Facebook-branded Vitaminwater

Those smug smarties from Palo Alto, Calif. (disclosure: my husband works there part-time, so I can say that with some bit of certainty) say they love the openness and cooperativeness of internal Facebook culture, according to Glassdoor (as well as the free food and commuter shuttles).

This is the first time Facebook has made the Glassdoor list. In second place is Southwest Airlines–which was last year’s winner–followed by Bain & Company, General Mills and Edelman, respectively.

As for other tech companies, SAS Institute placed No. 7, Overstock.com was No. 9 and CareerBuilder No. 11. Apple was No. 20 and Google No. 30.

Meanwhile, in more surprising news, Glassdoor reports that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is actually more popular now than founder Jerry Yang when he was in the top spot. Bartz has an employee approval rating of 56 percent, compared to 34 percent for Yang when he left.

Other comparisons: HP CEO Léo Apotheker has 62 percent approval, compared to Mark Hurd’s 34 percent when he left, and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has 71 percent approval, compared to Randy Falco’s 13 percent approval when he left.

The most popular tech CEO is Apple’s Steve Jobs, with a 97 percent approval rating. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Eric Schmidt are both at 96 percent.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

The January 2011 issue ranking cellphones and services carries this headline on the cover: “Best and worst providers (Sorry AT&T).”

I’m going to try to pick up a copy this morning and will then update, but here are the highlights, according to the Houston Chronicle. AT&T got the magazine’s full black dot rating (that’s as low as it gets) in almost every nationwide category, while Verizon topped the rankings.

AT&T sent out the following statement in response to the rankings: “We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20 percent slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60 percent slower on average nationwide. And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent–the equivalent of just one call in a thousand–of the industry leader.”

On the device side, the iPhone (the same one that the magazine once recommended against buying) tops the list of phones available at AT&T, the Droid X and Samsung Fascinate tied for best Verizon option and Samsung’s Epic and Vibrant top the options at Sprint and T-Mobile, respectively.

They didn’t bother to obliterate the U.S. Supreme Court. But in the real world, that’s where the $10.5 billion videogame industry faces its greatest threat. On Tuesday, the court’s nine justices will consider whether to strip First Amendment protection from violent videogames that critics say appeal to the deviant interests of children.

A 2005 California law prohibits selling or renting such games to minors based on legislative findings that they stimulate “feelings of aggression,” reduce “activity in the frontal lobes of the brain” and promote “violent antisocial or aggressive behavior.” The law never took effect because lower courts found it violated free-expression rights.

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A national poll released today by Common Sense Media asking how well social networks protect kids online produced an answer that should come as a shock to exactly no one:

Not very well, at least according to parents.

A full 75 percent of them gave social networking sites such as Facebook a negative rating for the task.

About 2,000 parents were polled by the nonprofit media organization, as well as 400 teens, who also gave thumbs down to social networks’ ability to police themselves.

There will be a big roundtable discussion on the topic in Washington, D.C., this morning, which will include Common Sense Media head Jim Steyer, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Deputy Secretary of Education Anthony Miller.

Along with the poll results, San Francisco-based Common Sense Media said it will also announce the launch of the “Protect Our Privacy–Protect Our Kids” campaign to help parents protect kids’ reputations and personal information online.

I love the smell of impending privacy legislation in the morning!

Already from Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts: “As the House author of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, I remain intently interested in ensuring that children are not targeted online and their privacy is strictly protected. Twelve years after the bill was signed into law, entire new technologies and industries have emerged that could put children’s safety at risk, making a legislative update necessary. I look forward to introducing such legislation to bring COPPA into the 21st century.”

Thus, here is more for pols to chew on: The bulk of those surveyed are more concerned with online privacy than they were five year ago (another obvious one); parents do not believe Web sites, including search engines such as Google (GOOG), should share the location of kids (count me in on that one too!); and teens think their friends overshare (you think?).

But instead of me telling you, just read it all here in top-line results for adults and teens, as well as in the official press release:

Final CSM adults topline

Final CSM teen topline

Privacy Poll Results and Campaign Launch

Financial terms of the acquisition are not being released.

Suddenly–although not entirely unexpectedly–the major investors of Yahoo are getting restless.

If you talked to many of them in recent weeks, there has developed a confusion over the stock sitting stagnant in the mid-teens for far too long now, a vague disgruntlement that CEO Carol Bartz has not provided enough of a vision and innovation in her 18 months in charge to turn around the iconic but long-struggling Internet giant, a nagging worry about the continuing exodus of top execs and, perhaps most of all, vexation that Yahoo (YHOO) is just too big not to be, well, bigger than it is.

“It just feels like there is nothing going on to get any momentum going,” said one major shareholder, whose sentiment is more common than not among longtime stock owners of Yahoo. “And it is not clear if there is anything on the horizon to get it going.”

Many point to the value of Yahoo’s Asian holdings, especially its stake in China’s Alibaba Group, as its most promising set of assets, valuing them much more than management’s recent attempts to focus on its media properties while shedding search technology costs under its ongoing partnership with Microsoft (MSFT).

“A Yahoo shareholder has to have the patience of Job,” said another major stock owner, noting shares of the Silicon Valley company are down more than 10 percent compared to a year ago, in contrast to an 8.3 percent rise at Google (GOOG) and a 3.9 percent increase at Microsoft.

To be fair, for the year to date, all Yahoo shares have declined less than those of either of those two digital giants.

And analysts are expecting some sunshine from today’s second-quarter earnings results, which will be reported after the markets close.

The company is expected to report a strong gain in profits, even with revenues rising only slightly.

The consensus: Yahoo will earn 14 cents a share for the three months ended in June, on $1.16 billion in revenue. That compares to 10 cents on $1.14 billion in the same period a year ago.

Several analysts are raising their ratings on Yahoo, noting that Bartz’s efforts to cut costs and improve margins have not been fully appreciated by investors.

Reaction to Yahoo’s results will be interesting. Google’s earnings report earlier this week disappointed Wall Street, since its profit was less than expected, although U.S. revenue growth was promising.

“In particular, we believe that the robust and accelerating Google U.S. revenue results, based on both Search and Display growth, provide a broad positive market read-thru for Yahoo!,” wrote Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney in his “cheat sheet” note ahead of earnings.

Mahaney reiterated his $22-a-share price target, pointing to display advertising recovery, margin expansion, search share stabilization, Yahoo’s recent stock buyback authorization and the eventual value of the Asian assets.

Yahoo shares closed yesterday at $15.10.

If you can’t buy Foursquare–as Yahoo did not after aggressive efforts to do so–then…buy the Indonesian version of it!

BoomTown has to be honest and say I have never heard of Koprol, a Jakarta-based social geolocation service that bears striking similarities to the hot New York-based one Yahoo (YHOO) offered $100 million for recently to no result.

But that’s just what Yahoo snapped up, announcing the purchase of the mobile-focused start-up for an undisclosed sum tonight.

It is not clear what Yahoo intends to do with the technology from Koprol, but execs called it an emerging-market play.

And, indeed, Koprol could be used to bolster Yahoo “check-in” features globally, especially in Asia.

Frankly, Koprol sounds more robust, innovative and fun than Foursquare.

Yahoo already made another splashy mobile announcement today by unveiling a partnership deal with Finnish handset giant Nokia (NOK).

Here is a video Yahoo posted on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog with Kopral’s founders:

And here’s the full Yahoo press release on the Koprol acquisition:

Yahoo! Acquires Koprol; Extends Social and Mobile Strategy With Location-Based Community
Expands Offerings in Rapidly Growing Emerging Markets

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and JAKARTA, Indonesia –May 24, 2010–Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today announced the acquisition of Koprol. Headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, Koprol extends Yahoo’s social, mobile and local offerings and focuses on the intersection of location, community expertise and mobile experiences that have become important trends around the globe. Koprol enables users to interact and share knowledge about their community in a way that is uniquely tailored to mobile phones.

Koprol allows people to connect and share photos, reviews and additional information about locations in real-time using just their mobile phone browser, making the service accessible to a larger percentage of mobile users. Once on Koprol, people can “check-in” to their current location and see where others are and what they are doing. The service helps people find local businesses, such as popular shops or restaurants, based on user ratings including a “thumbs-up” feature to elevate favorite places to the top of the ranking. Users can also start or join discussions based on particular locations and invite friends to participate, creating a unique city-based social mobile community resource.

“Users are increasingly relying on mobile devices to communicate and access the Internet and they are looking for seamless integration between those devices and PCs. This is especially true in many emerging markets where we are introducing the Yahoo! brand to many new-to-Net users,” said Rose Tsou, senior vice president, Asia Region at Yahoo!. “Koprol was uniquely designed for mobile phones and within a year has already built a strong user base. Yahoo! provides the global scale and technology to accelerate growth in Indonesia as well as introduce the service to new markets.”

Yahoo! is focused on providing personally relevant content to its global users on multiple devices and access points. Koprol aggregates a database of locations within a city, created through its community, so that people can find friends or discover new local businesses, neighborhood resources and discussions that are important to them. Yahoo! plans to leverage the rich community of information generated by Koprol users to make its properties and applications, including its homepage and media and communications products, even more locally relevant.

“We are excited to join Yahoo! and look forward to the opportunities being part of a global Internet leader presents,” said Fajar Budiprasetyo, CEO and co-founder of Koprol. “From the beginning, we have leveraged Yahoo!’s open technologies to help build our business, and it was just six months ago when we were showcased at the Yahoo! Hack Day held in Indonesia. This is a great success story for the online community in Indonesia and demonstrates that innovation is recognized wherever it occurs.”

Yahoo! will continue to invest in evolving Koprol’s service, such as the new BlackBerry™ application introduced today, and expects to announce new mobile applications for both local and global mobile platforms in the future.

Social bookmarking start-up Xmarks, which has been growing its user base and bookmarked Web addresses strongly, launched a new advertising product today called SearchBoost, which it hopes will finally give it a viable business model.

Using a tool that displays user ranking and review information from the free synching service, Xmarks Chairman Mitch Kapor said in an interview with BoomTown that the ad offering essentially “decorates” a paid search ad, thereby boosting click-through rates by 15 percent.

Xmarks, which was founded in 2006 and offers a browser widget to record bookmarking information, will also give advertisers additional analytics about their ads, as well as organic search results.

With detailed usage data on over one billion bookmarks rated and reviewed by users, this information will be attached to the end of search results from both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) Bing on Mozilla’s Firefox and soon, on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome browsers.

Xmarks said the service will cost from $29 to $99 a month for advertisers and that it will also offer more elaborate plans.

In the interview, Kapor said the company is simply enabling the addition of existing and valuable information already gleaned from its millions of users and giving advertisers the ability to show it off.

Different colors–which you can see below, with orange for paid and blue for organic results–is used to distinguish between them.

“These reviews show up where they show up and advertisers can’t buy a ranking or a rating,” said Kapor. “If advertisers want to decorate their ads to increase their conversions by showing what users think, that’s a good thing.”

Added Xmarks CEO James Joaquin: “We are allowing advertisers a tool that is already reflecting what the user base is saying is valuable…the real benefit is for brands that already have a high rank to declare that.”

Launching its business model, Kapor added, after growing its user base to four million active users, is the next logical step for Xmarks.

“This is the effort to move from that category to the category of sustainable enterprises,” he said. “And that is certainly a good thing.”

Here is Joaquin’s entire blog post on the move:

Today’s a big day at Xmarks. We’ve launched a new service for search marketers called SearchBoost, designed to increase the performance of paid search ads by displaying relevant Xmarks ratings and reviews next to sponsored links on Google and Bing search result pages. SearchBoost is a premium service with pricing starting at $29 per month.

SearchBoost is the primary business model for Xmarks, allowing us to keep our browser synchronization service completely free. While we obviously devote resources to this business, we’ve also recently launched Xmarks for Chrome and a new Tab Sync feature for Firefox. You can count on us to continue innovating and improving our sync products.

SearchBoost is also a natural extension of our vision for Smarter Search: displaying crowd-sourced ratings and reviews to help users identify the highest quality results on their search page. A small but vocal minority have told us (and may tell us again on this blog ;-) that they’re not interested in this feature. That’s OK with us: we’ve made it very simple to turn the Smarter Search feature off in Xmarks Settings. Many other users have sent us kudos for this important enhancement to web search.

We hope you’ll find ratings and reviews on ads as useful as they are on organic search results. It’s important to note that Xmarks ratings and reviews are completely crowd-sourced from our users. Advertisers cannot pay $ to improve ratings or alter reviews.

Finally, quick shout-outs to our chairman & co-founder Mitch Kapor who has kept us focused on his orginal vision of aggregating bookmarks to improve web search, and Xmarks advisor Eric Ries who helped us think through the early concept stage of what is now SearchBoost.

Why?

After the vicious beating the market has given Palm (PALM) these past few months, the company’s stock–down a gruesome 75 percent since October–already well reflects its woes and the challenges it faces. And it’s still conceivable that the company may end up an acquisition target. So there’s that as well.

“We continue to view Palm as one of the share losers in the high-growth Smartphone segment,” Long wrote. “In our view, the company is too small to compete and the internally developed WebOS operating system is no longer a major differentiator. The end game for Palm is most likely to combine with a large OEM that wants to own its operating system and can leverage its brand and distribution platform.”

FURTHER READING:

• Good Luck Competing on the iPhone’s Home Turf, Palm
• Exercise in Futility? Palm Pre Plus, Pixi Plus Headed to AT&T
• Palm: Pssst. Wanna Buy 1.15 Million Smartphones?
• Palm Pileup: Weak Smartphone Sales and a Gruesome Q4 Forecast
• Could Be Worse, Could Be Raining: Palm’s AT&T Launch Delayed?
• Could WebOS Licensing Be Palm’s Salvation?
• Palm’s Salvation? Less Push, More Pull.
• And if Palm’s Project JumpStart Doesn’t Work Out, There’s Always “Project Defibrillator”
• Double Face-Palm: Analysts React to Palm’s Lowered Guidance
• Time to Start Looking for a Buyer, Palm?
• 2010: Year of the Palm? Maybe Not…
• Analyst: Palm May Be Acquired in the Next Two Years

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This week, I’ve done the dirty work for you: I’ve amassed a collection of vital details about the three most popular systems—Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii—so that you can get a handle on what each offers and what it will cost you.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo recently dropped the Wii’s price, for the first time, to $200 from $250. The Wii Console comes with a controller, an additional controller called a Nunchuk, and the Wii Sports game, which includes baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. It holds 512 megabytes of flash memory, but you can increase this by inserting SecureDigital memory cards. It also accepts high-capacity SD cards, or SDHCs, of up to 32 gigabytes.

The couch-potato world of videogamers was shaken up when the Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote control, was introduced about three years ago. Users can play Wii Golf, for instance, by swinging the remote like a golf club. In September, Nintendo added to its lineup a $20 remote-control accessory called Wii MotionPlus that was designed to add more precision to game motions. I tested this snap-on piece and found that it did make the Wii’s motions feel more realistic. But it works only with Wii MotionPlus games—and there are only six of them; 10 more are planned for 2010.

Wii encourages users to move around in more ways than just waving a remote: Its Wii Balance Board, which comes with the Wii Fit Plus game in a $100 bundle, works like a digital exercise step. It records the body’s weight shifts and movements for activities from yoga to wake-boarding.

The Wii accesses the Internet and lets users compete online against others. About 655 packaged games are available for between $30 and $50. Also, you can use pre-purchased Nintendo Points to buy and download about 150 WiiWare games and over 325 titles from the older Virtual Console library. Each game costs between 300 and 1,500 points, or between about $3 and $15.

WiiConnect24 can send messages from one Wii to another over the Internet, as long the two users exchange “Wii numbers.” Users can also surf the Web with Wii’s Opera browser. But beyond this, no other Web features—like downloadable movies, social-networking applications or streaming music—will work on this system.

Parental controls can be set on the Wii to restrict kids from using the Web browser, playing games that have a certain rating or communicating online.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft recently stepped up its game by adding features to its $200 Xbox 360 that make it well-rounded rather than strictly geared toward serious gamers. People who buy the Xbox LIVE Gold membership, for $50 a year, get applications for Facebook, Twitter, the Last.fm music-streaming service, online multiplayer game play, video chat, Netflix (Netflix subscription required), photo sharing via the Xbox, and movie or photo “parties” that allow users to watch a movie simultaneously with seven other friends.

Xbox LIVE Silver membership is free and includes basic features like voice and text chat, as well as access to the Zune video library’s 20,000 TV shows and movies to buy or rent. The Xbox also allows media-streaming over a home network. To wirelessly connect to the Internet on your Xbox, you’ll need to buy a $100 Wi-Fi adapter. By contrast, the Wii and PlayStation 3 have built-in Wi-Fi.

Anyone who owns a Microsoft Zune media player can buy a TV show or movie and download it to an Xbox or PC as well as the Zune. Zunes can be plugged into the Xbox to play music, as can Apple (AAPL) iPods.

The base Xbox comes with a wireless controller and 512 megabytes of memory. For $100 more, the Elite Holiday Bundle includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive, headset, wireless controller, and two games: “LEGO Batman: The Videogame” and “Pure.” More than 1,200 games are available for the Xbox, mostly costing between $29 and $60. About 350 of the games can be downloaded from the Xbox LIVE Arcade (costing 400 to 1,600 points, or $5 to $20) or the Games on Demand library.

Microsoft confirmed plans to introduce Project Natal, a system that lets people operate games with gestures and body movements rather than remote controls. Natal will work with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft won’t confirm a date.

Family settings let parents control whether their kids play games online and with whom they play, as well as the ratings of the games. A Family Timer regulates how long kids play.

Sony PlayStation 3

Sony’s PlayStation, like the Xbox 360, is designed with serious gamers in mind. Its base version costs $300 and includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a DualShock 3 wireless controller; $50 more buys a version with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Both systems can be upgraded with any standard 2.5-inch hard drive. The PlayStation is also a Blu-ray disc player.

Like the Xbox, the PlayStation 3, or PS3, now offers extra features, but these features are all included in the PlayStation Network, which is free (not $50 yearly like Xbox LIVE Gold). These PlayStation Network extras include Netflix (NFLX) instant streaming, a Web browser, photo slide shows, the ability to stream media over a home network to the PS3, a Facebook application that shares game information with friends and the PlayStation Network video-delivery service, where users can purchase 2,400 high- and standard-definition movies and 15,000 TV episodes.

The PS3 and the PlayStation Portable, Sony’s portable gaming device, are married in many ways. A new feature called Blu-ray Portable Copy lets users make a free standard-definition copy of some Blu-ray movies for transfer to a PlayStation Portable. Remote Play lets people stream media files from the PS3 to the PlayStation Portable in Wi-Fi hot spots or remotely turn the PS3 on or off using the PlayStation Portable. Movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Network can be transferred to either system, so you can start a movie on a big-screen TV and finish it on the PlayStation Portable; the same can be done for games.

About 400 games are available on Blu-ray for the PS3; these cost between $30 and $60. More than 150 titles, costing between $3 and $40, can be downloaded directly to the PS3. Sony confirmed that it will release a motion-sensing controller, but it hasn’t set a date.

Parental restrictions for the PS3 include the ability to restrict games, DVDs and Blu-ray discs with certain ratings. Parents can also limit monthly spending or Web browsing.

Games: A Cheat Sheet

Here are some of the key differences among three popular videogame systems.

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Xbox LIVE Gold costs $50 a year. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated in the second reference to the price that it costs $50 monthly. Also, the Xbox 360 can be connected to the Internet via an ethernet cable for free, as well as via Wi-Fi. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that connecting your Xbox to the Internet would require the purchase of a Wi-Fi adapter.

In a note to investors this morning, Pali analyst Walter Piecyk says he’s not buying predictions about Sprint (S) returning to growth in 2010. Sure, the company is improving post-paid subscriber losses, says Piecyk, but not as quickly as it needs to. And its prepaid business, which already faces a fair bit of competition, will be confronted with even more competition next year.

“Over the past six months our concerns have been rising over the slow pace of change at Sprint and what we view as lost opportunities for growth, but we maintained our Buy rating due to the low valuation on the stock and the depressed expectations of investors,” Piecyk writes.

“Those concerns increased in recent months as the pre-paid business, which Sprint has been accessing for growth, became more competitive and Verizon began executing on a more open device strategy,” the analyst adds. “In the past few weeks, investors have become more optimistic about positive post-paid signs early in Q4 and Sprint’s prospects of even stronger pre-paid results in 2010, in the face of increasing competition.”

In contrast, Piecyk notes that “We are less confident about those trends and as we model out a more competitive market in 2010 for all our companies it becomes evident to us that Sprint will be challenged to stabilize EBITDA. Faced with negative catalysts in the months ahead and the challenge of appropriately valuing a company whose EBITDA is in perpetual decline, we believe now is the right time to downgrade the stock to Neutral.”

Wall Street, then, isn’t underestimating Sprint’s prospects for 2010. It’s overestimating them–or at least it certainly was yesterday.

“For 2010, we expect post-paid losses to be pared by 35% to 2.3 million subs lost compared to our prior estimate of less than 2 million subs lost in that year,” Piecyk concludes. “While pre-paid net adds might offset the losses or even top post-paid losses in Q4 we expect the total customer base to decline by 700,000 in 2010.”