Facebook invites users to vote on the site's terms of service.
(Credit: Facebook)Following Facebook's privacy debacle earlier this year, the social-networking site is encouraging users to vote on whether a proposed terms of service culled from user feedback should replace the existing terms of service.
In a blog posting Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg encouraged users to review documents posted to the site that contain proposed changes to the site's terms of service (TOS) based on user feedback along side the current TOS:
If these new documents are approved, all future changes to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities will go through the same process of notice and comment, and may be put to a vote if enough people comment. Even if these new proposed documents are defeated, we will still find ways to involve you in the governance process; however, this involvement will need to be explicitly stated in a future version of the Terms of Use.
Users will have until noon PDT on April 23 to cast their vote, and the result will be binding if 30 percent of active Facebook users participate in the vote, Zuckerberg wrote. In the first few hours of voting, the proposed documents were beating the existing one by nearly 3 to 1, but fewer than 8,000 people had voted. Considering Facebook recently announced that it had surpassed 200 million active users, nearly 70 million users will need to participate to make the vote binding.
The voting is in response to a privacy flap that erupted in February after Facebook announced changes to its terms of service that had meant that its license on user content--a longstanding but little-publicized claim to an "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" for promotional efforts--would no longer expire if a member deleted his or her Facebook account.
But facing a revolt from thousands of users and a threatened federal complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information, the social-networking service returned to its previous terms.
In response, Zuckerberg announced in February that future changes in the Facebook agreements with users would be put up for open debate in a process of "notice and comment." The forum would be open to all Facebook users, and if Facebook proposes a modification to a term of service that is uncontroversial or has limited feedback, it will get incorporated into the user agreement after a stated period of time.
Now the fireworks and fractiousness can officially move inside Yahoo: activist investor Carl Icahn is part of the Internet company's board.
Icahn had tried to take over the entire board in July, but settled for a seat of his own and for two of his allies. In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Yahoo said Icahn is officially on the board, replacing Robert Kotick as planned.
Carl Icahn is Yahoo's newest board member.
One of Icahn's first roles on the board will be to help pick the two allies who will join him. The new appointments are set to be announced by August 15, increasing Yahoo's board from nine to eleven members.
Icahn owns about 5 percent of Yahoo's shares.
Yahoo's board is no place for a someone in search of a sinecure. The board met thirty times in the six months between Microsoft's announcement of its desire to acquire Yahoo and Friday's shareholder meeting.
And there's plenty of pressure still to come. After that meeting, the board might have been breathing a sigh of relief when vote results showed shareholder dissatisfaction had lessened from 2007. But a recount of the Yahoo vote actually showed strong dissatisfaction: 39.6 percent withheld votes to re-elect Chairman Roy Bostock and 33.7 percent withheld votes for Chief Executive Jerry Yang.
Those numbers could help bring some weight to whatever reforms Icahn has to suggest. The interpersonal dynamics of the board are sure to change, but it's not yet clear how. For the time being, though, both Icahn and Yahoo are presenting an image of collegiality and civility.
Despite Icahn's earlier request that Yang step down, Yang said he welcomes Icahn's "fresh perspective,", and at the board meeting, Bostock said the board looks forward to Icahn's arrival. "Carl is a good guy, despite some of the things written about him. He'll be a very productive member," Bostock said.
Icahn, who skipped the shareholder meeting, last week called Yang and Bostock "gentlemen" and said he hoped working together "will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
The shareholder approval ratings for Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock plunged Tuesday after Yahoo released new results that corrected a vote transmission error.
Shareholders unhappy with board members withheld their votes in the Friday election. In Yahoo's official voting tally released Friday, 14.6 percent of votes for Yang and 20.5 percent for Bostock were withheld.
But in the corrected results, Yang's withhold percentage rose to 33.7 percent and Bostock's to 39.6 percent, Yahoo said.
Update 2:09 p.m. PDT: Quantitatively, the change means nothing: "These errors did not affect the outcome of the election of directors," Yahoo said.
But qualitatively, it's a different story, because withhold votes do send a message even if the board was still re-elected. The disapproval has dropped down to the range of last year's meeting, a few days after which former Chief Executive Terry Semel lost his job.
A transmission error by Broadridge Financial Services affected the withhold tally, lopping off any withhold votes beyond 100 million in some particular circumstances. Broadridge transmitted to Yahoo results from Capital Research Global Investors, which owns 6.2 percent of Yahoo stock at last count, and its sister group Capital World Investors, which owns 9.85 percent of Yahoo shares.
(Credit:
Yahoo)
Update 2:23 p.m.: It's not hard to figure out why shareholders might be upset with the company, which is in the midst of a turnaround effort that began in 2007 and will last through 2008.
Since February, Yahoo's share price rose from $19.18 to the $30 range when Microsoft attempted to acquire first Yahoo then later just its search assets.
With those deals dead, for now at least, Yahoo's shares have sunk back down. The company's stock closed at $19.82 on Tuesday and dropped a few cents in after-hours trading.
Arthur Kern, Ronald Burkle, and Gary Wilson also saw a big jump in the percentage of votes withheld. Here's how the withhold-vote percentages changed for the various board members from Friday's tally to the Tuesday's revised results:
• Roy J. Bostock, 39.6 percent, up from 20.5 percent
• Ronald Burkle, 37.9 percent, up from 18.8 percent
• Eric Hippeau, 9.3 percent, no change
• Vyomesh Joshi, 7.1 percent, no change
• Arthur Kern, 31.7 percent, up from 22.1 percent
• Robert Kotick, 7.6 percent, no change
• Mary Agnes Wilderotter, 7.8 percent, no change
• Gary L. Wilson, 27.7 percent, up from 18.2 percent
• Jerry Yang, 33.7 percent, up from 14.6 percent.
Yahoo said it plans to update a shareholder vote results after an error in transmission meant some dissatisfaction with Yahoo management wasn't reflected in Friday's board member election figures.
Capital Research Global Investors, suspecting an error in the Yahoo vote tally, said on Monday that it requested that the firm it uses to transmit the votes to Yahoo check its work to see if there was an error. On Tuesday, that firm, Broadridge Financial Solutions, said it found a "truncation error" that underreported how many votes were withheld for some board members.
Withholding votes in a board member election is a symbolic but still potentially potent form of communication. The vote update isn't expected to change the overall outcome of the election, which saw all board members re-elected.
In Yahoo's official voting tally, released Friday, 14.6 percent of votes for Chief Executive Jerry Yang and 20.5 percent for Chairman Roy Bostock were withheld.
Capital Research Global Investors owns 6.2 percent of Yahoo stock at last count; sister group Capital World Investors, which owns 9.85 percent of Yahoo shares, also used Broadridge to transmit its votes.
Chuck Freadhoff, a representative for Capital Research Global Investors and Capital World Investors, didn't comment on its plans.
Maybe Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang didn't escape criticism from Friday's shareholder meeting so easily after all.
Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)The percentage of Yahoo shareholders who withheld votes for Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock dropped from 2007 to 2008, Yahoo said after the meeting, apparently signifying a lesser level of disapproval. But Capital Research Global Investors, which at last count owns 6.2 percent of Yahoo stock, has requested that the company that transmitted its votes to Yahoo, Broadridge Financial Solutions, check its work.
"We asked Broadridge Financial to doublecheck the votes it transmitted to Yahoo on our behalf," said Capital Research Global Investors spokesman Chuck Freadhoff.
That indicates the possibility that some "withhold" votes may not in fact have been withheld. In Yahoo's official tally, 14.6 percent of votes for Yang and 20.5 percent for Bostock were withheld.
Capital Research Global Investors employs Gordon Crawford, a portfolio manager who has been critical of Yahoo. It's one of two parts of Capital Research and Management; the other part, Capital World Investors, owns 9.85 percent of Yahoo shares.
Yahoo believes nothing is amiss with the vote. "The independent inspector of elections certified the results of the election and Yahoo accurately announced those results," the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said in a statement.
But Yahoo left the door open for the possibility that something might have gone wrong before the votes were received. "Yahoo did not participate in the execution of the votes and was not a party to any errors which may have been made either by a voting institution or a proxy processing intermediary acting on behalf of banks, brokers and institutions."
A representative for Broadridge wasn't immediately available for comment.
It's not clear what happens if there was a disconnect between investment firms' voting wishes and the way the votes were actually recorded. Because the withhold vote is largely a symbolic act of communication, it's not likely that any change in the withhold would, for example, force Yang or Bostock to step down.
But it could change Yahoo's estimation of how satisfied its shareholders are with the company's turnaround plan.
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