Tahrir Square in Egypt during the height of the revolution
Wikipedia, Reddit and thousands of other websites have gone dark in protest of SOPA and PIPA. The controversial laws, as I explained to The Consumerist, open the door to “your favorite websites [getting] penalized, blacklisted or even shut down due to a copyright infringement lawsuit.”
The protests have done their job — the mainstream public now aware of these laws, but some are arguing that it’s not enough. Chris Taylor of Mashable recently argued that Facebook should go dark for the day to protest these laws as well. He’s not the only one, though. Jay Rosen of NYU and Alex Howard of O’Reilly both suggested that Twitter should go dark as well.
Suggesting that two of the world’s major communication platforms should shut down in protest of a law that governs only a minority of its users is not just lunacy, but downright irresponsible.
Right now, thousands of people are using Facebook and Twitter to organize protests against SOPA. But more importantly, Twitter and Facebook are still being used as communication platforms to coordinate revolutions and inspire freedom. Shutting down Facebook and Twitter closes down communication platforms that have become just as important as email and cell phones.
How would you feel if AT&T, Verizon or Google shut down your cell phones and emails for a protest? It would also be an irresponsible move.
This isn’t about economics (though billions would be lost if Facebook and Twitter shut down for the day) — it’s about freedom of communication. Shutting down two of the most vital communication platforms in the world, no matter the reason, is just wrong. Just imagine if they had been shut down during the Tunisian revolution. Hell, Egypt actually did it during the revolution in its country. You’d be doing them a favor.
In his piece, Chris Taylor also argues that shutting down Facebook would make him into an instant Washington power player. But it probably would have unintended consequences as well. People in power tend to push back, and you can bet that Congress wouldn’t sit back and take a middle finger from Zuckerberg.
So stop criticizing Facebook and Twitter for not shutting down. The unintended consequences would be dire. Those two companies are better off using their communication platforms to spread word of the SOPA protests instead.
Jerry Yang, the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo, has resigned from the company. And we’re not just talking about his board seat, but all of his positions at Yahoo, Yahoo Japan and Alibaba.
In other words, Jerry Yang will have no involvement in the company. Yahoo will be without either its co-founders for the first time in its 17-year history.
New CEO Scott Thompson is now the company’s leader. Roy Bostock, the company’s chairman, is still around, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him step aside eventually as well.
So what will Yahoo look like without Jerry Yang? Some might argue that he hasn’t had much influence on the company since he was ousted as CEO in 2007, but that would just be inaccurate. Yang’s influence has been felt all throughout the company, especially after he and Bostock fired Carol Bartz.
But now it’s clear that Scott Thompson is running the show and is being given the leeway to run things as he sees fit, so don’t expect a lot of bluster: Thompson is a good-natured, low-key type of guy. He’ll make sure that everybody’s heads are down, getting things built.
Will Yahoo be better off without Jerry Yang? It’s always tough when you lose a co-founder, but clearly change was needed. This is one case where having the founder take a step away from the business will turn out to be a good thing.
First of all, congrats on the launch of PandoDaily! I’m looking forward to reading (and responding to) your sharp commentary on the startup world. A publication focused exclusively on the ecosystem makes sense, and I’m glad to see you join the ranks of the founders that you’ve covered for most of your career.
I also like the idea of the PandoTicker, which is where you aggregate the top news in the startup space. Honoring embargoes for the Ticker while reserving long-form content for exclusives is also a smart move.
But I still have two questions that I’m hoping you could answer:
Where are you going to draw the line for what you cover as a “startup”? In other words, when does a company cease to become a startup? AdAge reports that you’re going to be exclusively focused on startups and that we shouldn’t expect a lot of coverage of Microsoft or the other big companies. That’s fair, but when does a company cease being a startup and start becoming a big tech company? Is it when it IPOs, when it reaches a certain number of employees, or am I just splitting hairs here?
Is your ambition to focus solely on PandoDaily, or do you intend to launch other sites in the future? I ask this because the name of the company is PandoMedia, which gives you wiggle room to expand. I’m curious whether you intend to expand this out into a media empire or keep this as a one-site organization.
Again, congrats on the launch, Sarah. I expect that your venture will do very well. I’ll definitely be reading.
Another great article by NYT’s Evelyn Rusli and Ben Protess:
“Wall Street, as always, is going where the money is — and right now that is Silicon Valley. The latest Internet boom means there are more newly minted millionaires, and even billionaires, than at any time since the technology bubble a decade ago.”
And one more quote for the road:
“Financial firms are salivating over the wealth being created. Facebook is readying an initial public offering that will most likely value it near $100 billion. Employees and directors at Zynga own more than a third of the online game company, which went public in December at $7 billion. The list of prospects is long: Groupon is worth $12.2 billion; LinkedIn, $6.8 billion; and Pandora, $1.9 billion.”
Sell a company and Wall Street will start knocking on your door. They might even have some tickets to a show or exclusive access to Tesla’s factory to reel you in.
Should any of us be surprised? The fees generated by managing multiple multi-million dollar accounts adds up. And with Facebook’s impending IPO, there’s going to be a lot of new money flooding the Bay Area.
The question is whether it’s going to last. Is Silicon Valley the new nexus for wealth creation, or is it about to be hammered hard by the markets? We’re about to find out.
Instagram, Path and Color are three high-profile apps taking three different approaches to mobile social networking. Can all three co-exist?
You may think that these three apps have totally different purposes and do totally different things, but in reality they tackle the same problem: how do you better connect and share with your friends through mobile?
Instagram‘s thesis is simple: photo-sharing is the central component to the social and mobile experience. It is the undisputed king of photo-sharing apps, and it reached the top of the pile with a team of less than 10. Instagram has more than 15 million users.
Path, co-founded by Facebook legend Dave Morin (he co-invented Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform), is about intimate social networking. It’s a “smart journal” that lets you share photos, videos, status updates and locations with up to 150 of your closest friends and family. You can even share when you wake up and when you fall asleep. Its initial launch was a dud, but its recent launch has been gaining traction.
Color, co-founded by Lala and Onebox co-founder Bill Nguyen, was once about mobile photo-sharing through dynamically-created “elastic networks” — essentially it shared photos with whoever was nearby. It didn’t gain traction though, so Color went to the drawing board and reemerged as an app that lets you “visit” your friends through short video streams. Unlike Path or Instagram, Color’s entire social graph is built on top of Facebook. The new version of Color hasn’t caught on like Path or Instagram have, but it’s early in the game.
Three Approaches to Mobile + Social
To be clear: Instagram, Path and Color focus on different things. Instagram focuses on photography, Path focuses on intimate social networks, and Color focuses on “visits” and enhancing the Facebook experience for mobile.
However, I think they are converging. I feel as if Path, Instagram and Color started out on different paths, but have merged to become competitors. All three apps allow me to share photos, not just with friends and followers, but with my Facebook friends (Path and Instagram also support Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr). Path even added the photo filters that made Instagram into the powerhouse it is today.
If I share a photo on Path, am I also going to share it on Instagram or Color? If I record a video stream on Color, am I also going to put that on Path? For me, the answer is no. The overlap is just too much.
I suspect this phenomenon is just specific to me; who really has the patience to share stuff through three different apps?
Final Thoughts
The future of mobile social networking is up for grabs. Facebook may be the iPhone’s most popular app, but it essentially ports the Facebook experience to mobile (the app is also horrendously slow and painful to use — that’s an article for another day, though).
Instagram, Path and Color are experiments in the best way to utilize the unique capabilities of the phone to enhance social networking. The smartphone’s camera, GPS, accelerometer, touchscreen interface, notifications and persistence (it’s always in your pocket) makes it an ideal tool for sharing your world with friends.
Some point soon, though, the experimenting will end and a victor will emerge. I simply don’t believe there is enough room for all three apps, despite the different approaches they take to mobile social networking.
There are going to be a lot more pivots, challengers and forgotten apps by the time this battle is done.
What are your thoughts on the future of mobile social networking? Is there enough room for everybody? Let me know in the comments.
The move was something that I expected, but I don’t think anybody expected the integration to be so massive. You can’t browse Google without seeing Google+ everywhere.
The problem is simple: Google is using its monopoly in search to direct people to its social network. Lots of people are comparing it to when Microsoft used Windows to boost Internet Explorer, effectively killing Netscape.
I don’t think all of the parallels are there — it’s far easier to switch search engines than switch operating systems. However, the question is valid: has Google abused its monopoly to thwart its competitors in social networking?
Google was clearly unprepared for the backlash. Eric Schmidt’s odd interview with Danny Sullivan makes it clear that Google hasn’t prepared a real defense against the antitrust allegations.
This is something the government is going to investigate. I wouldn’t want to be Google’s legal department right now.
Google has launched three new features that personalize its search engine in a radical way. It’s the biggest change to Google’s search engine since Google Instant.
Google has fused Google Search with Google+ and Picasa to make results unique to the individualized. Clicking the person icon on the top right of the search page brings up these results.
Say you’re researching for a trip to Thailand. Normally Google will serve you relevant web pages about the area of Thailand you are researching. However, if you click the person icon (Google calls it the “Search plus your world” icon), it will start bringing up Google+ posts about Thailand from your network, related photos from your friends, and pages/profiles related to that query.
The changes also apply to searches for individuals. If I’m in your Circles, and you start typing my name, my profile will pop up. But the updated search engine will also pull up “prominent people on Google+”. This includes anybody who is a member of Google’s authorship program.
Essentially, Google has merged its search engine with Google+ and Picasa search. If you’re prominently using Google+, you’re going to show up more often in search results, and that is a very powerful thing.
Should Facebook Be Scared?
Google has decided that, if it is to beat Facebook, it needed to use its most powerful weapon: its search engine. We knew this was Google’s plan all along, but Google really went all-in on this one.
Will this take users away from Facebook though? I doubt it; there’s very little Google can do to beat Facebook’s entrenched network effect. Facebook is the repository and scrapbook for your entire life; Google+ simply isn’t as ubiquitous or useful. More people will sign up for Google+ and maybe even occasionally use it because they saw their friends appear in search results, but it won’t pry them away from Facebook.
What this does, though, is set up Google+ as the alternative to Facebook, should the social network eventually shoot itself in the foot. If Facebook stumbles badly, Google is in the prime position to seize on the opportunity and siphon away users.
Facebook’s real enemy isn’t Google; it’s Facebook. Google knows this, which is why the search giant is preparing for a massive user raid if and when Facebook slips up.
For the first time in years, I will not be attending CES. It’s a strange yet relaxing feeling not being part of the massive crowds that converge each January on Sin City.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is the epicenter for the launch of new gee-wiz tech gadgets, TVs, phones, tablets and all sorts of weird crap that just makes you scratch your head.
More than 100,000 journalists, industry professionals and tech execs converge on Las Vegas, all trying to find a way to stand out from the noise. There is a constant rush of press conferences and parties to attend, which probably explains why some companies pay lots of money to try out celebrities for their booths.
Oh, and if you’re lucky, you leave the place with a bag filled with tablets and cameras.
I’ll admit, I miss being part of the action on the ground. Being at all the product launches is exhilarating, even if it does wreck your sleep schedule. Meeting with the CEOs of tech’s biggest companies is always interesting, even if you don’t get more than 20 minutes with them. And some of the booths are just epic.
But the truth is that I’m relieved not to be attending CES this year. The show is draining, especially if you’re a reporter or a person trying to round up reporters for your products.
The bigger problem I have with CES is this, though: it has become an echo chamber for companies positioning themselves as the Apple alternative. I felt this last year when I was covering the dozens of Android tablets jockeying for position against Apple’s iPad. The Motorola Xoom won that battle last year, thanks to Android Honeycomb, but CES did nothing to boost its weak sales.
Apple famously ignores CES, and for good reason. Apple is just as large as CES — perhaps larger — and that reality marginalizes all of the companies that exhibit at the show. This will become especially true when the iTV gets released this year.
(It’s real, by the way. Sony and the rest of the electronics industry ought to be shaking in their boots.)
This year I decided to skip CES (and Sundance) to work on the startup and take investor meetings. And while I intend to come back next year, I think it’s going to feel like a vastly different show, thanks to iTV and Microsoft’s departure.
Scott Thompson, the President of eBay’s PayPal division, has just been named the new CEO of Yahoo.
Thompson, who was previously Yahoo’s CTO, has been a big reason why eBay and PayPal have done so well over the last few years. eBay’s value has gone up, thanks in large part to the rapid growth of its payments business. PayPal has doubled in both users (100+ million) and revenue ($4+ billion) since Scott took over.
On a personal note, Scott is a very likable and approachable guy. I’ve interviewed him several times over the course of my Mashable career, including the video interview I’ve embedded above (he was a good sport with my three “last questions”).
Yahooers will find it easy to like this guy. He also has a proven track record at building consumer-facing businesses. He does face a challenge switching from payments to media, though.
Bottom line: his unassuming, good-hearted nature is the perfect contrast to the bombastic, in-your-face management style of Carol Bartz.
I'm an entrepreneur, storyteller, scuba diver, swing dancer, romantic and a man on the move. I'm an advisor to startups (NerdsUnite Productions, Tracks.by, Women 2.0 and others), and I'm a proud alumnus of Mashable. You can learn more about me here.
