The city council approved a budget last year allowing the district’s lottery to operate a poker website accessible only inside district boundaries. City officials say the window for Congress to raise objections to the law was due to expire Thursday, allowing it to take effect.

Opening the district to online gambling could make the nation’s capital the first test case for “intrastate” online poker, which allows only players within a state–or the district–to gamble on a site.

States including Florida, California and Nevada are also debating bills to implement intrastate gambling, in part as a way to raise revenue in the face of big budget deficits. The district estimates online gambling could bring in around $13 million over three years, beginning in 2012.
A similar measure was recently vetoed by New Jersey’s governor.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Yesterday, in a major policy speech in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jumped on the Internet bandwagon again, unveiling a $25 million government investment for entrepreneurs to allow dissidents to thwart “thugs, hackers and censors.”

Since that’s about the amount a third-string social photo-sharing site gets while walking down University Avenue in Palo Alto, Calif., from venture capitalists with bags of money to spend, let me just say the money is, well, underwhelming.

Luckily, Clinton’s speech–the latest chapter of the Obama administration’s “Internet Freedom Agenda”–was much better.

In fact, it was a sobering look at the situation, replete with all its conflicts and compromises, including some related to the State Department of late (hello, WikiLeaks!).

While more of a gimmick, Clinton outlined what she called a “venture capital-style approach” to stopping governments from closing down digital communications platforms.

In Egypt, that has included the whole dang Internet after times got tough and protesters tweeted too much.

Even still, said Clinton, such efforts–however effective now–were ultimately useless.

“Those who clamp down on Internet freedom may be able to hold back the full expression of their people’s yearnings for a while, but not forever,” she said.

Still, even though Facebook and Twitter have been lauded as critical tools in the reform protests in the Mideast, those Luddite strongmen did manage to put up a very good fight in shutting them down.

But Clinton advocated pressing on. Along with the seed funding for firewall-piercing and evading technologies, she also announced the creation of a new coordinator for cyber issues and the fact that the State Department had just begun to tweet in Arabic and Farsi and would soon be doing so in Chinese, Hindi and Russian.

All very nice steps, but the overall arrival of the long-promised global “strategy for cyberspace,” which has gotten bogged down in politics, is still to come.

In fact, a GOP-fueled criticism of the State Department was also released yesterday, designed to muck up Clinton’s speech, about how another $30 million in digital investments was being spent or, more precisely, being spent badly.

Clinton answered critics:

“Some have criticized us for not pouring funding into a single technology–but there is no silver bullet in the struggle against Internet repression. There’s no ‘app’ for that.”

Well, actually, since there is an app that turns your Apple iPhone into a hand massager, there certainly should be.

Speaking of that, Clinton was deft at dealing with the obvious delta between pressing for Internet freedom, even as U.S. government lawyers were whacking away at WikiLeaks–and, by association, Twitter itself.

Clinton noted the release of a mass of classified State Department documents “began with an act of theft,” arguing that this was the real issue.

She went on to further argue:

“I said that the WikiLeaks incident began with a theft, just as if it had been executed by smuggling papers in a briefcase. The fact that WikiLeaks used the Internet is not the reason we criticized its actions. WikiLeaks does not challenge our commitment to Internet freedom.”

Actually, the issue is that the Internet, once it really gets going, doesn’t really want to be controlled by anyone.

Kind of like humanity.

Or as Clinton so correctly noted about the various protests taking place abroad:

“In each case, people protested because of deep frustrations with the political and economic conditions of their lives. They stood and marched and chanted and the authorities tracked and blocked and arrested them. The Internet did not do any of those things; people did.”

In any case, judge for yourself: Here’s the video of the speech at George Washington University from the State Department’s Web site, as well as the full text below:

Thank you all very much and good afternoon. It is a pleasure, once again, to be back on the campus of the George Washington University, a place that I have spent quite a bit of time in all different settings over the last now nearly 20 years. I’d like especially to thank President Knapp and Provost Lerman, because this is a great opportunity for me to address such a significant issue, and one which deserves the attention of citizens, governments, and I know is drawing that attention. And perhaps today in my remarks, we can begin a much more vigorous debate that will respond to the needs that we have been watching in real time on our television sets.

A few minutes after midnight on January 28th, the Internet went dark across Egypt. During the previous four days, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians had marched to demand a new government. And the world, on TVs, laptops, cell phones, and smart phones, had followed every single step. Pictures and videos from Egypt flooded the web. On Facebook and Twitter, journalists posted on-the-spot reports. Protestors coordinated their next moves. And citizens of all stripes shared their hopes and fears about this pivotal moment in the history of their country.

Millions worldwide answered in real time, “You are not alone and we are with you.” Then the government pulled the plug. Cell phone service was cut off, TV satellite signals were jammed, and Internet access was blocked for nearly the entire population. The government did not want the people to communicate with each other and it did not want the press to communicate with the public. It certainly did not want the world to watch.

The events in Egypt recalled another protest movement 18 months earlier in Iran, when thousands marched after disputed elections. Their protestors also used websites to organize. A video taken by cell phone showed a young woman named Neda killed by a member of the paramilitary forces, and within hours, that video was being watched by people everywhere.

The Iranian authorities used technology as well. The Revolutionary Guard stalked members of the Green Movement by tracking their online profiles. And like Egypt, for a time, the government shut down the internet and mobile networks altogether. After the authorities raided homes, attacked university dorms, made mass arrests, tortured and fired shots into crowds, the protests ended.

In Egypt, however, the story ended differently. The protests continued despite the internet shutdown. People organized marches through flyers and word of mouth and used dial-up modems and fax machines to communicate with the world. After five days, the government relented and Egypt came back online. The authorities then sought to use the Internet to control the protests by ordering mobile companies to send out pro-government text messages, and by arresting bloggers and those who organized the protests online. But 18 days after the protests began, the government failed and the president resigned.

What happened in Egypt and what happened in Iran, which this week is once again using violence against protestors seeking basic freedoms, was about a great deal more than the internet. In each case, people protested because of deep frustrations with the political and economic conditions of their lives. They stood and marched and chanted and the authorities tracked and blocked and arrested them. The Internet did not do any of those things; people did. In both of these countries, the ways that citizens and the authorities used the Internet reflected the power of connection technologies on the one hand as an accelerant of political, social, and economic change, and on the other hand as a means to stifle or extinguish that change.

There is a debate currently underway in some circles about whether the Internet is a force for liberation or repression. But I think that debate is largely beside the point. Egypt isn’t inspiring people because they communicated using Twitter. It is inspiring because people came together and persisted in demanding a better future. Iran isn’t awful because the authorities used Facebook to shadow and capture members of the opposition. Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people.

So it is our values that cause these actions to inspire or outrage us, our sense of human dignity, the rights that flow from it, and the principles that ground it. And it is these values that ought to drive us to think about the road ahead. Two billion people are now online, nearly a third of humankind. We hail from every corner of the world, live under every form of government, and subscribe to every system of beliefs. And increasingly, we are turning to the Internet to conduct important aspects of our lives.

The Internet has become the public space of the 21st century–the world’s town square, classroom, marketplace, coffeehouse, and nightclub. We all shape and are shaped by what happens there, all 2 billion of us and counting. And that presents a challenge. To maintain an Internet that delivers the greatest possible benefits to the world, we need to have a serious conversation about the principles that will guide us, what rules exist and should not exist and why, what behaviors should be encouraged or discouraged and how.

The goal is not to tell people how to use the Internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square, whether it’s Tahrir Square or Times Square. The value of these spaces derives from the variety of activities people can pursue in them, from holding a rally to selling their vegetables, to having a private conversation. These spaces provide an open platform, and so does the Internet. It does not serve any particular agenda, and it never should. But if people around the world are going come together every day online and have a safe and productive experience, we need a shared vision to guide us.

One year ago, I offered a starting point for that vision by calling for a global commitment to Internet freedom, to protect human rights online as we do offline. The rights of individuals to express their views freely, petition their leaders, worship according to their beliefs–these rights are universal, whether they are exercised in a public square or on an individual blog. The freedoms to assemble and associate also apply in cyberspace. In our time, people are as likely to come together to pursue common interests online as in a church or a labor hall.

Together, the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association online comprise what I’ve called the freedom to connect. The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere, and we have called on other nations to do the same. Because we want people to have the chance to exercise this freedom. We also support expanding the number of people who have access to the Internet. And because the Internet must work evenly and reliably for it to have value, we support the multi-stakeholder system that governs the internet today, which has consistently kept it up and running through all manner of interruptions across networks, borders, and regions.

In the year since my speech, people worldwide have continued to use the Internet to solve shared problems and expose public corruption, from the people in Russia who tracked wildfires online and organized a volunteer firefighting squad, to the children in Syria who used Facebook to reveal abuse by their teachers, to the Internet campaign in China that helps parents find their missing children.

At the same time, the Internet continues to be restrained in a myriad of ways. In China, the government censors content and redirects search requests to error pages. In Burma, independent news sites have been taken down with distributed denial of service attacks. In Cuba, the government is trying to create a national intranet, while not allowing their citizens to access the global internet. In Vietnam, bloggers who criticize the government are arrested and abused. In Iran, the authorities block opposition and media websites, target social media, and steal identifying information about their own people in order to hunt them down.

These actions reflect a landscape that is complex and combustible, and sure to become more so in the coming years as billions of more people connect to the Internet. The choices we make today will determine what the Internet looks like in the future. Businesses have to choose whether and how to enter markets where internet freedom is limited. People have to choose how to act online, what information to share and with whom, which ideas to voice and how to voice them. Governments have to choose to live up to their commitments to protect free expression, assembly, and association.

For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness. Now, we recognize that an open Internet comes with challenges. It calls for ground rules to protect against wrongdoing and harm. And Internet freedom raises tensions, like all freedoms do. But we believe the benefits far exceed the costs.

And today, I’d like to discuss several of the challenges we must confront as we seek to protect and defend a free and open Internet. Now, I’m the first to say that neither I nor the United States Government has all the answers. We’re not sure we have all the questions. But we are committed to asking the questions, to helping lead a conversation, and to defending not just universal principles but the interests of our people and our partners.

The first challenge is achieving both liberty and security. Liberty and security are often presented as equal and opposite; the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. In fact, I believe they make it each other possible. Without security, liberty is fragile. Without liberty, security is oppressive. The challenge is finding the proper measure: enough security to enable our freedoms, but not so much or so little as to endanger them.

Finding this proper measure for the Internet is critical because the qualities that make the internet a force for unprecedented progress–its openness, its leveling effect, its reach and speed–also enable wrongdoing on an unprecedented scale. Terrorists and extremist groups use the Internet to recruit members, and plot and carry out attacks. Human traffickers use the Internet to find and lure new victims into modern-day slavery. Child pornographers use the Internet to exploit children. Hackers break into financial institutions, cell phone networks, and personal email accounts.

So we need successful strategies for combating these threats and more without constricting the openness that is the Internet’s greatest attribute. The United States is aggressively tracking and deterring criminals and terrorists online. We are investing in our nation’s cyber-security, both to prevent cyber-incidents and to lessen their impact. We are cooperating with other countries to fight transnational crime in cyberspace. The United States Government invests in helping other nations build their own law enforcement capacity. We have also ratified the Budapest Cybercrime Convention, which sets out the steps countries must take to ensure that the internet is not misused by criminals and terrorists while still protecting the liberties of our own citizens.

In our vigorous effort to prevent attacks or apprehend criminals, we retain a commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms. The United States is determined to stop terrorism and criminal activity online and offline, and in both spheres we are committed to pursuing these goals in accordance with our laws and values.

Now, others have taken a different approach. Security is often invoked as a justification for harsh crackdowns on freedom. Now, this tactic is not new to the digital age, but it has new resonance as the internet has given governments new capacities for tracking and punishing human rights advocates and political dissidents. Governments that arrest bloggers, pry into the peaceful activities of their citizens, and limit their access to the Internet may claim to be seeking security. In fact, they may even mean it as they define it. But they are taking the wrong path. Those who clamp down on Internet freedom may be able to hold back the full expression of their people’s yearnings for a while, but not forever.

The second challenge is protecting both transparency and confidentiality. The Internet’s strong culture of transparency derives from its power to make information of all kinds available instantly. But in addition to being a public space, the Internet is also a channel for private communications. And for that to continue, there must be protection for confidential communication online. Think of all the ways in which people and organizations rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. Businesses hold confidential conversations when they’re developing new products to stay ahead of their competitors. Journalists keep the details of some sources confidential to protect them from exposure or retribution. And governments also rely on confidential communication online as well as offline. The existence of connection technologies may make it harder to maintain confidentiality, but it does not alter the need for it.

Now, I know that government confidentiality has been a topic of debate during the past few months because of WikiLeaks, but it’s been a false debate in many ways. Fundamentally, the WikiLeaks incident began with an act of theft. Government documents were stolen, just the same as if they had been smuggled out in a briefcase. Some have suggested that this theft was justified because governments have a responsibility to conduct all of our work out in the open in the full view of our citizens. I respectfully disagree. The United States could neither provide for our citizens’ security nor promote the cause of human rights and democracy around the world if we had to make public every step of our efforts. Confidential communication gives our government the opportunity to do work that could not be done otherwise.

Consider our work with former Soviet states to secure loose nuclear material. By keeping the details confidential, we make it less likely that terrorists or criminals will find the nuclear material and steal it for their own purposes. Or consider the content of the documents that WikiLeaks made public. Without commenting on the authenticity of any particular documents, we can observe that many of the cables released by WikiLeaks relate to human rights work carried on around the world. Our diplomats closely collaborate with activists, journalists, and citizens to challenge the misdeeds of oppressive governments. It is dangerous work. By publishing diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks exposed people to even greater risk.

For operations like these, confidentiality is essential, especially in the Internet age when dangerous information can be sent around the world with the click of a keystroke. But of course, governments also have a duty to be transparent. We govern with the consent of the people, and that consent must be informed to be meaningful. So we must be judicious about when we close off our work to the public, and we must review our standards frequently to make sure they are rigorous. In the United States, we have laws designed to ensure that the government makes its work open to the people, and the Obama Administration has also launched an unprecedented initiative to put government data online, to encourage citizen participation, and to generally increase the openness of government.

The U.S. Government’s ability to protect America, to secure the liberties of our people, and to support the rights and freedoms of others around the world depends on maintaining a balance between what’s public and what should and must remain out of the public domain. The scale should and will always be tipped in favor of openness, but tipping the scale over completely serves no one’s interests. Let me be clear. I said that the WikiLeaks incident began with a theft, just as if it had been executed by smuggling papers in a briefcase. The fact that WikiLeaks used the Internet is not the reason we criticized its actions. WikiLeaks does not challenge our commitment to Internet freedom.

And one final word on this matter: There were reports in the days following these leaks that the United States Government intervened to coerce private companies to deny service to WikiLeaks. That is not the case. Now, some politicians and pundits publicly called for companies to disassociate from WikiLeaks, while others criticized them for doing so. Public officials are part of our country’s public debates, but there is a line between expressing views and coercing conduct. Business decisions that private companies may have taken to enforce their own values or policies regarding WikiLeaks were not at the direction of the Obama Administration.

A third challenge is protecting free expression while fostering tolerance and civility. I don’t need to tell this audience that the Internet is home to every kind of speech–false, offensive, incendiary, innovative, truthful, and beautiful.

The multitude of opinions and ideas that crowd the Internet is both a result of its openness and a reflection of our human diversity. Online, everyone has a voice. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the freedom of expression for all. But what we say has consequences. Hateful or defamatory words can inflame hostilities, deepen divisions, and provoke violence. On the Internet, this power is heightened. Intolerant speech is often amplified and impossible to retract. Of course, the Internet also provides a unique space for people to bridge their differences and build trust and understanding.

Some take the view that, to encourage tolerance, some hateful ideas must be silenced by governments. We believe that efforts to curb the content of speech rarely succeed and often become an excuse to violate freedom of expression. Instead, as it has historically been proven time and time again, the better answer to offensive speech is more speech. People can and should speak out against intolerance and hatred. By exposing ideas to debate, those with merit tend to be strengthened, while weak and false ideas tend to fade away; perhaps not instantly, but eventually.

Now, this approach does not immediately discredit every hateful idea or convince every bigot to reverse his thinking. But we have determined as a society that it is far more effective than any other alternative approach. Deleting writing, blocking content, arresting speakers–these actions suppress words, but they do not touch the underlying ideas. They simply drive people with those ideas to the fringes, where their convictions can deepen, unchallenged.

Last summer, Hannah Rosenthal, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, made a trip to Dachau and Auschwitz with a delegation of American imams and Muslim leaders. Many of them had previously denied the Holocaust, and none of them had ever denounced Holocaust denial. But by visiting the concentration camps, they displayed a willingness to consider a different view. And the trip had a real impact. They prayed together, and they signed messages of peace, and many of those messages in the visitors books were written in Arabic. At the end of the trip, they read a statement that they wrote and signed together condemning without reservation Holocaust denial and all other forms of anti-Semitism.

The marketplace of ideas worked. Now, these leaders had not been arrested for their previous stance or ordered to remain silent. Their mosques were not shut down. The state did not compel them with force. Others appealed to them with facts. And their speech was dealt with through the speech of others.

The United States does restrict certain kinds of speech in accordance with the rule of law and our international obligations. We have rules about libel and slander, defamation, and speech that incites imminent violence. But we enforce these rules transparently, and citizens have the right to appeal how they are applied. And we don’t restrict speech even if the majority of people find it offensive. History, after all, is full of examples of ideas that were banned for reasons that we now see as wrong. People were punished for denying the divine right of kings, or suggesting that people should be treated equally regardless of race, gender, or religion. These restrictions might have reflected the dominant view at the time, and variations on these restrictions are still in force in places around the world.

But when it comes to online speech, the United States has chosen not to depart from our time-tested principles. We urge our people to speak with civility, to recognize the power and reach that their words can have online. We’ve seen in our own country tragic examples of how online bullying can have terrible consequences. Those of us in government should lead by example, in the tone we set and the ideas we champion. But leadership also means empowering people to make their own choices, rather than intervening and taking those choices away. We protect free speech with the force of law, and we appeal to the force of reason to win out over hate.

Now, these three large principles are not always easy to advance at once. They raise tensions, and they pose challenges. But we do not have to choose among them. Liberty and security, transparency and confidentiality, freedom of expression and tolerance–these all make up the foundation of a free, open, and secure society as well as a free, open, and secure internet where universal human rights are respected, and which provides a space for greater progress and prosperity over the long run.

Now, some countries are trying a different approach, abridging rights online and working to erect permanent walls between different activities–economic exchanges, political discussions, religious expressions, and social interactions. They want to keep what they like and suppress what they don’t. But this is no easy task. Search engines connect businesses to new customers, and they also attract users because they deliver and organize news and information. Social networking sites aren’t only places where friends share photos; they also share political views and build support for social causes or reach out to professional contacts to collaborate on new business opportunities.

Walls that divide the Internet, that block political content, or ban broad categories of expression, or allow certain forms of peaceful assembly but prohibit others, or intimidate people from expressing their ideas are far easier to erect than to maintain. Not just because people using human ingenuity find ways around them and through them but because there isn’t an economic Internet and a social Internet and a political Internet; there’s just the Internet. And maintaining barriers that attempt to change this reality entails a variety of costs–moral, political, and economic. Countries may be able to absorb these costs for a time, but we believe they are unsustainable in the long run. There are opportunity costs for trying to be open for business but closed for free expression–costs to a nation’s education system, its political stability, its social mobility, and its economic potential.

When countries curtail Internet freedom, they place limits on their economic future. Their young people don’t have full access to the conversations and debates happening in the world or exposure to the kind of free inquiry that spurs people to question old ways of doing and invent new ones. And barring criticism of officials makes governments more susceptible to corruption, which create economic distortions with long-term effects. Freedom of thought and the level playing field made possible by the rule of law are part of what fuels innovation economies.

So it;s not surprising that the European-American Business Council, a group of more than 70 companies, made a strong public support statement last week for Internet freedom. If you invest in countries with aggressive censorship and surveillance policies, your website could be shut down without warning, your servers hacked by the government, your designs stolen, or your staff threatened with arrest or expulsion for failing to comply with a politically motivated order. The risks to your bottom line and to your integrity will at some point outweigh the potential rewards, especially if there are market opportunities elsewhere.

Now, some have pointed to a few countries, particularly China, that appears to stand out as an exception, a place where Internet censorship is high and economic growth is strong. Clearly, many businesses are willing to endure restrictive internet policies to gain access to those markets, and in the short term, even perhaps in the medium term, those governments may succeed in maintaining a segmented internet. But those restrictions will have long-term costs that threaten one day to become a noose that restrains growth and development.

There are political costs as well. Consider Tunisia, where online economic activity was an important part of the country’s ties with Europe while online censorship was on par with China and Iran, the effort to divide the economic internet from the “everything else” Internet in Tunisia could not be sustained. People, especially young people, found ways to use connection technologies to organize and share grievances, which, as we know, helped fuel a movement that led to revolutionary change. In Syria, too, the government is trying to negotiate a non-negotiable contradiction. Just last week, it lifted a ban on Facebook and YouTube for the first time in three years, and yesterday they convicted a teenage girl of espionage and sentenced her to five years in prison for the political opinions she expressed on her blog.

This, too, is unsustainable. The demand for access to platforms of expression cannot be satisfied when using them lands you in prison. We believe that governments who have erected barriers to Internet freedom, whether they’re technical filters or censorship regimes or attacks on those who exercise their rights to expression and assembly online, will eventually find themselves boxed in. They will face a dictator’s dilemma and will have to choose between letting the walls fall or paying the price to keep them standing, which means both doubling down on a losing hand by resorting to greater oppression and enduring the escalating opportunity cost of missing out on the ideas that have been blocked and people who have been disappeared.

I urge countries everywhere instead to join us in the bet we have made, a bet that an open internet will lead to stronger, more prosperous countries. At its core, it’s an extension of the bet that the United States has been making for more than 200 years, that open societies give rise to the most lasting progress, that the rule of law is the firmest foundation for justice and peace, and that innovation thrives where ideas of all kinds are aired and explored. This is not a bet on computers or mobile phones. It’s a bet on people. We’re confident that together with those partners in government and people around the world who are making the same bet by hewing to universal rights that underpin open societies, we’ll preserve the internet as an open space for all. And that will pay long-term gains for our shared progress and prosperity. The United States will continue to promote an Internet where people’s rights are protected and that it is open to innovation, interoperable all over the world, secure enough to hold people’s trust, and reliable enough to support their work.

In the past year, we have welcomed the emergence of a global coalition of countries, businesses, civil society groups, and digital activists seeking to advance these goals. We have found strong partners in several governments worldwide, and we’ve been encouraged by the work of the Global Network Initiative, which brings together companies, academics, and NGOs to work together to solve the challenges we are facing, like how to handle government requests for censorship or how to decide whether to sell technologies that could be used to violate rights or how to handle privacy issues in the context of cloud computing. We need strong corporate partners that have made principled, meaningful commitments to internet freedom as we work together to advance this common cause.

We realize that in order to be meaningful, online freedoms must carry over into real-world activism. That’s why we are working through our Civil Society 2.0 initiative to connect NGOs and advocates with technology and training that will magnify their impact. We are also committed to continuing our conversation with people everywhere around the world. Last week, you may have heard, we launched Twitter feeds in Arabic and Farsi, adding to the ones we already have in French and Spanish. We’ll start similar ones in Chinese, Russian, and Hindi. This is enabling us to have real-time, two-way conversations with people wherever there is a connection that governments do not block.

Our commitment to internet freedom is a commitment to the rights of people, and we are matching that with our actions. Monitoring and responding to threats to internet freedom has become part of the daily work of our diplomats and development experts. They are working to advance internet freedom on the ground at our embassies and missions around the world. The United States continues to help people in oppressive internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers, and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online.

While the rights we seek to protect and support are clear, the various ways that these rights are violated are increasingly complex. I know some have criticized us for not pouring funding into a single technology, but we believe there is no silver bullet in the struggle against internet repression. There’s no app for that. Start working, those of you out there. And accordingly, we are taking a comprehensive and innovative approach, one that matches our diplomacy with technology, secure distribution networks for tools, and direct support for those on the front lines.

In the last three years, we have awarded more than $20 million in competitive grants through an open process, including interagency evaluation by technical and policy experts to support a burgeoning group of technologists and activists working at the cutting edge of the fight against internet repression. This year, we will award more than $25 million in additional funding. We are taking a venture capital-style approach, supporting a portfolio of technologies, tools, and training, and adapting as more users shift to mobile devices. We have our ear to the ground, talking to digital activists about where they need help, and our diversified approach means we’re able to adapt the range of threats that they face. We support multiple tools, so if repressive governments figure out how to target one, others are available. And we invest in the cutting edge because we know that repressive governments are constantly innovating their methods of oppression and we intend to stay ahead of them.

Likewise, we are leading the push to strengthen cyber security and online innovation, building capacity in developing countries, championing open and interoperable standards and enhancing international cooperation to respond to cyber threats. Deputy Secretary of Defense Lynn gave a speech on this issue just yesterday. All these efforts build on a decade of work to sustain an Internet that is open, secure, and reliable. And in the coming year, the Administration will complete an international strategy for cyberspace, charting the course to continue this work into the future.

This is a foreign policy priority for us, one that will only increase in importance in the coming years. That’s why I’ve created the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, to enhance our work on cyber security and other issues and facilitate cooperation across the State Department and with other government agencies. I’ve named Christopher Painter, formerly senior director for cyber security at the National Security Council and a leader in the field for 20 years, to head this new office.

The dramatic increase in internet users during the past 10 years has been remarkable to witness. But that was just the opening act. In the next 20 years, nearly 5 billion people will join the network. It is those users who will decide the future.

So we are playing for the long game. Unlike much of what happens online, progress on this front will be measured in years, not seconds. The course we chart today will determine whether those who follow us will get the chance to experience the freedom, security, and prosperity of an open Internet.

As we look ahead, let us remember that Internet freedom isn’t about any one particular activity online. It’s about ensuring that the Internet remains a space where activities of all kinds can take place, from grand, ground-breaking, historic campaigns to the small, ordinary acts that people engage in every day.

We want to keep the Iternet open for the protestor using social media to organize a march in Egypt; the college student emailing her family photos of her semester abroad; the lawyer in Vietnam blogging to expose corruption; the teenager in the United States who is bullied and finds words of support online; for the small business owner in Kenya using mobile banking to manage her profits; the philosopher in China reading academic journals for her dissertation; the scientist in Brazil sharing data in real time with colleagues overseas; and the billions and billions of interactions with the Internet every single day as people communicate with loved ones, follow the news, do their jobs, and participate in the debates shaping their world.

Internet freedom is about defending the space in which all these things occur so that it remains not just for the students here today, but your successors and all who come after you. This is one of the grand challenges of our time. We are engaged in a vigorous effort against those who we have always stood against, who wish to stifle and repress, to come forward with their version of reality and to accept none other. We enlist your help on behalf of this struggle. It’s a struggle for human rights, it’s a struggle for human freedom, and it’s a struggle for human dignity.

Thank you all very much.

It started with some simple graffiti that Ben Berkowitz wanted to get removed from a wall near his office in New Haven, Conn. 

“And not the nice kind of graffiti,” he added. 

Instead of knocking on the door of City Hall to get the unsightly spray paint dealt with, Berkowitz and his fellow co-founders developed SeeClickFix.

The Web and mobile app, from the company of the same name, has been aiming to help users document and report civic annoyances since its alpha launch in 2008.

Now SeeClickFix has just completed a $1.5 million Series A round of funding led by Bryce Roberts at O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network also invested.  

The round closed very shortly after a major upgrade of its Apple iPhone app and formalization of partnerships with San Francisco’s 311 issue reporting system, as well as Washington, D.C.’s similar service.

So issues submitted in those cities via the SeeCickFix apps will actually create a work order in the cities’ official system, rather than just being directed to the appropriate agency’s email “tip line.”

Berkowitz said the infusion of cash will allow the addition of a sales and business development staff, as well as the hiring of two developers to focus on its apps and Web presence.

The concept behind SeeClickFix is simple, if not entirely original. In fact, Berkowitz admitted, it began as an outright copy of FixMyStreet, a pothole-reporting Web app from the U.K. 

“We looked at the FixMyStreet code when building SeeClickFix, and quickly realized that it was built specifically not to scale outside of the U.K.,” Berkowitz said. ”We had to rebuild the concept from scratch so it would be useful here in the U.S. and so it could scale.”

SeeClickFix took the pothole concept and added the ability to report graffiti, speeding school buses, broken infrastructure and just about any kind of civic breakdown one might imagine. 

People have even used it to request beautification, other than blight removal, such as asking for a tree in their neighborhood. 

Berkowitz claimed the resolution rate for issues filed with SeeClickFix is approximately 45 percent nationally, although he wouldn’t elaborate on given municipalities. 

He did say that he hoped the new formal partnerships would close the loop and allow SeeClickFix to more accurately list the issues that had been fixed through municipal reporting, rather than waiting for citizens to document the fixes. 

I asked about the somewhat unusual funding situation SeeClickFix is now in, having a venture investor best known for supporting micro-finance and political engagement campaigns in the developing world. 

But to Berkowitz, it seemed like a pretty natural partnership. 

“Citizens are our users. That’s who we serve,” he said. “Governments just benefit from it.” 

Berkowitz actually had quite a bit to say about the larger motivations behind SeeClickFix, and you can watch the video interview below to hear it all from him:

(Early Adopter is a new column on early-stage start-ups and ideas that will be written weekly by Drake Martinet.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110114/early-adopter-pothole-reporting-app-seeclickfix-raises-1-5-million-to-help-you-be-a-squeakier-wheel/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100813/decoding-googles-net-neutrality-proposal-blog-the-pixie-dust-free-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20100813/decoding-googles-net-neutrality-proposal-blog-the-pixie-dust-free-edition/#comments Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:51:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32137

The opening line of the classic J.M. Barrie book “Peter Pan” reads, “All children, except one, grow up.”

Actually, that one grew up, too, and now the whole Internet is angry at Google (GOOG) and taking shots, because of the Silicon Valley search giant’s recent joint public-policy proposal with Verizon (VZ) over net neutrality.

Many are claiming Google–in the most cynical of ways–sold out its long-standing commitment to the open Internet to make a corporately favorable deal.

Thus, Google–in this case, Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel–took to the corporate blog yesterday to explain it all away in a post titled “Facts About Our Network Neutrality Policy.”

It practically begs for translation, so BoomTown shall not disappoint:

Google wrote: Over the past few days there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding our announcement of a policy proposal on network neutrality we put together with Verizon. On balance, we believe this proposal represents real progress on what has become a very contentious issue, and we think it could help move the network neutrality debate forward constructively.

We don’t expect everyone to agree with every aspect of our proposal, but there has been a number of inaccuracies about it, and we do want to separate fact from fiction.

Translation: Wait, the hypnotic multicolored letters aren’t working anymore? What about the cute logos on the homepage–didja see our whimsical “Wizard of Oz” montage? Hey, our founders still wear wacky shoes!

And look over here at the Googleplex: Segways with wings and coconut-water lattes for all!

Okay, we’ll come clean: This band of Lost Boys–and Wendy who runs search–didn’t want to grow up, either.

But Sheryl Sandberg did an Indian talent raid and convinced Tinkerbell to take all her fairy dust to work on magical social-marketing features at Facebook. Also, Captain Hook and that alligator are working up some geo-location thing with the ticking clock over at Foursquare.

In other words, that’s Mr. Peter Man to you now.

Google wrote: MYTH: Google has “sold out” on network neutrality.

FACT: Google has been the leading corporate voice on the issue of network neutrality over the past five years. No other company is working as tirelessly for an open Internet.

But given political realities, this particular issue has been intractable in Washington for several years now. At this time there are no enforceable protections–at the Federal Communications Commission or anywhere else–against even the worst forms of carrier discrimination against Internet traffic.

With that in mind, we decided to partner with a major broadband provider on the best policy solution we could devise together. We’re not saying this solution is perfect, but we believe that a proposal that locks in key enforceable protections for consumers is preferable to no protection at all.

Translation: We caved. In fact, we spelunked. All right, we journeyed to the center of the earth. Second to the right and straight on till morning, times a google.

But it is not technically selling out, since we got no money in the deal. I mean, not yet.

That comes later, when we and Verizon control all the tolls on the private and exclusive Schminternet, named for Fearless Leader and CEO Eric Schmidt (pictured here), coming to you in 2020!

We’re not saying the solution is perfect. But we believe that a proposal that locks in key moneymaking fees for us is preferable to having to struggle later–like those losers at Microsoft (MSFT) do today–when the search business goes the way of boxed software.

Google wrote: MYTH: This proposal represents a step backwards for the open Internet.

FACT: If adopted, this proposal would for the first time give the FCC the ability to preserve the open Internet through enforceable rules on broadband providers. At the same time, the FCC would be prohibited from imposing regulations on the Internet itself.

Here are some of the tangible benefits in our joint legislative proposal:

* Newly enforceable FCC standards
* Prohibitions against blocking or degrading wireline Internet traffic
* Prohibition against discriminating against wireline Internet traffic in ways that harm users or competition
* Presumption against all forms of prioritizing wireline Internet traffic
* Full transparency across wireline and wireless broadband platforms
* Clear FCC authority to adjudicate user complaints, and impose injunctions and fines against bad actors
* Verizon has agreed to voluntarily abide by these same requirements going forward–another first for a major communications provider. We hope this action will convince other broadband companies to follow suit.

Translation: Did you ever do the Hokey Pokey? Jockeying for political power in Washington is like that, except someone always loses an eye.

You put your eternal soul in,
You put your ethics out;
You put your corporate standards in,
And you shake them all about.
You do the Hokey-Pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about!

Which is why they say you should never watch sausage being made.

Google wrote: MYTH: This proposal would eliminate network neutrality over wireless.

FACT: It’s true that Google previously has advocated for certain openness safeguards to be applied in a similar fashion to what would be applied to wireline services. However, in the spirit of compromise, we have agreed to a proposal that allows this market to remain free from regulation for now, while Congress keeps a watchful eye.

Why? First, the wireless market is more competitive than the wireline market, given that consumers typically have more than just two providers to choose from. Second, because wireless networks employ airwaves, rather than wires, and share constrained capacity among many users, these carriers need to manage their networks more actively. Third, network and device openness is now beginning to take off as a significant business model in this space.

In our proposal, we agreed that the best first step is for wireless providers to be fully transparent with users about how network traffic is managed to avoid congestion, or prioritized for certain applications and content. Our proposal also asks the Federal government to monitor and report regularly on the state of the wireless broadband market. Importantly, Congress would always have the ability to step in and impose new safeguards on wireless broadband providers to protect consumers’ interests.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the future of wireless broadband increasingly will be found in the advanced, 4th generation (4G) networks now being constructed. Verizon will begin rolling out its 4G network this fall under openness license conditions that Google helped persuade the FCC to adopt. Clearwire is already providing 4G service in some markets, operating under a unique wholesale/openness business model. So consumers across the country are beginning to experience open Internet wireless platforms, which we hope will be enhanced and encouraged by our transparency proposal.

Translation: By transparency, we mean a backroom deal so covered in the fog of compromise that it was like the Smoke Monster in “Lost.”

And you know what happened when he (she? it?) showed up. Not pretty.

Neither was the fact that we had to throw wireless–the most promising of networks–under the bus right now. While there is likely to be some crushing of competition and mangling of the bones of this little baby, you can be sure Congress can always step in to protect consumers’ interests with regard to wireless broadband.

In fact, Congress just hired Kate and Jon Gosselin to give parenting tips on how not to completely take advantage of the wired Internet’s most valuable offspring.

Google wrote: MYTH: This proposal will allow broadband providers to “cannibalize” the public Internet.

FACT: Another aspect of the joint proposal would allow broadband providers to offer certain specialized services to customers, services which are not part of the Internet. So, for example, broadband providers could offer a special gaming channel, or a more secure banking service, or a home health monitoring capability–so long as such offerings are separate and apart from the public Internet. Some broadband providers already offer these types of services today. The chief challenge is to let consumers benefit from these non-Internet services, without allowing them to impede on the Internet itself.

We have a number of key protections in the proposal to protect the public Internet:

* First, the broadband provider must fully comply with the consumer protection and nondiscrimination standards governing its Internet access service before it could pursue any of these other online service opportunities.

* Second, these services must be “distinguishable in purpose and scope” from Internet access, so that they cannot over time supplant the best effort Internet.

* Third, the FCC retains its full capacity to monitor these various service offerings, and to intervene where necessary to ensure that robust, unfettered broadband capacity is allocated to Internet access.

So we believe there would be more than adequate tools in place to help guard against the “cannibalization” of the public Internet.

Translation: Yes, the very same government that protected its citizens from the sub-prime mortgage mess by monitoring those giant, risk-mad banks so well.

The same government that was making sure oil giants like BP adhered to strict safety standard for its offshore wells.

The same government…well, you get the general idea, but you should have no fear of cannibals.

Of sharkish telcom companies, yes. Of man-eating lions from the cable business, certainly.

But of multicolored, letter-decorated piranhas who look harmless with their big squishy balls and organic guava smoothies but will cut you as soon as you stick one consumer finger in the digital pond?

Let’s just say: Don’t go in the water.

Google wrote: MYTH: Google is working with Verizon on this because of Android.

FACT: This is a policy proposal–not a business deal. Of course, Google has a close business relationship with Verizon, but ultimately this proposal has nothing to do with Android. Folks certainly should not be surprised by the announcement of this proposal, given our prior public policy work with Verizon on network neutrality, going back to our October 2009 blog post, our January 2010 joint FCC filing, and our April 2010 op-ed.

Translation: Rachel, are you in London or back in Mountain View? Please ring us up asap, as you need to come up with some fancy new talk. I don’t think they are buying this policy-proposal-not-a-business-deal pablum.

In fact, I am even giggling every time I write it.

Google wrote: MYTH: Two corporations are legislating the future of the Internet.

FACT: Our two companies are proposing a legislative framework to the Congress for its consideration. We hope all stakeholders will weigh in and help shape the framework to move us all forward. We’re not so presumptuous to think that any two businesses could–or should–decide the future of this issue. We’re simply trying to offer a proposal to help resolve a debate which has largely stagnated after five years.

It’s up to Congress, the FCC, other policymakers–and the American public–to take it from here. Whether you favor our proposal or not, we urge you to take your views directly to your Senators and Representatives in Washington.

We hope this helps address some of the inaccuracies that have appeared about our proposal. We’ll provide updates as the situation continues to develop.

Translation: Indeed, two corporations are not legislating the future of the Internet.

In point of fact, there were at least a half-dozen of us on the G5 on the way back from divvying up the Web in D.C.

And we’re not so presumptuous to think that any two businesses could–or should–decide the future of this issue.

We are planning on including at least six or seven more businesses, since it will cost an awful lot of money to peddle all that influence in D.C.

Of course, that Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook seems to be holding out and even criticizing our Verizon bear hug.

That kid has some guts all right–but he can’t live in Neverland forever.

At some point, you’ve got to grow up. You can’t clap your hands and believe you can fly. Even pixie dust eventually runs out.

And that’s something we at Google know very, very well by now.

And until the magic returns, please relish the incomparable Mary Martin in the famous stage version of “Peter Pan” singing “Never Never Land.” As Peter Pan described himself, “I’m youth, I’m joy. I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.” Martin is all that and more:

"Never Never Land"
Uploaded by computergirl07. – Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100813/decoding-googles-net-neutrality-proposal-blog-the-pixie-dust-free-edition/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20100812/viral-video-quayle-hunting-for-office/ http://allthingsd.com/20100812/viral-video-quayle-hunting-for-office/#comments Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:11:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=31928

BoomTown loves political dynasties from any party with about as much enthusiasm as I have for tossing sheep on Facebook.

Which is to say, none at all.

Nonetheless, it was an odd blast from the past to see this offspring spring into the public eye–as in Ben Quayle, former VP Dan Quayle’s son, who is running for Congress in Arizona.

Here is a somewhat awkward campaign video by Quayle the younger, in which the candidate declares he is going to beat up Washington, D.C. and then walks right off at the end like he is heading there immediately, just as he is approving the ad:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100812/viral-video-quayle-hunting-for-office/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100415/liveblogging-googles-earnings-call-ou-est-eric/ http://allthingsd.com/20100415/liveblogging-googles-earnings-call-ou-est-eric/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:41:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26792

BoomTown liveblogged Google’s earnings call this afternoon.

Earlier today, Google (GOOG) beat Wall Street’s expectations in its first-quarter earnings, signaling that online advertising spending is back on track.

Here we go:

1:30 pm PT: Investor lady went over investor stuff. Zzzz.

1:33 pm: First up: Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google, whose delightful French accent livened up what was an almost entirely newsless event.

In fact, it turned out that the biggest news was changes in how Google presents its earnings calls going forward: No more CEO Eric Schmidt!

Instead, it will be Pichette from here on out, along with sidekick and head products dude Jonathan Rosenberg. Who was not around today, so top Google execs Susan Wojcicki and Jeff Huber filled in.

Also making an appearance, Nikesh Arora, president of Global Sales Operations and Business Development.

Thus, a parade of Google execs replaced Schmidt–all of whom said as little as he used to!

Pichette went through the numbers–lots and lots of them.

“Very strong performance, across the board, in terms of revenue,” he concluded.

1:44 pm: Next up, Wojcicki–fun fact about the VP of Product Management: Google was started in her garage–talking about improvements to ad search results.

They are going to get fat and detailed, apparently, with all kinds of stuff attached to them.

“The idea is for them to be more useful and therefore more high performing,” she said.

In display, Wojcicki said there was “very strong momentum.” More DoubleClick integration, more analytics.

Mobile: “Doing very well.” (I look forward to the first analyst question about its regulatory approval problem with Google’s $750 million AdMob acquisition.)

There will be an ability to “call through” on ads in smartphones, which sounds kind of cool.

1:51 pm: Next, it was Huber’s turn. He is SVP of Engineering.

He started with mobile and geolocation features Google is working on, some of which sounded a bit stalkerish. To the all-seeing eye of Google, they are fabulous, of course.

Its Android and Chrome operating systems are growing, Huber said, noting that there are now 34 Android devices.

Take that, Apple!–which has but one (which is doing pretty well on its own, Huber declined to add).

1:55 pm: Arora joined the call with the others for Q&A.

Questions about international advertising. All was well, said both Pichette and Arora.

Next question was about the percentage of revenue from enterprise and mobile. Also what up with Nexus One?

Pichette was not saying, of course, as that information would be useful.

Also no data on the profits of Nexus one, which Pichette noted was indeed profitable. But Google wasn’t saying how much! More non-news.

Finally, a good question about whether Google will remain on Apple (AAPL) products–given growing corporate rivalry between the two–and why the heck Schmidt is not on the call anymore and whether there is more to it.

Pichette became slightly agitated about the CEO question.

Eric has been everywhere! Abu Dhabi! Washington, D.C.! Jetting around on the GooglePlane like it was nobody’s business!

“It does not mean that Eric is not available,” said Pichette, explaining that the move is simply a question of “streamlining.”

Huber declined to comment about Apple, of course!

But, blood in the water: What’s up with Facebook competition?

This is a true oucher for Google internally, with execs quite concerned about the social networking site’s growth, even if Huber did not admit it and called it “not a significant issue.”

Translation: It’s significant.

2:04 pm Back to the sleepy questions on marketing and how the company feels about upcoming quarters compared with previous ones.

Hey, the colorful letters of Google and Googley goodness are just not cutting it anymore! You need some pretty ads! You have to promote! After all, Google has actual products now, like the Nexus One.

The next questions were on the number of Nexus One phones sold and, finally, on China.

Huber was not disclosing! If there were a badillion devices sold, you know he would, of course.

Pichette took the China question.

“This was a tough situation, but we really think we made the right decision,” he said, noting that the company is kind of still in China from Hong Kong.

Well, not really, but it was the right decision.

2:10 pm: Another good question on the News Corp. (NWS) deal and the AdMob situation.

Pichette pointed out the the mobile ad market is “nascent,” naturally noting that Apple announced its recently announced iAd network.

In other words, let’s keep pointing to what Apple is up to to save our bacon with the government.

“Google wants every partner,” said Pichette about renewing the deal over MySpace, but added that economics have changed since the first one was done with the then-hot-and-now-not social networking site.

Translation: Don’t expect a big check, Rupert Murdoch!

More in-the-weeds questions, which provided some insight, but not much.

2:28 pm: Another China question about whether serving its results from Hong Kong is sustainable.

Yes, said Pichette.

More about search advertising innovations and targeting. Google is all over it, said Wojcicki in many, many, many more words.

This line of questioning continued until someone asked whether the reported tensions between Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin over China are behind his absence.

Juicy, but completely ridonkulous.

“Non,” laughed Pichette, answering in a jaunty way.

The lack of Schmidt, he added, was not a negative, but part of a review of stuff Google could do better. In fact, it was an innovation!

Mais oui or mais non, it was the most interesting news of the day.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100415/liveblogging-googles-earnings-call-ou-est-eric/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100326/exclusive-facebook-poaches-yet-another-major-googler-this-time-ad-exec-david-fischer/ http://allthingsd.com/20100326/exclusive-facebook-poaches-yet-another-major-googler-this-time-ad-exec-david-fischer/#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:19:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26013 David Fischer–who was VP of Global Online Sales & Operations for Google and more recently, was heading up its local efforts–is taking a job at Facebook as VP of Advertising and Global Operations, according to sources.

Both Google (GOOG) and Facebook just sent out an internal memo about the move this morning.

UPDATE: Facebook, as well as Google, just confirmed that Fischer (pictured here) is joining the company.

Said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg:

“It’s a testament to Facebook’s expanding opportunities in advertising that we’re able to welcome an executive of David’s caliber. I have worked closely with David over the years and witnessed his passion, energy, and effectiveness at building teams on a global scale. David’s arrival deepens our operational capabilities so we can build upon our ability to serve advertisers, regardless of size or location, that are building their brands on Facebook.”

Said Google in a short statement: “We thank David for his many contributions to Google and wish him the best of luck in the future.”

But the search giant cannot be happy, as the move by Fischer is yet another in a series of top execs at the search giant to defect to the fast-growing social networking site.

And it will surely raise tensions between Google and Facebook, which are increasingly becoming rivals in several major Internet arenas, and opposing poles of power in Silicon Valley.

Fischer has a strong and longtime business relationship with Sandberg.

He was Sandberg’s top deputy when she ran the core self-serve ad business at Google and took over her job when she left for Facebook two years ago. The pair also worked together at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., in the Clinton administration.

It is clear that Fischer, said sources with knowledge of the situation, is being brought in to strengthen leadership in ad ops and help scale that business.

The appointment of the experienced exec also frees Sandberg and others to focus on nonadvertising issues, such as Facebook’s inevitable journey to an IPO in 2011 or 2012.

The affable Fischer, 37, has been at Google since 2002 and rose through its ranks quickly.

Said the Google Web site about Fischer, in part:

David Fischer is responsible for Google’s online sales channel, which represents the majority of the company’s customers worldwide. David has provided leadership for the online sales and operations program since its inception in early 2002 and has helped build Google’s online advertising network into the largest in the world. He also runs the online sales channel of the AdSense publisher program, which enables website owners worldwide to earn revenue through partnerships with Google.

David manages operations for Google’s consumer products worldwide and runs Google’s Book Search scanning operations, working with libraries and publishers around the world to digitally scan books from their collections. In addition, he leads the Google Grants program, which has donated more than $300 million advertising dollars to thousands of nonprofits around the world. David has opened many offices for Google, including its sales centers in Hyderabad and Gurgaon, India as well as Ann Arbor, Michigan and Boston, Massachusetts.

But Fischer left that job last fall, taking a sabbatical.

He returned to Google in January and has been working on the company’s efforts to expand its local advertising and commerce business.

In a statement, Fischer said of his new job:

“Facebook is not just driving a shift in how people connect with one another, but in how advertisers engage and interact with their customers. I’m eager to help accelerate this shift by working with customers, scaling operations globally, and collaborating with the product and engineering teams to continue to evolve Facebook’s advertising business. Google is an incredible company and I will miss the many friends I made during my time with the company. Facebook has assembled a highly impressive collection of talent, and I’m thrilled to be part of the team.”

At Facebook, Fischer will not lack for former Google execs to reminisce with.

As well as Sandberg, some of the many include: Elliot Schrage, who is VP of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy; Grady Burnett, who heads its online and inside sales; Don Faul, director of global online operations; and Ethan Beard, director of the Facebook Developer Network.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100326/exclusive-facebook-poaches-yet-another-major-googler-this-time-ad-exec-david-fischer/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100322/web-1-0s-blue-mountain-arts-jared-polis-is-a-congressman-in-web-2-0/ http://allthingsd.com/20100322/web-1-0s-blue-mountain-arts-jared-polis-is-a-congressman-in-web-2-0/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:18:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25838

While in Washington, D.C., last week, one of BoomTown’s last stops was at the office of Colorado Democratic Congressman Jared Polis on Capitol Hill.

Although I usually try to avoid politicians at all costs, it was terrific to check in with Polis, who was one of the more interesting players in the Web 1.0 scene.

His family–the Schutzs–created a pioneering and unusually fast-growing online greeting cards site in 1996, Blue Mountain Arts, inspired by their independent analog company.

In 1999, they sold it to Excite@Home for $780 million, a little less than half in cash, in what turned out to be one of the final bubble deals of that era.

Proof of that: American Greetings (AM) snapped up Blue Mountain Arts for just $35 million in cash in 2001.

By that time, Polis–who decided to use his mother’s maiden name–had involved himself in educational issues in his home state and finally won a seat in Congress in 2008.

Polis, 34, whose entrepreneurial ventures in tech preceded and followed Blue Mountain, talked with me about his first full year in office, which includes a lot less tech focus than you might imagine.

Here’s the video, which includes a tour of Polis’s Congressional office in the Cannon House Office Building:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100322/web-1-0s-blue-mountain-arts-jared-polis-is-a-congressman-in-web-2-0/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100320/the-fccs-national-broadband-paper-plan-gets-a-boomtown-tour-of-the-nations-capital/ http://allthingsd.com/20100320/the-fccs-national-broadband-paper-plan-gets-a-boomtown-tour-of-the-nations-capital/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:19:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25758

When I went to Washington, D.C., last week to visit the Federal Communications Commission on the occasion of its release of its National Broadband Plan, I was actually given a paper version in a giant binder.

Yes, a dead-tree copy of a federal government scheme to make the United States more digital!

And, at hundreds of pages, it weighed more than when I was lugging my kid around the nation’s capital when he was a baby.

Thus, my big idea to take the analog plan around and show it the sights of Washington, with a little help from some tourists.

Ever the most excellent PR dude, the FCC’s Mark Wigfield wrote me in an email:

“It would have been hard to take broadband.gov on a tour of D.C., so I think the binder served a useful purpose!…I would be remiss in not telling you that I think our new media team’s Web presentation of the plan is really fantastic and user-friendly :)”

Nice try, Mark, you decimator of forests!

In any case, here’s my video, including stops at the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the White House and the Smithsonian:

(You can also see the FCC’s NBP executive director Blair Levin trying to foist another paper plan on me in this interview about it.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100320/the-fccs-national-broadband-paper-plan-gets-a-boomtown-tour-of-the-nations-capital/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100319/national-broadband-plan-guru-blair-levin-speaks-plus-the-press-release-and-exec-summary/ http://allthingsd.com/20100319/national-broadband-plan-guru-blair-levin-speaks-plus-the-press-release-and-exec-summary/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:34:52 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25735

While trolling around Washington, D.C., this week, BoomTown dropped in on Blair Levin, executive director of the National Broadband Plan, the opus just released by the Federal Communications Commission.

Aimed primarily at boosting the proliferation of high-speed access across the United States, the plan has been shepherded by the telecommunications analyst and former FCC staffer.

We talked about the main themes of the plan, which will require action by the FCC, the White House and Congress to be fully effective.

While Levin will move on soon, now that his job is done, he had several observations about the potential bottlenecks and more.

As in: Will broadcasters resist the spectrum suggestions? Will there be money to fund a digital literacy corps? And most of all, how can the cost of broadband be lowered?

The Yale-trained lawyer would know. As chief of staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt from late 1993 to late 1997, he oversaw, according to his bio, “the implementation of the historic 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, the first spectrum auctions, the development of digital television standards, and the Commission’s Internet initiative.”

Here’s the video of my interview with Levin, as well as the press release and executive summary of the plan, below (you can find out more here on the FCC site about it):

DOC-296859A1

DOC-296858A1

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100319/national-broadband-plan-guru-blair-levin-speaks-plus-the-press-release-and-exec-summary/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100319/my-life-on-the-d-list-meets-all-things-d/ http://allthingsd.com/20100319/my-life-on-the-d-list-meets-all-things-d/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:15:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25746

While in Washington, D.C., this week, BoomTown got to go to a dinner in honor of comic Kathy Griffin.

Griffin’s reality television show is called “My Life on the D List,” and we’re proud to share the same terrific letter.

She made much hay of her relationship with Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak on the show, so there’s yet another tech link.

And, in the video–in which she talks about her lobbying on Capitol Hill to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military–she also uses a very naughty term for tweeting on Twitter.

So, apropos of it being Friday, here’s the video of Griffin, who also told me she is a big fan of the Flip digital video camera:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100319/my-life-on-the-d-list-meets-all-things-d/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100317/tweet-the-people-twitter-vc-wilson-and-federal-cto-chopra-talk-policy-in-d-c/ http://allthingsd.com/20100317/tweet-the-people-twitter-vc-wilson-and-federal-cto-chopra-talk-policy-in-d-c/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:15:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25689

Ms. BoomTown went to Washington, D.C., this week to moderate a panel on the future of the digital arena for an event marking the 25th anniversary of the first .com domain.

Surprisingly, the panelists–Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson, Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and VeriSign (VRSN) CTO Ken Silva–did not talk about geo-location jet packs and augmented reality for everyone.

Instead, due to their proximity to pols and government bureaucrats, they went wonkish, talking a lot about open government, data-retention regulations and, in Wilson’s case, pondering the “privacy heist” of consumer information by Silicon Valley social networking hotshot Facebook.

Now, to be fair, Wilson is a big and early investor in rival Twitter, so he might have his bias.

But the conversation was a refreshing change from pointless discussions on location wars between Foursquare and Gowalla and reporting-free speculation about whether MySpace is or is not for sale or will spin off or not.

In fact, it was almost erudite, except for the part about how the Federal Communications Commission gave me a giant paper-filled binder of the National Broadband Plan (more on that classic D.C. tree-killing move later!).

So that you too can get all federal, here’s a video I did with Wilson and Chopra, in which they talk tech policy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100317/tweet-the-people-twitter-vc-wilson-and-federal-cto-chopra-talk-policy-in-d-c/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100315/boomtown-in-d-c-to-say-happy-25th-birthday-to-com-and-hello-to-broadband-plan/ http://allthingsd.com/20100315/boomtown-in-d-c-to-say-happy-25th-birthday-to-com-and-hello-to-broadband-plan/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:54:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25604

Last night, I jetted east to Washington, D.C., for an unusual confluence of events: The 25th anniversary of the .com Internet domain name and the Federal Communications Commission’s release of the much anticipated National Broadband Plan.

Both are set for tomorrow in the nation’s capital and both concern the impact of the Web on the United States in the past and the future.

Incredibly, .com was almost .cor, for corporate.

And the first .com address handed out–Symbolics.com–belonged to a now-defunct Massachusetts computer company.

(It signed up via the domain registrar, Network Solutions, which was bought by VeriSign in 2000. The Symbolics.com domain was sold in 2009 to Missouri-based XF.com, which “operates commercial real estate and premium domain properties.”)

In honor of the anniversary, VeriSign (VRSN), which administers the .com registry, is hosting a policy forum in D.C. It includes a keynote address by former President Bill Clinton, as well as some panels.

I will be moderating the one in the afternoon titled “The Next Generation.” The panelists, looking to the future, include, among others: Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post; Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO of the U.S.; and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.

There will be another gala event to honor Internet innovators in San Francisco in late May.

While the growth of .com was slow until the browser became popularized–numbering under 15,000 in 1992–there are now close to 85 million .com domains. This commercial one is clearly the most important of the designations, both financially and perceptually.

Still, despite how much impact the Internet has had globally, spurred mostly by innovation in the U.S., this country still remains woefully behind in high-speed access to the Web.

While it is easy–and fun–to blame the greedy telcos and cable companies (and they do deserve some of the blame), the lack of a federal imperative has been the most appalling explanation.

It is as if the federal government had decided dirt roads were preferable to the highway system or tin cans and string were better than universal telephone access.

Will making broadband access easy, fast and cheap for most people in the U.S. be the end result of the National Broadband Plan, to be officially unveiled by the FCC tomorrow?

As I wrote last week:

“The two key questions about the effort to get the United States up to speed, so to speak, with decent digital access: Will it be toothless or not and will there be any money to pay for it, given the cash-strapped federal government?”

A possible highlight of the plan concerns whether spectrum should be allocated for a free or inexpensive high-speed wireless service, as well as restoration of some regulations lifted in the previous Republican administration.

But the main focus will be that the U.S. needs high-speed access to improve dramatically across the nation, especially for poorer citizens and in rural areas.

After a quarter-century of .com, the growth of a trillion-dollar industry from one punctuation mark and three letters, and badillions of page views, you would think this would be glaringly obvious to our federal government.

You should think it would.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100315/boomtown-in-d-c-to-say-happy-25th-birthday-to-com-and-hello-to-broadband-plan/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100311/if-its-tuesday-it-must-be-the-national-broadband-plan-if-your-connection-isnt-too-slow-you-can-tune-in-online/ http://allthingsd.com/20100311/if-its-tuesday-it-must-be-the-national-broadband-plan-if-your-connection-isnt-too-slow-you-can-tune-in-online/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:33:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25472

Finally, after much advance leakage, the Federal Communications Commission will unveil its National Broadband Plan on Tuesday, March 16.

The two key questions about the effort to get the United States up to speed, so to speak, with decent digital access: Will it be toothless or not and will there be any money to pay for it, given the cash-strapped federal government?

A possible highlight of the plan concerns whether spectrum should be allocated for a free or inexpensive high-speed wireless service. It was a notion mentioned by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski at a meeting in Washington, D.C., earlier this week.

This is not an idea that telecom providers have warmed to in the past, of course, since they so enjoy sticking it to consumers with spotty service and high prices.

And if the report proposes the restoration of some regulations lifted in the previous Republican administration, you can be sure the Prada-wearing political lobbyist brigade will be at the ready.

What the FCC opus will surely point out is the obvious: The U.S. needs high-speed access to improve dramatically across the nation, especially for poorer citizens and in rural areas.

As BoomTown and many others have pointed out many times, our high prices and low speed make the U.S. the laughingstock of the digital world.

And the federal government’s lack of attention to the one innovative arena this nation shines in–tech–is appalling.

The plan will be the first big move by Genachowski, the longtime Internet exec who will appear as a speaker at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June.

One certainty about the latest plan: It will be a long document of hundreds of pages, so save some trees and get it online here at the aptly named Reboot.FCC.gov site.

In fact, the FCC open commission meeting, where the plan is being unveiled at 10:30 am ET on March 16, will be streaming live on the Web at the site.

A recent FCC report noted that two-thirds of consumers in the U.S. have some sort of broadband connection. On average, they pay $41 for this sometimes dubious privilege.

Incredibly, six percent of Americans still use dial-up access and four percent have no broadband at home at all.

Not surprisingly, poor people access the Web a lot less, although longtime gaps among races are closing, with African-Americans and Hispanics gaining in access and usage.

So whatever the FCC proposes, at least it will shine a light on this critical issue.

And a new plan is better than none at all–I think–so let’s see what’s what on Tuesday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100311/if-its-tuesday-it-must-be-the-national-broadband-plan-if-your-connection-isnt-too-slow-you-can-tune-in-online/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100311/latest-trend-for-vcs-is-overfunding-group-buying-start-ups-livingsocial-nabs-25-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20100311/latest-trend-for-vcs-is-overfunding-group-buying-start-ups-livingsocial-nabs-25-million/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:52:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25442

Start-ups that offer users big discounts via socially-charged local group-buying services are getting a lot of attention these days, especially from venture firms.

Today, it’s Washington, D.C.-based LivingSocial, which just announced a $25 million Series B round, led by U.S. Venture Partners.

The funding will be used to expand its footprint of cities, among other initiatives.

Sites such as LivingSocial feature a “daily deal” with a huge discount from a wide range of local businesses, such as restaurants and spas. They use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to turbocharge consumers into action.

This kind of thing has been tried before, of course, centering on users who group together to get discounts on items by purchasing them in bulk.

In Web 1.0, there were many group-buying sites, most of which failed badly. One of the more high-profile ones–Mercata–got $90 million in funding from investors, including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures.

Still, the group-buying space is getting mighty competitive of late. Recently, Chicago-based Groupon grabbed $30 million from, among others, Accel Partners.

BoomTown, in fact, did a video interview with Groupon founder Andrew Mason last week, after which I was inundated with press releases from a half-dozen wannabe competitors.

Ironically, for businesses based on discounting, there seem to be no price cuts when it comes to group-buying start-up funding.

Here’s the full press release:

Social Commerce Leader LivingSocial Raises $25 Million Series B Round, Led by U.S. Venture Partners

Funding to Fuel Expansion to Dozens of Cities by Year End; Chicago, Denver, Raleigh Durham, and San Diego launch today

Washington D.C., March 11, 2010–LivingSocial, the social commerce leader behind LivingSocial Deals and top Facebook applications Visual Bookshelf and Pick Your Five, today announced that it has completed a $25 million Series B round of venture funding led by U.S. Venture Partners, with Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC participating. With this round of funding, LivingSocial Deals is launching in four additional cities: Chicago, Denver, Raleigh Durham and San Diego, making the program live in 13 markets across the country, growing to dozens of cities by year-end. By signing up for LivingSocial’s free daily online service people are saving an average of 50-70% at their favorite places, such as the hottest local restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels, and other local attractions, giving local merchants the Web prowess of viral marketing proven through LivingSocial’s explosive Facebook success.

“With more than a million people already using LivingSocial Deals, online group buying is a movement that is clearly resonating with consumers,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO of LivingSocial. “This round of funding enables us to accelerate our growth throughout more cities and combine our feet-on-the-street approach with our social channel expertise to offer our 85 million customers great deals at local businesses, while giving merchants a no-risk way to get customers through their doors.”

LivingSocial is the premier local activity discovery engine–the place where anyone can find out what’s “hot” in and around their city. As a result, it not only gives local merchants an innovative way to reach nearby customers, but also leverages LivingSocial’s unprecedented social media knowledge to grant merchants access to the company’s extensive community of more than 85 million people. With LivingSocial, merchants get the viral power of the Internet, the reach of the LivingSocial community, and the leverage of the iPhone platform.

LivingSocial today also launched an affiliate program for sites large and small, producing a revenue opportunity for affiliates, such as blogs and other sites, and broadening the advertising reach for merchants to the farthest ends of the Web. LivingSocial affiliates can generate revenue by delivering amazing discounts targeted to their loyal readers. Creating a centralized affiliate program gives participating merchants reach into new media, without requiring them to create, develop and manage individual relationships with an ever-growing cast of bloggers or other local content sites. More information can be found at http://livingsocial.com/affiliates.

“Local merchants deserve the ability to link online advertising spend with store visits, not just site visits,” said Ted Maidenberg, Principal at U.S. Venture Partners. “LivingSocial is at the forefront of a profound shift in the way local merchants engage with new and existing customers. This investment will allow them to continue to evolve the program and reach new markets so more merchants can reap the rewards of what LivingSocial has to offer.”

LivingSocial’s group buying service has grown rapidly since its launch in August 2009, expanding from Washington, D.C., to New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, Chicago, Raleigh Durham, Denver, and San Diego, with more cities rolling out in coming months. Also, with the first social savings iPhone application, LivingSocial users can get savings on-the-go and be alerted when new deals are available through push notifications and even redeem directly from their iPhone. LivingSocial users throughout the country have already saved millions of dollars, with tens-of-millions more on tap throughout 2010.

“We’re really excited to bring LivingSocial to Chicago, Denver, Raleigh Durham and San Diego as these markets have such vibrant populations,” added O’Shaughnessy. “The deals we offer reflect the diversity and unique nature of each city, encouraging the exploration of nightlife, culture, entertainment, and outdoor activities.”

For more information or to sign up for your city, go to http://livingsocial.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100311/latest-trend-for-vcs-is-overfunding-group-buying-start-ups-livingsocial-nabs-25-million/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20100203/another-googler-to-obama-administration-now-weve-got-a-foursome/ http://allthingsd.com/20100203/another-googler-to-obama-administration-now-weve-got-a-foursome/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:01:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23977 Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

It will be like they never left the Googleplex in Silicon Valley if this Washington, D.C., invasion of execs from the search giant keeps up.

The fourth new geek in town is Sumit Agarwal (pictured here), who was head of Google’s mobile product management and has become the deputy assistant secretary of defense for outreach and social media in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Phew! But what’s that? Poking with M-16s? The Berlin Wall? Tweeting troop movements?

In any case, it’s interesting to see so many key appointments in the tech arena going to one company, especially one so immersed now in national and international policy issues.

And especially since Google (GOOG) has begun spending so much money in D.C. on lobbying.

As I reported recently:

According to the most recent public reports filed by Google with the Senate on its lobbying spending there, the search giant has significantly increased its outlay in 2009 from the previous two years.

In 2007, Google spent a total of $1.52 million, which rose to $2.84 million in 2008.

And the 2009 total? Just over $4 million, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database.

That’s probably no surprise given the ever-growing range of issues of concern to U.S. regulators due to Google’s increasing number of deals and because of many new and often controversial initiatives the company is forging forward with.

From pushing for approval of its DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 to its failed attempt to strike a search and online partnership with Yahoo (YHOO) in 2008 to last year’s wrangling with book publishers to 2010’s expected tussle over its $750 million purchase of mobile advertising start-up AdMob, Google’s presence in D.C. is only going to rise as its ambitions expand.

That’s still $2.7 million less than archrival Microsoft (MSFT) spent in 2009, but Google has been gaining on the software giant in a very short time.

In any case, these are former Googlers, who might or might not return to the mother ship at the end of their tenure.

But, for those keeping track, Agarwal will join:

* Former business development and product exec Katie Jacobs Stanton, who was the Obama administration’s director of citizen participation and now works in the State Department.

* Google’s top policy wonk, Andrew McLaughlin, who serves as deputy chief technology officer.

* And Sonal Shah, who worked at Google.org and is now director of the White House’s new Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100203/another-googler-to-obama-administration-now-weve-got-a-foursome/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100126/beltway-hustle-google-quickly-gaining-on-microsoft-in-d-c-lobbying-spending/ http://allthingsd.com/20100126/beltway-hustle-google-quickly-gaining-on-microsoft-in-d-c-lobbying-spending/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:12:41 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23511 Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

While Microsoft has needed all the help it could hire in Washington, D.C., after its antitrust debacle many years ago, Google is quickly catching up to it as a tech power to be reckoned with in the nation’s capital.

According to the most recent public reports filed by Google (GOOG) with the Senate on its lobbying spending there, the search giant has significantly increased its outlay in 2009 from the previous two years.

In 2007–as you can see from the table below (click on the image once to make it larger)–Google spent a total of $1.52 million, which rose to $2.84 million in 2008.

And the 2009 total? Just over $4 million, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database.

That’s probably no surprise given the ever-growing range of issues of concern to U.S. regulators due to Google’s increasing number of deals and because of many new and often controversial initiatives the company is forging forward with.

From pushing for approval of its DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 to its failed attempt to strike a search and online partnership with Yahoo (YHOO) in 2008 to last year’s wrangling with book publishers to 2010′s expected tussle over its $750 million purchase of mobile advertising start-up AdMob, Google’s presence in D.C. is only going to rise as its ambitions expand.

In the fourth quarter of 2009–according to its report, which you can read in its entirety below–Google spent $1.12 million lobbying the House and Senate, as well as the Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies, on topics such as “privacy and competition issues” related to online advertising, copyright laws and its book search settlement.

And this does not take into account Google’s spending in states across the country, as well as globally.

Interestingly, Microsoft’s reported lobbying spending in D.C.–which the software giant has been doing for much longer, with an even more complicated presence (can you say: consent decree?)–has declined in that same period, although it remains larger than Google’s.

In 2007, Microsoft (MSFT) spent $9 million, which fell slightly in 2008 to $8.9 million, before dropping to $6.72 million in 2009.

In the fourth quarter of 2009–according to its report, which you can also read in its entirety below–Microsoft spent $1.69 million buttonholing an alphabet soup of federal agencies and pols in the House and Senate on an even wider variety of issues than Google, including open government, visas, tax reform, free trade and, of course, “competition in the online advertising and software markets.”

Translation: Google-bashing in D.C.!

But now, it seems that Google’s ever-deeper lobbying wallet means turnabout is fair play.

As the stakes rise, check out Google’s and Microsoft’s most recent quarterly filings below:

Google

goog lobbying _ –
Microsoft

msft lobbying _ –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100126/beltway-hustle-google-quickly-gaining-on-microsoft-in-d-c-lobbying-spending/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100115/realnetworks-rob-glaser-talks-about-giving-the-internet-a-voice-and-yes-woolly-mammoths/ http://allthingsd.com/20100115/realnetworks-rob-glaser-talks-about-giving-the-internet-a-voice-and-yes-woolly-mammoths/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:20:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22975

Rob Glaser (pictured here) called BoomTown when he landed in Washington, D.C., only a few hours after he announced Wednesday he was stepping down as longtime CEO of RealNetworks (RNWK).

Digital Daily reported there was some contention between Glaser and the Real board around his departure from the Seattle-based company he founded 16 years ago, a move that has actually been in the works for some time.

While Glaser did say that he had been through the “most intense two weeks of my life,” leading up to that, he declined to comment more about the specifics of his leaving.

That was fine with me, because–although execs come and go in various and sundry ways–you simply have to give Glaser credit for his pioneering work in bringing both audio and video to the Web.

So Glaser and I talked about this and more, from what he thinks are the key highlights of his Internet career until now to what he plans to do next.

First and foremost, Glaser did “give the Internet a voice,” as I wrote in a 1998 profile of him for The Wall Street Journal about his company’s introduction of its first RealAudio product:

“RealAudio was greeted with more than a little disdain from the Internet elite because it was a tinny and unsatisfying experience for most users. But it gave the Internet a voice, and Mr. Glaser kept plugging away, improving fidelity and striking deals with more content providers to use it on their Web sites.”

Glaser said that was the simple idea behind Real, to “turn the Web from text and static links to a dynamic media space for the mainstream to enjoy.”

That effort began in earnest in the mid-1990s, he noted, by selling “tech enablement,” which simply meant hawking servers and software to companies interested in adding audio and, later, video, to their Web sites.

So successful was Real then that many big companies tried to buy it for huge sums. But ever the aggressive entrepreneur, Glaser never sold–unlike Mark Cuban at Broadcast.com–although many wished he had.

But that was simply not his style, he said; plus, business was booming and it was “like selling pickaxes during the Gold Rush.”

It is an apt metaphor since the next major moment for the company came when the Web 1.0 bubble burst in 2000.

“A lot of great–and also not so great–companies just died,” he said.

To avoid that fate, “We pivoted in a hard way to consumer services and avoided the tailspin,” Glaser added. “It was kind of like when the woolly mammoth evolved into an elephant, while the pterodactyl did not turn into anything.”

That meant creating a variety of consumer-focused media offerings that used Real technology, such as its casual games business and its Rhapsody music service.

Real also shifted its tech licensing business to a carrier services model, Glaser said.

He regularly tangled with Microsoft (MSFT), where he started his career as a very brash 21-year-old. The software giant targeted Real’s business, but also cooperated with the company at times.

And, while the games unit and Rhapsody hit some major bumps, Real did score a whopping $761 million antitrust settlement in 2005 from Microsoft.

But that win was some time ago, and Real idled too much, as did its stock, in the following years, even as Glaser plugged away at creating a variety of new businesses and strategies.

Some were off limits, he said when I asked him why he did not come up with a service like YouTube, given Real’s advantages in video early on, noting that his public company could never had created a service that so antagonized Hollywood partners.

But Glaser did just that more recently with one such innovative idea for a “legal” DVD ripper, called RealDVD.

Though very interesting, RealDVD hit the skids quickly when a federal judge last week dismissed Real’s claims against Hollywood studios seeking to shut down the service before it could be widely distributed.

While that specific defeat was not the reason for his leaving RealNetworks, the idea that it was time to bring new blood to the company finally gained traction with investors, the board, employees and, yes, Glaser too.

What the notoriously hard-charging executive–“My intensity sometimes manifested itself in less positive ways,” Glaser conceded in my 1998 interview with him–will do next is anyone’s guess.

Including his own.

Glaser noted that he would remain chairman of Real, although his day-to-day engagement there is now over.

“It is a big transition for me, because I am closing a chapter I have been in for a very long time,” he said, adding that he would probably do more philanthropic and political work.

(That’s no surprise. After all, Real was once called Progressive Networks, after his liberal politics, and Glaser once had a newspaper column called “What’s Left” while at Yale University.)

Glaser said that on the flight to Washington he thought about the advice Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, one of Real’s earliest investors, gave him when he left Microsoft and was thinking about his next step:

You should take time to figure out what you want to do next and know why you want to do it. Because if it’s successful, once you get going you won’t have time to think through those issues as clearly as you can now.

That’s pretty much been Glaser’s modus operandi over his many years at Real and in the larger Internet space: He pushed his vision of a live Internet forth, he never cut and ran, he never sold, he kept pushing forward.

And you have to admire that kind of gumption, no matter the outcome.

In any case, it is likely Glaser will keep doing so in the years to come.

In fact, pointing out that the movement of entertainment and content online has “come a long way, but still has an even longer way to go,” Glaser started rattling off ideas about where the online media sector needs to go in exactly the same fashion I described a dozen years before.

I described Glaser then as: “speaking in staccato bursts and radiating so much intensity that his face resembles a clenched fist.”

In other words, for all the the lively entrepreneur has been part of as a key pioneer in the development of the Internet, some things will never ever change.

If you want to see Glaser in action, check out these three videos of him, two from the fifth D: All Things Digital conference and one of him talking to me about RealDVD when he introduced it at Demo:

Session interview at D5

Demoing RealPlayer 11 at D5

Talking about RealDVD

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100115/realnetworks-rob-glaser-talks-about-giving-the-internet-a-voice-and-yes-woolly-mammoths/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100105/steve-case-and-jerry-levin-look-on-our-works-ye-mighty-and-despair-about-the-aol-time-warner-merger-that-is/ http://allthingsd.com/20100105/steve-case-and-jerry-levin-look-on-our-works-ye-mighty-and-despair-about-the-aol-time-warner-merger-that-is/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:49:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22601

Since both former AOL CEO Steve Case and former Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin played such conflicting roles in my 2003 book–“There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL-Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future”–it was odd to see the pair together on the same television set yesterday morning on CNBC.

But there they were–both looking very fit, I might add–with Case as a guest co-host and Levin as his more peaceful self.

They were on the cable network to jawbone about the disaster that was the AOL-Time Warner merger on the occasion of the deal’s 10th anniversary, since CNBC is airing a piece tomorrow night called “Marriage from Hell: The Breakup of AOL Time Warner.”

Actually, that purple title underplays just how bad it got for the doomed union.

In fact, except for the first crazy hug when the megadeal was announced in January 2000, the time they served as the combined company’s chairman (Case) and CEO (Levin) was pretty much fraught and the tensions between the pair intense.

Today, though, it is apparently sweetness and light between them, especially according to Levin, who has moved far away from his cerebral, New York, slick corporate-shark mode–which was very much in evidence when I first met him–to a man who now helps troubled high achievers find their inner happiness in Southern California at a holistic clinic called Moonview Sanctuary.

(I saw that unusual transformation up close too, spurred by the delayed impact of the tragic murder of his son, which came just as Levin was ousted.)

In fact, the now more heartfelt Levin even called the merger “some kind of transcendent concept,” although he quickly acknowledged that “I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently.”

Levin did, and so quickly apologized for the whole mess. “I’m really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused,” he said, although there are some at both companies who don’t believe him to this day.

Levin used that feel-good terminology to describe the merger’s failure: “Even though the stock was up at the time, there was a lot of tension, and I didn’t deal with the psychology with enough compassion. It’s a little hard to exercise compassion, connection, and love when the market is very unforgiving as it was at that time.”

And without even a raised eyebrow, Case–who has not changed his calm, aloof mode since I first met him in the early 1990s in the Washington, D.C. area–backed Levin up about the lack of execution in the deal.

Now, of course, AOL (AOL) has been spun out from Time Warner (TWX), and what the pair wrought is almost completely gone.

Or, as Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote about the “Look on my works, ye mighty and despair” statue of the great ruler Ozymandias: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Well, at least Case and Levin are still standing, and this interview with them, lasting just over 22 minutes, is very worthwhile.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that the now-bearded Levin, for all the hippyish bromides–such as “Management is a humanist art”–is still as sharp as a tack in many ways, with some pretty decent observations about the Web and its players, for all his supposed beachy abandonment of it.

Check out the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100105/steve-case-and-jerry-levin-look-on-our-works-ye-mighty-and-despair-about-the-aol-time-warner-merger-that-is/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20091222/as-microsoft-warily-eyes-google-buying-spree-will-it-jump-in-or-play-the-regulatory-card/ http://allthingsd.com/20091222/as-microsoft-warily-eyes-google-buying-spree-will-it-jump-in-or-play-the-regulatory-card/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:57:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22095 Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

With Google in the market for pretty much, well, everything, in the Web 2.0 space of late–using its fat stock price and copious cash reserves–it stands to reason that Microsoft would be in the same market too.

But multiple sources close to the situation said the software giant was caught short when Google (GOOG) grabbed mobile advertising start-up AdMob recently with a massive $750 million acquisition price.

Microsoft (MSFT) execs were similarly surprised when news emerged late last week that the search giant was offering more than $500 million for local search site Yelp, and were scrambling to figure out the best response, because both their MSN portal and their new Bing search service have been prominently emphasizing local recently.

That Google-Yelp deal seems to have gone off the rails for now.

Interestingly, Yelp insiders, several sources said, had considered Microsoft the only realistic spoiler–with both an interest in and the means for making such a play–even as they have openly scoffed at the idea of ever selling to Microsoft over the hipper and more copacetic Google.

In any case, maybe Microsoft will rise to the occasion now, taking advantage of the Silicon Valley-style breakdown between Google and Yelp.

But if the company’s recent history is any guide, it could just sit with a similarly large pile of cash on the sidelines, mulling its options.

It has certainly been a long mull for Microsoft, with no major acquisition in the digital space since the summer of 2008, when it bought Greenfield Online, an online market research and survey firm, for $486 million, as well as paying $100 million for the semantic search engine Powerset.

Microsoft also paid an undisclosed amount for a small interactive online gaming company called BigPark in May.

Of course, there was the little matter of that famously failed $44 billion bid for Yahoo (YHOO) that might have made it a bit wary, which was preceded by its $240 million investment in Facebook in the fall of 2007 at a $15 billion valuation.

But for the most part, Microsoft has been focusing on making its own product more innovative and competitive recently, especially with its laudable effort with Bing, which has seen small but promising results.

What’s most certain is that if Google keeps up its acquisition spree, there is certain to be a faceoff in Washington, D.C., with Microsoft more likely to try to quash Google’s recent series of aggressive moves by making a regulatory stink.

The company did so rather effectively after Google bought DoubleClick, delaying the closing of the deal significantly and engendering the ire of top Google execs, who have not forgotten Microsoft’s sharp-elbowed effort.

They might not have to forget it, because it appears that it’s not going to stop, according to some who have been briefed on Microsoft’s thinking.

“The notion being put forth is that Google is bidding an ‘antitrust’ premium on these properties, outbidding everyone else, so Microsoft is the only other possibility,” said one source. “There’s no doubt Microsoft will argue that if Google wins at this game, it should face significant regulatory hurdles.”

That kind of government review is what has already happened with AdMob.

And with Google in the crosshairs of publishers over a variety of content issues–with Microsoft putting itself out as a white knight to some media giants–expect more of the same going forward.

In other words, if you don’t bid, you block.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091222/as-microsoft-warily-eyes-google-buying-spree-will-it-jump-in-or-play-the-regulatory-card/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091218/zyngas-mark-pincus-talks-about-big-funding-offer-ad-controversies-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20091218/zyngas-mark-pincus-talks-about-big-funding-offer-ad-controversies-and-more/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:32:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22050

Just days after selling $180 million in private stock to a group of investors, including Facebook funder Digital Sky Technologies of Russia, Zynga’s Mark Pincus came to visit the BoomTown Worldwide HQ for a video interview.

The San Franisco-based Zynga creates and distributes online games, including Mafia Wars and FarmVille, which are played on social networking sites like Facebook. It claims 60 million active daily users.

While playing, users can also buy virtual goods with real dollars.

Zynga took the pile of money, Pincus explained to me, so it would not have to do what everyone thought it was set to do soon: Go public.

But with 700 employees and a reported annual revenue “run rate” of $300 million, the fast-growing start-up needed more options, he added.

Thus, rather than selling out or going public, Pincus went for megafunding, a path similar to the one Facebook took.

Along with DST, which accounted for the majority of the funding, investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global and Institutional Ventures Partners.

Previous investors in Zynga are Union Square Ventures, Clarium Capital, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Kleiner Perkins, along with personal investments from Silicon Valley players such as Reid Hoffman.

Pincus will need all that cash given that the arena is heating up and consolidating fast.

Playfish, a competitor, was recently snapped up by Electronic Arts (ERTS) for $275 million in cash and $125 million more in stock and earn-outs, for example.

This is not a fate Pincus says he wants for Zynga, instead insisting he would rather create a powerful and innovative standalone gaming company of the future.

Obviously, Zynga is the big shot at that prize for the longtime entrepreneur, whom I met way back when I was a reporter in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, when Pincus co-founded another start-up, called Freeloader.

In our interview, Pincus talks about the new infusion of cash, controversies around questionable “offer” advertisements that appeared on Zynga’s site and more.

Here’s the longish video:

And here is a video interview I did with Pincus, back in May of last year:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091218/zyngas-mark-pincus-talks-about-big-funding-offer-ad-controversies-and-more/feed/ 2 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091214/turnabout-is-fair-play-boomtown-decodes-rupes-journalism-is-not-a-free-cow-op-ed/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091207/yahoo-adds-new-privacy-tool-for-users-just-as-ftc-privacy-hearings-start-today-and-microhoo-regulatory-approval-is-pending/ http://allthingsd.com/20091207/yahoo-adds-new-privacy-tool-for-users-just-as-ftc-privacy-hearings-start-today-and-microhoo-regulatory-approval-is-pending/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:03:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21569

Yahoo announced a new consumer tool this morning, called “Ad Interest Manager.”

BoomTown is going to ignore the could-it-be-duller name for the feature, which–Yahoo (YHOO) said in a press release you can see below–gives users a “central place where Yahoo! visitors can see a concise summary of their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their exposure to interest-based advertising served from the Yahoo! Ad Network.”

What fortuitous timing, since the first of three of the Federal Trade Commission’s “Exploring Privacy: A Roundtable Series” begins this morning in Washington, D.C.

And, of course, the bigger backdrop is the pending regulatory approval of the massive search and advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT). Yahoo and Microsoft announced Friday that they had completed the definitive agreement for the deal.

Among the key issues for regulators, of course, are the privacy implications of combining the search and online ad technologies of the No. 2 and No. 3 players.

Today’s day-long agenda is chock-full of academics and privacy group folks, but there is a Microsoft lawyer on a panel. (The next roundtable in the series takes place at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Jan. 28, 2010.)

Said the FTC on its site:

The Federal Trade Commission will host a series of day-long public roundtable discussions to explore the privacy challenges posed by the vast array of 21st century technology and business practices that collect and use consumer data. Such practices include social networking, cloud computing, online behavioral advertising, mobile marketing, and the collection and use of information by retailers, data brokers, third-party applications, and other diverse businesses. The goal of the roundtables is to determine how best to protect consumer privacy while supporting beneficial uses of the information and technological innovation.

There will surely be lots to discuss, since privacy groups are wary of self-regulation by the very companies that link consumer data to advertising.

And they have a point.

Visiting my Ad Interest Manager page is kind of freaky, to be honest. It shows I am interested in entertainment, technology and travel, checking in most on the finance and television pages. Correctomundo!

Also, it has detailed data about my computer, including its color depth, as well as my age and gender.

If I want, it is pretty easy to opt-out of the whole “interest-based” ad categories completely or by category, with on-off switches, which is a good thing.

If you want to know more, here is the Yahoo press release:

YAHOO! INTRODUCES AD INTEREST MANAGER

PROVIDES CONSUMERS WITH GREATER TRANSPARENCY AND CONTROL OVER THEIR ONLINE ADVERTISING EXPERIENCE

Today Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) released a beta version of a new consumer tool called Ad Interest Manager, which takes transparency in online advertising to a new level for building user trust. Ad Interest Manager http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim is a central place where Yahoo! visitors can see a concise summary of their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their exposure to interest-based advertising served from the Yahoo! Ad Network.

“Ads tailored to users’ interests make online experiences more compelling and user-focused, and the new tool Yahoo! is launching today will provide transparency into how Yahoo!’s interest-based advertising works,” said Yahoo! Vice President of Policy and Head of Privacy, Anne Toth. “Yahoo! is committed to providing consumers with increased transparency and control when they are online. Ad Interest Manager will show users what interests we think they have, and also let them edit and change those interests to reflect the most up-to-date information.” Anne Toth also pointed out: “Importantly, users who don’t want interest-based ads can turn them off completely.”

Yahoo!’s new Ad Interest Manager tool:

• Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater control over their online experience.

• Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to deliver interest-based advertising.

• Shows the visitor both Yahoo!’s educated guesses about their interests and a summary of observations, along with other information they have provided.

• Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed a user into and lets people turn those categories off.

• Allows people who don’t want to see interest-based ads to turn them off entirely.

“Yahoo! has long provided its users with products and services for free, thanks to a business model based almost entirely on advertising, and we’ve found that consumers are more likely to click on advertising that speaks directly to them and their interests,” said Yahoo!Vice President and General Manager of Display Advertising, David Zinman. “With the introduction of Ad Interest Manager, users can not only get a better understanding of how the process works, but they can also communicate better with Yahoo! and our advertisers about what most interests them.”

Yahoo!’s Ad Interest Manager is currently available in beta in the U.S. and will soon be made available to UK and European users. Planned future enhancements to the Ad Interest Manager will also let users add categories of interest that Yahoo! may have missed.

To see what the new Ad Interest Manager looks like and how it works, please visithttp://privacy.yahoo.com/aim.

Yahoo! was one of the first companies to implement a layered privacy center http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.htmlmodel more than eight years ago, which provides people with a central place to understand and control their privacy online, as well as their options when it comes to the use of personal data. This information is coupled with our industry-leading data-retention policy http://ycorpblog.com/2008/12/17/your-data-goes-incognito/, which anonymizes most Web log data within 90 days. The policy also strives to ensure that Yahoo! retains data only long enough to serve the business and create the highest-quality user experiences, while simultaneously maintaining the ability to fight fraud, secure systems, and meet legal obligations.

And here is the consumer privacy groups’ press release on the FTC hearings:

Consumer and Privacy Groups at FTC Roundtable to Call for Decisive Agency Action

Washington, DC, December 6, 2009–On Monday December 7, 2009, consumer representatives and privacy experts speaking at the first of three Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Exploring Privacy Roundtable Series will call on the agency to adopt new policies to protect consumer privacy in today’s digitized world. Consumer and privacy groups, as well as academics and policymakers, have increasingly looked to the FTC to ensure that Americans have control over how their information is collected and used.

The groups have asked the Commission to issue a comprehensive set of Fair Information Principles for the digital era, and to abandon its previous notice and choice model, which is not effective for consumer privacy protection.

Specifically, at the Roundtable on Monday, consumer panelists and privacy experts will call on the FTC to stop relying on industry privacy self-regulation, because of its long history of failure. Last September, a number of consumer groups provided Congressional leaders and the FTC a detailed blueprint of pro-active measures designed to protect privacy, available at: http://www.democraticmedia.org/release/privacy-release-20090901.

These measures include giving individuals the right to see, have a copy of, and delete any information about them; ensuring that the use of consumer data for any credit, employment, insurance, or governmental purpose or for redlining is prohibited; and ensuring that websites should only initially collect and use data from consumers for a 24-hour period, with the exception of information categorized as sensitive, which should not be collected at all. The groups have also requested that the FTC establish a Do Not Track registry.

Quotes from Monday’s panelists:

Marc Rotenberg, EPIC: “There is an urgent need for the Federal Trade Commission to address the growing threat to consumer privacy. The Commission must hold accountable those companies that collect and use personal information. Self-regulation has clearly failed.”

Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy: “Consumers increasingly confront a sophisticated and pervasive data collection apparatus that can profile, track and target them online. The Obama FTC must quickly act to protect the privacy of Americans,including information related to their finances, health, and ethnicity.”

Susan Grant, Consumer Federation of America: “It’s time to recognize privacy as a fundamental human right and create a public policy framework that requires that right to be respected. Rather than stifling innovation, this will spur innovative ways to make the marketplace work better for consumers and businesses.”

Pam Dixon, World Privacy Forum: “Self-regulation of commercial data brokers has been utterly ineffective to protect consumers. It’s not just bad actors who sell personal information ranging from mental health information, medical status, income, religious and ethnic status, and the like. The sale of personal information is a routine business model for many in corporate America, and neither consumers nor policymakers are aware of the amount of trafficking in personal information. It’s time to tame the wild west with laws that incorporate the principles of the Fair Credit Reporting Act to ensure transparency, accountability, and consumer control.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091207/yahoo-adds-new-privacy-tool-for-users-just-as-ftc-privacy-hearings-start-today-and-microhoo-regulatory-approval-is-pending/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091118/yahoo-hires-amber-allman-as-new-d-c-director-of-public-affairs/ http://allthingsd.com/20091118/yahoo-hires-amber-allman-as-new-d-c-director-of-public-affairs/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:18:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20821

Earlier today, BoomTown reported that Yahoo was poised to name a few new top execs at its Silicon Valley HQ.

But the company has also hired a new director of public affairs in the nation’s capital.

After I queried the company, Yahoo (YHOO) confirmed that it has tapped Amber Allman, a vice president at 463 Communications, for the job. She has extensive tech experience.

“We are very pleased that she is coming on board,” said Nina Blackwell, senior director of global public affairs, who will be Allman’s boss. “She will be a very valuable member of the team.

Yahoo’s last public affairs rep in D.C. was the most excellent Tracy Schmaler, who left Yahoo earlier this year.

At Yahoo, she worked on everything from human rights issues in China to the failed takeover attempt by Microsoft (MSFT) to Yahoo’s also-botched effort to do a search and advertising deal with search giant Google (GOOG).

Ironically, Schmaler is now deputy director, Office of Public Affairs, at the Justice Department, which is currently scrutinizing Yahoo’s search and ad partnership with Microsoft.

Ah, the revolving doors of Washington, D.C.!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091118/yahoo-hires-amber-allman-as-new-d-c-director-of-public-affairs/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091118/center-for-digital-democracys-jeff-chester-talks-about-microhoo-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20091118/center-for-digital-democracys-jeff-chester-talks-about-microhoo-and-more/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:55:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20741 While in Washington, D.C., BoomTown can’t just visit the policy wonks from Internet companies (such as my Facebook how-do-you-do here), so I hightailed it several hundred feet and directly across Connecticut Avenue NW to visit with Jeff Chester.

For those who don’t know him, Chester is the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that works to promote privacy and protection online.

In other words, a professional–and much needed–thorn in the side of Facebook, Google (GOOG) and these days, MicroHoo.

That’s because, while advertisers and publishers are supportive of the massive search and online advertising deal between Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO)–which now looks close to being launched–Chester has a more whoa-nelly attitude.

“There are questions that must be answered regarding the collection and sharing of consumer data by the two companies,” said Chester right after the deal was announced. “While the rationale for the deal is to provide some much needed competition to Google (and income for Yahoo), the further consolidation of the global digital advertising system should be a concern to Internet users, privacy advocates, online marketers, and competition regulators.”

Violations of consumer privacy by such unions or by Facebook’s efforts to use data to better deliver online ads or by any of the myriad ways such companies are honing their behavioral targeting skills worries Chester.

Thus, in patented D.C.-style, he hectors government agencies, politicians and the media to look more closely at such practices.

Here is my video interview with him about all this, which is well worth listening to, especially in an era when online powerhouses like Google are learning more and more about you, and not in a good way:

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