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Yahoo's Product Runway: Are You In or Out?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:41:24 +0000

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

Project Slice Partners With Yahoo; Raises $9 Million in Capital

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:00:34 +0000

Project Slice aims to help consumers organize all of their electronic communications with retailers.

The service manages all of the emails you receive regarding e-commerce purchases, including shipping notifications, tracking numbers and return policies to make them easily accessible.

Despite the somewhat obscure idea, the year-old company is getting two big votes of confidence today: It has raised $9.4 million in venture capital, and it is rolling out a partnership with Yahoo Mail.

“We are making online shopping simpler by giving you one private and central location to keep track of all your orders from across the Web,” said Scott Brady, CEO of Project Slice.

In addition to aggregating e-commerce receipts, it will also let you quickly find receipts from physical retailers.

Brady said increasingly companies such as Apple, Patagonia and Nordstrom are experimenting with allowing customers who visit a store in person to receive their receipts by email.

“Most of the growth isn’t coming from e-commerce,” he said. “It’s coming from bricks and mortar retailers that are offering digital receipts. In the past 60 days, there’s been a wave of merchants, like Patagonia and Whole Foods, that are testing it. You can imagine what your inbox will look like.”

The company’s first round of capital was led by DCM and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other investors include Michael Birch, Floodgate, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Rick Thompson.

Initially, the service is being rolled out to Yahoo Mail as part of the latest version of the email application. The application called “All My Purchases” can be found in the side bar.

For now, the company is focused on getting consumers to adopt the product and then will figure out how to monetize it later. However, you can imagine that in the future having a database of spending habits could be valuable to the right advertisers.

Revamped Yahoo Mail Peels Off Beta Stamp

Ina Fried — Tue, 24 May 2011 04:00:57 +0000

Yahoo announced late on Monday that it is ready with a final version of its updated mail software in an effort to regain momentum in the free Webmail arena, where it competes with Google and Microsoft.

In addition to offering speed improvements, the company is adding new features, such as the ability to respond to a Facebook message directly from within an email or see updates from Twitter. Some new features, such as the ability to view photo slideshows and YouTube videos from within an email are already part of rival services, such as Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail.

The revamped mail program, which has been in the works for about a year, also integrates instant messaging and text messages more deeply, archiving conversations by default. A built-in tool from YouSendIt is included for sending large files, with additional services built in for other tasks, such as tracking purchases or unsubscribing from bulk email. On the instant messaging front, users can now converse via Facebook Chat from within Yahoo Mail.

“Yahoo’s vision for online communications brings together all the tools that people use to connect–email, chat, SMS, and social updates–and makes it easier for them to share content and engage in conversations with the people that matter most to them,” Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving said in a statement.

Yahoo has been beta testing the new mail program since October. The company did a major overhaul of the mail service back in 2007.

Despite remaining the top email provider in the U.S. with close to 90 million accounts, Yahoo has been losing ground in recent years, dropping 7 percent in the U.S. and 1 percent globally over the last 12 months, according to ComScore.

On the mobile side, Yahoo said it is making a new version of its software available to Nokia. The Finnish cell phone maker signed a deal last year to have their email and chat features “powered by Yahoo.”

No Facebook User Emails for Google–But Yahoo and Microsoft Already Have Access

Liz Gannes — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:06:47 +0000

Facebook and Google are hardly friends these days, and they’re having more and more trouble containing their dislike. (Maybe they should take a hint from Jimmy Kimmel and his National UnFriend Day campaign.)

Background: Last week, Google stopped allowing Facebook to help its users find their friends by importing their Gmail contacts list. Google said the move was about data portability and liberation, calling Facebook a “data dead end” because it wasn’t giving its users’ email addresses to Google.

Facebook yesterday found a workaround to re-enable Google contacts importing, and Facebook engineering lead Mike Vernal commented on TechCrunch at length under his own name, charging Google with hypocrisy for disallowing contact importing for Orkut last year and “limiting user choice.”

What’s funny, though, as sources have pointed out to us, is that Facebook actually does allow email importing, specifically to Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Hotmail (we checked AOL mail too, but couldn’t find it there).

This is no secret; Yahoo launched its Facebook email contact importer in March of this year. In a blog post at the time, senior product manager Rick Pal said,

Importing from Facebook is super simple…After you click login, we will authorize your account and begin importing, which may take a minute or two depending on your Internet speed and how many Facebook friends you have.

Update: Microsoft confirmed through a spokesperson that its Windows Live users can import both Facebook and Gmail contacts, and said some nice stuff about its commitment to customer choice.

Access to user emails isn’t something Facebook gives just anyone. In fact, only a few partners can hook into them while the rest have to rely on users’ Facebook-formatted information available through Facebook Connect. That includes Google. The difference, according to a source, is that Yahoo and Microsoft asked nicely.

Please see my disclosure related to Facebook here.

Flickr Gets More Social

Voices — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 21:02:41 +0000

Not content to let its users merely find photo-sharing friends and acquaintances, Flickr will now start proactively suggesting People You May Know on the service. Suggestions are based on your contacts plus your contacts’ contacts. Not thrilled with some of the suggestions? Dismiss them and the system will offer up a new batch. Users also are now able to import contacts from Facebook in addition to Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.

New Looks for Aging Models: Fashion Shots from Yahoo's Product Runway

John Paczkowski — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:59:42 +0000

“The only worse thing than being talked about is not being talked about.” That quip fired off recently by Ironfire Capital founder and former dissident Yahoo investor Eric Jackson pretty much sums up the state of affairs at the company, which seems to be losing relevance almost as quickly as it’s losing talent. Yahoo’s share price is down 18 percent this year, hovering near its 52-week low, and it recently ceded its spot as No. 2 search engine in the United States to Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing.

But Yahoo’s not languishing–or so it says.

At the company’s “Fall Product Runway” media event this morning, Yahoo announced plans for a slew of forthcoming updates to what it’s taken to paranoically describing as “habit-forming communications products.” Among them:

Yahoo Mail Beta, the latest iteration of the company’s mail service. With a cleaner UI and updated back end, it promises to be faster and easier to use. Integrated support for Twitter and Facebook will allow users to manage at least a few of their social services directly from their in-boxes. Also included: Video, photo sharing tools, a new version of Yahoo Messenger and better spam tools (Yahoo claims its mail service will have 55 percent less spam than Gmail).

Yahoo Search enhancements that promise “more visually compelling” news and entertainment-related searches that combine images, news articles, videos, tweets, events and ratings in search returns.

Trending Now lists–trending stories presented as slideshows

A Yahoo app for iPad designed to deliver a personalized Yahoo experience to Apple’s (APPL) tablet. Features Yahoo News, Mail, etc., as well as a handy Yahoo alarm clock.

Rich content integration with Twitter.

An improved Connected TV experience, thanks to new partnerships with content providers, social networks and TV manufacturers like Toshiba.

Customized Content Ads: “Creative formats that leverage an advertiser’s robust content and enable social sharing”–whatever that means.

Interesting updates, I suppose, when they’re finally rolled out (Yahoo EVP Blake Irving says we won’t be able to use Twitter to comment on Yahoo pages until June 2011,), but nothing really transformative. Many of them seem to me table stakes really, and to tout them before they’re even live and so soon after the debut of Google (GOOG) Instant smells a little desperate. Odd that one of Irving’s big messages today is that Yahoo is becoming faster and more innovative and will be shipping products even more quickly than it has been. None of these products are even ready.

A parting shot: Asked “What is Yahoo?” during today’s Q&A session, Irving defined the company as follows:

“Yahoo is a global series of Web experiences delivered across a variety of devices that gives people what they want. It connects advertisers to a global audience. Yahoo is all about delivering experiences to individuals that make them engage with each other. Folks always ask, Is Yahoo a search company? A content company? A communications company? In a world where people only have so much time, we’d like to help them engage with the things that matter most to them.”

That’s got to be the world’s worst elevator pitch.

Giving 'Ribbon' Its 'Classic' Look

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:48:52 +0000

I believe that the Microsoft Office 2007 “Ribbon” user interface is one of the great abominations in the history of personal computing. Are you aware of any workaround that can restore the “classic” interface that was used in prior versions?

Microsoft (MSFT) didn’t offer an option to replace the 2007 Ribbon interface–which is intended to group functions more logically and make them easier to find–with the classic menus and toolbars. However, a number of third-party companies offer add-in programs that do so. You can find these by simply doing a Google (GOOG) search for “Office classic menu.” I haven’t tested these, so I can’t recommend any particular one. Note also that, in the newer Office 2010, Microsoft has introduced the ability to customize the Ribbon, so your favorite commands are clustered in your own personalized tabs. More information on this is at: http://bit.ly/aTS05D.

A low-tech answer to a reader’s question on the AT&T MicroCell tower.

Is there any way to turn the AT&T MicroCell on and off so that I don’t have a mini cell tower constantly blasting radio waves around the house?

Sure. You can simply unplug it, by pulling the power adapter out of the back. But be aware that it won’t restart instantly when you plug it back in. It takes much longer for the MicroCell to re-establish its network and GPS connections than it takes for a standard Internet router to come back to life after being turned off.

I am buying a new laptop primarily to send email and to surf the Internet. Are there any worthy alternatives to Outlook so I don’t have to spend a lot for Outlook or a bunch of Microsoft Office programs I won’t need or use?

There are some decent free alternatives. One, from Microsoft itself, is called Windows Live Mail, and can be downloaded free at http://bit.ly/baYTM3. Another, also free, is Mozilla Thunderbird, at http://bit.ly/2zxpYm. Or you could just use free Web-based email programs, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Hotmail.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Exclusive: Yahoo's Communications Products Head Jason Titus Departs

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:31:25 +0000

In what many sources at Yahoo characterize as a blow, Jason Titus (pictured here)–who heads all communications products for the Silicon Valley Internet portal, including its powerful Yahoo Mail and Messenger–is leaving the company soon.

Titus, who has been at Yahoo (YHOO) since 2004, was reportedly considered a key exec by CEO Carol Bartz in her attempts to revive the company.

Yahoo confirmed the move when BoomTown asked for comment.

Sources said Titus wants to take time off and has no plans to move to another company.

Michael Curtis, a close and well-regarded colleague of Titus, will take over as interim head until a replacement is found.

Here is a video of Titus talking email in a 2008 O’Reilly Social Graph Foo Camp video:

Microsoft Comms Head Smacks Back by the Numbers (Plus a "Rocky"-Inspired Internal Email!)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:33:09 +0000

After what he considered weeks of unfair press coverage and running down of Microsoft (MSFT), the software giant’s Corporate VP of Corporate Communications, Frank Shaw, posted a pugnacious corporate blog entry today that trotted out some impressive numbers about Microsoft’s business.

Of course, he also took the opportunity to put up some not-so-much figures about competitors such as Apple (AAPL), Netflix (NFLX), Salesforce.com (CRM) and, of course, Google (GOOG).

My favorite dig is the stat on the “percent chance that Salesforce.com CEO [Marc Benioff] will mention Microsoft in a speech, panel, interview, or blog post.” The answer, natch: 100!

As it turns out, that was a follow-up to a very sharply worded letter Shaw sent out to communications teams across Microsoft (MSFT) earlier this month, obtained by BoomTown, in which he noted at the start:

“It has been a rough couple of weeks for us from a coverage standpoint. It seems like every time I turn on the computer, or talk to a reporter, or pick up a publication at home, or do a scan of my RSS feeds or Twitter client that I see more stories and opinions about the challenges we have, and how great some of our competitors are doing. iPad this, Droid that, sheesh.”

Sheesh? Who says that anymore?

Still, I like his gumption in using it! Thus, Shaw–who is an active blogger and Twitter poster–is apparently mad as heck and not going to take it anymore!

Here’s the blog post below, followed by the internal email Shaw sent (apparently inspired by the landscape at our eighth D: All Things Digital conference earlier this month):

Microsoft by the numbers

25 Jun 2010 12:30 PM

You probably saw the news this week that we’ve sold 150 million Windows 7 licenses in 8 months. That’s more than 600,000 per day. And, perhaps fittingly for a product called Windows 7, it adds up to 7 copies every second of every day since launch.

As a communications guy, I’m generally most comfortable with words. But since Microsoft is a pretty numbers-driven company, the Windows 7 milestone got me thinking about some *other* numbers, too.

Of course, numbers are only one dimension of a story. And we live in a hyper-competitive industry, with loads of challenges to go along with loads of opportunity. All the same, with Windows 7, Office 2010, Bing, Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows Phone 7, our cloud platform, and many other products, services and happy customers, 2010 is shaping up as a huge year for us.

So, without further ado, a few of my favorite numbers:

1

150,000,000
Number of Windows 7 licenses sold, making Windows 7 by far the fastest growing operating system in history.[source]

2

7.1 million
Projected iPad sales for 2010. [source]

58 million
Projected netbook sales in 2010. [source]

355 million
Projected PC sales in 2010. [source]

3

>10
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2008. [source]

96
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2009. [source]

4

0
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in November 2009.

10,000
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in June 2010. [source]

700,000
Number of students, teachers and staff using Microsoft’s cloud productivity tools in Kentucky public schools, the largest cloud deployment in the US. [source]

5

16 million
Total subscribers to largest 25 US daily newspapers. [source]

14 Million
Total number of Netflix subscribers. [source]

23 million
Total number of Xbox Live subscribers. [source]

6

9,000,000
Number of customer downloads of the Office 2010 beta prior to launch, the largest Microsoft beta program in history. [source]

7

21.4 million
Number of new Bing search users in one year. [Comscore report--requires subscription]

8

24%
Linux Server market share in 2005. [source]

33%
Predicted Linux Server market share for 2007 (made in 2005). [source]

21.2%
Actual Linux Server market share, Q4 2009. [source]

9

8.8 million
Global iPhone sales in Q1 2010. [source]

21.5 million
Nokia smartphone sales in Q1 2010. [source]

55 million
Total smartphone sales globally in Q1 2010. [source]

439 million
Projected global smartphone sales in 2014. [source]

10

9
Number of years it took Salesforce.com to reach 1 million paid user milestone. [source]

6
Number of years it took Microsoft Dynamics to reach 1 million paid user milestone. [source]

100%
Percent chance that Salesforce.com CEO will mention Microsoft in a speech, panel, interview, or blog post.

11

173 million
Global Gmail users. [source]

284 million
Global Yahoo! Mail users.[source]

360 million
Global Windows Live Mail users.[source]

299 million
Active Windows Live Messenger Accounts worldwide. [Comscore MyMetrix, WW, March 2010--requires subscription]

1
Rank of Windows Live Messenger globally compared to all other instant messaging services. [Comscore MyMetrix, WW, March 2010 - requires subscription]

12

$5.7 Billion
Apple Net income for fiscal year ending Sep 2009. [source]

$6.5 Billion
Google Net income for fiscal year ending Dec 2009. [source]

$14.5 Billion
Microsoft Net Income for fiscal year ending June 2009. [source]

$23.0 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2000. [source]

$58.4 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2009. [source]

fxs

It has been a rough couple of weeks for us from a coverage standpoint. It seems like every time I turn on the computer, or talk to a reporter, or pick up a publication at home, or do a scan of my RSS feeds or Twitter client that I see more stories and opinions about the challenges we have, and how great some of our competitors are doing. iPad this, Droid that, sheesh. Even BusinessWeek got into the act, taking some unfair shots at Natal under the guise of looking at our consumer strategy all up. Man, when someone is beating on Natal prior to E3, you can bet we’ve got momentum against us.

Sitting there at the All Things Digital conference last week and hearing from our competitors really got me thinking, though. What is our differentiation? Why do we make certain decisions? What drives the way we think about business and technology? The morning after the Steve Jobs q&a (which everyone should watch), I dragged myself out of bed to go for a run. As I’d driven into the hotel, I noticed with a sinking feeling that there were lots of hills. I asked the desk clerk if they had a jogging map. They did not. I asked if he could point me a direction that did not have a bunch of hills. He laughed and pointed “up” the driveway and said that if I turned left there would be a nice running path. “I drove in that direction,” I said. “Seems like it’s uphill.” He shrugged, and away I went. Up.

And to keep my mind off the elevation gain, I was thinking about that previous question–what drives Microsoft? Coming up the second hill, I got it. Fundamentally, we believe that we have the opportunity to make life better for billions of people around the world through our products and services. Not millions, not tens of millions, but billions. We started with the idea of a computer on every desktop, and even though the computer looks a lot different today than it did those years, and even though the developed world probably does have a computer on every desk, there are still billions more to go, and we are going to get there. And when you start thinking about serving billions, which we do, we’re playing a game that nobody else in the industry is. I don’t know about you, but I come to work thinking about what I can do to help w/ that big goal. And it’s not all altruism and unicorns, when we do a great job of creating products that make life better for billions, it makes us better as a company, we sell more, we learn more, our partners do better, we do better. And when you have big dreams and big ambitions (like we do) and when you set the bar high (which we do) then sometimes we don’t get over the bar. There are people in the world that see that and call it failure; but failing to hit the mark doesn’t mean quitting. That’s part of our culture, too.

The run back to the hotel was easier. I even scrambled up a bluff next to the path (imagining the theme to “Rocky” in my head) and stood looking out over the Pacific for a bit. And I thought about our challenges, internal and external. External is easy. Internal is harder.

There is a saying I’ve heard a bunch since I’ve been at Microsoft: “Hope is not a strategy.” Heck, I’ve used it myself, and felt pretty superior while saying it, since I was talking about something I didn’t really own. But standing on the bluff, I wondered.

In my last mail, I referenced the need for us all to be comfortable in the gap between what is and what we desire to create. If we simply live in what we have, we become cynics. And if hope is not a strategy, then neither is cynicism, and we have lots of cynics among us. It is a challenge, especially for those of us who help tell our story. I often see it used, and use it myself, to cover up the pain of not meeting a goal, or seeing a product/service be ill-received by the market. If I am able to mock and sneer, then nobody outside the company can make me feel worse at setbacks and even failures.

As the evangelists for the company, we must guard against this. Hope can’t be a strategy, but it (and its cousin belief) is a needed ingredient in any success. Think about this for a bit. Each and every one of us needs to be grounded in our challenges and our wins. Right now, we are massively over-indexed in thinking and knowing about our losses and challenges. But what of our wins?

At the conference later that day, I had a chance to engage in a spirited and mostly friendly discussion with some folks who thought we were doing a crap job all up. Stock price flat, no iPad, etc. Instead of shrugging and agreeing, I talked about our wins and our momentum. We’ve built a huge server business over the last decade, something else nobody has done. Windows 7 sales are up about 39 percent year over year, against a huge base. Office 2010 beta largest ever, Office is in the cloud. Bing is one year old, 4 points of market share–nobody has grown search market share against Google but we are doing it. They are copying our look, our home page. New Hotmail is driving them to offer something other than threaded email for Gmail. Xbox Live has 23 million users–again, only two companies in the last decade have built subscription services like this (Netflix is the other). Windows Azure has 10,000 paying customers, we just announced 700k deployment of live@edu, probably the largest cloud deployment in the world. Natal is coming, it’s cool. Yes, we want to (and will) do better in phones. Yes, we want to (and will) have more cool thin slate/tablet/other form factor devices that run Windows. I’ll tell you, while I don’t think I created any true believers, I did force people to think differently about Microsoft and what we’re doing, and I call that a win.

This is our job. We don’t just represent the products and services we work on, we represent the company all up. Be ready to tell that story. Tell it to your co-workers here at Microsoft, to your family and friends, to members of the media. They know about our challenges, they don’t know about our wins and momentum. So tell them.

fxs

Learning About Everything Under The 'Cloud'

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 06 May 2010 01:05:12 +0000

The digital world loves to revel in its own jargon, and one of its most popular phrases today is “cloud computing.” You see the expression everywhere new uses for the Internet are discussed. But what do techies and companies mean when they refer to doing things in “the cloud”? They aren’t talking about meteorology, and all they see when they use the term—which is always singular—is sunshine, not rain.

[ See post to watch video ]

To help you navigate through the talk about cloud computing, here’s a very basic explainer. It doesn’t cover every detail current among Internet experts. But I hope it gives regular folks a better understanding of the “cloud” products and services being offered them.

At its most basic level, the “cloud” is simply the Internet, or the vast array of servers around the world that comprise it. When people say a digital document is stored, or a digital task is being performed in the cloud, they mean that the file or application lives on a server you access over an Internet connection, via a Web browser or app, rather than on “local” devices, like your computer or smartphone.

This isn’t a new idea. For years, there have been services that would back up your files to a distant server over the Internet or keep your photos online. And Web-based email programs, like Yahoo Mail or Hotmail, are familiar examples of cloud-based applications. These programs live on servers, not your PC, and you access them through a Web browser.

What’s changed is that, in recent years, large-scale Internet-based storage has gotten cheaper, so it’s possible for programmers to create more-sophisticated remote software, and the speed and ubiquity of Internet connections have improved. Also, some users have expressed a desire to share and collaborate in easier and richer ways than emailing files. Cloud-based services let many users view, comment on, and edit the same material. All this has given a boost to cloud computing.

On top of that, computers are changing in ways that make cloud services more desirable. Your little netbook may lack the huge hard disk needed to hold all your music or photos, but there are ways to keep this material in the cloud and access it at will. Your smartphone can’t run all the sophisticated programs, or store all the files, that your PC can. But, if it’s connected to cloud storage and cloud-based apps, it can do much more than its hardware specs suggest. And, with cloud file storage and apps that run on remote servers, you could conceivably travel without any computer. A borrowed PC, tablet or smartphone might be all you need to log in and do real work.

So, in recent years, a flood of cloud-based products and services have appeared to store and share files; to keep information on all your devices synchronized; and even to perform tasks like editing photos, or creating and editing long documents or large spreadsheets.

For instance, I wrote parts of this column in a private test edition of a cloud-based version of Microsoft Word that the company will release soon. In fact, Microsoft (MSFT) will be making its entire Office suite available free in the cloud. Google (GOOG) and others already have such cloud-based productivity suites. Another example: Many of the 200,000 apps for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone are merely small programs that tap data or services stored in the cloud to provide everything from restaurant choices to driving directions.

There are other good examples. At Picnik.com, you’ll find an elegant, versatile cloud-based photo editor that can work on pictures from a wide variety of Web-based photo sites as well as those on your own hard disk. At Zoho.com, you’ll find a cornucopia of cloud-based apps that interact with both the Web and your local hard disk. You can track your finances using a cloud-based program called Mint, which is available from a PC browser, or from an iPhone or Android-based phone.

Of course, clever readers will have noticed that this trend toward cloud computing has an obvious flaw. If you aren’t connected to the Internet—or are saddled with a poor connection—you could be left high and dry when you want access to an important file stored remotely, or need to use a cloud-based program. Google, which is building an entire cloud-based operating system, and other companies have come up with ways to store some remote material on your local device. But these solutions aren’t yet comprehensive, so wise users will make sure that the tools and files they need most are still available on their devices.

Some products get around this by offering hybrid cloud and local services. One of my favorites in this category is SugarSync, which backs up key folders you select to the Web and synchronizes them to the hard disks on your PCs or Macs, so you always have the freshest copies handy, whether you have a connection or not. Another problem is privacy. Many of these cloud services have good security, but prying hackers are relentless and smart, so consumers should be careful about what they store in the cloud. You may not care if a family photo is swiped, but your Social Security number is a different matter.

Cloud computing is here, and growing, and quite useful. It will only get better and better.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Google Buzz Isn't Exactly Humming Along

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:18 +0000

These days, it’s near impossible to use a computer without running into a social network. Web sites encourage people to “tweet” links to their articles via Twitter; photo-sharing sites nudge users to post albums on Facebook; and aggregators like TweetDeck display content from several social networks in a digestible way. Last week, Google Buzz joined this trend by integrating social networking into something people use every day: email.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google Buzz (google.com/buzz) is built into Gmail, Google’s email program, as an opt-in social network that provides people with a place for sharing status updates, Twitter tweets, photos, videos, Web links and blog posts with a network of friends. I’ve been testing Google Buzz, and I like the way it displays shared photos in full-screen view and nestles into Gmail, which I use every day. But right now, Buzz still falls flat.

One of the biggest problems with Buzz is that it’s late to the social-networking party. People have had years to get comfortable with networks like Facebook and Twitter, and old habits are hard to kick. Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) already incorporate social networking into their Web email in Windows Live Hotmail and the Yahoo Mail, respectively. Windows Live Hotmail lets users create networks of friends and connects with up to 69 other networks, including Facebook and Twitter. Yahoo also builds networks with your connections, and integrates content into email from sites like Twitter, Flickr and Picasa.

Google (GOOG) tried to catch up with existing social networks by using a proprietary algorithm to create networks of people with whom users communicate most in Gmail and in Google Chat, the company’s instant messaging program. In other words, the people you emailed the most via Gmail or chatted with the most on Google Chat automatically became the people you followed in your social network.

But Google took a lot of heat for these pre-made networks because people didn’t know where the names came from or who some of the people were. Even worse, these networks were made public by default so every Buzz user could see everyone else’s closest contacts.

Google Buzz encourages social networking for Gmail users, but is it too late to join the fray?

This is a problem because many of us treat email differently than we treat our social networks. We communicate via email in private conversations—often with people who we don’t necessarily want looking at our personal photos or other information. If I exchange several emails over an extended period of time with my plumber about fixing a sink, it doesn’t mean I want him in my social network. Likewise if a parent regularly emails with a teacher about a child’s progress.

In the past several days, Google has apologized for its presumption that you would absolutely want to add the people you email into your social network online. The company has changed settings in Buzz to ameliorate this and several other issues. A network is now suggested rather than predetermined so users can clearly select whom they follow by checking boxes beside names and photos, nixing the plumber and keeping a best friend. Likewise, a very clear box now lets people opt to share these names publicly or not.

So how does the rest of Buzz work? All Gmail users will find a Buzz icon in the top left area of the Gmail site and must opt in to use Buzz. A tiny link at the bottom of every page can always turn it off altogether. Buzz is a separate screen and isn’t fully weaved into Gmail’s inbox, though notifications are sent to the Inbox in three instances: if someone comments on your post; if you comment on a post and then someone else makes an additional comment; and if someone directs a Buzz at you, such as starting a post with @Katie Boehret.

Buzz doesn’t yet have a way to completely stop notifications from coming to an inbox, but you can opt to stop receiving inbox notifications every time someone else comments about a post. (Go to “More Actions” within the email and select “Mute.”)

Google Buzz uses ideas from Facebook, like the ability to “like” a post. It also integrates with other Google properties including Blogger, Google Reader, Picasa and YouTube. Rather than using a system of friends like Facebook, Buzz takes a page from Twitter’s playbook by organizing friends into followers: people a user follows and people who follow the user. If you don’t want someone following you, just block them.

I spoke to Facebook about Buzz, asking specifically if the company would consider integrating with Google’s new program. A spokeswoman noted Facebook’s position as an open platform and said the company is always delighted to be working with new partners that want to integrate Facebook Connect in ways that help people connect with their “real” friends.

Buzz pulls in Twitter updates, or tweets, from people who have connected their Twitter and Buzz accounts. But the Twitter feed is only one way—coming into Buzz—so people can’t respond to or direct message back to Twitter. They can just leave a comment about the tweet on Buzz—a comment that is never displayed on Twitter. A Google representative said the company is working on more two-way integration in the future.

As for photo sharing, Buzz lets users integrate with Google-owned Picasa or Yahoo-owned Flickr so they can share on Buzz whatever photos are publicly shared within those services. Images show up in Buzz and, when selected, they take up the full browser screen—an eye-catching feature. But though users can browse Picasa albums from Buzz to select photos, they can’t share whole albums to Buzz right now.

Buzz is usable on the go with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Google’s Android phones. By default, it uses someone’s current location whenever posts are made on Buzz. But this can be turned off, albeit in a clumsy way: Currently, people must tap an “x” beside their location to remove this location information from a post. Later this week, this language will be made clearer with a bolded explanation on each screen before a post is sent of how to remove locations. If someone opts not to use location in one post, this setting sticks for subsequent posts—except when Buzz is accessed through a voice program.

Google Buzz got off to a rough start and still has a lot of catching up to do. Though it could be a convenience for people whose social contacts all already exist in Gmail, it could also saddle them—and their friends—with yet another social network to check every day. For now, my social-networking friends are sticking to Facebook and Twitter, making the buzz on Buzz almost inaudible.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Gmail Goes Social With Google Buzz

John Paczkowski — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:00:57 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Google Buzz Makes Gmail Less Socially Awkward

John Paczkowski — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:27:02 +0000

Can a microblogging twist on Gmail raise Google’s profile in social networking? We’ll soon find out. At an event at company headquarters today, Google announced Google Buzz, a new Twitteresque status update system for the email service that will allow users to share their everyday mundanities and inanities and follow those of selected contacts.

“A Google approach to sharing,” Buzz is designed to, in the words of Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product Management, “find the signal in the social networking noise.”

The service exists within Gmail and promises to bring the social network that Google (GOOG) says always existed beneath the email service to the surface.

“The stream of social messages has become a torrent,” said Horowitz. “There is no way to parse that amount of information that ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime. We think this has become a Google-scale problem.”

Hence, Buzz.

Buzz taps into the torrent via the sort of feature set you’d expect: auto-following, which turns Gmail contact lists into social networks (which seems to me a horrifically bad idea; Like most folks, I imagine I have quite a few contacts I absolutely do NOT want to included in my social network); public and private sharing options; support of the “@ reply” feature popularized by Twitter; and a feature called “Recommended Buzz” that allows users to endorse updates they enjoy. The service also strives to make it easy to enhance those updates with content from other sites–Flickr, Picasa, YouTube and, yes, Twitter (no Facebook, though–yet).

Buzz, which launches Tuesday, is closely tied to Google’s mobile ambitions. It will debut in concert with a Web app for Android and iPhone and an enhancement to Google Maps for Mobile that will use GPS data to associate public Buzz content posted from mobile phones with location.

Google is the latest search company to try to graft social-networking features onto email service. Yahoo did it last year by adding “status casting,” its variation on Twitter, to Yahoo Mail. That feature has been mostly ignored since its debut. Perhaps Google’s effort will fare a bit better. It is, perhaps, the one company with enough heft and market power to reasonably take on Facebook. But it won’t be easy: Facebook has some 400 million unique users. Gmail, about 176 million.

Still, embrace and extend. Embrace and extend.

Will Nexus One Be a Hit? Maybe. But Not Every Google Launch Lands Well.

Drake Martinet — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:05:38 +0000

Google has finally rolled out a slick-looking mobile phone called the Nexus One–not just a phone but a superphone!

But the search giant hasn’t confined its ambitions to mere hardware and software design. It also wants to reinvent the way the mobile business works.

Heady stuff, but then, Google (GOOG) has already reinvented some industries (ask the old search engines) and is helping reorder others (ask any newspaper publisher).

The flip side: While Google does launch lots of stuff, many of its products are now on the shelf with other dusty tech curios.

Below are a few of the choicest nuggets in our newest slideshow. Some are first-place finishers, while others had to be killed off and turned into mulch for Google’s organic garden.

No File! No Icon! Litl Is a Big Idea, but Still Cloudy

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:31:29 +0000

One of the hottest ideas in the digital world now is the notion of dumping the traditional personal computer, where most programs and data are stored locally, for a stripped-down device that would operate primarily as a gateway to servers on the Internet, where your programs and data are accessed remotely. This approach is often called “cloud computing.”

[ See post to watch video ]

In fact, the original netbooks, the small laptops that have become very popular, were designed around this concept of relying mostly on the Web. They used low-end processors, shunned Windows, and had very little internal storage. But a combination of consumer sentiment and industry maneuvering pushed them back into the fold, so that today, most are simply cheap, small conventional Windows laptops.

Now, a small Boston company, called Litl, is taking another shot at this idea, with a different twist. It is selling online a highly unusual laptop it classifies as a “webbook,” which attempts to meld cloud computing with a TV-like viewing experience—for the home. This shiny, colorful computer, named the Litl, is larger and more expensive than a typical netbook. It’s about the size of a small standard laptop, with a 12-inch screen and a weight of 3.4 pounds. It costs $699, or about twice the price of a netbook, at litl.com.

Yet the Litl doesn’t use Windows, or directly run word processors, email, or photo or music programs. It can only perform those tasks via Web sites and services like Gmail or Flckr, Google Docs or Pandora Radio. About the only local program it has that can run without an Internet connection is a virtual egg timer. It has no hard disk or any other way for a user to store anything locally.

The Litl’s user interface is a radical departure. There is no task bar or dock, no folders, no icons for files and programs; no traditional desktop. Instead, the Litl’s screen is filled with small cards that contain various kinds of Web content, from photos to news headlines, Facebook status and favorite Web sites. Click on a card, and its contents fill the screen.

The Litl webbook

And the Litl has another big difference from standard laptops or netbooks: something called “easel mode.” You can flip it around so the machine takes the form of an inverted letter “V,” with the screen facing outward. In that position, the machine can be used like a small Internet-based TV to display headlines, the weather, photo slideshows or videos from the Web. The company sells a $19 remote for controlling the computer in easel mode. You can also control it with a wheel built into the hinge.

I’ve been testing the Litl and I have mixed feelings about it. Some of the bold concepts behind the machine are refreshing, including the cloud-computing idea and the very simple interface and operating system, which demand much less work and attention from the user than a traditional PC does. The company also is promising many improvements, delivered via frequent over-the-air updates, including iPhone-type apps developed by third parties. It even offers a two-year money-back guarantee.

I was able to set up cards for Gmail and Yahoo Mail, and to send and receive messages. I also set up a card for Google Docs and was able to create and edit documents. I tapped into my Flickr account and could view slideshows of family photos I had previously uploaded. And I was able to watch TV shows via Hulu, both in easel mode and on my big-screen TV, once I connected the Litl to it.

But, in my tests, I found the device a bit clumsy and unsatisfying to use. For instance, as you add cards for your favorite Web sites or headline feeds (called channels), it becomes more difficult to scroll through screen after screen to find the one you want. There is no easy way to organize things.

In easel mode, when you see a headline that interests you, there is no way to click on it to read the whole story. Videos in easel mode too often stuttered. Worse, if you’re watching a video in easel mode, or through a TV, the Litl’s remote doesn’t let you pause, fast forward or back up. And the Litl doesn’t allow you to upload photos or videos to the Web.

The battery life is awful. The company claims 2.5 hours. In my tests, it conked out in less time. The company says that isn’t a problem, because the machine is designed for home use and will likely stay plugged in.

The company claims it is working on improving the Litl’s shortcomings. For instance, it plans a photo-uploading function and smoother video playback. So, it will likely get better. But, as of now, for $699, my feeling is that a standard laptop could perform many of these tasks in a more familiar, more versatile manner.

Cloud computing may one day be the standard way of doing things digitally, but the Litl, at least in its current form, isn’t the answer.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Filtering Junk Mail and Buying Laptops

Walt Mossberg — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:32:32 +0000

How can I filter junk mail on my iPhone?

A: The iPhone’s email program doesn’t include a junk-mail filter. It relies on your email service’s junk-mail filtering system, such as the ones built into Gmail, Yahoo Mail or your company’s email system, to clear out the spam before it gets to the phone. Obviously, these server-based filtering systems aren’t perfect, so you’ll still get some spam. But you might experiment to select the email service you feel does the best job. Once you decide, you can make that the main, or the only, service you use on your iPhone, and forward all the email from accounts that receive a lot of spam into an account on that relatively spam-free service.

What model of laptop do you recommend for a student of middle-school age, at the $500 price range?

A: At that price range, you have several broad choices, so it depends on how the student will be using the machine. If it will be mainly staying on a desk or just used around the house, you should be able to find a standard-sized laptop with a 14″ or 15″ or even larger screen, and adequate speed, memory and hard disk capacity, for around $500, or even less, depending on sale prices. If the student wants more mobility, then a high-end netbook, or a low-end “thin and light” or “ultrathin” machine would work, though their screens and hard disks might be smaller and their processors slower.

However, if the student is a hard-core gamer, or does sophisticated video production, the graphics on any $500 laptop might prove inadequate, and you may have to spend more.

I have no particular model to recommend, since the best way to do this is to have the intended user try various models, to be sure she is comfortable with the screen and keyboard, and that the machine has whatever specific features she wants for the price.

I understand that the new Motorola Droid phone has a GPS function. I was considering a Garmin unit but wonder if I would be just as well off with the Droid and Google maps. What do you think?

A: The Droid not only has GPS and maps, which are common on many other phones, but it has a free voice-prompted, turn-by-turn navigation system powered by Google, which isn’t common. This is very similar to what you’d get in a stand-alone unit sold by companies like Garmin and Magellan, or in a paid, add-on app for the iPhone.

However, in my tests of this new feature on the Droid, I ran into two occasions when the Google voice-promoted navigation system gave me completely erroneous directions. On Garmin products, I have often encountered directions I considered too roundabout or time-consuming, but I have personally never received absolutely wrong directions. So you might bear that in mind when deciding if the Google capability in the Droid is a good enough substitute, at least in this stage of its development.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free at the All Things Digital web site,http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Sticky Situation of the Month: Ex-Yahoo Communications Head (and "Peanut Butter Manifesto" Scribe) Garlinghouse to Helm Similar Unit at AOL

Kara Swisher — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:45:02 +0000

In the ongoing game of musical chairs among top managers at Internet companies, former Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse–famous for his controversial “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which correctly chided the Internet giant for becoming so lugubrious several years ago–is taking a job at AOL very similar to the one he left at Yahoo last year.

Garlinghouse, 38, has been named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner (TWX) online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.

He has only been in talks with AOL–which used Spencer Stuart’s Internet-top-exec-finder-in-chief Jim Citrin–for a few weeks, in a deal that came together quickly, he and the company said.

Garlinghouse, a longtime Web entrepreneur and exec, had reportedly been considering a number of start-up and venture-related jobs since he left Yahoo last summer after six years there.

Sources said he was seriously considering becoming the CEO of a mobile firm.

He was most recently at Silver Lake Partners, as an “in-house senior advisor,” the private equity firm that recently bought the Skype Internet telephony firm for $1.9 billion. Garlinghouse also reportedly helped work on that deal.

“It’s really exciting to be to able to rebuild and revitalize an industry giant,” said Garlinghouse in an interview with BoomTown earlier today. “I make no bones that these [properties] are in need of that…but there is also a huge opportunity to do something cool.”

Garlinghouse has to hurry. Despite being among the top communications players online–a group that also includes Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) and, more recently, Google (GOOG)–AOL has lost relevance with key audiences, even as social networking properties like Facebook and the microblogging service, Twitter, have innovated in the communications space.

The hiring of Garlinghouse, well known in Silicon Valley circles, is meant to counter that.

He will head up AOL’s operations from its Mountain View, Calif., campus–which is also the former HQ of AOL-acquired Netscape Communications–where, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Garlinghouse will “be CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”

Between all its various properties, AOL has several hundred employees in the Northern California area.

Armstrong said AOL–which was founded 25 years ago on the East Coast and has tried and failed many times to get a true foothold in the West–thinks having an important player at the center of the tech industry is critical as it moves to spin off as an independent company by the end of the year.

“We have a triple play in getting a great executive, who is a master in the communications on the Web and who is well known out there,” said Armstrong. “Brad is our senior AOL manager there.”

Along with running all of AOL’s communications properties, Garlinghouse will inherit some of its community properties, although AOL’s Bebo social networking unit–now considered to be an overpriced acquisition error–now resides in its ventures unit, headed by Jon Brod.

Garlinghouse will also be aiding Brod, said Armstrong, with AOL on the lookout for acquisition opportunities in communications and other arenas.

While Garlinghouse declined to be specific about what would pique his buying interest, he was responsible for such big Yahoo deals as its $350 million purchase of Zimbra in the fall of 2007.

He was also key to bringing both Oddpost, which is at the heart of Yahoo’s email offering, and the popular Flickr photosharing service to Yahoo.

Garlinghouse said he has admired what Twitter and Facebook have done, but that they were not destroying traditional online communications, pioneered by AOL, as some assert.

“It’s a vibrant segment and this just means there are a lot of opportunities to enable integration,” he said. “I think of it as an expansion of online communications and I hope AOL can do more collaboration and partnerships.”

Garlinghouse also has to watch AOL’s basic products like email, which was recently passed by Google’s Gmail as the No. 3 email service in the U.S. Yahoo Mail is the top email, while Microsoft’s Hotmail is second.

How much Garlinghouse can do will depend on the future financial strength of AOL. Its advertising business has been hit hard in the econalpyse, with hopes it will return before its money-generating access business continues its slow decline.

Armstrong is now in the midst of looking over AOL’s cost structure and employee base, which most expect will eventually result in another round of layoffs and cuts.

He has been busy creating a different strategy for the company since he arrived earlier this year, as well as hiring (and firing) top execs to create a new management structure.

Now, that includes Garlinghouse.

So, for a look-see at AOL’s latest talent acquisition, here’s a video interview I did with him, just after Yahoo bought Zimbra:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here’s the full press release from AOL about the hiring of Garlinghouse:

AOL NAMES BRAD GARLINGHOUSE AS PRESIDENT, INTERNET AND MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS

NEW YORK, N.Y.–September 8, 2009–AOL today named Brad Garlinghouse as President of Internet and Mobile Communications, spearheading AOL’s global efforts to expand the reach of its e-mail and instant messaging. Garlinghouse will also take on an expanded leadership position for the company, heading up AOL’s Silicon Valley operations from its Mountain View campus and serving as the West Coast lead for AOL Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm headed globally by Jon Brod. Garlinghouse was most recently at Silver Lake Partners as an in-house Senior Advisor.

Prior to Silver Lake, Garlinghouse spent nearly six years at Yahoo!, where he led that company’s communications and community products. Garlinghouse will report directly to AOL’s Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.

” Brad Garlinghouse is an all-star in the Internet industry with an unparalleled background and proven track record, having led Yahoo’s communications products to unprecedented growth,” said Armstrong. “In addition to leading our efforts to grow our communications products, Brad will be bringing his global leadership and business experience as a key member of our company’s executive leadership team. He will also be a major force for AOL in Silicon Valley, working to expand our presence there and in the tech community in general. We’re delighted to have Brad on board and know he’ll do great things for AOL.”

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to join AOL at this pivotal moment in its history,” Garlinghouse said. “Tim has set out a clear strategy and vision for where he is taking this company as it becomes independent again. I’m looking forward to working with him and the rest of the team to realize that vision.”

Armstrong, who joined AOL in April, identified Communications as one of the five key areas of strategic focus for AOL after an extensive 100-day review of the company’s business. Other focus areas include Content, Advertising, Local & Mapping and AOL Ventures.

Garlinghouse spent nearly six years at Yahoo! where he most recently served as SVP of Communications and Communities. Prior to that he served as SVP of Communications, Communities and Front Doors, which included the Yahoo! home page. He came to Yahoo in 2003 as VP, Communication Products. During his time there, Yahoo! Mail went from No. 3 to leading all competitors by a wide margin, and the company’s instant messaging service rose to become the leader in that market as well. Garlinghouse also oversaw the company’s Flickr photo-sharing service and Yahoo! Groups.

Prior to Yahoo!, Garlinghouse was CEO of Dialpad.com Inc., responsible for all aspects of the company’s operations, finance, sales and marketing. He was also General Partner at @Ventures, Category Manager of Media Development for the @Home Network, Inc., and Manager at SBC Communications.

Garlinghouse, 38, received his BA in economics from the University of Kansas and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Hopefully, the Yahoo Experience in Arabic Won't Include a "Maktoooooo-ooob!" Yodel

John Paczkowski — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:30:23 +0000

Online ad spending in the Middle East is expected to increase between 35 and 45 percent this year. Little wonder then that Yahoo is entering the market there.

This morning, Yahoo said it is acquiring Maktoob.com, an Arabic online portal that boasts some 16 million users. Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed, but paidContent values it at between $75 million and $80 million.

“Access to information and communications tools can positively impact people’s lives in many ways,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in a statement, “and with the acquisition of Maktoob.com and our investment in the region, the Arab world will soon get a Yahoo experience in Arabic with relevant local language content, programming and services.”

For Yahoo (YHOO), which is working to expand its international footprint, the move is an important one. While there are more than 320 million Arabic speakers worldwide, less than one percent of online content is in Arabic. The market is still in its early stages and it is already underserved. In other words, it represents a tremendous opportunity for local versions of Yahoo Search, Mail, Messenger and other properties.

“This deal is part of Yahoo!’s broader strategy to grow our international business, particularly in emerging markets,” Keith Nilsson, Yahoo’s Senior Vice President of Emerging Markets, said in a blog post. “In many countries, vast populations–and advertisers–are just starting to come online. The potential is tremendous. Yahoo! has a large and growing audience in these markets today, and our acquisition of Maktoob represents the kind of investment we’re making to cater to the needs of these promising regions.”

Hopefully, the Yahoo Experience in Arabic Won't Include a "Maktoooooo-ooob!" Yodel

John Paczkowski — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:30:23 +0000

Online ad spending in the Middle East is expected to increase between 35 and 45 percent this year. Little wonder then that Yahoo is entering the market there.

Yahoo Renovates Its Home Page

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:52:02 +0000

Makeovers are always fun to watch. Someone swoops in on an unsuspecting fashion “don’t,” improves him or her with a new hairstyle, makeup and wardrobe, and presents the finished product to overjoyed friends and family.

Last week, Yahoo (YHOO) unveiled the results of its latest makeover: the revamped home page. Carol Bartz, the company’s relatively new CEO, has said that Yahoo’s home page needed just such a makeover. After not changing significantly since 2006, the home page fits the role of a fashion don’t. And consumers, like family and friend observing the aftermath of a makeover, will either be overjoyed or nonplussed by the finished product.

Yahoo’s cleaner, streamlined home page emphasizes its ability to view content from other Web sites.

I’ve been using this new home page for over a week now and I can report that Yahoo followed one of the most important makeover rules by doing more with less. Gone is the busy screen saturated with advertisements and clutter. The new home page is clean and easier to absorb.

Favorite ‘Apps’

Yahoo’s home-page makeover goes beyond surface improvements. Its most useful feature is a list called My Favorites, which contains a variety of Web sites from within and outside of Yahoo. When your cursor hovers over one of these entries, which Yahoo calls “apps,” a pane opens with a preview of content from that site. This turns your Yahoo home page into an aggregator of information, bringing glimpses of information to you in one place so you don’t have to waste time navigating to other sites.

But if a greater number of these apps were more robust, you would be able to do more right within the hover pane, like watch videos or play a game. Currently, the hover preview pane only lets you see content, update social-network statuses and enter search terms, the results of which are shown on a new Web page.

[ See post to watch video ]

This makeover comes at an interesting time in the world of online news aggregation. Competitors like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) incorporate data from all over the Web into iGoogle.com and MSN.com, respectively. And the concept of the home page as a starting point isn’t as popular as it once was: Many people now start browsing the Web by first clicking on a link in an email or in one of many social-networking sites, like Twitter.

Traffic Driver

Of course, Yahoo plans to use this redesigned home page to drive traffic to the company’s own sites like Shine, Answers, Health and OMG (a celebrity gossip site). These Yahoo sites make up half of the 65 apps designed especially for My Favorites. Yahoo says that its apps for other sites, including WSJ.com, were made by Yahoo and the outside company running the Web site. An ad runs on the hover preview page of each app and the revenue for this ad goes to Yahoo, not the content provider.

Yahoo will use your list of My Favorites apps to learn about what sites you use so as to target ads at users. This proved true for most of the ads I saw on my home page, but strangely, the AllThingsD.com app displayed ads for Mars chocolate and Del Monte fruit snacks rather than technology products.

Module Thinking

My Favorites is fixed on the far left of the Yahoo home page and a large search box sits prominently at the top of the home screen.

The top middle section of the screen shows a carousel of images and current news that Yahoo calls the Today Module; below this is the News Module, which houses tabs labeled News, World, Local, and Finance. The Local and Finance tabs can be customized by entering a ZIP Code and stock tickers, respectively. The Today and News Modules can switch positions if you click on a small arrow.

The revamped home page will serve as a starting point for the Yahoo Application Platform, or YAP. Sometime around late September, Yahoo will open its YAP (no pun intended) to software developers so they can make all kinds of apps with a variety of functions for the home page, not just apps that are tied to Web sites.

You can customize the home page for style or content changes if you sign on using a user ID and password. Changes should appear the next time you log in. But this didn’t work as well as it should. I set my page to display in a tangerine color, one of six colors offered for customizing the page, but the home page wasn’t tangerine-colored the next time I logged in.

Some Problems

I had trouble logging into my Gmail account using a special Gmail app, but this and the color problem were fixed by the time this column went to press.

Some apps didn’t work at all, like the Facebook app, which couldn’t connect to my Facebook account. Yahoo said the problem should be fixed this week.

The home page seemed to have a longer memory when it came to the list of My Favorites. I edited my list, adding more pre-made apps and creating some of my own using a built-in tool that lets you enter a Web site. Yahoo has preloaded icons for some popular Web sites such as cnn.com; otherwise, it will use a generic star.

Permanent Apps

Two apps are permanent fixtures at the top of the My Favorites list: One shows a list of all Yahoo sites and the other shows Yahoo Mail. Everything else can be deleted, added and moved around in the list. One of my favorite apps was for Epicurious.com, the food and recipe site. When I hovered over the Epicurious app, images of food with recipe names appeared in the hover preview pane. One click on an image sent me to the Web site for the full version of the recipe.

After adding many of my own apps to My Favorites, I wished Yahoo had a one-click tool for converting my browser bookmarks into apps. Yahoo says this is something it hopes to introduce in the future.

Mobile Rollout

This week, Yahoo started rolling out a mobile Web site made to run on the iPhone’s Safari browser that coordinates with the more robust version of the home page. I used this Yahoo home page on the iPhone and liked that it immediately pulled up the My Favorites list I had carefully constructed on my computer. Similar offerings will soon be available for other mobile devices.

The new Yahoo home page is a refreshing way of bringing content to you rather than you chasing around the Web looking for it. The My Favorites apps need a little more power to be truly useful and to encourage people to use the Yahoo home page every day, but Yahoo hopes to solve some of that problem in a couple of months when it opens the site to developers.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Yahoo Confirms Xoopit Purchase

Kara Swisher — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:44:57 +0000

Yahoo confirmed the news–first reported by BoomTown and in The Wall Street Journal last night–that it was buying Xoopit, the San Francisco-based social email company.

And it did so in both a blog post and on Twitter, as you can see here:

@karaswisher @jvascellaro Your scoops confirmed http://bit.ly/gpOT2

Well, thanks! But we are already onto new scoops, so try to keep up!

The price for the acquisition, which Yahoo (YHOO) did not reveal, was about $20 million, according to sources.

In its blog post, titled “Xoopit + Yahoo! Mail = Moving beyond that massive digital shoebox,” Yahoo’s SVP of Application Products Bryan Lamkin wrote, in part:

With the integration of Xoopit’s platform technology and capabilities, the task of sending photos via email will be as easy as it should be and sharing photo albums with friends and family members will also be a cinch. You’ll be able to share your pictures among a group of friends or family like never before–combining pictures from numerous sources into a single album for a private group to view. And soon your inbox will become an organized photo index as well. Just imagine having a tool that collects all the photos you’ve sent and received over the years into that scrapbook you’ve never had time to assemble.

In short, Xoopit will bring phenomenal photo organization, improved photo sharing, and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo! Mail.

Why is this such a big deal? Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives. While social networks and community sites are great for sharing photos with everyone you know, we realize it’s not for everyone or every occasion. For many, email is still best for sharing photos among a more select group of friends or family. And now we’re making it all that much easier for you.

Xoopit finds photos, videos, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them on many sites, such as social networking giant Facebook. It also has other products that essentially enliven email.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

As I previously reported, sources said Yahoo was first impressed with its innovative plug-in that works with Gmail from Google (GOOG), and has been looking at the company for a while, previously offering about $10 million for it.

Xoopit also makes a similar photo-sharing application for Yahoo Mail, which it launched late last year.

The opening up of its popular email product to a variety of third-party applications in order to make it more robust has been a goal of Yahoo recently as it seeks to socialize one of its most popular products.

Interestingly, in the Yahoo blog, Lamkin said Xoopit was Yahoo Mail’s most popular third-party app.

Here is a screen shot of Xoopit in action in Yahoo’s email offering (click on the image to make it larger):

Yahoo to Acquire Xoopit for About $20 Million

Kara Swisher — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:00:12 +0000

Yahoo plans on announcing Thursday that it has bought Xoopit for a price in the $20 million range, according to several sources, one of its first acquisitions in a long while.

Reached late this afternoon by BoomTown, a Yahoo (YHOO) spokeswoman declined to comment about the acquisition. Xoopit did not respond to emails earlier today.

But sources said it was a done deal to buy the San Francisco-based social email start-up that finds photos, video, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them on many sites. It also has other products that essentially enliven email.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

According to sources, Yahoo was first impressed with its innovative plug-in that works with Gmail from Google (GOOG), and has been looking at the company for a while, previously offering about $10 million for it.

Xoopit also makes a similar photo-sharing application for Yahoo! Mail, which it launched late last year.

The opening up of its popular email product to a variety of third-party applications, in order to make it more robust, has been a goal of Yahoo recently, as it seeks to socialize one of its most popular products.

One source said Xoopit was a good fit for Yahoo because it allowed the company’s email to be the platform that could knit together other social networking services, such as Facebook. This is seen as a core feature, although the Silicon Valley-based company is also opening its email products up to outside developers.

Yahoo has been planning on announcing the acquisition on Thursday at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference, where SVP of Applications Products Bryan Lamkin is appearing on a panel titled, “Dollars & Demographics: Capitalizing on Demographic Trends.”

Lamkin, a former Adobe Systems (ADBE) exec, now runs the Yahoo unit that includes email and other communications and communities products. He was hired in April by CEO Carol Bartz.

That panel topic is a little ironic, several sources joked, since Xoopit is not profitable and has very small revenues thus far.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on the deal, although it said Yahoo and Xoopit were still in late-stage talks and the deal was not complete yet.

But, according to my sources, it is done.

Yahoo Tweaks Homepages for Web and Mobile

John Paczkowski — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:00:12 +0000

Yahoo (YHOO) announced some updates to its homepages today–mobile and Web both. Designed to make them more personally relevant to their users, the pages are more customizable than they’ve been before. The release in full after screenshot (click to enlarge):

Making New Yahoo! Homepages Your Own

We recognize that for many of you around the world, the Yahoo! homepage — whether you’re seeing it on a computer or a mobile device – is Yahoo!. And we know you all have vastly different interests and “must-see” places you navigate to online. We can make our homepage better reflect this reality and, as many of you know, we’ve been hard at work on improving both our mobile and Web homepages.

What’s new, you ask?
We recently made the new Yahoo! Mobile (http://m.yahoo.com) available on the mobile Web across more than 300 devices and as an Apple iPhone app — both are available in eight countries, with more launching soon. We’ve moved out of beta and are in the process of rolling it out as our default mobile homepage.

Like the PC homepage we’re testing, Yahoo! Mobile has a more feature-rich design, letting you bring together your favorite content and services from across the Web, making it more personally relevant. For example, my experience is customized with my Yahoo! Mail, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! Messenger accounts, as well as my various stocks, favorite blog feeds, and weather from my favorite cities. The beauty of it is that you can customize the experience to exactly what you want and add anything to the page.

As for the Web, we recently started testing some new designs based on your feedback. We recognize that many of you like your homepage just the way it is, thank-you-very-much, so the overall look and feel of the page will be familiar. But take a closer look, and you’ll see that we’ve made some fundamental improvements and packed in features that are easy to use and easy to make your own — things you have told us you want.

The “My Favorites” area on the left side of the page includes an applications “dashboard” with the ability to preview, interact with or navigate to your favorite sites — whether they’re on Yahoo! or elsewhere on the Web. It’s all fully customizable.

Here’s some of what’s new and cool:

Lots more apps: We’re testing a growing library of apps that let you get more done without leaving the page. Some of these apps include eBay and MySpace, and content sites like USA Today and NPR. We also have newly developed apps for popular Yahoo! services like Messenger, Movies and Flickr.

Social pulse: A new Yahoo! Updates app lets you keep up with your friends’ online activities directly on the homepage — such as a recently Buzzed article or a video uploaded to YouTube.

Easier email: We’ve separated your individual email accounts as distinct apps, rather than a combined inbox, so that it’s faster and easier to get to the exact mail you want. This was a request we heard repeatedly during testing.

Using PC and Mac Interchangeably

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:10:02 +0000

There’s no other major item most of us own that is as confusing, unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computers. Everybody has questions about them, and we aim to help.

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

I switched from PC to Mac a year ago, but now I am thinking of adding a Windows laptop. If I do, what kind of compatibility problem would I have? I would be using the laptop mostly to write, to send/receive email and to Web browse.

In the old days, there were compatibility problems, but most of those have gone away. Based on your simple predicted usage, I’d say that you should be fine. For instance, both Macs and PCs can interchangeably open and edit all of the major file types — JPG pictures, MP3 music, Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDF files, etc. Email and instant messages can, of course, be exchanged between the two platforms, even if you are using different programs. And Macs understand Windows file extensions. Also, you can use both platforms simultaneously on the same home network to access the Internet.

In some cases, you might need different programs to open the same files on the two platforms. But even that obstacle has greatly diminished. For instance, programs like the Firefox and Safari Web browsers, Adobe Reader, iTunes, Microsoft Office, Google Earth, Picasa, Photoshop and many others come in native versions for both platforms that can handle the same files. And, of course, Web-based programs like Gmail and Yahoo Mail work on both. Sometimes, the same programs have different features and user interfaces on Windows and Macs, but I haven’t found these differences hard to master.

The biggest problems for average users are Quicken, whose Mac version is inferior and incompatible; Internet Explorer, which is no longer made for the Mac; and Microsoft Outlook, which is replaced on the Mac by a program called Entourage that is similar but uses a different file format. And networking can be tricky. In general, the Mac does a better job of seeing Windows PCs on a network than Windows does of seeing Macs.

I use Outlook Express for my email, and I store a lot of mail in local folders. Is there a simple way to back these up? If I buy a new computer, can they be transferred?

Yes. There are two methods. One is a manual method, which Microsoft explains in a detailed document at this Web site: support.microsoft.com/kb/270670.

The other, quicker, method is to obtain one of several utility programs that can back up your Outlook Express data and, in some cases, allow you to transfer it to another PC. I haven’t tested these in years, and thus can’t recommend one over another. But one example is a free program called Outlook Express Backup, which can be found at genie-soft.com/products/oeb. Another is a $40 program called Outlook Express Backup Wizard, which can be found at: outlook-express-backup.com.

Do you know of an iPhone GPS application that speaks directions? It would make the iPhone similar to a TomTom or Garvin GPS unit.

A: No, but Apple recently announced that, under its new 3.0 operating system for the iPhone, such programs will be possible. Several companies are believed to be working on them, and I expect them to be available later in the year. The reason none exist yet is partly legal, having to do with the licensing of the underlying maps.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Yahoo Execs Tapan Bhat and Ash Patel Talk About Yahoo's Open and Social Launch

Kara Swisher — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:05:45 +0000

Here’s a video interview I did yesterday at the San Francisco event where Yahoo finally launched a lot of the new open and social elements that it has long said it was injecting into its most popular products.

BoomTown talked with the key movers of the initiatives: Ash Patel, Yahoo’s EVP of its Audience Product Division, and Tapan Bhat, its SVP of its Front Doors, Communities and Network Services.

(You can see screen shots and an official Yahoo video of the new features here.)

The initiatives Yahoo (YHOO) finally released into the wild have been long in the making, first discussed as just vaporware by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (see that video below too).

Yahoo also hosted a session at its Sunnyvale HQ about its open plans in the fall.

And, after the longest of gestation periods, they arrived yesterday, in an impressive rollout.

The changes include some very deft rejiggering of Yahoo Mail, called a “smarter inbox,” with a new dashboard welcome page, easier ways to make connections, more filtered views, updates and third-party apps integrated into the application.

I thought the changes to the mail product were the most interesting, especially given the hundreds of millions of people using the product. It’s an interesting choice for a social entry point, aiming to give nonsocial-networking types enough of a taste of it without inundating them.

Of particular note were the third-party applications, such as for WordPress and Flickr, that launch nicely right in the email program.

Also cool was one app from Xoopit that surfaces old photos and photo links lost in the musty archives of old emails.

Yahoo also debuted an enhanced version of the homepage (previously announced in September) and My Yahoo, as well as a new toolbar and socialization elements added to its popular media properties.

It remains to be seen how popular these changes will become, especially since many consumers already have their social-networking lives on Facebook or MySpace.

In addition, both Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and Microsoft (MSFT) have rolled out similar social and open changes to their sites recently, making it super-confusing for everyone.

But, better late than never, I always say, so here’s Bhat and Patel talking about Yahoo’s new stuff.

I had to load the video onto YouTube, as Brightcove had snafus (also below is Yang talking about the concepts at CES in January 2008):

Tapan Bhat and Ash Patel

Jerry Yang at January 2008 CES

[ See post to watch video ]