AllThingsD » Mashable

More Media on Social Media: Slew of New Apps Hit Facebook's Timeline

Lauren Goode — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:06:32 +0000

A few months ago, AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes questioned why it seemed as though all of her friends on Facebook were reading articles from the Washington Post online; turns out she, like many users, was seeing an aggregated list of activity from news apps through Facebook’s “open graph.” Today, Facebook announced that even more media apps were coming to Timeline through the social network’s open graph, including “The Daily Show,” MSNBC.com, Huffington Post, Mashable, MTV News and BuzzFeed.

ATD and Mashable Sitting in a Tree: The Best Merger Memo I've Nabbed All Year

Kara Swisher — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:00:24 +0000

While AllThingsD.com is known for scooping various and sundry internal memos from Internet giants, this is perhaps the most pleasing to post.

It’s a graphic visualization that our social media editor Drake Martinet did for his beloved, Stacy Green, who is the VP of marketing and communications over at Mashable.

Drake asked Stacy to marry him last night and, because they are both such geeks, did this paean to their relationship that is just adorkable.

And we post it here, because ATD is not just about news — it’s about love, sweet love. Compared to our Apple coverage, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

No, not just for some, but for everyone — Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers.

(By the way, Stacy said yes.)

Enjoy:

Mashable COO Adam Hirsch Makes a Move to DoSomething

John Murrell — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:26:30 +0000

DoSomething.org, which helps channel the energies of teens into social causes, said today it had lured Adam Hirsch away from the COO job at Mashable to become its chief digital officer as of Feb. 7. Hirsch will oversee all member engagement including social media, product development, and mobile.

Hey Facebook, Where's That Timeline and Open Graph You Promised?

Liz Gannes — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:00:10 +0000

Two and a half months after Facebook promised that a huge revision of its self-expression and sharing tools were coming soon, users and developers are still waiting.

Way back in September, Facebook told the world it was launching two major changes to its service: A revision of user profiles, called Timeline, that would make them more substantive and beautiful records of people’s lives; and “Open Graph” tools for developers to automatically share activity by logged-in Facebook users to their Timelines and friends.

Facebook didn’t give a firm date for the new launches, though it indicated they would be ready soon. “We’re going to roll [Timeline] out widely over the next few weeks as we polish all the edges,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told developers and press attendees in his keynote at f8 on Sept. 22.

But we’re already in December, and those tools have yet to arrive. Why the delay?

“We wanted to let developers build on the platform and to give users more time to get used to the idea of change coming,” a Facebook spokeswoman told AllThingsD, noting that Facebook has been criticized in the past for rolling out products in a hurry. Would she offer a launch date, or even an estimate? Nope.

Developers told AllThingsD that they are eager and ready to launch their Open Graph tools, but that Facebook keeps pushing its dates back. In recent developer communications, Facebook’s promises to launch “before the end of the year” have segued to January, the developers said.

Developers also said they’re worried that Facebook has told them it will likely run a staged rollout, where all users might not receive access at the same time, and where users would have seven days to review their Timeline before publishing it.

Those various states of deployment could be a chafe for app makers to support simultaneously, and could potentially confuse users.

At f8 in September, Zuckerberg had promised that Facebook would soon be filled with a cornucopia of verbs — like “watch,” “listen,” “read,” “cook,” “run,” “throw sheep,” etc. — building on the more static “people,” “places,” “things” and other nouns the site had supported in the past.

He said users could look forward to automatically sharing and collecting records of their culinary and athletic adventures through social cooking and social running apps, for example. Facebook also named a list of developers who had already agreed to create Open Graph applications, including Blockbuster, Flipboard and Mashable.

But only a chosen few — including Spotify, Rdio, the Guardian, the Washington Post and Netflix (though the social version of Netflix is not available in the U.S. yet) — got to launch in September; to my knowledge, no other partners or any other developers have since been allowed to release their “frictionless sharing” apps to the masses.

Meanwhile, more than a million Facebook users are already trying Timeline through a preview version for developers.

Months later, it seems rather odd that some users have an entirely different Facebook aesthetic. Personally, as a user with many connections in the tech industry who have activated their Timelines, when I happen on an older-style profile, with no glossy cover photo, the layout feels dated.

Here are some of the reasons Facebook, developers and conspiracy theorists gave for the delays:

From the Facebook camp, we hear of efforts to rewrite Timeline to make it faster, to sync up mobile versions, and to fully ensure the product is ready. There’s also some chatter of internal conflict over the Timeline concept.
Based on my own observations, early response to beta versions of the new features has been mixed. The new real-time Ticker, built to show Open Graph activity and every other action taken on Facebook as a sidebar on the site’s main page, was initially unpopular with many users. Anecdotally, I’ve seen very few Timeline beta users scan in their baby photos to tell the backstory of their lives. And new automated sharing features — like Spotify and especially the social news reader apps — can be annoying.
There are also some external factors. A small company called Timelines, with trademarks on its brand, sued Facebook right after f8. A judge denied Timelines a temporary restraining order against Facebook, but said he would reconsider if Facebook opens Timeline to a larger audience. As of Oct. 8, 1.3 million people were using the Timeline beta, and tens of thousands were signing up per day, according to court documents. Also, Facebook recently agreed to settle with the FTC over privacy complaints. While the settlement specifically prohibits Facebook from retroactively changing any user privacy settings, it’s not as explicit about how Facebook must introduce privacy features for new products. Given that Facebook is likely to go public soon, people at the company are probably especially interested in surviving a major launch with as little privacy backlash as possible.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Mashable Says It Fired Editor-at-Large Ben Parr

John Murrell — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:21:28 +0000

Tech news site Mashable and its editor-at-large, Ben Parr, have parted ways under circumstances that apparently were less than amicable. The writer and entrepreneur, who had worked for the site since 2008, was fired, according to a brief Mashable statement.

Word of Parr’s departure began to bubble out late Sunday, when mail to his Mashable address started kicking back an automated “no longer here” response, and his bio page was edited to identify him as “the former editor-at-large.”

Parr then confirmed his departure to AllThingsD, indicating that he’d have more to say on Monday. Mashable limited its official response to a single sentence, “confirming the terms of departure were termination.”

Expect a volley of “he said, they said” exchanges to follow.

Federated Media Buys Lijit Networks

Kara Swisher — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:00:16 +0000

San Francisco-based Federated Media Publishing said it has bought Lijit Networks, a smaller online advertising analytics and tools firm.

The price for the Boulder, Colo., start-up — which was founded in 2006 — was undisclosed, but it has received just under $29 million in venture funding from firms such as Foundry Group. Federated said Lijit would continue to operate independently, “but in conjunction.”

In an interview yesterday, Federated CEO Deanna Brown said the buy was to round out offerings for its clients and to better compete in a world where most of the online ads go to the top five players.

“I am excited we can give both publishers and advertisers more tools for engagement and monetization,” she said.

Federated, which lost big social-media news site Mashable earlier this year, also benefits from increased scale and inventory of sites.

Lijit CEO Todd Vernon, who will become EVP of technology at Federated, said that it was ever more important for ad-focused firms on the Web to “deliver the entire stack.”

“Lijit has a core competency in the media business, and combined with FM’s best-in-class sales force, we can offer everything needed to do effective online campaigns,” he said.

Here’s the official press release:

Federated Media Publishing To Acquire Lijit Networks

Combined Entity Will Power More than 77,000 Independent Publishers Across the Web Via Comprehensive Advertising, Analytics and Reader Engagement Tools

SAN FRANCISCO, October 4, 2011 – Federated Media Publishing, which powers the best of the Independent Web, today announced the acquisition of Lijit Networks, Inc. Lijit is a leading provider of advertising services, audience analytics and reader engagement tools for online publishers of all sizes. The combined entity will reach nearly 300 million global unique visitors according to Quantcast.

Lijit, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, will continue to operate independently but in conjunction with the rest of Federated Media Publishing. Lijit CEO Todd Vernon and COO Walter Knapp will take on corresponding EVP of Technology and SVP of Platform Revenue responsibilities at Federated Media Publishing and will report directly to Federated Media Publishing’s CEO, Deanna Brown. Additionally, Lijit board member Seth Levine from Foundry Group will join the Federated Media Publishing board of directors, effective immediately.

With the addition of Lijit Networks’ existing publisher relationships, Federated Media Publishing will now reach more than 77,000 online publishers and nearly 15,000 expert communities, making it one of the largest companies to power publishing on the Independent Web. The acquisition vastly expands the combined company’s inventory of sites, offering premium advertisers improved scale and reach.

Publishers Will Profit and Flourish

Lijit helps publishers more thoughtfully interact with and better understand their audience by providing analytics and engagement tools that build deeper relationships, lengthen time on site and increase page views. These robust and actionable audience analytics and reader engagement tools leverage intent, behavior and demographics to help publishers of all sizes increase revenue and better engage their readers.

Additionally, the combined advertising services provided by FM and Lijit will give publishers of all sizes a revenue stream that complements existing sales efforts and helps grow and monetize their website businesses, no matter what the size.

Advertisers Can More Easily Analyze and Engage

The combination of Federated Media Publishing’s premium online advertising and conversational marketing programs and Lijit’s proprietary data collection tools will empower advertisers to better understand user intent, contextual relevance and demographic information. And by leveraging the combined entity’s extensive publisher relationships, advertisers will have unprecedented scale on the Independent Web.

Introducing Programmatic Buying to the Independent Web

Programmatic buying is one of the fastest growing trends in digital media and the introduction of Lijit’s robust RTB exchange will equip media buyers with one of the largest platforms available. Over the next few months, Federated Media Publishing and Lijit will develop a series of private exchanges that will highlight leading independent publishers. These exchanges will allow brands to engage active, passionate consumers found in highly conversational online communities and publications, while delivering premium CPM rates via FM’s conversational marketing programs.

Quote

“The Lijit Networks team is just as passionate and committed to powering publishers as we are at Federated Media Publishing and that was a crucial element to this decision,” said Deanna Brown, chief executive officer, Federated Media Publishing. “Our combined relationships, proprietary tools and conversational marketing services will be invaluable to publishers and advertisers alike.”

“Federated Media invented how to leverage authentic voices and engaged conversations that exist in the Independent Web,” said Todd Vernon, founder and CEO of Lijit Networks. “The combination of the two companies is a game changer in the industry that unlocks new opportunities for both companies and our combined publisher network.”

Early Adopter: Facebook Snags a Journalist, But What Will Vadim Lavrusik Do?

Drake Martinet — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:05:49 +0000

Tech giants have always gobbled up journalists and media types, but most of those folks end up in the PR department.

But, as of Wednesday, Facebook has brought aboard a media-mind who won’t be fielding calls from AllThingsD.com reporters wondering about the Winklevii.

Vadim Lavrusik, former community manager at tech and social media Web site Mashable, has joined Facebook’s media partnerships team, where he will be “Journalist Program Manager.”

Lavrusik is a graduate of Columbia Univeristy’s journalism school and did a brief stint at the New York Times before heading to Mashable–a site probably most famous for massive numbers of social media followers.

Lavrusik’s move from social media-heavy news site to news guy at a social media giant isn’t that surprising, but what exactly is his job anyway?

I headed over to Lavrusik’s coming-out party–the social networking giant called it a journalism meetup–at Facebook’s Palo Alto HQ, to find out how true he plans to keep to his journalist roots, and what his hopes are for the future of journalists on the Facebook platform.

After some nervous looks from Facebook PR staffers, Lavrusik agreed to do a little video and be grilled on what Facebook means for journalism, and what his first order of business will be, once he unpacks his moving boxes at its New York offices.

[ See post to watch video ]

LivingSocial Focuses on Deals More in New Series of Commercials

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:25:03 +0000

LivingSocial, the second-largest daily deals site, has created two new commercials that will air during the Oscars on Sunday.

This time, unlike the one that aired right before the Super Bowl kick-off, LivingSocial is focusing more on the deals themselves.

In the Super Bowl, it used the tagline “LivingSocial changed my life,” and had a strange storyline that featured a gruff-looking man who turns into a cross-dresser.

The two new spots are a little more on point.

For example, in “We’ll set the stage, you play the part,” a man and a women perform a number of quick costume changes as they transition through a number of scenes, ranging from a restaurant (55 percent off fine dining), to a hair salon (72 percent off) to a dance floor (where they save 62 percent on tango lessons). For the finale, the curtain closes and the announcer says, “Sign up for free to get daily deals at LivingSocial.com.”

The Super Bowl commercials for both LivingSocial and Groupon demonstrated how difficult it is to portray this somewhat new concept of offering a voucher for a heavily discounted service.

Even so, LivingSocial’s commercial might be a little misleading since it uses “free” in the tagline. As any regular participant of LivingSocial or Groupon would know, you have to pay for the voucher in advance if you want the deal. (But it may not be so obvious to a newbie).

While LivingSocial’s Super Bowl ad fell flat, Groupon fell on even tougher luck with its series of three advertisements, which viewers revolted against and called insensitive.

The one that got the most feedback was a 30-second clip featuring Timothy Hutton that said while Tibetan culture is in jeopardy, “they still whip up an amazing fish curry, and since 200 of us bought at Groupon.com, we’re each getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15.”

Groupon initially offered to retract that one, but ended up having to apologize and yank all three. The company tried explaining that it was raising money for those causes, but the connection was lost on viewers.

LivingSocial’s new commercial can be found on the company’s Web site. It’s also embedded below. Mashable reports that the new campaign, which will kick off Sunday, was created by the Martin Agency.

Google Willing to Start From Scratch to Enter Daily Deals Market

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:20:01 +0000

Google appears to be entering the local daily deals business on its own after Groupon rejected a jaw-dropping $6 billion buyout offer.

According to Mashable, Google is close to launching “Google Offers,” a service that will compete with Groupon, LivingSocial and their hundreds of clones.

In a fact sheet sent to Mashable, it says users will receive a daily email offering a local deal, and as with other sites, the discount will be activated once enough people have made the purchase. The deal will be promoted throughout Google’s ad networks.

Google confirmed the service at a very high level: “Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways.”

To be sure, early providers have proven that the business can scale.

For instance, just yesterday LivingSocial sold 1.3 million $20 Amazon gift cards for $10 each to ring up a one-day sales total of $13 million. Groupon’s run rate is close to $2 billion, although about half of that is passed on to merchants.

It’s not surprising that Google is kicking off the service without acquiring a company in the space. Groupon would rather seek an IPO than sell, and LivingSocial has already teamed up with Amazon–and after those two, it’s slim pickings.

Google’s challenge won’t be in attracting a large audience but in executing the business.

Traditionally, Google has focused on a self-service advertising model, where merchants can go online to buy an ad without having to interact with a salesperson. But Groupon and LivingSocial have approached the business differently and have put hundreds of feet on the street. Groupon has roughly 3,000 employees, while LivingSocial has about 600–and both are growing extremely fast.

Google could try the approach it knows best, by automating the process and putting at least some of it online. After all, one of the reasons it was reportedly willing to pay so much for Groupon was for its local sales force.

So far, Google’s local track record has been spotty. Getting mom-and-pops interested in buying keywords online has been notoriously hard, as they have continued to prefer working with other mediums like newspapers and yellow pages (which do have local sales forces).

But if it is successful at automating any part of the process, Google could take a smaller cut of the deal than others do today, which could push down margins for everyone.

Photo Credit: Mashable.

Mac App Store Lacks Social Apps, Save for Twitter

Liz Gannes — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:43:41 +0000

Social apps are few and far between for the grand opening today of Apple’s Mac App Store, meant to be a desktop app marketplace equivalent to the highly successful app stores for Apple devices.

The only big-name social app joining the “social networking” category at launch is Twitter, which contributed an app that it says is designed for the “mainstream” user and is three times faster than the previous version of Tweetie for Mac, the independent app that Twitter acquired. The new Twitter app is quite elegant, with the rounded corners and UI accents of an iOS app rather than something from the desktop world. Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski says that based on his positive experience with it this morning he’s already deleted the two other Twitter clients on his desktop.

Other than that, the category contains an app for Mashable, the blog about social networking. There are some independent Twitter apps such as Tweetings for Twitter and Itsy. There’s an app for MarsEdit, the desktop blogging software.

That’s slim pickings compared to the social networking category for iPhone apps, where the top free apps are Skype, Facebook and Textfree. Meanwhile, the free iPad social networking app category is led by a couple of off-brand Facebook apps and the official Twitter app.

Facebook has neglected development of its own apps on the iPad and other platforms, so it’s not a surprise that the company hasn’t built something for the Mac app launch. And Skype, as you can understand, already has its own desktop app. Various texting and voice services perhaps make more sense in a phone situation. But you’d think there would at least be a LinkedIn, Tumblr or Myspace Mac app.

Maybe they’ll come later–today’s launch included just 1,000 apps. Or maybe the desktop just isn’t a very social place.

(Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I can link to the Mac apps themselves, as accessing the store requires a software update available only to users of the latest Mac operating system.)

SurveyMonkey Says: Mark Zuckerberg Needs to Get Out More (With an IPad)!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:31:55 +0000

The All Things Digital readership has spoken: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was wrong in declaring that the Apple iPad was not mobile.

In fact, 1,671 takers of a survey BoomTown ginned up on the subject using SurveyMonkey disagreed with him 85.1 percent to 14.9 percent.

The larger number picked the answer– “No, Mark needs to get out more!”–when asked: “Was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg correct in asserting last week that the Apple iPad is not mobile?”

The smaller number agreed with the statement, “Yes, Mark is a visionary!”

Well, he actually is, but not about this debate.

A week ago, BoomTown wrote a post titled “Dear Zuck: The Apple iPad Is Mobile (So Sorry!),” countering Zuckerberg’s sudden statement at a recent press event that the popular tablet device was not.

As I wrote about what the kingpin of the social networking giant said:

Ben Parr of Mashable asked a question everyone has been speculating about recently–whether and when there would be an iPad app for Facebook coming.

A fumbling “no comment” would have worked fine, but the real Zuckerberg seemed to have decided to channel the clever Aaron Sorkin-ish repartee of the fictional Zuckerberg in the movie “The Social Network.”

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” he said flatly.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” noted Parr.

“Well, sorry,” Zuckerberg spat out, his voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that only a super-nerdy Silicon Valley engineer can pull off properly.

I disagreed, noting:

The iPad is a computer, because that is technically true, even though that makes a smartphone a computer too. (And, now that I think of it, my car is a computer.)

But actual civilians don’t make these kinds of distinctions and, if one spends any time watching consumers use tablets, mobile is entirely how they think of it.

The post got a lot of comments, and tweets on Twitter too, so I thought I would post a survey so that everyone could cast their own vote.

Here it is below again, with the results under it (click on full screen to make it ginormous):

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

SurveySummary_11092010

[Photo from CafePress, and thanks to SurveyMonkey for calling our survey a "smart, savvy, and even downright sexy" embed.]

Take the BoomTown Vs. Zuckerberg Survey: Is the Apple iPad Mobile or Not?

Kara Swisher — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 08:09:58 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown wrote a post titled “Dear Zuck: The Apple iPad Is Mobile (So Sorry!),” countering Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement at a press event earlier this week that the popular tablet device is not.

As I wrote about what the kingpin of the social networking giant said:

Ben Parr of Mashable asked a question everyone has been speculating about recently–whether and when there would be an iPad app for Facebook coming.

A fumbling “no comment” would have worked fine, but the real Zuckerberg seemed to have decided to channel the clever Aaron Sorkin-ish repartee of the fictional Zuckerberg in the movie “The Social Network.”

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” he said flatly.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” noted Parr.

“Well, sorry,” Zuckerberg spat out, his voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that only a super-nerdy Silicon Valley engineer can pull off properly.

I disagreed, noting:

The iPad is a computer, because that is technically true, even though that makes a smartphone a computer too. (And, now that I think of it, my car is a computer.)

But actual civilians don’t make these kinds of distinctions and, if one spends any time watching consumers use tablets, mobile is entirely how they think of it.

The post got a lot of comments, and tweets too, so I thought I would post a survey so that everyone can cast their own vote.

And I won’t blame the economy if I lose, so click away (and I will post the results later):

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

Dear Zuck: The Apple iPad Is Mobile (So Sorry!)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:01:07 +0000

Because while those who live in the echo chamber of Silicon Valley are frequently wrong, but never in doubt, a gigantic amount of time is spent being more technical than realistic.

And by “technical,” I mean annoyingly detailed in making a point as to completely obfuscate the essence of anything.

Let me explain.

In the middle of yet another dullish release of features–this time mobile-related–at an event at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, Calif., on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of the social networking giant, finally livened up the proceedings in the Q&A part at the end.

Ben Parr of Mashable asked a question everyone has been speculating about recently–whether and when there would be an iPad app for Facebook coming.

A fumbling “no comment” would have worked fine, but the real Zuckerberg seemed to have decided to channel the clever Aaron Sorkin-ish repartee of the fictional Zuckerberg in the movie “The Social Network.”

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” he said flatly.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” noted Parr.

“Well, sorry,” Zuckerberg spat out, his voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that only a super-nerdy Silicon Valley engineer can pull off properly.

And, while he quickly backtracked and declared a deep love of Apple products, it was clear Zuckerberg meant what he’d said and said what he’d meant.

That the iPad is just another version of the kind of computer he cut his geek teeth on and it is not at all like the mobile smartphones that are now moving squarely into power pole position in the digital universe.

Except, not so fast.

First, the creators of the iPad over at Apple do consider it mobile, and its own often-disdainful leader Steve Jobs has said so on many occasions.

While that does not make it so, of course, imagine if he got up and said Facebook was not actually a social network as much as, say, a glorified portal with more chitchat. Sort of an AOL-Plus!

You could make that argument, although it would not take into account a lot of key elements Zuckerberg did not take into account in his iPad-is-a-computer zinger.

But that’s not a good enough counter, of course, so let’s focus on real people using the iPad or tablets like it, such as the Amazon Kindle e-reader.

First, the iPad is a computer, because that is technically true, even though that makes a smartphone a computer too. (And, now that I think of it, my car is a computer.)

But actual civilians don’t make these kinds of distinctions and, if one spends any time watching consumers use tablets, mobile is entirely how they think of it.

If you want to get technical, I supposed “portable” is a better way to describe it, but not in the way a laptop is.

And here are the five simple reasons why:

No. 1: A tablet is typically carried around like a book or magazine, which are perhaps the most portable of all media.

While it has a hard shell, an iPad has the elements of those much more so than a computer laptop, which is much harder to manipulate, due to its clamshell design and keyboard.

No. 2: A tablet is largely used via a touchscreen, which allows the device to be intimate in a way a computer never is.

Watch people use a laptop and an iPad in a public setting and you will easily see the relationship is much different.

A laptop is treated more as a work device and an in-a-pinch entertainment player. Like a phone, the tablet is used close in and with no sense of boundaries.

No. 3: A tablet is largely used as a consumption device, with interactive and inputting elements, while a computer is an interactive and inputting device with consumption elements.

No. 4: The tablet, like my phone, is always on, with no boot up. It is persistent, while a computer is more periodic.

And a tablet is smaller and thinner than any computer and will only get thinner over time. Again, this kind of form factor makes it more and more a mobile device.

No. 5: And, even now, as large as the first iteration of the iPad is, it never sits on my desk.

A desktop computer, of course, does. My laptop sits on my desk, plugged into a big screen, and is often unplugged and taken with me when I travel.

But my iPad is never on my desk. Unless it is charging or synching, it is in my bag with my phone and always ready to go.

As in, mobile.

Liveblogging the Facebook Mobile Event: Single Sign-On for Social

Kara Swisher — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:55:54 +0000

BoomTown arrived late to the Facebook mobile event for the press due to traffic related to the parade today for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory–and where I would much rather be right now.

Go Giants!

10:53 am PT: In any case, I am here in the cafeteria of Facebook again, where the company continues its attempts to take over the known digital universe before Google does.

Currently, the social networking giant notes “200 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook from a phone, more than triple the number just one year ago.”

Thus, some new tries of a lot of stuff, such as single sign-on.

Meaning you sign on a Facebook and it signs you on all over the Web (or at least at those in partnership with the company).

Such as at Groupon and Zynga.

This single sign-on stuff has been tried by many before, a kind of Holy Grail of the Web, and where everyone has failed.

But it also the proverbial camel’s nose poking in your digital tent.

As in, the whole Facebook body is surely coming in next.

Facebook’s exec in charge of all this, Eric Tseng, talks about a virtuous circle of single sign-on, happy users and happy developers, sounding as if this is the single biggest problem facing humanity.

A password crisis! Silicon Valley to the rescue!

Perhaps the only issue the now damaged administration of President Barack Obama could actually get some legislation passed on now.

“My fellow Americans, we have too long be stuck in a miasma of forgetting which name of our dog we used for our password plus the number one…”

How much do I want to be at Giants parade right now? Much!

11:02 am: Next, we move onto more ability to show your location to friends on Facebook better and make sense of it by opening location APIs.

More heavy pontificating about what a disaster it is that we cannot properly see where our friends are on Facebook in the real world.

Of course, this leaves out the pertinent point that my “friends” on Facebook are exactly those I do not want to run into at the Starbucks on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, Calif.

Loopt Founder Sam Altman comes up to show off the integration with Facebook Places, where this problem is solved anyway.

“We believe data wants to be unified,” says Altman.

Certainly if you are the Borg, you want it to be unified. Me, not so much.

11:11 am: Now comes the attempted Groupon-killer from Facebook, which is creatively called “Deals.”

This is essentially allowing Facebook Places to locate a person and then merchants to offer deals when a user is nearby via a platform offered by Facebook.

You can do individual deals, such as getting a beer at a bar when you check in. Then, there is a loyalty deal on the phone, taking the place of that dog-eared card you always lose.

And there is the “friend deal.” This is not friends with benefits, sadly.

It means if you check in and bring a lot of folks, one eats free–which sounds just a little naughty.

Also, there is one deal type related to charity.

For the Gap, for example, you get a free jeans if you are among the first 10,000 to check in at a Gap store. There are 500 million Facebook users, so you do the math.

Essentially, it is about getting stuff if you check in, including experiences.

So, just like little white mice in Facebook’s lab, we push the button, we get the cheese. Sigh.

But I wonder if I check in right now, I can be transported to the Giants parade via a time machine. Now that might be something worth handing over my privacy to Facebook.

“The big takeaway for today is that there is obviously a lot of change in the social space,” says Facebook CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. “You can rethink any product area and make it be social.”

Indeed, you can. And Facebook obviously is going to be plowing on through a lot of them in order to solidify its stranglehold on the consumer.

11:23 am: Q&A!

The first question is on privacy and third-party developers giving up your location.

Yes, that!

Zuckerberg makes assurances that the current privacy steps now in place are working just fine and also users need to consent.

“The place information about people is not public,” he says.

There is question from Ben Parr of Mashable, about whether there is an iPad app for Facebook coming.

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” declares Zuckerberg, dismissing the very good question.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” countered Parr, correctly.

“Well, sorry,” said Zuckerberg with more than a little bit of snark.

For a second, he sounds just like the guy from the Facebook movie.

But Zuckerberg quickly declares his love of Apple products and apologizes, although he should not have as it was a funny exchange.

A question about single sign-on. Zuckerberg notes that it has been tried, but the experience was bad.

“What we think is going to happen now is that it is so easy when it works, it is a whole different experience,” he said, comparing it to the way YouTube made video uploading on the Web easier.

Zuckerberg’s goal is that all apps become social, which is also a virtuous circle for Facebook, of course.

A question about the deals offer. It seems for Zuckerberg that Facebook is not getting a cut from retailers right now, as Groupon does.

Ruh-roh, Andrew Mason!

Zuckerberg then notes that the Places offering is going well, without giving a lot of specifics.

At the end, PR maven Brandee Barker wraps it up by saying what I have been thinking this entire time:

“Go Giants!”

Remember Merton, the Chatroulette Piano Guy? He's Still Here!

Peter Kafka — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:02:03 +0000

Remember “Merton,” Chatroulette’s breakout star? The funny improv piano player who wasn’t Ben Folds but who inspired Ben Folds to create his own Merton tribute and…

Hrm. This seemed like super-interesting stuff a few months ago. But Chatroulette’s buzz, and perhaps its traffic, is dying down. And while Merton is still a little mysterious–unless I’m missing it, he has yet to actually identify himself–he’s no longer of the moment. And when he puts out a new video, no one cares.

Okay, so not no one–this clip, Merton’s third, has racked up more than 336,000 views since Friday. But here’s a telling data point: Mashable, the reliable chronicler of all things Merton, has yet to acknowledge the new clip.

The good news for Merton is that he may be able to extract a few dollars out of this thing before it goes away completely. If you watch the clip below (there is indeed some swearing) or visit his channel on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, you’ll see he has started selling ads on this stuff. Hurry up!

And if you have another 5 minutes, I still really, really enjoy the first Ben Folds Merton tribute:

Remember Merton, the Chatroulette Piano Guy? He's Still Here!

Peter Kafka — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:02:03 +0000

Remember “Merton,” Chatroulette’s breakout star? The funny improv piano player who wasn’t Ben Folds but who inspired Ben Folds to create his own Merton tribute and…

And if you have another 5 minutes, I still really, really enjoy the first Ben Folds Merton tribute:

UPDATE: AOL Won't Deny It Has Sold Bebo

Peter Kafka — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:15:58 +0000

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal identifies Bebo’s mystery buyer as Criterion Capital. TechCrunch pegs the price at less than $10 million. Both of those answers sound plausible to me.

—————–

Mashable says AOL has sold Bebo, but doesn’t know who bought it or the price paid for the social network. PE Hub’s Dan Primack (via Business Insider) thinks the buyer is in Southern California.

What does AOL say?

No comment. Or more precisely: “We haven’t announced anything,” says PR boss Tricia Primrose.

Okey-dokey! More info if and when it surfaces.

But if Tim Armstrong can get anyone to pay anything for Bebo, it will be a small victory for AOL (AOL).

The previous AOL regime bought the social network for $850 million at the height of the last Web bubble, and the portal has since had to write the whole thing off. For some reason, Time Warner (TWX) boss Jeff Bewkes, who signed off on the purchase, never gets tarred for that one, but I digress…

Armstrong has already announced that if he can’t find a buyer for Bebo, he’ll shut the whole thing down. Which makes it pretty hard to drive a hard bargain. Anyone want to hazard a guess?

Video: College Humor's Ricky Van Veen on How to Make Web Stuff That Doesn't Suck

Peter Kafka — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:06:04 +0000

Some of you may have already read Mashable’s summary of the “10 Web Content Urban Legends” presentation that Ricky Van Veen delivered yesterday. But I got to see the College Humor co-founder do this in person, and I can vouch that it’s well worth watching.

Check it out. It’s a very quick 30 minutes–the picture of the Obama inauguration is worth it by itself. But there’s no reason to watch the Q&A that follows, in which Van Veen is queried by a dolt.

Supershort attention span? That’s okay. You’re on the Web! Here’s the “show, not tell” version–the “Font Conference” video Van Veen holds up (correctly) as an example of non=sucky Web content.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Meet Merton, the Chatroulette Piano Guy (Who Isn't Ben Folds)

Peter Kafka — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:14:44 +0000

The intrepid team at Mashable has an excellent get: An interview with “Merton,” the Chatroulette Piano Guy.

The important takeaway, which I’d basically deduced on my own: He’s definitely not Ben Folds.

Merton declines to identify himself for Mashable’s Brenna Ehrlich. Though I gather that once his identity is unmasked, it won’t be anyone you’ve ever heard of anyway.

Ehrlich’s Skype chat with Merton runs 15 minutes, and if you’ve got time, I suggest watching the whole thing, because it’s both fascinating and charming. It also rubs off just a bit of charm from the phenomenon, though. Because the truth is always a bit less fun than the story you cook up in your head.

If you’re time-pressed, here are my notes:

Merton plays piano all the time, though it’s not clear if he’s a professional. He’s not in a band. He primarily does improvisational stuff in the “brooding, introspective” vein of Keith Jarrett and Tori Amos.
He filmed the Chatroulette videos over two nights, in three-hour sessions. He and his pals edited the footage to three five-minute clips.
He put the clips up on YouTube as a lark and initially kept them private. Now they’re approaching five million views, but he says that wasn’t his intent. “i didn’t give it some huge web site like College Humor… i guess that’s why they call it viral.”
He did a new session a few days ago, and not surprisingly “my experience was very different because everyone knew who I was…it’s more fun one way, and a little less fun another way.”
What about all the naked dudes Chatroulette is famous for? “I’m not deeply creeped out by those people.” But he understands why other people might be. “I don’t think there should be any children on Chatroullete ever, for so many different reasons.”
He loves Ben Folds’s tribute, of course. He also understands why casual observers might think the two men were the same person. “We’re both white guys who play the piano.”
Putting the stuff up anonymously “wasn’t really a strategy,” but it was “empowering.” Merton knows this can’t last forever. “Eventually, someone’s going to find me out, and that’s fine…I’m pretty sure that I would have the most fun if i went undetected for as long as possible.”

Not addressed in the interview: How is Merton going to cash in on this? And why did Google (GOOG) force him to take down his clip yesterday?

I think I can answer the latter question. It seems that some of the Chatrouletters in the clip made privacy claims, and you can figure out which ones when you watch the re-edited video.

Twitter Still Attracting New Users, Phishers

Peter Kafka — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:33:32 +0000

Twitter’s astonishing growth doesn’t just generate awe and giant valuations, it attracts scammers who want to prey on the service’s ever-expanding user base.

The most recent example: A new wave of phishing attacks, which are generally–but not always–sent via the service’s “direct message” feature. And which generally–but not always–feature language like “LOL is this you” in the message.

Like most phishing attacks, this one has some telltale signs, if you’re the kind of person who’s inclined to see them. There’s the odd text in the message itself. And the “bzpharma” text that appears in the URL address is a big giveaway.

But! As with many other phishing attacks, if you’re not looking for this stuff or you’re just clicking quickly, it’s easy enough to get duped. The fake Twitter homepage created by the phishers looks real enough, as does the “fail whale” message you get after entering your info.

One easy step you can take to arm yourself against this kind of thing: Follow Twitter’s “Spam Watch” account, which does a decent job of keeping people informed attacks like these. But while that account has 148,368 followers, and tends to get retweeted a lot, the majority of Twitter users still won’t learn about this stuff in advance. Maybe it’s time for Twitter to build some equivalent of the emergency broadcast system.

Meanwhile, if you don’t like reading, the video below from the Sophos security firm (via Mashable) gives you a good idea of what this is all about.

Steve Jobs Sells the iPad in Three Minutes. Amazing!

Peter Kafka — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:39:46 +0000

Say you fell and bumped your head Wednesday morning and have been dozing since. Here’s the Apple (AAPL) iPad unveiling you missed, helpfully condensed into 180 seconds.

Thanks to Mashable for finding and to body painter (really?) Neil Curtis for the heavy lifting.

And if you liked that, you’re in luck, because there’s a long history (by Internet standards) of Steve Jobs keynote condensations. Well worth another few minutes to engage in some time travel here:

New ATD Features: Topic Pages and Finding Jobs (No, Not Steve!)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:57:42 +0000

Here at All Things Digital, we are always fussing away on our site, making a variety of improvements regularly to deliver a better experience to our readers.

In that vein, we have recently added two new features over the last few weeks, both of which deserve a look-see: Topic pages and job listings.

The first is our attempt to offer a new and easier way for the ATD audience to navigate specific information, by gathering in one place a selection of blogs, columns, videos and photos on the site, all related to a single popular topic, all without requiring a user to search via keywords.

The variety of our topic pages will grow over time. But right now we have special pages for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3GS, the Palm (PALM) Pre, the new Bing search service from Microsoft (MSFT) and news from Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference.

Secondly, we’ve partnered with Simply Hired to offer paid job listings on AllThingsD.com, right from the front page. Starting this week, you’ll find Simply Hired widgets with current job opportunities on pages across our site, including here.

Recruiters can post jobs directly to the ATD jobs page, and these listings are also distributed to more than 5,000 partner sites in Simply Hired’s network, including GigaOM, Mashable and WashingtonPost.com.

(Full disclosure: Simply Hired, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has raised some of its funding from the News Corp. (NWS) digital unit, Fox Interactive Media. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

How Much Is Your Favorite Blog Worth? Less Than It Was a Year Ago (Maybe).

Peter Kafka — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:45:14 +0000

What happens to the value of blogs when advertising craters and big media companies go into a tailspin? They go down, obviously. Except when they don’t.

That’s the lesson you can learn by perusing 24/7 Wall St.’s list of the 25 most valuable blogs and comparing it to the version the two-man publication put together a year ago. Editor Douglas A. MacIntyre has given sharp haircuts to many of the Web publications he assessed last March. But not all of them.

MacIntyre thinks TechCrunch, for instance, is now worth about $25 million; last year he pegged the tech blog’s value at $36 million. Web 2.0 chronicler Mashable has taken a 75 percent drop, from $10 million to $2.5 million.

But MacIntyre also thinks that the uber-aggregator Huffington Post is now worth $90 million, up from $70 million a year ago, even though the site’s political coverage doesn’t have the same appeal it had last fall. And he thinks the most valuable company on his list, Nick Denton’s Gawker Media, is now worth $170 million even though (or perhaps because) Denton has been consolidating his list of titles. Last spring, MacIntyre thought Gawker was worth $150 million.

Since every one of these blogs is a small operation that provides little to no visibility into its financials, every one of these valuations is, at best, an educated guess. And it’s easy to pick nits or arguments with any one of MacIntyre’s valuations. But then again, those arguments are sort of the point of a list like this.

And it’s hard to argue with his overall thesis: The same advertising woes that have caused problems for Yahoo (YHOO), the New York Times and nearly every other big media company are being felt by the little guys too. Maybe even more so since many of the little guys were hoping that the big guys would snap them up, as Condé Nast did with Ars Technica and the Guardian Media Group did with PaidContent last year. Hard to argue that we’ll see deals like these in 2009.

Here’s MacIntyre’s top 10: You can see the full list here.

1. Gawker Media: $170 million. Last year: $150 million.

2. Huffington Post: $90 million. Last year: $70 million.

3. The Drudge Report: $48 million. Last year: $10 million.

4. Perez Hilton: $32 million. Last year: $48 million.

5. Sugar, Inc.: $27 million. Last year: Not listed.

6. TechCrunch. $25 million. Last year: $36 million.

7. MacRumors. $21 million. Last year: $85 million

8. SeekingAlpha. $11 million. Last year: $15 million

9. GigaOm: $9.5 million. Last year: $8.4 million

10. Politico: $8.7 million. Last year: Not listed.

Kara Visits the VentureBeat Party!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:03:32 +0000

Last night, dressed in my kindergarten soccer-coach best (sneaks, sweats and athletic socks–glam!), I ventured over to the Tenderloin district of San Francisco to attend VentureBeat‘s party in honor of the launch of its new digital media blog.

Held at the Ambassador club on Geary Street, it was as if 1999 had never ended, and the huge crowd was partying like it was, well, 1999.

Shoulder to shoulder–or, in my puny case, shoulder to stomach–entrepreneurs, PR folks and a healthy smattering of press jammed into the venue, chattering about valuations, venture deals and other vacuous topics of Web 2.0.

Attendees included Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Craigslist’s Jim Buckmaster, blogger Dan Gillmor and Microsoft-man-in-Silicon-Valley Dan’l Lewin (who gave us bupkis info about the deal, as you can see in the video).

Also in the video, in order, Meebo Co-Founder Seth Sternberg (fresh from a big funding); VentureBeat’s new editor of its digital media blog, Eric Eldon; Lewin; Gillmor; Valleywag’s Owen Thomas; and, finally, VentureBeat Editor and Founder Matt Marshall.

[ See post to watch video ]