Original Story: latimes.com
A Facebook product manager has joined Snapchat’s growth team in Venice, becoming the latest Silicon Valley worker to be drawn south by the fast-expanding entertainment app maker.
Anthony Pompliano said Tuesday on Twitter that he moved to Los Angeles over the weekend to “lead Snapchat’s growth team.” His experience at Facebook included helping launch features related to elections and child abduction notifications, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Funded by more than $1 billion in venture capital and millions of dollars in ad revenue, Snapchat has brought on more than 300 software engineers, content producers and business executives since its founding in 2011. An Atlanta venture capital lawyer is following this story closely. Many new hires have relocated to Los Angeles from Silicon Valley and elsewhere, seeing great potential in the company’s push to make the app a major force in chat and online video.
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Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
SNAPCHAT GETS 4 BILLION VIDEO VIEWS, CHALLENGING FACEBOOK
Original Story: latimes.com
In just three months, Snapchat has doubled the number of video views it gets per day to 4 billion, a spokeswoman for the social media app said. Search engine optimization secures and maintains premium keyword positions in the organic search engine results pages, increasing traffic for your company.
That puts Snapchat on equal footing with social media giant Facebook, which announced it hit 4 billion daily views in the first quarter of this year.
Snapchat's newest numbers, which were first reported by the International Business Times, are being driven by the popularity of its “Live Stories” feature, which curates clips from around the world.
FOR THE RECORD
9 a.m.: An earlier version of this article stated that the news site Business Insider first reported Snapchat's latest video views numbers. It was the International Business Times.
Snapchat’s founder and chief executive, Evan Spiegel, told Bloomberg in May that the company was generating 2 billion views a day.
The numbers will boost Snapchat’s bottom line as advertisers gravitate toward the app’s millennial audience.
Snapchat has raised over $1 billion, implying a valuation of about $16 billion.
In just three months, Snapchat has doubled the number of video views it gets per day to 4 billion, a spokeswoman for the social media app said. Search engine optimization secures and maintains premium keyword positions in the organic search engine results pages, increasing traffic for your company.
That puts Snapchat on equal footing with social media giant Facebook, which announced it hit 4 billion daily views in the first quarter of this year.
Snapchat's newest numbers, which were first reported by the International Business Times, are being driven by the popularity of its “Live Stories” feature, which curates clips from around the world.
FOR THE RECORD
9 a.m.: An earlier version of this article stated that the news site Business Insider first reported Snapchat's latest video views numbers. It was the International Business Times.
Snapchat’s founder and chief executive, Evan Spiegel, told Bloomberg in May that the company was generating 2 billion views a day.
The numbers will boost Snapchat’s bottom line as advertisers gravitate toward the app’s millennial audience.
Snapchat has raised over $1 billion, implying a valuation of about $16 billion.
Friday, March 20, 2015
FACEBOOK CLARIFIES HOW IT POLICES SOCIAL NETWORK FOR LURID CONTENT
Original Story: latimes.com
Facebook will still rely on users to report offensive or inappropriate posts, but as of Sunday night, they have more guidance on what the company considers a violation of its standards.
Keeping scandalous photos, harassing language and violent content off its network has been a priority for Facebook for years. But some of its 1.39 billion users have been critical about the haphazard application of content guidelines.
In a blog post Sunday, Facebook officials responded with an updated guidebook that adds clarity and examples to terms such as “hate speech” without changing the standards themselves.
Any flagged content is reviewed by a moderator regardless of whether one person reports it or 100. The content gets removed if it's in violation of the standards or a law.
“In order to treat people fairly and respond to reports quickly, it is essential that we have policies in place that our global teams can apply uniformly and easily when reviewing content,” Facebook writes. “As a result, our policies can sometimes be more blunt than we would like and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes. We are always working to get better at evaluating this content and enforcing our standards.”
In the case of nudity, displaying genitals or “focusing in” on a fully exposed butt isn’t okay. But breastfeeding images or post-surgery breast photos are OK. Same for nudes in art. Sexually explicit passages may also be deleted, Facebook warns.
Attacking people based on gender, race and other traits is unacceptable. But hate speech can be linked to or re-posted for the purpose of raising awareness. Facebook expects users to mention that rationale though.
Facebook also wants users to sign up with their “authentic identity.”
“When people stand behind their opinions and actions with their authentic name and reputation, our community is more accountable,” according to the guidelines.
Facebook will still rely on users to report offensive or inappropriate posts, but as of Sunday night, they have more guidance on what the company considers a violation of its standards.
Keeping scandalous photos, harassing language and violent content off its network has been a priority for Facebook for years. But some of its 1.39 billion users have been critical about the haphazard application of content guidelines.
In a blog post Sunday, Facebook officials responded with an updated guidebook that adds clarity and examples to terms such as “hate speech” without changing the standards themselves.
Any flagged content is reviewed by a moderator regardless of whether one person reports it or 100. The content gets removed if it's in violation of the standards or a law.
“In order to treat people fairly and respond to reports quickly, it is essential that we have policies in place that our global teams can apply uniformly and easily when reviewing content,” Facebook writes. “As a result, our policies can sometimes be more blunt than we would like and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes. We are always working to get better at evaluating this content and enforcing our standards.”
In the case of nudity, displaying genitals or “focusing in” on a fully exposed butt isn’t okay. But breastfeeding images or post-surgery breast photos are OK. Same for nudes in art. Sexually explicit passages may also be deleted, Facebook warns.
Attacking people based on gender, race and other traits is unacceptable. But hate speech can be linked to or re-posted for the purpose of raising awareness. Facebook expects users to mention that rationale though.
Facebook also wants users to sign up with their “authentic identity.”
“When people stand behind their opinions and actions with their authentic name and reputation, our community is more accountable,” according to the guidelines.
Friday, January 30, 2015
FACEBOOK TAKES BLAME FOR SERVICE OUTAGES, WHICH HIT WIDER WEB
Original Story: reuters.com
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Access to Facebook (FB.O), the world's largest social network, and its Instagram photo-sharing site, were blocked around the world for up to an hour on Tuesday, which the company said later was due to an internal fault and not an outside attack.
The outage at Facebook, which started around 0600 GMT, appeared to spill over and temporarily slow or block traffic to other major Internet sites, according to web and mobile user reports from around the globe.
U.S.-based online match-making site Tinder, a unit of IAC/InterActive Corp (IACI.O), and Hipchat, the workplace instant- messaging service of Australian enterprise software company Atlassian, were also down around the same period, but recovered.
A hacker group associated with other recent high-profile attacks on other online services sought to claim responsibility for the outages, but Facebook said the fault was its own.
“This was not the result of a third-party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems," Facebook said. "Both services are back to 100 percent for everyone.”
Users in the United States and many countries in Asia and Europe reported that they were unable to log on to the websites of Facebook, Instagram and corresponding mobile apps including Facebook and Facebook Messenger.
During the outages, Facebook users were greeted with the message: "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."
"If you run a service with the capacity (and complexity) to deliver media for hundreds of millions of users, it's inevitable that things don't always go according to plan," said Steve Santorelli, a former London police detective and now a researcher at U.S. threat intelligence firm Team Cymru.
Facebook counted more than 1.35 billion web and 1.12 mobile phone users on a monthly basis in September, the latest date for which official figures are available.
Earlier on Tuesday a Twitter account that purports to speak for hacker group "Lizard Squad" posted messages suggesting that it was behind an attack that temporarily blocked several major web sites, including Facebook and Instagram.
The Lizard Squad is a group of unknown hackers that has taken credit for several high-profile outages, including the attacks that took down the Sony (6758.T) PlayStation Network and Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Xbox Live network last month.
Santorelli said that attacking Internet sites which operate at the size and scale of Facebook via a classic distributed denial of service attack would be a huge undertaking, which, while not entirely impossible, would be "monumentally hard."
Denial of service attacks direct thousands of infected computers under an attacker's control to ping a site or sites, thereby slowing or blocking access for regular users.
Such attacks can create congestion on branches of the Internet where the site is located, slowing Web traffic and affecting access to unrelated services.
As a precaution, Facebook users are advised to change their passwords and review their privacy settings, Santorelli said.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Access to Facebook (FB.O), the world's largest social network, and its Instagram photo-sharing site, were blocked around the world for up to an hour on Tuesday, which the company said later was due to an internal fault and not an outside attack.
The outage at Facebook, which started around 0600 GMT, appeared to spill over and temporarily slow or block traffic to other major Internet sites, according to web and mobile user reports from around the globe.
U.S.-based online match-making site Tinder, a unit of IAC/InterActive Corp (IACI.O), and Hipchat, the workplace instant- messaging service of Australian enterprise software company Atlassian, were also down around the same period, but recovered.
A hacker group associated with other recent high-profile attacks on other online services sought to claim responsibility for the outages, but Facebook said the fault was its own.
“This was not the result of a third-party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems," Facebook said. "Both services are back to 100 percent for everyone.”
Users in the United States and many countries in Asia and Europe reported that they were unable to log on to the websites of Facebook, Instagram and corresponding mobile apps including Facebook and Facebook Messenger.
During the outages, Facebook users were greeted with the message: "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."
"If you run a service with the capacity (and complexity) to deliver media for hundreds of millions of users, it's inevitable that things don't always go according to plan," said Steve Santorelli, a former London police detective and now a researcher at U.S. threat intelligence firm Team Cymru.
Facebook counted more than 1.35 billion web and 1.12 mobile phone users on a monthly basis in September, the latest date for which official figures are available.
Earlier on Tuesday a Twitter account that purports to speak for hacker group "Lizard Squad" posted messages suggesting that it was behind an attack that temporarily blocked several major web sites, including Facebook and Instagram.
The Lizard Squad is a group of unknown hackers that has taken credit for several high-profile outages, including the attacks that took down the Sony (6758.T) PlayStation Network and Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Xbox Live network last month.
Santorelli said that attacking Internet sites which operate at the size and scale of Facebook via a classic distributed denial of service attack would be a huge undertaking, which, while not entirely impossible, would be "monumentally hard."
Denial of service attacks direct thousands of infected computers under an attacker's control to ping a site or sites, thereby slowing or blocking access for regular users.
Such attacks can create congestion on branches of the Internet where the site is located, slowing Web traffic and affecting access to unrelated services.
As a precaution, Facebook users are advised to change their passwords and review their privacy settings, Santorelli said.
Monday, December 08, 2014
EX-GOOGLE WORKER SAYS COMPANY 'F***ED UP'
Original Story: cnbc.com
A former designer at Google took to the blog site Medium to explain—in strong but not virulent language—that the company has uncharacteristically missed a big opportunity with Google+, its three-year-old answer to Facebook.
The former employee, Chris Messina, said in his somewhat lengthy post that the company has missed so many opportunities to make a unique, industry leading product with Google+ that it's hard to understand what purpose the platform still serves.
Or, as Messina put it: "So what the f*** is Google+ for anyway?"
With privacy both an important and misunderstood concept in cyberspace, Messina wrote that the Google's lack of strategic thinking means that the development of online identity—with all its positive and negative connotations—has been essentially ceded to Facebook.
Google did not respond to a request for comment. Read the entire post below.
Thoughts on Google+
I fucked up. So has Google.
It’s been over a year since I left Google. Over 450 days, actually. During that time, I joined and left a startup; traveled to Paris (twice). I got divorced. I started a new relationship, moved, and became a bonus dad. Now I’m on the cusp of starting a new company (I think, details pending).
Any of these changes could be significant on their own, but I bring them up merely for comparison’s sake. I’m one person and these things happened to me over the course of a year. If there are roughly 3000 people working on Google+, what have they been doing during the same period?
While this post touches on the recent-past, present, and future, I’m going to start with a stupid mistake I made earlier this week.
I fucked up
I need to make a retraction. I fucked up. Publicly.
I cast aspersions where none were warranted. I called out Google+ on Twitter (in front of 68K followers no less) for a bug that—I argued—proved that they’d stopped doing QA (an essential step in the launch of any product at Google) and must have therefore and finally abandoned its social network.
But I was wrong.
The problem—as diagnosed by Googler Melissa Chang —was interference from Jesse Middleton’s Better BCC extension. Once I disabled it, the problem went away. (He tells me that he’s updated his extension to address this.)
Egg on my face. My bad. And apologies to my Googler friends Ade and Paul, in particular, for pointing out my mistake.
So what the fuck is Google+ for anyway?
When I thought about what motivated me to lob this snarkbomb, I realized I was looking for a reaction. I wanted some kind of defiant response to questions that’ve recently bugged me—What’s going on with Google+? Where is it headed? What the fuck is it for, anyway?
The last time David Besbris (Vic Gundotra’s successor and top exec on Google+) was interviewed by Recode, he said nothing. Literally.
No vision. No insight. Just pollyannaish platitudes: “We’re … very happy with the progress of Google+.”
The most salient thing he said was, “[The Google+ audience sees] Google+ as a social network for their interests.”, which at least suggests how the team must be thinking about the network internally. But if they’re more worried about Facebook, Snapchat, or Pinterest—I can’t tell. And if they have a plan and a vision for creating something new and wonderful in the world, I certainly can’t deduce it from their Oct 9 feature release: Polls (a feature I contributed to over a year and a half ago when I was a UX designer on the team).
Furthermore, if you simply look at the velocity of iOS releases across the most popular social apps over 2014, you’ll see that Google+ and Hangouts lag significantly behind (WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook this year, which likely explains their lack of updates).
Why do I care about Google+?
Dear reader, I wouldn’t fault you if you’re wondering why I give a shit. It’s not like I work there anymore. Sure, I have a few friends who do but most rolled off to work on other projects at Google, left, or started new companies. And yes, I run a popular mixology community, but it’s not like it’s blowing up or anything.
So why do I care?
Simple: for the same reason that motivated me to join Google in 2010— that the future of digital identity should not be determined by one company (namely, Facebook). I still believe that competition in this space is better for consumers, for startups, and for the industry. And Google still remains one of the few companies (besides Apple, perhaps) that stands a chance to take on Facebook in this arena—but Google+, as I see it, has lost its way.
(Or maybe never found its way. I dunno.)
It matters to me because there’s a lot at stake here—way more than the success of a mere social network. What’s at stake is how individuals participate in the web ecosystem, and whether one company will determine how we get online, gain access, connect and communicate through the increasing number of apps, devices, and digital experiences that we rely upon.
If you take the long view, you’ll understand why this moment in time is important: the companies and apps that solidify their position in our lives today will likely live on far into the future. Google is one of those companies that has already done this. I believe Facebook will too. So the fundamental problem that I have with Google+ is that I just don’t understand it. And what I don’t understand makes me nervous—and should make you nervous too.
Digital identity, circa 2014
I’ll be the first (well, maybe the second) to admit that we’re no longer living in the golden era of social networking. We’ve migrated away from the mouse and keyboard era of computing and replaced them with glossy, touchable surfaces that we carry around in our pockets and alert us to all of our friends’ most recent doings. We have access to our contacts, to information, and to superpowers that we’ve never had before. And not only are we starting to take this all for granted—there’s a younger generation growing up without any conception of a time Before Siri, and are living Post Browser.
All this is perfectly normal to them. Things are exactly as they should be, and always have been.
So why does the competition for control of digital identity matter anymore? Frankly, because as I’ve long held, identity is the platform—the killer app of networked personal computing devices (even more so as we increasingly depend on more than one authenticated device at a time!).
Digital identity unlocks universal personalization (i.e. better ads), payments and commerce (i.e. Snapcash), environmental adaptation (i.e. an Uber that plays your Spotify music), communications (i.e. Path Talk), and access (i.e. Sosh Concierge). Today’s most exciting apps are barely scratching the surface of what will be possible when there are years of preferences data stored up on each of us, that we can leverage at a moments notice, in any context.
Privacy is a four-letter word
But before you go get your pitchfork and scream bloody murder about the loss of individual “privacy”, stop for a second.
This word, privacy ?— it’s a problem.
It’s one of those words that puts a stop to useful conversations and prevents us from actually engaging with what’s going on in our digital lives. It obscures and glosses over.
WAKE UP!
Maintaining your privacy doesn’t strictly mean keeping people from having data or information about you. Certainly not preventing yourself from having access to data about yourself. Privacy is about the ability to be left alone, or about not being watched, if you don’t want to be. Which is fine. Turn on Do Not Disturb. There—you’ve got a bit of your privacy back. But that has nothing to do with the huge amounts of data you’re still producing and is being tracked.
So, given that expectations of privacy are changing (or being changed), I challenge you: what if you want to be watched? What if you were offered an outsize amount of value in exchange for allowing someone else to watch you? What would you do? Who would you want to watch over you? Who would you want to look after you and your best interests? Who would you trust? Do you feel like you have reasonable choices in today’s marketplace?
This, my friends, is the dilemma presented and the opportunity omitted by an overused term like “privacy”.
Taking the data-positive perspective, it seems completely reasonable to me that companies would vie to become my lifelong “data bank”. Ultimately I do want companies to know more about me and to use more data about me in exchange for better, faster, easier, and cheaper experiences. But I also want to be treated like an adult when talking about my data. Watery terms like “cloud” or “dropbox” or “backup” sound utilitarian but mask the true aspirations of these service providers. They should just come out and say it: they want all this information to establish a competitive advantage in delivering more personalized services to me and people like me. Backing up my files is absolutely not the long game (but it’s a convenient lock-in strategy in the meantime).
Seizing your data capital
Here’s the thing: you and me, we’re being tracked whether we like it or not. Use a web browser, use apps —and there’s a company or companies out there amassing huge amounts of data about every click, tap, photo, notification, or icon in your digital life. Sometimes they anonymize it so that your preferences or behavioral data can’t be easily tracked back to you, but then you have no way of auditing that information, accessing it, or perhaps granting access to some other trusted party of your choosing. This may reassure you that your data won’t be that valuable if its leaked when there’s another breach, but this also means that you’re leaving a ton of value on the table. And frankly, most of these companies (especially the ad-driven ones) don’t really care about your data specifically. They can target you just as effectively through other means. And frankly, most would rather anonymize it to avoid embarrassing moments than do the heavy lifting to make your data accessible to you in more useful formats.
Taken at the individual level, you’re just a rounding error at the millionth decimal. And yet this data could be hugely valuable to you if you collect and let it accrue for long enough. This is why I’ve called this kind of information exhaust “data capital”. If you think of this data as your money being burned, maybe you’ll rethink what “privacy” is all about, and what stake you should claim in the data being captured about you.
So what about Google+?
So what does this have to do with Google+?
As it stands, Facebook, Apple, and Google (and to some degree Amazon) are in a battle to know you better than you do. Facebook is pretty clear about what they’re doing, and do a fair job explaining it—and have improved over the years. Apple recently came out aggressively about their own commitment to user privacy (but they make money from hardware, rather than ads). Google’s efforts, meanwhile, seem disjointed and confused, despite significant improvements to their settings and security features. If Google+ was intended to serve as Google’s “social backbone”, it should be the locus of control and access over the kind of information I’ve described above. And yet… it’s not. Far from it, in fact.
To my point, most people would likely describe Google+ as a newsfeed, a kind of Facebook-lite. Sure, it’s got neat photo and video chat apps hanging off of it. And die-hard users would call out the interest-based communities as the reason they return, as Bez did. But few if any would say that it’s where they go to understand the data that Google holds about them, or where they go to adjust their preferences, or to adjust how people see and find them online. And maybe that’s intentional and maybe that’s the point—but if so, then I don’t get it. Why did the world need another Facebook, unless to benefit Google by making their ad targeting more effective? Why wasn’t Google+ one of Google’s famous moonshots, intended to improve personal social networking by 10x? Why did they take a conventional approach to social networking rather than think about what controls people might need in the next 5–10 years in their digital lives? Moreover, how does Google+ help deliver better, richer, more interesting, and more personalized experiences, to motivate people to store more information with Google? I mean, why did Google hitch their digital identity strategy to 2004-era social networking trends?
And damnit all, why am I so disappointed?!
When it comes right down to it, maybe I just don’t want to admit that I spent 3½ years working on something that will become irrelevant. Even if Google+ regains focus and simplifies its mission, I want to believe that we were working on something significant and that had an opinion about what the world should look like. Lately, I just feel like Google+ is confused and adrift at sea. It’s so far behind, how can it possibly catch up? I mean, Facebook launched a polling ad unit in 2009; five years later, Google+ launched their own. Is mentions really a differentiator? (Nope, Facebook has a dedicated app for that, and it’s been baked into Twitter for how long?) Is this kind of slow-following going to win the future?
I’m disappointed because I expect better from Google. Like, self-driving cars better, or hot-air balloon internet access better. I don’t want excuses. I don’t want to hear about how competitive or political the internal environment is. Larry is a strong leader. Sundar is too. And I know that they’re getting a ton of mileage (and cash) out of ads, Chrome, and Android —there are plenty of resources. Leaving internet identity in Facebook’s hands would be a massive fail. At least Twitter is making a go at it with Digits. But how does Google[+] fit into this picture? Will it ever? (And no, Google+ Sign In isn’t enough.)
Is there any hope that Google+ will find a compelling reason to continue to exist, and perhaps deliver on the data-positive vision I’ve outlined above?
The missed opportunity
I remember the primordial days of Emerald Sea (the codename for Google+). Its original name was Google Me (at least until Kevin Rose leaked the name and a new name needed to be chosen). I loved the name, not because it was a good name, but because of what it implied: “Just google me and I’ll be there”. Google Me was necessary to improve Google’s profile and social graph to make search more personalized and humane. It was like Google was saying, “We’re going to be your trusted partner in cyberspace, and we’ll help you surface the right information to the people you choose, at the right time.” The value proposition was search oriented, rather than social.
So, if I searched for my mom’s phone number on Google, I could find it—because it‘d be on her profile and she would have shared it with me. An obvious query like “mom’s phone number” would work.
“Google is where I search for things and I should be able to find useful information about my friends if they’ve shared it with me.”
But when the name to Google+ (cue terrifying echos of Microsoft Plus!), the focus shifted. Now, not only was Google+ fast-following Facebook, but the name of the product was a hedge against another Buzz-like debacle. If for some reason the product failed (and lots of Buzz veterans actively worried about this), Google could just drop the “+” and pretend the “project” never existed. Genius.
But this was all wrong. By starting off on a defensive footing, Google+ didn’t defiantly stand for something special in the world. Instead it defined itself by what it wasn’t—i.e. Facebook—though it was positioned internally as chasing after their success. And while Facebook executed a bold, ambitious (and uncomfortable) plan to create a “more open and connected world”, Google+ confusingly claimed to be rethinking real-life sharing on the web, with “nuance and richness”, even though we clearly hadn’t figured it out. Indeed, our solution (Circles (read: “lists”) put the onus on the user to manually curate groups of people—a great concept in theory, but too arduous and awkward in practice.
Now, it’d be one thing if Circles and “better privacy” (there’s that word again!) were merely a launch ploy to drum up interest (it’s worked for others in the past). Instead, Google+ continued to throw its weight behind this narrative long after Facebook overhauled its privacy features, and “grew up”. To this day, I still don’t know what Google+ is for, let alone better at than Facebook. Some might argue it’s “cleaner” and has fewer ads, but even those won’t be lasting competitive advantages.
What’s sad to me is that the promise of Google Me could be found in launch post: “We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests.”
Yes! Yes!
But by launching a conventional social network, Google missed the pivotal opportunity to establish a data-positive paradigm for sharing, individual control, and personalization that set itself apart from Facebook. Ultimately it offered too little, too late.
More recently, the Google+ marketing team came back to the message of personalization— at least for Google’s own apps. Instead, Google+ was about uniting Google products with one user account —something that should have been inevitable after Eric Schmidt’s tenure ended anyway.
So now what?
I read this passage from the launch post for Google+ and I get excited, to this day. The sentiment here echoes Ello’s claims upon their launch. The difference is that I actually believe Google to make good on these promises.
You and over a billion others trust Google, and we don’t take this lightly. In fact we’ve focused on the user for over a decade: liberating data, working for an open Internet, and respecting people’s freedom to be who they want to be. We realize, however, that Google+ is a different kind of project, requiring a different kind of focus?—?on you. That’s why we’re giving you more ways to stay private or go public; more meaningful choices around your friends and your data; and more ways to let us know how we’re doing. All across Google.
Yes! Yes!
But now what? Google’s work here is far from over.
The Google+ feed does nothing towards addressing the issues I’ve raised about data capital and privacy. Sure, Google gives you controls to set your ads preferences, but this framing is all wrong. Whereas Pinterest helps you express your aspirational self, Google pigeonholes you into what you already are, based on your previous search activity. This is where improving the data that Google has about you—in turn trusting Google as a steward of that data—changes the nature of the conversation by making it less about “privacy” and more about empowerment. While some people will freak out (as they always do), this would be a bold, productive, future-forward direction to take. Hell, we’re living in this reality already—but few give straight talk about what’s going on, and how their data is, or could be, used for their benefit. If Google took the approach I’ve suggested here—becoming more user-centric—I’d finally understand why what they’re doing is different. And then I could evaluate Google on being a steward of my data, and acting as my universal user agent in my digital life.
But until that happens, [object Object] makes just as much sense to me as their strategy.
A former designer at Google took to the blog site Medium to explain—in strong but not virulent language—that the company has uncharacteristically missed a big opportunity with Google+, its three-year-old answer to Facebook.
The former employee, Chris Messina, said in his somewhat lengthy post that the company has missed so many opportunities to make a unique, industry leading product with Google+ that it's hard to understand what purpose the platform still serves.
Or, as Messina put it: "So what the f*** is Google+ for anyway?"
With privacy both an important and misunderstood concept in cyberspace, Messina wrote that the Google's lack of strategic thinking means that the development of online identity—with all its positive and negative connotations—has been essentially ceded to Facebook.
Google did not respond to a request for comment. Read the entire post below.
Thoughts on Google+
I fucked up. So has Google.
It’s been over a year since I left Google. Over 450 days, actually. During that time, I joined and left a startup; traveled to Paris (twice). I got divorced. I started a new relationship, moved, and became a bonus dad. Now I’m on the cusp of starting a new company (I think, details pending).
Any of these changes could be significant on their own, but I bring them up merely for comparison’s sake. I’m one person and these things happened to me over the course of a year. If there are roughly 3000 people working on Google+, what have they been doing during the same period?
While this post touches on the recent-past, present, and future, I’m going to start with a stupid mistake I made earlier this week.
I fucked up
I need to make a retraction. I fucked up. Publicly.
I cast aspersions where none were warranted. I called out Google+ on Twitter (in front of 68K followers no less) for a bug that—I argued—proved that they’d stopped doing QA (an essential step in the launch of any product at Google) and must have therefore and finally abandoned its social network.
But I was wrong.
The problem—as diagnosed by Googler Melissa Chang —was interference from Jesse Middleton’s Better BCC extension. Once I disabled it, the problem went away. (He tells me that he’s updated his extension to address this.)
Egg on my face. My bad. And apologies to my Googler friends Ade and Paul, in particular, for pointing out my mistake.
So what the fuck is Google+ for anyway?
When I thought about what motivated me to lob this snarkbomb, I realized I was looking for a reaction. I wanted some kind of defiant response to questions that’ve recently bugged me—What’s going on with Google+? Where is it headed? What the fuck is it for, anyway?
The last time David Besbris (Vic Gundotra’s successor and top exec on Google+) was interviewed by Recode, he said nothing. Literally.
No vision. No insight. Just pollyannaish platitudes: “We’re … very happy with the progress of Google+.”
The most salient thing he said was, “[The Google+ audience sees] Google+ as a social network for their interests.”, which at least suggests how the team must be thinking about the network internally. But if they’re more worried about Facebook, Snapchat, or Pinterest—I can’t tell. And if they have a plan and a vision for creating something new and wonderful in the world, I certainly can’t deduce it from their Oct 9 feature release: Polls (a feature I contributed to over a year and a half ago when I was a UX designer on the team).
Furthermore, if you simply look at the velocity of iOS releases across the most popular social apps over 2014, you’ll see that Google+ and Hangouts lag significantly behind (WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook this year, which likely explains their lack of updates).
Why do I care about Google+?
Dear reader, I wouldn’t fault you if you’re wondering why I give a shit. It’s not like I work there anymore. Sure, I have a few friends who do but most rolled off to work on other projects at Google, left, or started new companies. And yes, I run a popular mixology community, but it’s not like it’s blowing up or anything.
So why do I care?
Simple: for the same reason that motivated me to join Google in 2010— that the future of digital identity should not be determined by one company (namely, Facebook). I still believe that competition in this space is better for consumers, for startups, and for the industry. And Google still remains one of the few companies (besides Apple, perhaps) that stands a chance to take on Facebook in this arena—but Google+, as I see it, has lost its way.
(Or maybe never found its way. I dunno.)
It matters to me because there’s a lot at stake here—way more than the success of a mere social network. What’s at stake is how individuals participate in the web ecosystem, and whether one company will determine how we get online, gain access, connect and communicate through the increasing number of apps, devices, and digital experiences that we rely upon.
If you take the long view, you’ll understand why this moment in time is important: the companies and apps that solidify their position in our lives today will likely live on far into the future. Google is one of those companies that has already done this. I believe Facebook will too. So the fundamental problem that I have with Google+ is that I just don’t understand it. And what I don’t understand makes me nervous—and should make you nervous too.
Digital identity, circa 2014
I’ll be the first (well, maybe the second) to admit that we’re no longer living in the golden era of social networking. We’ve migrated away from the mouse and keyboard era of computing and replaced them with glossy, touchable surfaces that we carry around in our pockets and alert us to all of our friends’ most recent doings. We have access to our contacts, to information, and to superpowers that we’ve never had before. And not only are we starting to take this all for granted—there’s a younger generation growing up without any conception of a time Before Siri, and are living Post Browser.
All this is perfectly normal to them. Things are exactly as they should be, and always have been.
So why does the competition for control of digital identity matter anymore? Frankly, because as I’ve long held, identity is the platform—the killer app of networked personal computing devices (even more so as we increasingly depend on more than one authenticated device at a time!).
Digital identity unlocks universal personalization (i.e. better ads), payments and commerce (i.e. Snapcash), environmental adaptation (i.e. an Uber that plays your Spotify music), communications (i.e. Path Talk), and access (i.e. Sosh Concierge). Today’s most exciting apps are barely scratching the surface of what will be possible when there are years of preferences data stored up on each of us, that we can leverage at a moments notice, in any context.
Privacy is a four-letter word
But before you go get your pitchfork and scream bloody murder about the loss of individual “privacy”, stop for a second.
This word, privacy ?— it’s a problem.
It’s one of those words that puts a stop to useful conversations and prevents us from actually engaging with what’s going on in our digital lives. It obscures and glosses over.
WAKE UP!
Maintaining your privacy doesn’t strictly mean keeping people from having data or information about you. Certainly not preventing yourself from having access to data about yourself. Privacy is about the ability to be left alone, or about not being watched, if you don’t want to be. Which is fine. Turn on Do Not Disturb. There—you’ve got a bit of your privacy back. But that has nothing to do with the huge amounts of data you’re still producing and is being tracked.
So, given that expectations of privacy are changing (or being changed), I challenge you: what if you want to be watched? What if you were offered an outsize amount of value in exchange for allowing someone else to watch you? What would you do? Who would you want to watch over you? Who would you want to look after you and your best interests? Who would you trust? Do you feel like you have reasonable choices in today’s marketplace?
This, my friends, is the dilemma presented and the opportunity omitted by an overused term like “privacy”.
Taking the data-positive perspective, it seems completely reasonable to me that companies would vie to become my lifelong “data bank”. Ultimately I do want companies to know more about me and to use more data about me in exchange for better, faster, easier, and cheaper experiences. But I also want to be treated like an adult when talking about my data. Watery terms like “cloud” or “dropbox” or “backup” sound utilitarian but mask the true aspirations of these service providers. They should just come out and say it: they want all this information to establish a competitive advantage in delivering more personalized services to me and people like me. Backing up my files is absolutely not the long game (but it’s a convenient lock-in strategy in the meantime).
Seizing your data capital
Here’s the thing: you and me, we’re being tracked whether we like it or not. Use a web browser, use apps —and there’s a company or companies out there amassing huge amounts of data about every click, tap, photo, notification, or icon in your digital life. Sometimes they anonymize it so that your preferences or behavioral data can’t be easily tracked back to you, but then you have no way of auditing that information, accessing it, or perhaps granting access to some other trusted party of your choosing. This may reassure you that your data won’t be that valuable if its leaked when there’s another breach, but this also means that you’re leaving a ton of value on the table. And frankly, most of these companies (especially the ad-driven ones) don’t really care about your data specifically. They can target you just as effectively through other means. And frankly, most would rather anonymize it to avoid embarrassing moments than do the heavy lifting to make your data accessible to you in more useful formats.
Taken at the individual level, you’re just a rounding error at the millionth decimal. And yet this data could be hugely valuable to you if you collect and let it accrue for long enough. This is why I’ve called this kind of information exhaust “data capital”. If you think of this data as your money being burned, maybe you’ll rethink what “privacy” is all about, and what stake you should claim in the data being captured about you.
So what about Google+?
So what does this have to do with Google+?
As it stands, Facebook, Apple, and Google (and to some degree Amazon) are in a battle to know you better than you do. Facebook is pretty clear about what they’re doing, and do a fair job explaining it—and have improved over the years. Apple recently came out aggressively about their own commitment to user privacy (but they make money from hardware, rather than ads). Google’s efforts, meanwhile, seem disjointed and confused, despite significant improvements to their settings and security features. If Google+ was intended to serve as Google’s “social backbone”, it should be the locus of control and access over the kind of information I’ve described above. And yet… it’s not. Far from it, in fact.
To my point, most people would likely describe Google+ as a newsfeed, a kind of Facebook-lite. Sure, it’s got neat photo and video chat apps hanging off of it. And die-hard users would call out the interest-based communities as the reason they return, as Bez did. But few if any would say that it’s where they go to understand the data that Google holds about them, or where they go to adjust their preferences, or to adjust how people see and find them online. And maybe that’s intentional and maybe that’s the point—but if so, then I don’t get it. Why did the world need another Facebook, unless to benefit Google by making their ad targeting more effective? Why wasn’t Google+ one of Google’s famous moonshots, intended to improve personal social networking by 10x? Why did they take a conventional approach to social networking rather than think about what controls people might need in the next 5–10 years in their digital lives? Moreover, how does Google+ help deliver better, richer, more interesting, and more personalized experiences, to motivate people to store more information with Google? I mean, why did Google hitch their digital identity strategy to 2004-era social networking trends?
And damnit all, why am I so disappointed?!
When it comes right down to it, maybe I just don’t want to admit that I spent 3½ years working on something that will become irrelevant. Even if Google+ regains focus and simplifies its mission, I want to believe that we were working on something significant and that had an opinion about what the world should look like. Lately, I just feel like Google+ is confused and adrift at sea. It’s so far behind, how can it possibly catch up? I mean, Facebook launched a polling ad unit in 2009; five years later, Google+ launched their own. Is mentions really a differentiator? (Nope, Facebook has a dedicated app for that, and it’s been baked into Twitter for how long?) Is this kind of slow-following going to win the future?
I’m disappointed because I expect better from Google. Like, self-driving cars better, or hot-air balloon internet access better. I don’t want excuses. I don’t want to hear about how competitive or political the internal environment is. Larry is a strong leader. Sundar is too. And I know that they’re getting a ton of mileage (and cash) out of ads, Chrome, and Android —there are plenty of resources. Leaving internet identity in Facebook’s hands would be a massive fail. At least Twitter is making a go at it with Digits. But how does Google[+] fit into this picture? Will it ever? (And no, Google+ Sign In isn’t enough.)
Is there any hope that Google+ will find a compelling reason to continue to exist, and perhaps deliver on the data-positive vision I’ve outlined above?
The missed opportunity
I remember the primordial days of Emerald Sea (the codename for Google+). Its original name was Google Me (at least until Kevin Rose leaked the name and a new name needed to be chosen). I loved the name, not because it was a good name, but because of what it implied: “Just google me and I’ll be there”. Google Me was necessary to improve Google’s profile and social graph to make search more personalized and humane. It was like Google was saying, “We’re going to be your trusted partner in cyberspace, and we’ll help you surface the right information to the people you choose, at the right time.” The value proposition was search oriented, rather than social.
So, if I searched for my mom’s phone number on Google, I could find it—because it‘d be on her profile and she would have shared it with me. An obvious query like “mom’s phone number” would work.
“Google is where I search for things and I should be able to find useful information about my friends if they’ve shared it with me.”
But when the name to Google+ (cue terrifying echos of Microsoft Plus!), the focus shifted. Now, not only was Google+ fast-following Facebook, but the name of the product was a hedge against another Buzz-like debacle. If for some reason the product failed (and lots of Buzz veterans actively worried about this), Google could just drop the “+” and pretend the “project” never existed. Genius.
But this was all wrong. By starting off on a defensive footing, Google+ didn’t defiantly stand for something special in the world. Instead it defined itself by what it wasn’t—i.e. Facebook—though it was positioned internally as chasing after their success. And while Facebook executed a bold, ambitious (and uncomfortable) plan to create a “more open and connected world”, Google+ confusingly claimed to be rethinking real-life sharing on the web, with “nuance and richness”, even though we clearly hadn’t figured it out. Indeed, our solution (Circles (read: “lists”) put the onus on the user to manually curate groups of people—a great concept in theory, but too arduous and awkward in practice.
Now, it’d be one thing if Circles and “better privacy” (there’s that word again!) were merely a launch ploy to drum up interest (it’s worked for others in the past). Instead, Google+ continued to throw its weight behind this narrative long after Facebook overhauled its privacy features, and “grew up”. To this day, I still don’t know what Google+ is for, let alone better at than Facebook. Some might argue it’s “cleaner” and has fewer ads, but even those won’t be lasting competitive advantages.
What’s sad to me is that the promise of Google Me could be found in launch post: “We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests.”
Yes! Yes!
But by launching a conventional social network, Google missed the pivotal opportunity to establish a data-positive paradigm for sharing, individual control, and personalization that set itself apart from Facebook. Ultimately it offered too little, too late.
More recently, the Google+ marketing team came back to the message of personalization— at least for Google’s own apps. Instead, Google+ was about uniting Google products with one user account —something that should have been inevitable after Eric Schmidt’s tenure ended anyway.
So now what?
I read this passage from the launch post for Google+ and I get excited, to this day. The sentiment here echoes Ello’s claims upon their launch. The difference is that I actually believe Google to make good on these promises.
You and over a billion others trust Google, and we don’t take this lightly. In fact we’ve focused on the user for over a decade: liberating data, working for an open Internet, and respecting people’s freedom to be who they want to be. We realize, however, that Google+ is a different kind of project, requiring a different kind of focus?—?on you. That’s why we’re giving you more ways to stay private or go public; more meaningful choices around your friends and your data; and more ways to let us know how we’re doing. All across Google.
Yes! Yes!
But now what? Google’s work here is far from over.
The Google+ feed does nothing towards addressing the issues I’ve raised about data capital and privacy. Sure, Google gives you controls to set your ads preferences, but this framing is all wrong. Whereas Pinterest helps you express your aspirational self, Google pigeonholes you into what you already are, based on your previous search activity. This is where improving the data that Google has about you—in turn trusting Google as a steward of that data—changes the nature of the conversation by making it less about “privacy” and more about empowerment. While some people will freak out (as they always do), this would be a bold, productive, future-forward direction to take. Hell, we’re living in this reality already—but few give straight talk about what’s going on, and how their data is, or could be, used for their benefit. If Google took the approach I’ve suggested here—becoming more user-centric—I’d finally understand why what they’re doing is different. And then I could evaluate Google on being a steward of my data, and acting as my universal user agent in my digital life.
But until that happens, [object Object] makes just as much sense to me as their strategy.
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
Raising Morale is Goal of Yahoo's New Policy
Story first appeared on The New York Times -
When Marissa Mayer took over as chief executive at Yahoo last summer, she confronted a Silicon Valley campus that was very different from the one she had left at Google.
Parking lots and entire floors of cubicles were nearly empty because some employees were working as little as possible and leaving early.
Then there were the 200 or so people who had work-at-home arrangements. Although they collected Yahoo paychecks, some did little work for the company and a few had even begun their own start-ups on the side.
These were among the factors that led Ms. Mayer to announce last week that she was abolishing Yahoo’s work-from-home policy, saying that to create a new culture of innovation and collaboration at the company, employees had to report to work.
The announcement ignited a national debate over workplace flexibility — and within Yahoo has inspired much water cooler conversation and some concern.
But former and current Yahoo employees said that Ms. Mayer made the decision not as a referendum on working remotely, but to address problems particular to Yahoo. They painted a picture of a company where employees were aimless and morale was low, and a bloated bureaucracy had taken Yahoo out of competition with its more nimble rivals.
“In the tech world it was such a bummer to say you worked for Yahoo,” said a former senior employee who, like many Yahoo insiders, would speak only anonymously to preserve professional relationships. The employee added, “I’ve heard she wants to make Yahoo young and cool.”
Restoring Yahoo’s cool — from revitalizing behind-the-times products to reversing deteriorating morale and culture — is hard to do if people are not there, Ms. Mayer concluded. That view was reflected in Yahoo’s only statement on the work-at-home policy change: “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home. This is about what is right for Yahoo, right now.”
Yahoo declined to comment further.
On Monday, another ailing company, Best Buy, announced that it, too, would no longer permit employees to work remotely, reversing one of the most permissive flexible workplace policies in the business world.
Inside Yahoo, there has been mixed reaction to the policy change. Some employees said that they were able to be highly productive by working remotely, and that it helped them concentrate on work instead of the chaos inside Yahoo.
Brandon Holley, former editor of Shine, Yahoo’s women’s site, said she built the site and signed on big-name advertisers while she and most of her team worked from homes across the country.
“It grew very rapidly,” said Ms. Holley, who is now editor of Lucky, Condé Nast’s shopping magazine. “A lot of that had to do with the lack of distraction in a very distracted company.”
The change to the work-at-home policy initially angered some employees who had such arrangements, and worried others who occasionally stayed home to care for a sick child or receive a delivery. Reports that Ms. Mayer built a nursery for her young son next to her office made parents working at Yahoo even angrier.
This week, the policy continued to be the topic of much discussion at the company, as people wondered aloud whether they would lose that flexibility, said employees who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
But for the most part, those employees said, those concerns have been eased by managers who assured them that the real targets of Yahoo’s memo were the approximately 200 employees who work from home full time.
One manager said he told his employees, “Be here when you can. Use your best judgment. But if you have to stay home for the cable guy or because your kid is sick, do it.”
Many of Yahoo’s problems are visible to people outside the company. It missed the two biggest trends on the Internet — social networking and mobile. Its home page and e-mail services had become relics used by people who had never bothered to change their habits. It ceded its crown as the biggest seller of display ads to Facebook and Google. Its stock price was plummeting.
Inside the company, though, there were deeper cultural issues invisible from the outside. For Ms. Mayer’s ambitious plans to turn around the company to work, employees briefed on her strategy said, she believed Yahoo needed “all hands on deck.”
Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s director of human resources and the author of the new policy, is an extreme example of this philosophy. She commutes to Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale, Calif., from her home in New York, where she lives with her children.
“Morale was terrible because the company was thought to be dying,” said a former manager at Yahoo, who would speak only anonymously to preserve business relationships. “When you have those root issues, an employee work force that is not terribly motivated, it built bad habits over years.”
Yahoo has withstood many changes over the years, starting with a turnover of six chief executives in five years, each with his or her own deputies and missions for the company. This led to confusion among the work force about the company’s goals and frustration that projects would be pulled midstream by a new chief executive.
The company had hired many managers to oversee new tech products, but the extra levels of management slowed product development, former employees said.
“Where Yahoo competes, with companies like Facebook churning out a new release every single day, there was a lot of bloat slowing down product decisions,” the former manager said.
The new policy is the first unpopular big move Ms. Mayer has made. Yahoo insiders said they did not expect the employee and media outcry that followed.
Employees said that unlike previous chief executives, who focused outside Yahoo, she has prioritized fixing the company internally and motivating employees.
She introduced free food in the cafeterias, swapped employees’ BlackBerrys for iPhones and Android phones and started a Friday all-employee meeting where executives take questions and speak candidly.
A recent internal employee survey found that 95 percent of employees were optimistic about the company’s future, a 32 percent bump from the previous survey, Ms. Mayer said in a call with analysts in January.
Résumés have begun arriving from employees at competitors like Facebook and Google, which rarely happened in the past, according to one person briefed on Yahoo hiring.
Since Ms. Mayer made food free, there are now crowds in the cafeterias, lingering to talk about new ideas, employees say — exactly what she wants to encourage by requiring people to work in the office.
“I understand why Marissa Mayer would want to call everybody back into work,” Ms. Holley said. “It’s kind of a necessary step.”
When Marissa Mayer took over as chief executive at Yahoo last summer, she confronted a Silicon Valley campus that was very different from the one she had left at Google.
Parking lots and entire floors of cubicles were nearly empty because some employees were working as little as possible and leaving early.
Then there were the 200 or so people who had work-at-home arrangements. Although they collected Yahoo paychecks, some did little work for the company and a few had even begun their own start-ups on the side.
These were among the factors that led Ms. Mayer to announce last week that she was abolishing Yahoo’s work-from-home policy, saying that to create a new culture of innovation and collaboration at the company, employees had to report to work.
The announcement ignited a national debate over workplace flexibility — and within Yahoo has inspired much water cooler conversation and some concern.
But former and current Yahoo employees said that Ms. Mayer made the decision not as a referendum on working remotely, but to address problems particular to Yahoo. They painted a picture of a company where employees were aimless and morale was low, and a bloated bureaucracy had taken Yahoo out of competition with its more nimble rivals.
“In the tech world it was such a bummer to say you worked for Yahoo,” said a former senior employee who, like many Yahoo insiders, would speak only anonymously to preserve professional relationships. The employee added, “I’ve heard she wants to make Yahoo young and cool.”
Restoring Yahoo’s cool — from revitalizing behind-the-times products to reversing deteriorating morale and culture — is hard to do if people are not there, Ms. Mayer concluded. That view was reflected in Yahoo’s only statement on the work-at-home policy change: “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home. This is about what is right for Yahoo, right now.”
Yahoo declined to comment further.
On Monday, another ailing company, Best Buy, announced that it, too, would no longer permit employees to work remotely, reversing one of the most permissive flexible workplace policies in the business world.
Inside Yahoo, there has been mixed reaction to the policy change. Some employees said that they were able to be highly productive by working remotely, and that it helped them concentrate on work instead of the chaos inside Yahoo.
Brandon Holley, former editor of Shine, Yahoo’s women’s site, said she built the site and signed on big-name advertisers while she and most of her team worked from homes across the country.
“It grew very rapidly,” said Ms. Holley, who is now editor of Lucky, Condé Nast’s shopping magazine. “A lot of that had to do with the lack of distraction in a very distracted company.”
The change to the work-at-home policy initially angered some employees who had such arrangements, and worried others who occasionally stayed home to care for a sick child or receive a delivery. Reports that Ms. Mayer built a nursery for her young son next to her office made parents working at Yahoo even angrier.
This week, the policy continued to be the topic of much discussion at the company, as people wondered aloud whether they would lose that flexibility, said employees who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
But for the most part, those employees said, those concerns have been eased by managers who assured them that the real targets of Yahoo’s memo were the approximately 200 employees who work from home full time.
One manager said he told his employees, “Be here when you can. Use your best judgment. But if you have to stay home for the cable guy or because your kid is sick, do it.”
Many of Yahoo’s problems are visible to people outside the company. It missed the two biggest trends on the Internet — social networking and mobile. Its home page and e-mail services had become relics used by people who had never bothered to change their habits. It ceded its crown as the biggest seller of display ads to Facebook and Google. Its stock price was plummeting.
Inside the company, though, there were deeper cultural issues invisible from the outside. For Ms. Mayer’s ambitious plans to turn around the company to work, employees briefed on her strategy said, she believed Yahoo needed “all hands on deck.”
Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s director of human resources and the author of the new policy, is an extreme example of this philosophy. She commutes to Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale, Calif., from her home in New York, where she lives with her children.
“Morale was terrible because the company was thought to be dying,” said a former manager at Yahoo, who would speak only anonymously to preserve business relationships. “When you have those root issues, an employee work force that is not terribly motivated, it built bad habits over years.”
Yahoo has withstood many changes over the years, starting with a turnover of six chief executives in five years, each with his or her own deputies and missions for the company. This led to confusion among the work force about the company’s goals and frustration that projects would be pulled midstream by a new chief executive.
The company had hired many managers to oversee new tech products, but the extra levels of management slowed product development, former employees said.
“Where Yahoo competes, with companies like Facebook churning out a new release every single day, there was a lot of bloat slowing down product decisions,” the former manager said.
The new policy is the first unpopular big move Ms. Mayer has made. Yahoo insiders said they did not expect the employee and media outcry that followed.
Employees said that unlike previous chief executives, who focused outside Yahoo, she has prioritized fixing the company internally and motivating employees.
She introduced free food in the cafeterias, swapped employees’ BlackBerrys for iPhones and Android phones and started a Friday all-employee meeting where executives take questions and speak candidly.
A recent internal employee survey found that 95 percent of employees were optimistic about the company’s future, a 32 percent bump from the previous survey, Ms. Mayer said in a call with analysts in January.
Résumés have begun arriving from employees at competitors like Facebook and Google, which rarely happened in the past, according to one person briefed on Yahoo hiring.
Since Ms. Mayer made food free, there are now crowds in the cafeterias, lingering to talk about new ideas, employees say — exactly what she wants to encourage by requiring people to work in the office.
“I understand why Marissa Mayer would want to call everybody back into work,” Ms. Holley said. “It’s kind of a necessary step.”
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
'New, More Modern' Yahoo Being Introduced
Story first appeared on Business Insider -
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just put up a blog post announcing a "new, more modern" Yahoo.
It's her long-expected, this-time-it's-official update to the Yahoo homepage She says the page is more personal.
Features:
At a Goldman Sach's conference in San Francisco last week, Mayer put it this way: "I'm not confused, our biggest problem right now is impressions. We're growing prices, we need to grow usage."
Here is Mayer's entire blog post:
Yahoo! first began as Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web, a directory of links created to help organize the Internet during its very early days. That simple directory evolved through the years into the Yahoo! we know today -- a starting point for your daily habits. Whether checking the latest news, sports scores, or just searching, Yahoo! has always been about bringing you the very best of the web. And, today, we’re introducing a new, more modern experience to do just that.
Designed to be more intuitive and personal, the new Yahoo! experience is all about your interests and preferences. Since streams of information have become the paradigm of choice on the web, we’re introducing a newsfeed with infinite scroll, letting you experience a virtually endless feed of news articles. Whether you are a sports fanatic or entertainment buff, you can easily customize your newsfeed to your interests. And, to make Yahoo! even more social, you can log in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID to get articles from thousands of news sources as well as those shared by your friends.
Because you come to Yahoo! everyday for must-know information, we’ve also introduced newly designed applications. From your local weather forecast to Facebook friends’ birthdays, you’ll always have the information you need. We’ve also refreshed some of what you love most -- including our Yahoo! editorial features, and the daily snapshot into popular trending web searches.
The new Yahoo! experience works well on the go -- we’ve optimized it for smartphones and tablets. And, thanks to some under-the-hood improvements, Yahoo! is also faster.
Over the next few days, our U.S. users will begin to see the new Yahoo! experience and we’re excited to see the response. Over the coming months, we’ll continue to make changes and improvements, so today is just the beginning.
Here's a more detailed blog post from Mike Kearns, Yahoo VP of product::
If you’ve had a chance to visit Yahoo! today, you may have noticed a few changes. We’ve launched a fresh, dynamic and personalized Yahoo! experience that brings you relevant content even faster. It’s now easier for you to get your daily dose of weather, stock quotes, sports scores, and more. These changes are just the first step in making Yahoo! personalized, and the more you visit Yahoo!, the better it will become. Below are a few top tips on how to get the most out of the new Yahoo!.
Get personal, sign-in
To view more personally relevant content in the newsfeed, just sign in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID in the upper right corner of your screen.
Filter your newsfeed.
The newsfeed defaults to a "blend" of story types, but also allows you to filter your view through a handful of popular categories, such as news, local, entertainment and sports. For additional choices in the newsfeed filter, just click the “More” button to choose from other categories that interest you like business, technology, politics or science. If you want to see fewer stories about a particular topic in the future, hover your cursor to the right of the story and click on the “X” button. And remember, the more feedback you provide, the more personalized and relevant your experience will be.
Share your favorite content from Yahoo!.
In addition to seeing news stories that your friends have read and shared, you can easily share with them. When you come across a news item that you’d like to share, hover over it to view a button that allows you to share the story via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
Reach the bottom of the page? Quickly navigate back up to the top.
If you’ve scrolled far down and want to head back to the top, click on the handy back-to-top arrow in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to be taken back to the top of your Yahoo!.
Check out weather, sports, stocks and more with new applications.
There are seven new applications on the right side of the screen to connect you with information you view everyday, like weather, stocks, sports, friends’ birthdays, horoscopes, Flickr photos and popular videos from Yahoo!. To personalize the applications, simply hover over the upper right side to click on the gears icon. For example, getting ready for March Madness? Add your favorite teams to the Sports application to catch up on the latest scores. Keeping an eye on your investments? To view stock quotes, click on the gears icon in the Quotes application to integrate your portfolio, look up quotes, or add new stocks. Travel often? Add as many cities as you’d like to the Weather application.
Customize your applications.
To remove a particular application, click the “x” button in the upper right corner of the application box. Change your mind? You can add them all back by selecting “Restore all” in the area where the applications used to be displayed.
Never forget a birthday.
If you’ve signed into Yahoo! via Facebook, the Birthday application offers an easy way to be reminded of upcoming birthdays from your circle of friends.
View the latest Flickr photos.
If you love photos, you can customize the Flickr application to display photos taken by the people you’re following. If you don’t have a Flickr account or if you’re not signed into Yahoo!, you’ll be shown some of the most recent and most interesting photos on Flickr.
On an iOS or Android device? Try swiping.
Simply visit yahoo.com on your tablet or mobile device, swipe through the “Today” stories to browse the freshest content. As you scroll down the newsfeed you can swipe left to take action on content. Find a story you like? Swipe left to share it. You also can swipe left to experience the different applications.
The best way to learn your way around the new Yahoo! is by checking it out yourself. Visit Yahoo! today to see what’s new!
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just put up a blog post announcing a "new, more modern" Yahoo.
It's her long-expected, this-time-it's-official update to the Yahoo homepage She says the page is more personal.
Features:
- "A newsfeed with infinite scroll."
- "You can log in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID to get articles from thousands of news sources as well as those shared by your friends."
- New applications, like a list of your Facebook friends' birthdays.
- Refreshed "Yahoo! editorial features."
- The list of popular searches of the moment has a "refreshed" look.
- It's faster.
- It's optimized for tablets and smartphones.
- The business goal for the new homepage is simple: Yahoo needs to grow its userbase, and it needs all of it users to spend more time on the site.
At a Goldman Sach's conference in San Francisco last week, Mayer put it this way: "I'm not confused, our biggest problem right now is impressions. We're growing prices, we need to grow usage."
Here is Mayer's entire blog post:
Yahoo! first began as Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web, a directory of links created to help organize the Internet during its very early days. That simple directory evolved through the years into the Yahoo! we know today -- a starting point for your daily habits. Whether checking the latest news, sports scores, or just searching, Yahoo! has always been about bringing you the very best of the web. And, today, we’re introducing a new, more modern experience to do just that.
Designed to be more intuitive and personal, the new Yahoo! experience is all about your interests and preferences. Since streams of information have become the paradigm of choice on the web, we’re introducing a newsfeed with infinite scroll, letting you experience a virtually endless feed of news articles. Whether you are a sports fanatic or entertainment buff, you can easily customize your newsfeed to your interests. And, to make Yahoo! even more social, you can log in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID to get articles from thousands of news sources as well as those shared by your friends.
Because you come to Yahoo! everyday for must-know information, we’ve also introduced newly designed applications. From your local weather forecast to Facebook friends’ birthdays, you’ll always have the information you need. We’ve also refreshed some of what you love most -- including our Yahoo! editorial features, and the daily snapshot into popular trending web searches.
The new Yahoo! experience works well on the go -- we’ve optimized it for smartphones and tablets. And, thanks to some under-the-hood improvements, Yahoo! is also faster.
Here's a more detailed blog post from Mike Kearns, Yahoo VP of product::
If you’ve had a chance to visit Yahoo! today, you may have noticed a few changes. We’ve launched a fresh, dynamic and personalized Yahoo! experience that brings you relevant content even faster. It’s now easier for you to get your daily dose of weather, stock quotes, sports scores, and more. These changes are just the first step in making Yahoo! personalized, and the more you visit Yahoo!, the better it will become. Below are a few top tips on how to get the most out of the new Yahoo!.
Get personal, sign-in
To view more personally relevant content in the newsfeed, just sign in with your Yahoo! or Facebook ID in the upper right corner of your screen.
Filter your newsfeed.
The newsfeed defaults to a "blend" of story types, but also allows you to filter your view through a handful of popular categories, such as news, local, entertainment and sports. For additional choices in the newsfeed filter, just click the “More” button to choose from other categories that interest you like business, technology, politics or science. If you want to see fewer stories about a particular topic in the future, hover your cursor to the right of the story and click on the “X” button. And remember, the more feedback you provide, the more personalized and relevant your experience will be.
Share your favorite content from Yahoo!.
In addition to seeing news stories that your friends have read and shared, you can easily share with them. When you come across a news item that you’d like to share, hover over it to view a button that allows you to share the story via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
Reach the bottom of the page? Quickly navigate back up to the top.
If you’ve scrolled far down and want to head back to the top, click on the handy back-to-top arrow in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to be taken back to the top of your Yahoo!.
Check out weather, sports, stocks and more with new applications.
There are seven new applications on the right side of the screen to connect you with information you view everyday, like weather, stocks, sports, friends’ birthdays, horoscopes, Flickr photos and popular videos from Yahoo!. To personalize the applications, simply hover over the upper right side to click on the gears icon. For example, getting ready for March Madness? Add your favorite teams to the Sports application to catch up on the latest scores. Keeping an eye on your investments? To view stock quotes, click on the gears icon in the Quotes application to integrate your portfolio, look up quotes, or add new stocks. Travel often? Add as many cities as you’d like to the Weather application.
Customize your applications.
To remove a particular application, click the “x” button in the upper right corner of the application box. Change your mind? You can add them all back by selecting “Restore all” in the area where the applications used to be displayed.
Never forget a birthday.
If you’ve signed into Yahoo! via Facebook, the Birthday application offers an easy way to be reminded of upcoming birthdays from your circle of friends.
View the latest Flickr photos.
If you love photos, you can customize the Flickr application to display photos taken by the people you’re following. If you don’t have a Flickr account or if you’re not signed into Yahoo!, you’ll be shown some of the most recent and most interesting photos on Flickr.
Simply visit yahoo.com on your tablet or mobile device, swipe through the “Today” stories to browse the freshest content. As you scroll down the newsfeed you can swipe left to take action on content. Find a story you like? Swipe left to share it. You also can swipe left to experience the different applications.
The best way to learn your way around the new Yahoo! is by checking it out yourself. Visit Yahoo! today to see what’s new!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Yahoo Profits On The Upswing
Story first appeared on USA Today -
Marissa Mayer has brought the yippee! back to Yahoo.
Under a company reboot, the Internet pioneer reported earnings that beat analyst forecasts after the close of markets Monday.
Shares of Yahoo initially jumped 4.5% to $21.22 in after-hours trading following the report.
Yahoo reported fourth-quarter profit of $272 million on revenue of $1.22 billion, compared with a profit of $295 million on revenue of $1.17 billion a year ago.
The revenue uptick marks a first year-over-year gain in four years as CEO Mayer has begun turnaround efforts at Yahoo.
Yahoo's adjusted earnings per share of 32 cents beat the 27 cent average of analyst estimates from Thomson Reuters.
"There's a lot of work to be done," Mayer said on a conference call with investors and analysts. "Mobile will be key to our business."
There's a huge exodus of consumers from PCs spending more time on mobile devices that's causing companies ranging from Google, Facebook, Zynga and Yahoo to scramble to meet new advertising needs.
Shares of Yahoo have shot up 30% since Mayer took the role in July on optimism that the former Google executive can turn around the company's fortune as it battles for advertising.
Yahoo reported a 14% increase in search revenue in the quarter compared with last year. "Theoretically, there's a lot of growth potential if they can boost search," says IDC analyst Karsten Weide, a former Yahoo employee.
Google holds 66.7% of the search market, trailed by Microsoft, with 16.3%, Yahoo's 12.2%, Ask.com's 3% and AOL's 1.8%, according to market researcher ComScore.
Despite gains, Yahoo saw a 5% decline in display advertising revenue from a year ago. Yahoo has been dogged by a need for better tools to serve advertisers. "Agencies are increasingly looking for more automation — Yahoo is kind of tepid in that regard," Weide says. I "think that's one of the ways that Yahoo can get out of a crisis."
Yahoo is the No. 2-most visited U.S. Internet destination behind Google, according to ComScore. Ranking after Yahoo comes Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon.com and AOL.
Yahoo said Flickr usage is up 25% since the company refreshed the online photo service in the quarter.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Mayer (Yahoo) Looking for Mobile Growth
Article first appeared on CNBC -
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is confident that her company will be able to capitalize on the explosion in mobile communication, saying Yahoo will focus on strong partnerships with Apple, Google and Facebook.
"The nice thing at Yahoo is we have all of the content that people want on their phones. We have these daily habits. Whenever you're dealing with a daily habit, and really providing a lot of value around it,there's an opportunity," Mayer said at the World Economic Forum in Davos,Switzerland on Friday.
"There's really an opportunity for strong partnerships. That's what we'll be focused on. So we work with for example Apple and Google in terms of the operating system. In terms of the social network we have a strong partnership with Facebook," she said.
She played down mobile privacy concerns, saying it would always be "something users should consider."
"But I also think that privacy is always a trade-off. When you give up some of your personal information, you get some functionality in return. It's really about making those trade-offs in a very informed way," she said.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
What will Facebook's big news be? Some contenders
originally appeared in USA Today:
Silicon Valley's latest parlor game this week is what Facebook is up to on Tuesday, when it announces news at its headquarters in nearby Menlo Park.
Anticipation of the first big news from Facebook in months has prompted investors to snap up shares and push them above $30 — though still shy of the company's IPO price of $38 in May. Facebook closed at $30.95 Monday.
The early money is on search engine-related news, given its high financial stakes. Google's share of the overall U.S. mobile ad market — 57%, compared with Facebook's 9% — is largely because of its search business.
Facebook might also make a more aggressive push into gaming or leverage its $1 billion acquisition of photo-sharing site Instagram.
Other possibilities include new ad formats, mobile ad advancements and an external ad network, according to the CEO of Didit.
Facebook raked in about $4.2 billion from advertising last year — 84% of its estimated $5 billion in total revenue, according to eMarketer. Leading the charge were mobile display sales. Facebook took home about 18% of the U.S. market last year — or $339 million — besting Google's 17%.
Google took home 15% of the nearly $15 billion U.S. display ad market, with Facebook close behind.
Payments accounted for Facebook's remaining $800 million in 2012 revenue, eMarketer estimates.
Long odds are on a long-rumored smartphone announcement coming Tuesday despite mild protestations from CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a September public interview.
The mobile space is a particularly bedeviling proposition for Facebook, which has been late to the market even as Americans continue to eschew PCs for smartphones and tablets.
EMarketer estimates 70 million people in the USA regularly access Facebook from a phone — about half of Facebook's active domestic audience.
The marketplace has room for a Facebook phone, according to a telecommunications analyst that follows Facebook said in a note last week. Today, only Apple and Google are heavy hitters.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Netflix, CEO Hastings get SEC warning for Facebook Post
originally appeared in USA Today:
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a "Wells Notice" to online video streaming business Netflix and its CEO, the company said Thursday.
The move arises from regulators' determination that Netflix's CEO violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, a rule that requires companies to share material and non-public information with all investors. Netflix disclosed the receipt of the Wells Notice in a regulatory filing.
The Securities and Exchange Commission declined comment.
Netflix' CEO wrote in an regulatory filing the SEC's allegation stems from a posting he made on Facebook in early July. In that post, he told the 200,000 people who subscribe to his posts that Netflix members have viewed more than 1 billion hours of programming on the service in June. The company did not file an official regulatory filing disclosing that information.
He disputes the allegation, saying that having 200,000 followings on Facebook made the Facebook disclosure public. He says the fact regarding the 1 billion hours of viewing not only wasn't material, but had already been disclosed on a public blog.
He also says that while Netflix' stock rose the day he posted on Facebook, the stock's rise started before the mid-morning post as made and likely driven by a positive Citigroup research report.
Netflix' CEO wrote that he remains optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC's review process.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a "Wells Notice" to online video streaming business Netflix and its CEO, the company said Thursday.
The move arises from regulators' determination that Netflix's CEO violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, a rule that requires companies to share material and non-public information with all investors. Netflix disclosed the receipt of the Wells Notice in a regulatory filing.
The Securities and Exchange Commission declined comment.
Netflix' CEO wrote in an regulatory filing the SEC's allegation stems from a posting he made on Facebook in early July. In that post, he told the 200,000 people who subscribe to his posts that Netflix members have viewed more than 1 billion hours of programming on the service in June. The company did not file an official regulatory filing disclosing that information.
He disputes the allegation, saying that having 200,000 followings on Facebook made the Facebook disclosure public. He says the fact regarding the 1 billion hours of viewing not only wasn't material, but had already been disclosed on a public blog.
He also says that while Netflix' stock rose the day he posted on Facebook, the stock's rise started before the mid-morning post as made and likely driven by a positive Citigroup research report.
Netflix' CEO wrote that he remains optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC's review process.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Key Mobile, Marketing Talents Exit Facebook
Story first reported from USA Today
SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook hasn't just been losing market value.
Since its poorly received IPO in May, the social-networking company has lost a handful of top-ranking executives.
The latest defections came last week, when Ethan Beard, who is responsible for developing relationships with top app makers, and Katie Mitic, platform marketing director, announced pending departures. Jonathan Matus, mobile platform marketing manager, also is leaving.
The announcements come after the high-profile exits of chief technology officer Bret Taylor in June to start his own company, and Open Graph product manager Carl Sjogreen last month.
The loss of key mobile and marketing personnel, on the heels of a $157 million second-quarter loss, won't help Facebook shares, which have drooped to $20.72 — nearly half of their $38 starting price. Questions about its online and mobile advertising business have led to a drop in the company's initial valuation to $43.5 billion, from $100 billion.
Shares may further decline when Facebook's first lockup period for stock ends Aug. 17, allowing employees and early investors to sell some of their shares.
The talent drain underscores intense competition for employees in Silicon Valley, and the temptation for workers — even those at Facebook — to flirt with start-ups, where they can wield more influence, says social-media analyst Greg Sterling.
"Start-up junkies get restless after a few years," says Sterling, noting that fledgling companies offer bigger potential salaries and greater long-term stock payoffs. "This is not a time to lose top talent. That is Facebook's challenge."
"We're fortunate to have many, many talented people join the company each week, and we believe this will serve us well over the long run," Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said in a statement.
But stock options don't appear to be enough to keep employees rooted at Facebook.
Beard worked at Facebook more than four years, and most of his stock options have likely vested. Four years is the customary amount of time for options to fully vest at Silicon Valley companies. Mitic has been at Facebook only two years; Matus, one.
Both are likely to have received stock before Facebook's IPO. It's possible they're betting Facebook's stock will not rise so steeply the next year or two that they'd be leaving serious cash on the table.
SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook hasn't just been losing market value.
Since its poorly received IPO in May, the social-networking company has lost a handful of top-ranking executives.
The latest defections came last week, when Ethan Beard, who is responsible for developing relationships with top app makers, and Katie Mitic, platform marketing director, announced pending departures. Jonathan Matus, mobile platform marketing manager, also is leaving.
The announcements come after the high-profile exits of chief technology officer Bret Taylor in June to start his own company, and Open Graph product manager Carl Sjogreen last month.
The loss of key mobile and marketing personnel, on the heels of a $157 million second-quarter loss, won't help Facebook shares, which have drooped to $20.72 — nearly half of their $38 starting price. Questions about its online and mobile advertising business have led to a drop in the company's initial valuation to $43.5 billion, from $100 billion.
Shares may further decline when Facebook's first lockup period for stock ends Aug. 17, allowing employees and early investors to sell some of their shares.
The talent drain underscores intense competition for employees in Silicon Valley, and the temptation for workers — even those at Facebook — to flirt with start-ups, where they can wield more influence, says social-media analyst Greg Sterling.
"Start-up junkies get restless after a few years," says Sterling, noting that fledgling companies offer bigger potential salaries and greater long-term stock payoffs. "This is not a time to lose top talent. That is Facebook's challenge."
"We're fortunate to have many, many talented people join the company each week, and we believe this will serve us well over the long run," Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said in a statement.
But stock options don't appear to be enough to keep employees rooted at Facebook.
Beard worked at Facebook more than four years, and most of his stock options have likely vested. Four years is the customary amount of time for options to fully vest at Silicon Valley companies. Mitic has been at Facebook only two years; Matus, one.
Both are likely to have received stock before Facebook's IPO. It's possible they're betting Facebook's stock will not rise so steeply the next year or two that they'd be leaving serious cash on the table.
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Thursday, August 02, 2012
Funds Exit Early from Facebook
Story first reported from WSJ.com
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
Fidelity Investments was an early buyer of Facebook Inc. shares. In the spring of 2011, two dozen of its funds bought more than $200 million worth of the company's private stock. Then, when Facebook went public in May, many of those funds and other Fidelity funds loaded up on publicly traded shares.
Now, many of the giant Boston-based company's fund managers are shrinking their stakes.
Twenty-one Fidelity funds sold more than 1.9 million public Facebook shares combined in June, with 16 of them selling more than a quarter of their stakes in the company, according to investment-research firm Morningstar Inc. Private shares can't be traded until later this year.
It is unclear whether the Fidelity funds made or lost money on the Facebook shares, but the stock has languished below its $38 offering price on May 18. In June, it traded between $25.52 and $33.45; shares hit an all-time low of $20.84 before closing at $20.88 on Wednesday.
The moves represent an about-face for Fidelity, one of the first institutional investors to take a significant stake in Facebook and the country's third-largest mutual-fund company by assets. Fidelity's funds owned the shares for at most six weeks—much shorter than the median holding period of about 22 months for U.S. stock funds, according to Morningstar.
To be sure, the sales represent a very small portion of the funds' holdings. Also, 13 Fidelity funds bought 2.2 million shares of Facebook in June, though more than 1.3 million of those went to index funds, which passively track established stock indexes.
Mutual-fund analysts say it is uncommon for mutual funds to flip shares so quickly.
Nearly two dozen Fidelity funds are dumping Facebook funds at a hurried clip, and they sold nearly two million shares in June alone.
A Fidelity spokeswoman said, "Our managers are not tied to a minimum holding period and need to be able to respond to changes in market conditions."
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg met with Fidelity executives, along with other large asset managers, during Facebook's IPO roadshow in May. Morgan Stanley and other underwriters of Facebook stock also called top institutional clients, including Fidelity, before the IPO to tell them their analysts had lowered Facebook's earnings and revenue estimates.
Fidelity wasn't the only company with funds that flipped Facebook shares. Turner Investment Partners' Large Growth fund, which has a typical holding period of about seven months, sold 28% of its shares within weeks of buying them. OppenheimerFunds Inc.'s Global Allocation fund in June sold more than 10,000 shares, or 10% of its holdings.
A fraction of mutual-fund companies, including Fidelity, report holdings on a monthly basis, while the majority report only quarterly. That means investors in most funds that sold shares in May and June won't ever know how much Facebook stock their funds once owned.
The biggest reported seller of shares in June was the Fidelity Puritan fund, a "balanced fund" that invests in both stocks and bonds. It sold more than 623,000 shares, or a quarter of its overall stake. Other big sellers included Fidelity Disciplined Equity, which invests in both growth and value stocks and sold more than 444,000 shares, or 47% of its stake, and Fidelity Dividend Growth, which sold more than 167,000 shares, or 25% of its stake. Fidelity Magellan, one of the best-known actively managed funds in the country, sold more than 155,000 shares, or 17% of its stake.
Fidelity Puritan has an average holding period of about eight months, according to Morningstar, and Fidelity Dividend Growth has an average holding period of a year and a half.
It is unusual for an IPO like Facebook to be sold so quickly by long-term fundamental investors. Typically, IPOs see growing ownership by such investors and shrinking ownership by trade-oriented hedge funds, according to a study completed last year by Ipreo, a capital-markets data and advisory firm.
In a study of 270 IPOs of U.S. companies between 2009 and 2011, institutions such as mutual funds and pension funds represented 45% of the IPOs' initial allocation. But one quarter later, they represented 67% of the shareholders in those same stocks.
This doesn't mean many mutual-fund managers won't try to cash in on a post-IPO pop, said University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, who studies IPOs. Such managers, many of whose companies pay millions in commissions to underwriters, expect to get shares of an IPO and try to flip the shares for a profit once they are widely traded, he said.
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
Fidelity Investments was an early buyer of Facebook Inc. shares. In the spring of 2011, two dozen of its funds bought more than $200 million worth of the company's private stock. Then, when Facebook went public in May, many of those funds and other Fidelity funds loaded up on publicly traded shares.
Now, many of the giant Boston-based company's fund managers are shrinking their stakes.
Twenty-one Fidelity funds sold more than 1.9 million public Facebook shares combined in June, with 16 of them selling more than a quarter of their stakes in the company, according to investment-research firm Morningstar Inc. Private shares can't be traded until later this year.
It is unclear whether the Fidelity funds made or lost money on the Facebook shares, but the stock has languished below its $38 offering price on May 18. In June, it traded between $25.52 and $33.45; shares hit an all-time low of $20.84 before closing at $20.88 on Wednesday.
The moves represent an about-face for Fidelity, one of the first institutional investors to take a significant stake in Facebook and the country's third-largest mutual-fund company by assets. Fidelity's funds owned the shares for at most six weeks—much shorter than the median holding period of about 22 months for U.S. stock funds, according to Morningstar.
To be sure, the sales represent a very small portion of the funds' holdings. Also, 13 Fidelity funds bought 2.2 million shares of Facebook in June, though more than 1.3 million of those went to index funds, which passively track established stock indexes.
Mutual-fund analysts say it is uncommon for mutual funds to flip shares so quickly.
Nearly two dozen Fidelity funds are dumping Facebook funds at a hurried clip, and they sold nearly two million shares in June alone.
A Fidelity spokeswoman said, "Our managers are not tied to a minimum holding period and need to be able to respond to changes in market conditions."
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg met with Fidelity executives, along with other large asset managers, during Facebook's IPO roadshow in May. Morgan Stanley and other underwriters of Facebook stock also called top institutional clients, including Fidelity, before the IPO to tell them their analysts had lowered Facebook's earnings and revenue estimates.
Fidelity wasn't the only company with funds that flipped Facebook shares. Turner Investment Partners' Large Growth fund, which has a typical holding period of about seven months, sold 28% of its shares within weeks of buying them. OppenheimerFunds Inc.'s Global Allocation fund in June sold more than 10,000 shares, or 10% of its holdings.
A fraction of mutual-fund companies, including Fidelity, report holdings on a monthly basis, while the majority report only quarterly. That means investors in most funds that sold shares in May and June won't ever know how much Facebook stock their funds once owned.
The biggest reported seller of shares in June was the Fidelity Puritan fund, a "balanced fund" that invests in both stocks and bonds. It sold more than 623,000 shares, or a quarter of its overall stake. Other big sellers included Fidelity Disciplined Equity, which invests in both growth and value stocks and sold more than 444,000 shares, or 47% of its stake, and Fidelity Dividend Growth, which sold more than 167,000 shares, or 25% of its stake. Fidelity Magellan, one of the best-known actively managed funds in the country, sold more than 155,000 shares, or 17% of its stake.
Fidelity Puritan has an average holding period of about eight months, according to Morningstar, and Fidelity Dividend Growth has an average holding period of a year and a half.
It is unusual for an IPO like Facebook to be sold so quickly by long-term fundamental investors. Typically, IPOs see growing ownership by such investors and shrinking ownership by trade-oriented hedge funds, according to a study completed last year by Ipreo, a capital-markets data and advisory firm.
In a study of 270 IPOs of U.S. companies between 2009 and 2011, institutions such as mutual funds and pension funds represented 45% of the IPOs' initial allocation. But one quarter later, they represented 67% of the shareholders in those same stocks.
This doesn't mean many mutual-fund managers won't try to cash in on a post-IPO pop, said University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, who studies IPOs. Such managers, many of whose companies pay millions in commissions to underwriters, expect to get shares of an IPO and try to flip the shares for a profit once they are widely traded, he said.
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Friday, July 27, 2012
Losses Posted for Facebook
Story first reported from USA Today
Ending a tumultuous day for social media companies, Facebook posted a loss Thursday in its first test as a public company.
Investors fled the social-networking giant in after-hours trading following a quarterly loss of $157 million, which included one-time charges related to the accounting of stock awards disclosed amid the botched initial public offering on May 18.
The social-networking giant, which went public in May with an eye-popping high valuation, reported on an adjusted basis a profit of $295 million, or 12 cents a share, on revenue of $1.18 billion for its second fiscal quarter. That met the consensus estimate for the quarter.
The company's stock plunged 11% in after-hours trading to $23.77 after losing nearly as much during the day's trading session. And the stocks of other social media companies slumped further, among them Zynga, Groupon and LinkedIn . The stocks had fallen during regular trading, even as the broad market rallied. Zynga had released disappointing earnings Tuesday after the close of regular trading, giving investors pause.
Meanwhile, a problem at Twitter's data centers took the micro-blogging site offline for several hours, affecting millions of its users. Google Chat also crashed.
The stakes could not be higher for social-networking giant after its much-anticipated IPO fizzled amid questions about its online and mobile advertising business. Its initial valuation of $100 billion is now $60 billion.
There was some good news. The social-networking giant's revenue of $1.18 billion for its second fiscal quarter compared to consensus estimates of $1.15 billion.
It was the first quarterly report for Facebook as a public company. It's unusual for a company to miss estimates on its first quarter as a public company, says Jay Ritter, professor of finance at the University of Florida. When companies go public, they typically have a solid outlook at least for the first few months.
Seeing Facebook's earnings coming in roughly in line with expectations was a disappointment for investors who have been hoping for more, says Jordan Rohan of Stifel Nicolaus. "Investors still hung to the hope that Facebook would rise to the occasion," he says.
Investors response to Facebook's report shows just how jaded Internet investors have become, he says. "It takes a particularly special performance for a stock to go up on its earnings," he says. "That's the rhythm of this quarter earnings period."
Facebook had warned investors that the quarter wasn't going to be a stellar one, by updating the risk section of its prospectus, Rohan says. "A company wouldn't do that unless the results were going to be uninspiring," he says.
Rohan continues to rate the stock a "hold." "This quarter's fundamentals don't seem to change the story of the outlook," he says.
"They have to show they can justify" even that lower valuation, says Lucy Jacobs, chief operating officer of Spruce Media, a technology platform for social-media advertising. She said Facebook has made several changes to goose ad revenue.
Like nearly every business in social media and beyond, Facebook is betting a large portion of its future on mobile ads. Yet few companies, including Facebook, have been able to capitalize on the promise. The popularity of mobile devices comes, in part, from their lack of ads.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said mobile is a huge opportunity on a conference call with analysts, but he downplayed a rumored mobile phone from Facebook, adding that it "wouldn't make much sense." There had been speculation prior to the call that Zuckerberg might skip the conference call.
The market for the ads that dot smartphone and tablet screens is expected to soar to $10.8 billion in U.S. sales by 2016, from an estimated $2.6 billion this year, says research firm eMarketer. That's a tiny slice of the $169.5 billion market for media ad spending in the U.S.
Google has the early lead in the U.S. in monetizing mobile, with 51% of the market, largely due to its success with mobile search ads, says Noah Elkin, an eMarketer analyst. Phone numbers embedded in mobile ads on Google's click-to-call feature, for example, generate about 15 million calls per month.
Facebook barely registers yet, though the company has the potential to rake in $2.54 billion from mobile advertising, according to researcher Chitika. Facebook Sponsored Stories — an ad form that appears on a member's Facebook page and generally consists of a friend's name, profile picture and an advertiser the person "likes" — now appear in a user's Facebook mobile news feed.
Debra Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, says mobile is where it's at right now.
Until early this year, Facebook had no real mobile strategy, she says.
The company's challenges don't end there.
In the U.S., where Facebook makes most of its advertising revenue, the social network is not drawing new users. In May, 158.01 million unique visitors logged on to the network, compared with 158.69 million in April, according to market researcher comScore. Facebook says it has more than 955 million members worldwide.
Underwriters of Facebook's IPO lowered guidance in May, suggesting the company would earn about $4.8 billion for 2012 — a billion-dollar drop in confidence that fed market uncertainty about the effectiveness of Facebook's advertising machine.
Social-gaming leader Zynga's woeful results on Wednesday — it lost $22.8 million in its most recent quarter — underscored Facebook anxiety, since Facebook depends on Zynga for about 12% of revenue.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus blamed some of its problems on changes Facebook made to its platform.
Ending a tumultuous day for social media companies, Facebook posted a loss Thursday in its first test as a public company.
Investors fled the social-networking giant in after-hours trading following a quarterly loss of $157 million, which included one-time charges related to the accounting of stock awards disclosed amid the botched initial public offering on May 18.
The social-networking giant, which went public in May with an eye-popping high valuation, reported on an adjusted basis a profit of $295 million, or 12 cents a share, on revenue of $1.18 billion for its second fiscal quarter. That met the consensus estimate for the quarter.
The company's stock plunged 11% in after-hours trading to $23.77 after losing nearly as much during the day's trading session. And the stocks of other social media companies slumped further, among them Zynga, Groupon and LinkedIn . The stocks had fallen during regular trading, even as the broad market rallied. Zynga had released disappointing earnings Tuesday after the close of regular trading, giving investors pause.
Meanwhile, a problem at Twitter's data centers took the micro-blogging site offline for several hours, affecting millions of its users. Google Chat also crashed.
The stakes could not be higher for social-networking giant after its much-anticipated IPO fizzled amid questions about its online and mobile advertising business. Its initial valuation of $100 billion is now $60 billion.
There was some good news. The social-networking giant's revenue of $1.18 billion for its second fiscal quarter compared to consensus estimates of $1.15 billion.
It was the first quarterly report for Facebook as a public company. It's unusual for a company to miss estimates on its first quarter as a public company, says Jay Ritter, professor of finance at the University of Florida. When companies go public, they typically have a solid outlook at least for the first few months.
Seeing Facebook's earnings coming in roughly in line with expectations was a disappointment for investors who have been hoping for more, says Jordan Rohan of Stifel Nicolaus. "Investors still hung to the hope that Facebook would rise to the occasion," he says.
Investors response to Facebook's report shows just how jaded Internet investors have become, he says. "It takes a particularly special performance for a stock to go up on its earnings," he says. "That's the rhythm of this quarter earnings period."
Facebook had warned investors that the quarter wasn't going to be a stellar one, by updating the risk section of its prospectus, Rohan says. "A company wouldn't do that unless the results were going to be uninspiring," he says.
Rohan continues to rate the stock a "hold." "This quarter's fundamentals don't seem to change the story of the outlook," he says.
"They have to show they can justify" even that lower valuation, says Lucy Jacobs, chief operating officer of Spruce Media, a technology platform for social-media advertising. She said Facebook has made several changes to goose ad revenue.
Like nearly every business in social media and beyond, Facebook is betting a large portion of its future on mobile ads. Yet few companies, including Facebook, have been able to capitalize on the promise. The popularity of mobile devices comes, in part, from their lack of ads.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said mobile is a huge opportunity on a conference call with analysts, but he downplayed a rumored mobile phone from Facebook, adding that it "wouldn't make much sense." There had been speculation prior to the call that Zuckerberg might skip the conference call.
The market for the ads that dot smartphone and tablet screens is expected to soar to $10.8 billion in U.S. sales by 2016, from an estimated $2.6 billion this year, says research firm eMarketer. That's a tiny slice of the $169.5 billion market for media ad spending in the U.S.
Google has the early lead in the U.S. in monetizing mobile, with 51% of the market, largely due to its success with mobile search ads, says Noah Elkin, an eMarketer analyst. Phone numbers embedded in mobile ads on Google's click-to-call feature, for example, generate about 15 million calls per month.
Facebook barely registers yet, though the company has the potential to rake in $2.54 billion from mobile advertising, according to researcher Chitika. Facebook Sponsored Stories — an ad form that appears on a member's Facebook page and generally consists of a friend's name, profile picture and an advertiser the person "likes" — now appear in a user's Facebook mobile news feed.
Debra Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, says mobile is where it's at right now.
Until early this year, Facebook had no real mobile strategy, she says.
The company's challenges don't end there.
In the U.S., where Facebook makes most of its advertising revenue, the social network is not drawing new users. In May, 158.01 million unique visitors logged on to the network, compared with 158.69 million in April, according to market researcher comScore. Facebook says it has more than 955 million members worldwide.
Underwriters of Facebook's IPO lowered guidance in May, suggesting the company would earn about $4.8 billion for 2012 — a billion-dollar drop in confidence that fed market uncertainty about the effectiveness of Facebook's advertising machine.
Social-gaming leader Zynga's woeful results on Wednesday — it lost $22.8 million in its most recent quarter — underscored Facebook anxiety, since Facebook depends on Zynga for about 12% of revenue.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus blamed some of its problems on changes Facebook made to its platform.
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Monday, July 23, 2012
Mobile Device Ads on Rise
Story first reported from forbes.com
Worries that mobile advertising will never amount to much
have investors worries about even relatively strong companies such as Google
and Facebook. And there’s reason for concern, from whether people want their
little smartphone or even tablet screens cluttered with ads to whether
advertisers will ever be able to know, for instance, that someone who sees an
ad then went into a physical store and bought something.
For now, though, the advertisers who command the marketing
budgets don’t seem too concerned. According to a new report, search ads in particular
are growing rapidly on mobile devices, especially tablets. The study, from
online ad management firm Marin Software, points up several interesting trends,
pretty much all of them a positive for advertisers and search engines–mainly
Google, since it still owns 81% of all search ad spending.
First, a lot more clicks on search ads are coming from
mobile devices, says Marin Marketing VP Matt Lawson. In the U.S., mobile
devices accounted for 18% of paid search clicks, up from 14% in the first
quarter. And in an indication of a surge in tablet ownership and use, the share
of clicks on tablets, at 8%, was up 33% in the quarter.
More important to advertisers, those tablet clicks are
paying off. The cost per click for search ads on tablets is 18% lower than for
ads on desktops or laptops. And the click-through rate is 42% higher. Putting
both together, advertisers are getting more bang for the buck on tablet ads.
Lawson says that may not last forever. One reason for the
difference is that not as many marketers are aiming ads specifically for
tablets, so those that do don’t have as much competition on keywords. Indeed,
the cost-per-click gap is already starting to close.
Still, the results are prompting marketers to shift their
budgets toward tablets. The share of Marin’s 1,800 advertisers’ and agencies’
overall online ad spending that goes toward tablet campaigns rose 40% in the
second quarter alone–from 5% of budgets in March to 7% by June.
Not least, Lawson says, the conversion rate–ad industry
lingo for clicks that lead to a sale, a lead, or another desired action–on
tablets is comparable to desktop ads. In other words, it’s better than on
smartphones, which still lag behind desktops in conversions.
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Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Facebook Adds Woman to Board
Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
The No. 2 executive at Facebook Inc. has made it a mission to tell women that they can have it all. Now she has added one more résumé item to help her lead by example: a board seat at the social network.
On Monday, Facebook named her as the eighth member of its board. In doing so, the Menlo Park, Calif., company answered criticism by diversifying its all-male board with a high-profile female executive.
Her appointment comes amid intensified efforts to increase the number of women on American corporate boards. Their ranks have grown fairly slowly for years. Women accounted for about 16% of directorships at Fortune 500 companies last year, according to Catalyst, a New York group that researches women's issues. On the other hand, big businesses rarely put more than one insider on their boards.
Facebook's move gives her—who is frequently on the wish list of companies seeking to name a new chief executive—a voice at the highest echelons of the social network.
In a statement, the Facebook CEO Mark played up her importance to the company. He called her his "partner" and said she has been essential to Facebook's "growth and success."
She joined Facebook as its chief operating officer from Google Inc. in 2008, and was deeply involved in the social network's recent initial public offering and has helped build the company's online ad business.
In February, a California State Teacher's Retirement System's director of corporate governance, wrote a letter to the Facebook CEO saying that they are disappointed that Facebook's board will not have any women. The letter said evidence has shown that boards perform better when they are more diverse.
The board appointment on Monday alleviates that image but didn't quell all the critics. An author of several governance books, said since the CEO currently holds about 57% of Facebook's voting power, the company needs to go the extra mile to demonstrate its (board's) independence. In making this new appointment, Facebook is reaffirming its commitment to clubbiness with this choice because she's an insider.
Still, the appointment is likely to have the effect of keeping the executive—who is worth $1.4 billion from her 44 million shares of Facebook restricted shares and options—deeply vested in the social network. She has been wooed for CEO jobs in the tech and media worlds, say recruiters.
She appeared on a wishlist for the New York Times Co. chief executive position, according to a person familiar with the matter, which the company has been trying to fill since its former CEO retired in December. But "she was never approached" by the Times, another person familiar with the matter said.
The No. 2 executive at Facebook Inc. has made it a mission to tell women that they can have it all. Now she has added one more résumé item to help her lead by example: a board seat at the social network.
On Monday, Facebook named her as the eighth member of its board. In doing so, the Menlo Park, Calif., company answered criticism by diversifying its all-male board with a high-profile female executive.
Her appointment comes amid intensified efforts to increase the number of women on American corporate boards. Their ranks have grown fairly slowly for years. Women accounted for about 16% of directorships at Fortune 500 companies last year, according to Catalyst, a New York group that researches women's issues. On the other hand, big businesses rarely put more than one insider on their boards.
Facebook's move gives her—who is frequently on the wish list of companies seeking to name a new chief executive—a voice at the highest echelons of the social network.
In a statement, the Facebook CEO Mark played up her importance to the company. He called her his "partner" and said she has been essential to Facebook's "growth and success."
She joined Facebook as its chief operating officer from Google Inc. in 2008, and was deeply involved in the social network's recent initial public offering and has helped build the company's online ad business.
In February, a California State Teacher's Retirement System's director of corporate governance, wrote a letter to the Facebook CEO saying that they are disappointed that Facebook's board will not have any women. The letter said evidence has shown that boards perform better when they are more diverse.
The board appointment on Monday alleviates that image but didn't quell all the critics. An author of several governance books, said since the CEO currently holds about 57% of Facebook's voting power, the company needs to go the extra mile to demonstrate its (board's) independence. In making this new appointment, Facebook is reaffirming its commitment to clubbiness with this choice because she's an insider.
Still, the appointment is likely to have the effect of keeping the executive—who is worth $1.4 billion from her 44 million shares of Facebook restricted shares and options—deeply vested in the social network. She has been wooed for CEO jobs in the tech and media worlds, say recruiters.
She appeared on a wishlist for the New York Times Co. chief executive position, according to a person familiar with the matter, which the company has been trying to fill since its former CEO retired in December. But "she was never approached" by the Times, another person familiar with the matter said.
For information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right
blog.
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Room blog.
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For more Electronics
News, visit the Electronics America blog.
For more Real Estate News,
visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
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visit the Nation of Law blog.
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News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.
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visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.
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