Voices

Users Rate Facebook Slightly Above the Tax Man

Facebook plans to announce it has reached a milestone 500 million users this week — but that doesn’t mean the masses are happy customers. The American Customer Satisfaction Index, developed by the University of Michigan’s Business School, included Facebook in its regular survey of consumer satisfaction with companies.

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Almost Famous: Kent Lindstrom of PlacePop

This week, we stopped by Ooga Labs, a little incubator on Market Street in San Francisco, to meet Kent Lindstrom, CEO of PlacePop. PlacePop is an iPhone app and Web site, advertised as a check-in sharing service like Foursquare, but without the game. Hmm… a start-up touting that it does LESS, you say? And the CEO used to run Friendster? We had to see about this.

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Marrying High-Tech Innovation and Midwest Manufacturing

Most venture capital firms shy away from the Midwest manufacturing and automotive industries, instead favoring high-technology regions like Silicon Valley. Not RPM Ventures. Located less than a mile from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the firm aims to bridge the divide between high-tech start-ups and major manufacturers in the Midwest.

Google Co-Founder Larry Page’s Advice to the Class of 2009: “Be More Lazy!”

It’s back-to-school time for Google’s executive team, which is fanning out across college campuses to impart words of wisdom to the classes of 2009. Via Google’s YouTube, here are clips of co-founder Larry Page, CEO Eric Schmidt (twice!) and search boss Marissa Mayer. And some bonus advice, circa 1967.
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Concur: Another Singh, Another Disclosure Issue

Complicating the Diploma-Gate issue that cropped last week at Concur Technologies, it turns out that a second company executive also misstated his educational background in some corporate filings. Last week, Concur confirmed that company filings from 1998 through January 2007 incorrectly asserted that CEO S. Steven Singh had a degree from the University of Michigan, where he attended college, but never actually graduated.

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Concur: The Street Debates Diploma-Gate

There’s a spirited debate on the Street this morning about what to make of the Diploma-Gate scandal that’s broken out at Concur Technologies, which provides software used to track employee travel expenses. (We actually use their software here at Dow Jones, and I find it incredibly irritating and nonintuitive. But I digress.)

Unigo.com Gives Everyone a Say About College Picks

Walt takes a close look at a a new, free Web guide to colleges–and mostly likes what he sees. The information isn’t just words and numbers, but includes lots of photos, videos and student input for most schools.
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