-rupes-journalism-is-not-a-free-cow-op-ed/ http://allthingsd.com/20091214/turnabout-is-fair-play-boomtown-decodes-rupes-journalism-is-not-a-free-cow-op-ed/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:05:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21729

Last week, BoomTown translated an opinion piece written by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and published in The Wall Street Journal that focused on defending the search giant from criticism that it was, well, killing journalism.

One of the louder critics, in fact, has been Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp. (NWS), who has been loaded for bear in regard to Google (GOOG), leveling a series of high-profile verbal attacks on the company.

Last week, Murdoch published his own piece in The Journal, which he owns (along with this Web site), on the topic of the wrenching changes in the news business and in which he never mentioned Google by name.

But the company was there anyway, so, in the interests of equal opportunity balloon-pricking, I must also render Murdoch’s post through my decoding machine, because it’s only sporting!

His op-ed, The Journal noted, “has been adapted from his Dec. 1 remarks before the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop on journalism and the Internet.”

What Murdoch wrote: Journalism and Freedom

Government assistance is a greater threat to the press than any new technology.

By RUPERT MURDOCH

Translation: Crikey, as they say in Australia, I have been getting a little wobbly over Google’s growing power, but those bludgers in government will always make me go more troppo.

And, unlike Eric Schmidt, I didn’t need to be called Emperor Palpatine to scare people. Plain old “Rupe” works just fine to give most people the shakes.

What Murdoch wrote: We are at a time when many news enterprises are shutting down or scaling back. No doubt you will hear some tell you that journalism is in dire shape, and the triumph of digital is to blame.

My message is just the opposite. The future of journalism is more promising than ever–limited only by editors and producers unwilling to fight for their readers and viewers, or government using its heavy hand either to overregulate or subsidize us.

Translation: Please try to ignore the salient fact that it was actually Rupert Murdoch–me!–who has been loudly clanging the bell of late about how Google is laying waste to journalism, much as Sean Hannity did to that poor Alan Colmes nightly for a dozen years.

Also, please ignore that I am saying my message is just the opposite, because–really–I hate government more than I hate Google, so this makes perfect sense if you really think about it.

But don’t think about it, mate!

Murdoch wrote: From the beginning, newspapers have prospered for one reason: The trust that comes from representing their readers’ interests and giving them the news that’s important to them. That means covering the communities where they live, exposing government or business corruption, and standing up to the rich and powerful.

Technology now allows us to do this on a much greater scale. That means we have the means to reach billions of people who until now have had no honest or independent sources of the information they need to rise in society, hold their governments accountable, and pursue their needs and dreams.

Does this mean we are all going to succeed? Of course not. Some newspapers and news organizations will not adapt to the digital realities of our day–and they will fail. We should not blame technology for these failures. The future of journalism belongs to the bold, and the companies that prosper will be those that find new and better ways to meet the needs of their viewers, listeners, and readers.

Translation: Teri: Cue the speech about what journalism means for the little people! But also make sure we get in how News Corp. gets all this digital hoo-ha too and how we are not going to let those pointy-heads of Silicon Valley think we are not ready to rumble!

What Murdoch wrote: First, media companies need to give people the news they want. I can’t tell you how many papers I have visited where they have a wall of journalism prizes–and a rapidly declining circulation. This tells me the editors are producing news for themselves–instead of news that is relevant to their customers. A news organization’s most important asset is the trust it has with its readers, a bond that reflects the readers’ confidence that editors are looking out for their needs and interests.

Translation: There was a trophy cabinet and award wall just like that at The Wall Street Journal before I bought it. I ate it it for breakfast.

What Murdoch wrote: At News Corp., we have been working for two years on a project that would use a portion of our broadcast spectrum to bring our TV offerings–and maybe even our newspaper content–to mobile devices. Today’s news consumers do not want to be chained to a box in their homes or offices to get their favorite news and entertainment–and our plan includes the needs of the next wave of TV viewing by going mobile.

The same is true with newspapers. More and more, our readers are using different technologies to access our papers during different parts of the day. For example, they might read some of their Wall Street Journal on their BlackBerries while commuting into the office, read it on the computer when they arrive, and read it on a larger and clearer e-reader wherever they may be.

Translation: Teri: Tell Jon Miller to get on a plane stat and start chit-chatting with those Asian manufacturers asap. I am not going to let Amazon (AMZN) head Jeff Bezos guffaw me into oblivion with his Kindle or have “American Idol” get hijacked by Apple (AAPL) or have those Google (GOOG) twins shine me on, even as they are developing some magic mobile phone.

What Murdoch wrote: My second point follows from my first: Quality content is not free. In the future, good journalism will depend on the ability of a news organization to attract customers by providing news and information they are willing to pay for.

The old business model based mainly on advertising is dead. Let’s face it: A business model that relies primarily on online advertising cannot sustain newspapers over the long term. The reason is simple arithmetic. Though online advertising is increasing, that increase is only a fraction of what is being lost with print advertising.

That’s not going to change, even in a boom. The reason is that the old model was founded on quasimonopolies, such as classified advertising, which has been decimated by new and cheaper competitors such as Craigslist, Monster.com, and so on.

Translation: My second point follows from the first: We can’t charge for milk when we have been giving away the cow for free.

And, frankly, the old media have been lending out Bessie to every Web site that comes looking for a gallon, free of charge, in abject fear that no one likes milk anymore.

In the good old days, when we were the only beverage around–I like to call it a “quasiMOOnopoly”–we could set any price we wanted.

Now, unfortunately, everybody’s got milk.

What Murdoch wrote: In the new business model, we will be charging consumers for the news we provide on our Internet sites. The critics say people won’t pay. I believe they will, but only if we give them something of good and useful value. Our customers are smart enough to know that you don’t get something for nothing.

Translation: People will pay, once we de-index our sites from Google and they can’t get their daily dose of the New York Post’s Page Six for free. Where else will they get the latest online tidbits on the Tiger Woods scandal, for example?

Okay, from everywhere. But Page Six names at least 46 percent more mistresses than TMZ, and that’s worth something.

What Murdoch wrote: That goes for some of our friends online too. And yet there are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production. Some rewrite, at times without attribution, the news stories of expensive and distinguished journalists who invested days, weeks or even months in their stories–all under the tattered veil of “fair use.”

These people are not investing in journalism. They are feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others. And their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not “fair use.” To be impolite, it’s theft.

Right now, content creators bear all the costs, while aggregators enjoy many of the benefits. In the long term, this is untenable. We are open to different pay models. But the principle is clear: To paraphrase a famous economist, there’s no such thing as a free news story, and we are going to ensure that we get a fair but modest price for the value we provide.

Translation: By “friends,” I mean “sworn enemies,” also known as “Google.” (Until it meets with me to do a deal and then it is “friends” again.)

By “tattered veil of ‘fair use,’” I mean “the law I am going to get gutted by my 1,473 lobbyists in Washington, D.C.”

By “to be impolite, it’s theft,” I mean “to be impolite, it’s theft by Larry and Sergey.” (Until they meet with me to do a deal and fork over the moolah, and then it will be a “business arrangement.”)

By “there’s no such thing as a free news story,” I mean “I hope to trick those Google-obsessed Bing boys at Microsoft (MSFT) into paying me that boatload of money they aren’t sending Carol Bartz of Yahoo (YHOO).”

What Murdoch wrote: Finally, a few words about government. In the last two or three decades, we have seen the emergence of new platforms and opportunities that no one could have predicted–from social networking sites and iPhones and BlackBerries, to Internet sites for newspapers, radio and television. And we are only at the beginning.

The government has a role here. Unfortunately, too many of the mechanisms government uses to regulate the news and information business in this new century are based on 20th-century assumptions and business models. If we are really concerned about the survival of newspapers and other journalistic enterprises, the best thing government can do is to get rid of the arbitrary and contradictory regulations that actually prevent people from investing in these businesses.

One example of outdated thinking is the FCC’s cross-ownership rule that prevents people from owning, say, a television station and a newspaper in the same market. Many of these rules were written when competition was limited because of the huge up-front costs. If you are a newspaper today, your competition is not necessarily the TV station in the same city. It can be a Web site on the other side of the world, or even an icon on someone’s cell phone.

These developments mean increased competition, and that is good for consumers. But just as businesses are adapting to new realities, the government needs to adapt too. In this new and more globally competitive news world, restricting cross-ownership between television and newspapers makes as little sense as would banning newspapers from having Web sites.

Translation: Oh, I do not like Silicon Valley, but I dislike government even more!

And now that Google is its bogeyman instead of me, I really hope to finally be able to gut all those annoying cross-ownership rules that prevented me from owning the entire media landscape of every major city in America.

This must be done immediately, because those icons on people’s cellphones–especially that dangerous iFart app–are poised for attack!

What Murdoch wrote: In my view, the growing drumbeat for government assistance for newspapers is as alarming as overregulation. One idea gaining in popularity is providing taxpayer funds for journalists. Or giving newspapers “nonprofit” status–in exchange, of course, for papers giving up their right to endorse political candidates. The most damning problem with government “help” is what we saw with the bailout of the U.S. auto industry: Help props up those who are producing things that customers do not want.

The prospect of the U.S. government becoming directly involved in commercial journalism ought to be chilling for anyone who cares about freedom of speech. The Founding Fathers knew that the key to independence was to allow enterprises to prosper and serve as a counterweight to government power. It is precisely because newspapers make profits and do not depend on the government for their livelihood that they have the resources and wherewithal to hold the government accountable.

Translation: You bailin’ out me? You bailin’ out me? You bailin’ out me? Then who the hell else are you bailin’ out? You bailin’ out me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the %*#! do you think you’re bailin’ out?”

What Murdoch wrote: When the representatives of 13 former British colonies established a new order for the ages, they built it on a sturdy foundation: a free and informed citizenry. They understood that an informed citizenry requires news that is independent from government. That is one reason they put the First Amendment first.

Translation: Teri: Please insert the clarion cry of the First Amendment here, as it always stirs the heartstrings.

What Murdoch wrote: Our modern world is faster moving and far more complex than theirs. But the basic truth remains: To make informed decisions, free men and women require honest and reliable news about events affecting their countries and their lives. Whether the newspaper of the future is delivered with electrons or dead trees is ultimately not that important. What is most important is that the news industry remains free, independent–and competitive.

Translation: Believe me, if we could push a button and get rid of the whole Internet, News Corp. and Time Warner (TWX) and Viacom (VIA) and CBS (CBS) and the whole lot of us old media players would.

Barring that, whether the newspaper of the future is delivered with electrons or dead trees is ultimately not that important.

What is most important is that the news industry shake down big piles of dough from those Silicon Valley moneybags–whether they be Google or that Mark Zuckerberg kid, whenever Facebook goes public, or those Twitter dudes (if they figure out a way to make any money outside of fund raising)–in order to remain free, independent–and competitive.

It is, after all, the American way.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

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