Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, who just launched a new venture fund, said in an interview with Reuters (published Monday) that he expects the company's revenue to be in excess of $500 million in 2009, and that in five years it'll be well into the billions.
"Generally speaking, people who are selling their stock in Facebook now are making a mistake," he told Reuters regarding the fact that since an initial public offering is still a ways off, Facebook is permitting some employee stock sales to Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian firm that invested $200 million in the site in May. Andreessen himself is not a personal investor in Facebook, and said that "I probably could have if I had tried hard but I didn't."
If Facebook worked the ad-sales front a bit harder, Andreessen added in the interview, revenue could already be over a billion.
But Facebook has never taken kindly to traditional display advertisements, choosing instead to experiment with "engagement ads" integrated into the social-networking experience--a product it may potentially extend into Facebook Connect's participating sites, which now number over 10,000.
Additionally, Facebook has been working toward an alternative revenue stream with its "credits" system, a virtual currency that for now is restricted to the company's in-house "Gifts" application. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, the Facebook currency system will be made available to developers using the social network's API, which could produce a significant new source of revenue for Facebook as it takes a cut of transactions.
Andreessen--the Netscape founder and Silicon Valley mainstay whose current projects include social-network builder Ning--has been on Facebook's board for just over a year. He joined at the personal request of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said at the time that "Marc is an industry leader, and we're fortunate to have him join our board."
The city of Boston is set to launch an official iPhone application for residents to file complaints about "neighborhood nuisances--nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street lights," according to The Boston Globe.
Called Citizen Connect, the app will let Bostonians send pictures and tips right to City Hall.
The app was built with the help of a New Hampshire mobile development firm called Connected Bits.
Citizen Connect has been submitted to Apple but hasn't made it into the iTunes App Store just yet. When it does, it will be free.
Beware, Citizen Connect: complaints about this 'Aqua Hunger Teen Force' ad campaign turned into a huge mess for Boston two years ago.
(Credit: Boing Boing)The Boston Globe said Citizen Connect is the first app of its kind, but other cities have also been turning to new technology to make the minutiae of municipal government run more smoothly. New York's 311 nonemergency hotline for residents now has a presence on Skype and Twitter. New York also now accepts photo and video submissions for 911 and 311.
But the iPhone app has a few advantages. Per the Globe: "The application, which will be free to download from Apple, will allow residents to use the Global Positioning System function on their iPhones to pinpoint the precise location of the problem for City Hall. After submitting a complaint, users will get a tracking number, so they can pester city officials if the problem persists." Ooh! Pestering city officials sounds like fun!
That said, the idea of a complaint-filing iPhone app for Boston is particularly hilarious: the most famous instance of Boston municipal complaints in recent history happened when people started calling in concerns about suspicious-looking devices that turned out to be an ad campaign for the cartoon flick "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." This fact, however, did not come to light until the city had already shut down all traffic on the Charles River.
Or, as one blogger has pointed out already, the system could easily get flooded with photos accompanied by captions like "Please send a cop over to make these Yankees fans leave this bar."
It's here, sort of. Several months after the big announcement that content from Disney's ABC Entertainment division would be coming to Hulu, the entertainment conglomerate's shows have started arriving.
The primetime drama "Grey's Anatomy" debuted on the video hub Monday, and more shows will roll out over the next two weeks.
These include, according to Hulu, consistent hits like "Desperate Housewives" and "Scrubs," along with more recent additions to the network such as "I Survived A Japanese Game Show."
Disney joined Hulu in April, giving it a joint stake in the company alongside NBC Universal, News Corp., and investor Providence Equity Partners. Shows from ABC as well as ABC-owned cable channels like SoapNet and ABC Family are on the way, along with movies from Disney (though no titles have been made available yet).
Would-be Hulu rival Joost closed its consumer video service last month after its peer-to-peer technology failed to make up for its tepid content offering.
My big question: When will we see episodes of my favorite ABC show, "Lost," on Hulu? I've e-mailed a company representative to find out.
Lori Drew, the woman convicted of using a hoax MySpace profile to harass a teenage girl to the point of suicide, was acquitted by a Los Angeles judge on Thursday, Wired reported.
Judge George Wu overturned Drew's guilty verdict, which was issued in November, saying that if Drew had been convicted of a felony in the case, she would already have been sentenced. But because she was convicted of three misdemeanors--a significantly lighter offense than prosecutors originally sought--the constitutionality of the guilty verdict was less clear.
Drew, a Missouri resident, had been convicted of three misdemeanor counts of "accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress," each of which could have resulted in a year of jail and a $100,000 fine. But she hadn't been convicted of conspiracy, a felony that could've led to up to 20 years in prison.
The tragic situation unfolded in 2006, when Drew, her teenage daughter, and an 18-year-old employee of the family created a fake MySpace profile for a fictitious teenage boy that they used to harass one of Drew's daughter's classmates, 13-year-old Megan Meier. Meier hanged herself.
This was a situation in which traditional law did not align smoothly with the realities of the digital world: the prosecutors' argument was rooted in a terms of service violation, since MySpace officially outlaws impersonation and fictitious accounts.
Last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the courts to dismiss the case because of the precedent it could set. "Criminal charges for a 'terms of service' violation is a dramatic misapplication of the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), with far-ranging consequences for American computer users," the EFF said at the time, and argued that it could result in criminal charges for something as innocuous as a minor using the Google search engine.
Drew's lawyers had argued that the law being used against the defendant was vague and flawed, which the judge upheld Thursday when he threw out the guilty verdict. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is typically used against malicious hackers.
According to Wired, the judge argued for nearly 45 minutes with U.S. Attorney Mark Krause over the specifics of the CFAA.
A coalition of advertising industry trade groups have agreed on new guidelines for privacy related to behavioral targeting on the Web. Officially released on Thursday and expected to go into effect early next year, the set of principles concern what advertisers can do with personal data collected in order to zero in on target audiences.
The groups involved are the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).
The guidelines take the form of seven principles, ranging from a commitment to better consumer education about behavioral targeting, to a focus on keeping potentially sensitive data secure.
"Consumers deserve transparency regarding the collection and use of their data for behavioral advertising purposes. I am gratified that a group of influential associations--representing a significant component of the Internet community--has responded to so many of the privacy concerns raised by my colleagues and myself," Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour said in a release.
"These associations have invested substantial efforts to actually deliver a draft set of privacy principles, which have the potential to dramatically advance the cause of consumer privacy. I commend these organizations for taking this important first step."
Lawmakers have paid close attention to the evolution of online behavioral targeting over the past few years, especially as the vast amount of personal data on social networks makes it possible for advertisers to target more and more specific niches. Some have even suggested that behavioral targeting should be opt-in by default.
Last month, several subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce hosted a hearing about behavioral ad standards, and executives from companies like Facebook, Yahoo, and Google testified. At least one of those companies has come out publicly in support of the new guidelines.
"One of the key strengths of the principles is the fact that they apply to a broad range of companies participating in online advertising--advertisers, publishers, and ad networks," a post about the new measures on Google's public policy blog read.
Social-networking sites and other Web services can't be held liable in a sexual assault on a minor that stemmed from a meeting online, according to a ruling in a California appeals court that consolidated a number of complaints against MySpace on behalf of teenage girls and their parents.
Reuters reported late on Wednesday that the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles cited the Communications Decency Act in coming to the conclusion. Claiming negligence and product liability, the plaintiffs had alleged that MySpace had failed to put in place age verification software or to keep profiles on a "private" setting.
Other federal courts have come to similar rulings. Last year, a Texas court ruled that the family of a 14-year-old girl who was assaulted by a man she met on MySpace could not hold the social network responsible. The girl in question had lied about her age when she created a profile, claiming to be a legal adult, and the court ruled that it was her parents' job, not MySpace's, to keep her safe.
This week's ruling in Los Angeles received a thumbs-up from MySpace and parent company News Corp. It could also have repercussions across other social networks and community-based Web sites, which have been subject to scrutiny from authorities over both safety and decency standards. Craigslist, for example, has faced a crackdown on sex-related ads after both allegations of rampant prostitution and a high-profile case in which a Craigslist encounter allegedly ended in murder.
The situation can be different, if there is actual harassment conducted through the social network, rather than an offline assault. In that case, if it appears that a Web service isn't doing enough to keep members safe while using the site, it can, in some cases, be held responsible.
Facebook and MySpace are working with state attorneys general to keep registered sex offenders out of their user bases, following allegations from lawmakers that they weren't doing enough to maintain a safe environment for minors.
On Thursday, the sentencing is expected in another Los Angeles court for Lori Drew, who has been convicted of three misdemeanors after impersonating a teenage boy on MySpace and harassing a 13-year-old girl allegedly to the point of suicide.
Drew could be sentenced to up to three years in prison and forced to pay a fine of $300,000, a far lesser sentence than she originally faced.
Revamped privacy settings are coming soon to Facebook.
The social network's privacy controls had gotten so sprawling that they were distributed across six separate pages and 40 different settings, according to a conference call the company held on Wednesday.
"These can add up and pile up and not be as clean as one would like," Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said on the call. From what it sounds like, they'd gotten so complicated that many members just ignored them altogether--something that Facebook certainly doesn't want as it encourages its 200-million-plus members to post and share even more content.
As a result, Facebook's new controls will be more streamlined so as to offer easier and simpler controls about how much everything from entire profiles to individual pieces of content are shared. Users will be introduced to this through "transition tools" that allow them to toggle how open everything on their profile will be--totally public, friends-only, restricted to company or school networks, etc.
One of the biggest changes along with the new controls is that Facebook is getting rid of "regional networks," the opt-in way that members could designate themselves as residents of certain geographic areas. Only half of members even joined these networks, according to Facebook. It's a change that's been anticipated for some time, and privacy controls regarding regional networks have already been phased out.
"Networks were kind of the bedrock of privacy," product manager Leah Perlman said on the call. "When we expanded past college and work (networks), we created the concept of regional networks in order to have our privacy model expand." Members could share content selectively with members of their regional network, but representatives said that it was never quite clear as to exactly who else was in that regional network, and the delineation of networks was messy--some were defined by city, other by broader region or state, and others encompassed entire countries.
Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly is also considering a run for attorney general of California.
(Credit: Kelly2010.com)There were, for example, separate networks for each of New York City's five boroughs, but most residents just chose to join the broader "New York, NY" one instead. Facebook says that this shouldn't affect locally targeted advertisements: the company will be porting regional network data to its "Current City" field, and has already been using other data like IP address information to hone local ad targeting.
Facebook is keeping school- and company-based networks intact.
This comes in the wake of an announcement that Facebook would be tweaking its "publisher," the toolbar that lets members update their status messages or post content like individual photos and videos. The "publisher" will now have a privacy toggle for individual pieces of content, letting a user choose whether to make them available to friends only, custom friend groups, or--for the first time--to the Web at large. Making content available publicly will bring Facebook better in line with the thirst for real-time, searchable mass information that Twitter has captured so effectively thus far.
So how will this be handled? Facebook members will be guided through one of the aforementioned "transition tools," which representatives said will take one of two forms: either an ultra-specific set of granular, custom controls or a more no-brainer set of radio buttons. The new controls will first be tested with 40,000 users in the U.S. before rolling out to a bigger, international group of beta testers and then worldwide.
Last updated at 12:20 p.m. PDT.
Is Twitter getting possessive of its own name? Maybe.
A developer building an application using Twitter's API was told via e-mail that Twitter took issue with the user interface of his application, allegedly very similar to Twitter's own, as well as his use of the word "tweet" in the application's name.
The developer forwarded the e-mail to TechCrunch: "Twitter, Inc., is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own."
Uh-oh. If Twitter is staking a claim to the word "tweet," that could mean a problem for TweetDeck, TweetMeme, PoliTweets, and some of the other extremely popular businesses built atop Twitter.
A few things to keep in mind here. One, the developer was also creating a service that looked a lot like Twitter, the TechCrunch post explains, which means that the use of the word "tweet" may really have been less important than the e-mail made it out to be. Second, it's a personal e-mail coming from a Twitter employee--not a company representative or executive--which means that it may not be perfectly aligned with the company's official stance on things.
(Case in point: A Twitter investor hinted to The New York Times that the company would be making money with virtual coupons. One of Twitter's co-founders said in a comment on a blog that the investor was "brainstorming on his own.")
But the tech industry does have a history of getting into one skirmish after another over names similar to their trademarks. Several years ago, Apple started sending cease-and-desist letters to some third-party equipment companies and fan blogs that were using the word "pod" in their names. Google, too, has taken issue with the word "googling" being used as a generic verb.
And as TechCrunch points out, Twitter has filed for a trademark on the word "tweet." On the other hand, being possessive of this term (which, it goes without saying, has been a dictionary word for centuries) might not be the smartest strategy, if Twitter indeed wants to be a Digital Age communication standard "like electricity," as one executive said last month. So we'll see how this one unfolds.
UPDATE at 11:49 a.m. PT: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has, as the company's executives often do when there's a rumor flurry about something Twitter's doing, put up a blog post to clarify. The answer, not surprisingly, is that these things are handled on a case-by-case basis.
And "tweet" is not a target, he said.
"We have no intention of 'going after' the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter," Stone assured readers. "In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet."
It's more complicated when developers choose to use the word "Twitter," though it had been a dictionary word long before the microblogging company adopted the term.
"Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well," Stone wrote. "After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with 'Twitter' we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line."
This review contains some spoilers about the plot of "The Accidental Billionaires," but most of them are common knowledge to people familiar with Facebook's history.
(Credit: Doubleday)There's a reason why there aren't more lurid tell-all books about Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial elite: Generally, their lives are kind of a yawn.
Author Ben Mezrich attempts to prove that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is an exception to the rule in "The Accidental Billionaires," a testosterone-flavored tome of beach reading that hits stores on July 14. CNET News obtained an advance copy.
Telling the tale of Facebook's origins from late-night Harvard dorm room project to Silicon Valley start-up hotshot, "Accidental Billionaires" is neither a hard-hitting analysis nor a shocking expose of Facebook's origins. It also, um, isn't great literature. ("The thing that would drive this social network was the same thing that drove life at college--sex. Even at Harvard, the most exclusive school in the world, it was all really about sex. Getting it, or not getting it.")
And for digital-media enthusiasts who have been following Facebook's drama over the years--from the lawsuit on behalf of rival social network ConnectU, to the company's early days courting investors in Silicon Valley--there isn't a whole lot that will be particularly surprising. Most of the scandal in "Accidental Billionaires" was already in print, either thanks to court documents or investigative reports like the one on behalf of the now-defunct Harvard alumni magazine "02138."
But none of that really matters: "The Accidental Billionaires" is one of those books that exists to be turned into a movie. And the film adaptation of this one has been in development since before Doubleday was willing to confirm itself as the book's publisher. Mezrich's previous book, "Bringing Down The House," a similar tale of brilliance and treachery among students at an elite university, was turned into the hit movie "21." For the as-yet-untitled adaptation of "The Accidental Billionaires," "Fight Club" director David Fincher is reportedly on board to direct, and "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin has been charged with the screenplay. Sorkin is known for deft dialogue, which is good: "Billionaires" contains very little.
That's because Mezrich, himself a Harvard alumnus, was working mostly with second-hand sources: Zuckerberg and the rest of Facebook did not sanction or cooperate with the production of the book.
This is most obvious when you pick up on the fact that the narrative almost never depicts Zuckerberg alone, and is told primarily from the perspectives of three people who dealt with him during Facebook's early days--schoolmate and co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and eventual Facebook exec Sean Parker, and ConnectU co-founder Tyler Winklevoss. Scenes relying heavily on Zuckerberg's own actions tend to be bolstered by actual e-mails or blog posts written by the young CEO. Whenever Zuckerberg is actually doing something lascivious, be it hooking up with a girl or hacking into Harvard servers, it's laced with the language of disclaimers and speculation. ("Eduardo was pretty sure he'd just watched Mark Zuckerberg go home with a Victoria's Secret model.")
Zuckerberg: Evil nerd or dreamy visionary?
Is it at least entertaining? That depends on your literary proclivities--and your penchant for scandal. It's a colorful book, but those who were hoping that Zuckerberg would come across as an evil, conniving nerd will be a tad disappointed. He's portrayed as a dreamy visionary who devolves into a my-way-or-the-highway megalomaniac, at least from the perspectives of Saverin, Parker, and Winklevoss. But that megalomania is given the kid-glove treatment, likely because Mezrich was dealing with so much second-hand information, and the author even states in one chapter told from Saverin's perspective that "Mark didn't have the capacity, or the interest, to hate anyone."
It's fluffy "lad lit," so character depth isn't particularly front-and-center. The Winklevoss twins, who were in talks to employ Zuckerberg as a programmer and then alleged that he stole their business plan and code when he developed Facebook on his own, are rarely depicted in a setting that doesn't involve training for crew (remember, the two eventually went to the Olympics last year) or stuffing their faces in the dining hall after practice. Rowing is depicted with more than a slight hint of eroticism, with the adjective "phallic" applied to the Winklevosses' two-man boat, and Tyler Winklevoss described at the end of a race as "body sagging as he leaned forward, exhausted, his callused hands loosening against the now impotent oars." Oh, my.
And much ado is made of Sean Parker's bad-boy reputation while Mezrich's narrative simultaneously refutes it (he's portrayed as a skinny high school dropout with severe food allergies who happens to wind up at the wrong parties on a regular basis), as when the book implies that his arrest for cocaine possession was not only "a misunderstanding," as Parker has claimed, but goes through Parker's thought process as he considers that Zuckerberg may have set the whole thing up in order to oust him from his post as president of Facebook. Parker has declined to comment on whether he was one of Mezrich's sources for the book, but its treatment of him is rather exonerative. If Parker wasn't a source, someone very close to him was.
Beyond that, few players in Facebook's history have much of a role in the book. Early employees like Chris Hughes (who went on to be the Obama campaign's digital guru), Dustin Moskowitz, and Andrew McCollum make brief appearances, as does investor Peter Thiel. Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard alum who founded another social-networking project around the same time and has had legal issues with Zuckerberg over the rights to the use of the word "facebook," is given a few mentions. There's also a cameo by Bill Gates, who really did speak at Harvard in February 2004--that wasn't just a plot device.
Early rumors about "The Accidental Billionaires" suggested that Mezrich was particularly liberal with fact-checking, and while it looks like some of this was constrained by, you know, laws, there are a few obvious inaccuracies. A scene set in 2004 has Sean Parker griping to himself about Valleywag, the Silicon Valley gossip blog that didn't exist until 2006. And while Zuckerberg's longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, is alluded to a few times, it's implied (though not explicitly stated) that she didn't start dating Zuckerberg until Facebook had made him an on-campus celebrity; Facebook insiders say the two were already dating well before Zuckerberg founded Facebook.
In his introduction, Mezrich acknowledges that he's dealing with "a number of different--and often contentious--opinions about some of the events that took place." And it's clear he was careful with the handling of those situations, much in the way that a celebrity gossip magazine can report on the latest reports of Brangelina's demise without facing the Hollywood couple's legal team. On the bright side, that means the book probably isn't as factually dubious as it could have been, but it also means that Zuckerberg and Saverin aren't the world's most compelling protagonists. There's a reason there aren't more bestsellers about computer geeks.
"A James Bond villain"
If any legal action does stem from "The Accidental Billionaires," I'm guessing it won't come from Zuckerberg. There are few characters portrayed with legitimate, all-out negativity, but one of them is Sequoia Capital investor Michael Moritz, against whom Sean Parker is depicted as having a personal vendetta. Sequoia had invested in Parker's previous company, Plaxo, from which Parker departed under unfavorable terms; several chapters told from Parker's perspective describe Moritz as "a James Bond villain" who pushed Parker out of Plaxo's executive ranks after (it's implied) hiring a private investigator to stalk him and hunt down dirt.
In Mezrich's narrative, Parker imagines Moritz "stewing in his secluded lair, shouting at his peons in that bizarre, villainous Welsh accent," and allegedly sets up Zuckerberg's now-infamous Sequoia pitch meeting (in which Zuckerberg showed up late wearing pajamas) specifically to botch any chance that the venture firm would have to invest in Facebook.
Whether that's true or not, one can imagine Sequoia may not be too thrilled.
But as for Facebook? Undoubtedly, the social network has lawyers at the ready, but going after "Accidental Billionaires" would probably be a waste of time: Nothing in this book could come close to ruining Mark Zuckerberg, a young man who has already made more than a name for himself in Silicon Valley. Maybe we've all grown so immune to the presence of rampant celebrity gossip and speculation that it simply isn't that easy to drop a real character bomb. Or maybe it's just that, no matter how hard an author may try, the lives of Silicon Valley's glitterati simply aren't as salacious as those of Hollywood or D.C.
Eduardo Saverin, whom Mezrich thanks in his introduction for being crucial to the development of the book, has been on shaky terms with Facebook for years, and some of the conflict between Saverin and Zuckerberg that "Accidental Billionaires" details can be confirmed through courtroom documents. But Facebook, as Mezrich notes in his epilogue, now has returned Saverin to the official list of company co-founders on its Web site, and Saverin has also invested in at least one start-up based on the Facebook developer platform.
"Some of the writing about Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook is more accurate than others," a statement released by Facebook about the book read. "This book appears to fall in the 'others' category. We think future efforts will tell a better and more accurate story."
That said, it probably won't have hilariously over-the-top narrative gems like this one: "What happens when the guy next to you catches a lightning bolt? Does it carry you up to the stratosphere along with him? Or do you simply get charred trying to hold on?"
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen...the soaring heights of Silicon Valley drama.
Facebook has named former Genentech executive David Ebersman to the office of chief financial officer. He replaces Gideon Yu, whose departure was announced at the end of March.
"We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech's CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook."
David Ebersman earned a bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1991, according a university Web page.
(Credit: Brown University)Ebersman served as chief financial officer at the San Francisco-area biotechnology company Genentech from 2006 through April 2009 after moving up the ranks in the company for about a decade. The company was sold to Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Hoffmann-LaRoche in March, shortly before Ebersman stepped down.
He will officially start at Facebook in September.
Gideon Yu's departure from Facebook came amid rumors that he had failed to secure enough venture capital to keep the advertising-based company pushing forward toward profitability, something that Facebook repeatedly denied. The company said its search for a new CFO would focus primarily on "someone with public company experience." Ebersman wasn't at Genentech when it went public in 1980, but certainly did have experience running the financial operations of a public company--as well as its sale to a bigger corporation.
Two months after Yu departed Facebook, the social-networking company announced that it had received an additional infusion of venture capital, to the tune of $200 million, from Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies.
This post was updated at 12:01 p.m. PDT.
