The Social

NEW YORK--Web pioneer and conference honcho Tim O'Reilly warned the audience at the Web 2.0 Expo here on Tuesday afternoon that he thinks "we're headed into another ugly time." Namely, everybody is just being really nasty to each other. And it makes his hippie soul hurt.

For example, Rupert "Dr. Evil" Murdoch keeps threatening to pull News Corp.'s pay wall-guarded content from Google, perhaps offering an exclusive deal to another search engine for one hundred billion dollars (give or take a few bucks).

Those ubiquitous URL-shortening toolbars are throwing Web addresses behind a cloak of invisibility, O'Reilly said, and they "don't let you navigate freely like the Web used to work." With Google's Chrome hurling itself into the mix, the browser and operating-system wars are starting to look less "Mean Girls" and more "Aliens vs. Predator."

But O'Reilly's attitude isn't "bring it on, and get me a large popcorn with extra butter, while you're at it." Rather, he hinted that at least in some cases, he's willing to embrace Google as a big, cuddly, benevolent dictator in the midst of it all. It's "a monopoly that's a service of value to users," he said, adding that generally, when Google makes a product with the primary goal of one-upping the competition--Knol vs. Wikipedia, Checkout vs. PayPal--it's not a success.

That's probably because, at least right now, among all the giant robots stomping about the series of tubes, Google is the one that most resembles O'Reilly's vision of the "open Web." In a blog post prior to his speech, he predicted that Microsoft could take over this role. Or not. Either way, he insisted that "it's time for developers to take a stand."

Setting off this kind of electric shock in the Web's punditocracy is a great way to drum up attention and newsworthiness that doesn't have anything to do with philosophizing about the recession, extolling the possibilities of the real-time streaming Web, or predicting which dot-com figurehead is going to be the most plastered at South by Southwest this year. Thank goodness! That stuff was getting so boring!

And O'Reilly's rallying cry has already gathered reactions. Barbarian Group executive Rick Webb, for one, posted a colorful retaliatory blog post, in which he said that "setting aside the 'boo hoo, the Internet is becoming a bunch of walled gardens' arguments, when rational people have conversations about how to make the Web actually usable and not 95 percent piracy, spam, and fraud, almost every discussion starts with the proposition that there is no other realistic option but to chuck the whole thing and start over."

Of course, the Web should be in a state of "war." When have things been any different? It's a hub of innovation, competition, and constant change, and I think we all knew that already. The barrier to entry is low enough so that if there's a glaring problem with something, users will flock to whoever can create a better alternative. In fact, O'Reilly brought that up on Tuesday, when he talked about expensive in-car GPS navigation systems.

"The turn-by-turn directions from TeleAtlas cost $99 [on the iPhone], but Google is giving it away for free. This is a natural kind of extension for Google. I don't think Google is being evil here by being disruptive," O'Reilly said. "That's a massive user win, even though it is incredibly damaging to some existing companies and some existing business models. When Google offers free speech recognition, [that would be] an amazing win."

Is that legitimate innovation? Yes. But let's hope the "win" doesn't stop there. If Google manages to throw a sucker punch to Apple, Microsoft, or whoever else by offering something once-pricey for free, I should hope that the rest of the industry makes sure that it doesn't grow too complacent.

So let's get this straight: monopolies are bad, unless they're "nice" ones on behalf of companies that extol the virtues of Razor scooters, wheatgrass smoothies, and lava lamps. Competition is great, as long as everybody's nice to each other.

Doesn't quite make sense to me. But, hey, it's his show.

Corporate tools take note: You can tell Twitter exactly what you're doing, and it'll tell LinkedIn too.

Chalk one up for the cringe-worthy marketing term "personal branding": there is a new partnership between Twitter, hub for informing the world exactly what you're doing and thinking at all moments of the day, and LinkedIn, the business-networking tool on steroids. In an announcement Monday, the two companies explained that LinkedIn status messages can sync with Twitter.

"The business use case of Twitter is turning out to be very important, and more and more people are finding that the persona they create for themselves on the Web is part of their resume in many ways," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a joint video with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman that was posted to the LinkedIn blog.

So, in short, LinkedIn's "status" feature now syncs with Twitter with an optional check box--a feature that the two companies say should be rolling out over the next few days. Likewise, can set your Twitter status as your LinkedIn status by using the hash tag #li or #in, so that you can rest assured that your tweet about "watching Gossip Girl and eating cold pizza" won't immediately show up to potential clients or employers trawling your LinkedIn profile. (Full disclosure: This was my Twitter status tonight. If you believe that it renders me professionally unsound, please feel free to let me know.)

All snark aside, this is probably a very good bet for LinkedIn, which continues to grow fast and make money but which hasn't yet really jumped into the latest social-networking trend of real-time, streaming information. Inking a partnership with Twitter is much easier than launching some other kind of initiative to get members to update their statuses more often. Tweets sent to LinkedIn, presumably, could also be grouped in with LinkedIn status messages to form some kind of business-intelligence live stream. The sort of information that people want to share specifically with colleagues and professional associates could be of interest to high-end advertisers or the market research community.

Twitter, meanwhile, is going to want to stay in the limelight of the business community as it considers a long-term business model--one of the microblogging service's potential moneymakers has been launching a "dashboard" of analytics for people and companies who use it primarily for professional purposes rather than, you know, filling the world in on which beer was just discovered in the back of the fridge.

Also for Twitter, this is yet another potential source of tweets as it attempts to become the world's foremost repository of real-time information. Earlier this year, MySpace announced an official way to sync Twitter and MySpace status, and in a matter of weeks its link-shortening service had become the second most popular on Twitter (trailing Twitter's preferred Bit.ly).

Facebook, meanwhile, appears to have been more reluctant: a Twitter app on its platform has pulled tweets into status messages for some time, and an unofficial app lets members tag selective tweets with the hashtag "#fb" to cross-post them to Facebook, but the only time that Facebook has put out a big, official announcement about syncing with Twitter was when it added an easy-sync feature for "fan pages," profiles for brands and marketers.

Not surprising. Twitter is a hot name in marketing these days, and in order for Facebook to establish fan pages as an ideal spot for brands to build a presence, an easy Twitter sync is a selling point. But in the long run, it's an advantage for Facebook, which once tried to buy Twitter and was snubbed, to keep its treasure trove of what-the-world-is-thinking somewhat to itself. After all, it can get away with it: with well over 300 million active users, Facebook is significantly bigger than Twitter, and could be diluting its own product by openly sourcing status messages out to Twitter. LinkedIn, better known for its networking features than any kind of status updating, isn't running that kind of risk.

Until then: "At SFO airport at bookstore. Deciding between @gladwell and @tferriss. Need real, serious insights. Thoughts? #li."

In my in-box last week: "Citibank Survey Reveals Small Businesses Not Joining Social Media Conversation."

In my in-box on Thursday morning: "Survey: Nearly Half of Small Businesses Surveyed Have Profiles on Facebook and Twitter."

Um, do these add up?

Let's take a look. The first survey, conducted by Citibank and research firm GFK Roper, surveyed 500 small-business executives in the U.S. and found that 76 percent say they don't think social networks are helpful for "generating business leads or for expanding their business," and 86 percent "say they have not used social-networking sites to get business advice or information."

Yet the second survey, commissioned by research group Internet2Go and small-business networking site MerchantCircle, polled 2,000 small businesses in the U.S. and found that 45 percent already operate Facebook pages and 46 percent have either a business or personal presence on Twitter.

"We've known anecdotally that small businesses are using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter but these numbers are surprising," Internet2Go senior analyst Greg Sterling said in a release. "The conventional wisdom is that (small businesses) are unsophisticated but they're adopting social media tools en masse it appears, because there are fewer barriers to entry than other forms of online marketing."

Meanwhile, the Citibank survey: "Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses," executive vice president of Citi's small business group Maria Veltre said in a release. "While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them."

The two, both of which classify "small business" as a company with fewer than 100 employees, really seem to serve up fairly conflicting results. But let's look a little deeper. The Internet2Go study, affiliated with a company (MerchantCircle) with an obvious interest in small businesses and social media, only polled existing MerchantCircle members. That means that those small businesses have already made at least one big leap toward trying to become more social-media-savvy.

Internet2Go senior analyst Greg Sterling told CNET News that the decision to only poll existing MerchantCircle members was made because it's difficult and expensive to pin down small businesses to survey them. The social network has "a large population of SMB users," he said in an e-mail.

That said, he admits the survey's results aren't totally random as a result: "These results should not be automatically generalized to the entire (small business) population," a blog post by Sterling explains. "They're qualified by the following: the survey targeted the most frequent content-publishers among MerchantCircle's small-business members. However, we believe these respondents may be a leading indicator of where the market is heading."

So it's more than likely that the Citibank survey shows the scenario closer to the current reality. Fine print, you know, can say a lot.

This post was updated at 10:52 p.m. PT with comment from Internet2Go's Greg Sterling.

If you're running a business that has a presence in a virtual world, market research firm Gartner thinks you might want to make sure your employees' avatars aren't dressed like Lady Gaga at the VMAs.

"Companies with codes of conduct for other Web activities, such as blogging, should be able to extend those policies into virtual environments," a release Wednesday from Gartner announcing its new report "Avatars in the Enterprise: Six Guidelines to Enable Success" explained. "However, because 3-D environments add the visual dimension, they will need to make sure that their policies also cover dress codes."

That means your avatar might want to lose the sparkly pink torpedo bra, metallic leggings, and giant bat wings. When it's representing your company, that is.

The presence of businesses in virtual worlds like Second Life is nothing new--and has been much derided in recent years. But according to Gartner, it's still on the rise, particularly when it comes to training and virtual meetings. "Avatars are creeping into business environments and will have far reaching implications for enterprises, from policy to dress code, behavior, and computing platform requirements," the release explained. Gartner estimates that 70 percent of enterprises will be regulating the avatars of employees who use virtual worlds for business.

Two years ago, Gartner put out a study detailing the risks and pratfalls of doing business in virtual worlds, among them the difficulty of brand and reputation management. Now it's getting more specific: Gartner now says that employees ought to know how to operate their avatars properly, use the same degrees of discretion and professionalism that they do on social-networking sites, and even keep separate avatars for personal and professional use.

A majority of U.S. workplaces block access to social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, new survey results commissioned by consulting firm Robert Half Technology indicate. Fifty-four percent block social networks "completely," while another 19 percent only permit it "for business purposes."

Only 10 percent of companies surveyed permit social-network use on the job for any kind of personal use; 16 percent allow "limited" personal use, according to the results released Tuesday.

The study, conducted by an independent research firm, surveyed about 1,400 chief information officers at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees, which means that the results obviously don't encompass small businesses.

Regulating social-network use at work is a complicated matter. There are some nuances that numbers like these don't bring up: "limited" personal use of social networks sounds like it could mean anything from blocking the majority (but not entirety) of social sites to simply instituting a "don't trash your boss on Facebook" rule. Some companies, additionally, may have different standards set for different degrees of employees--the guy running the company Twitter account and the human resources department may have extra privileges, for example.

There also isn't a differentiation in the results regarding which percentage of "blocked completely" workplaces use filtering software to keep employees off banned sites and which ones have a rule by which employees are supposed to abide (but might not).

Internet controls and filters in the workplace are nothing new. But social networks pose an interesting case: their potential for professional as well as personal networking, not to mention the well-publicized use of Twitter for marketing and customer service. There's also the fact that they've become so ingrained in culture and communication that some companies choosing to block them can appear draconian rather than prudent.

But they're still great for procrastination and counterproductivity, so it's not surprising that most businesses put the clamp on them.

"Using social networking sites may divert employees' attention away from more pressing priorities, so it's understandable that some companies limit access," Robert Half Technology executive director Dave Willmer said in a release. "For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes."

Along with the survey results, the company also offered a number of tips for social networking on the job: be aware of your employer's policies, don't complain about your co-workers or boss online, and keep tabs on your usage so that it's not too much of a time suck.

Twitter will give your business wings, or at the very least, it will send along some cute cartoon birds to carry your briefcase for you.

(Credit: Twitter)

Twitter's home page definitely gets some Zen cred by consisting of little more than a text field that asks, "What are you doing?" But that's apparently about to change.

According to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, there will very soon be a major revamp to Twitter.com.

The reason is to give potential Twitter users--you know, the ones who are curious about what these "tweets" on CNN are--a better idea of exactly what the service is and what they can do with it.

This is slated to launch next week.

"You can try (Twitter) out without having to sign up, so you can get an idea of what Twitter is before you use it," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told AllThingsD. "We need to do a better job of explaining ourselves to people who hear about us and then have no idea what do to."

Part of this has gone live already: a section called "Twitter 101," geared toward businesses that want to use the microblogging service for publicity, marketing, or customer relations. Co-founder Biz Stone announced this in a blog post on Thursday evening.

"We coordinated with business students and writers to surface some interesting findings, best practices, steps for getting started, and case studies," Stone wrote. "The results demonstrate how customers are getting value out of Twitter and suggest techniques businesses can employ to enhance that value."

This is important because of troubling (albeit unofficial) statistics that Twitter's ubiquity may be fleeting. The majority of new users reportedly don't stick around, and third-party studies have found that a small number of active members are responsible for the vast majority of "tweets."

Getting a "real" home page could also be key for future revenue opportunities on Twitter's end. The site is so lightweight that many avid users rarely access it at all, instead using third-party clients like Twhirl or TweetDeck. For Twitter, which still doesn't have a head of sales, getting people back to its homepage could be the first step in making a buck or two off it.

Not a particularly surprising move: LinkedIn president Jeff Weiner has taken over as CEO of the company, according to an announcement Wednesday from the business networking site.

Weiner, a former executive vice president at Yahoo, joined the company in January after then-CEO Dan Nye stepped down in December and founder Reid Hoffman took over as interim CEO. Hoffman will remain executive chairman of the company.

"LinkedIn was founded to harness the power of the Internet to create a tool that would help individuals become more effective and successful professionals," Hoffman said in a release. "Over the past six months, Jeff has done an exceptional job leading the company and I look forward to continuing the work that we have begun together."

LinkedIn now has over 42 million members, the company said, and hopes to be profitable this year for the second year in a row; it makes money not only from ads, but from premium subscriptions and "corporate solutions."

The company was aiming for a billion-dollar valuation just around a year ago when it raised a $53 million Series D funding round. Hoffman has gone on the record saying that he hopes LinkedIn will eventually go public.

NEW YORK--Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was coy about exactly why he isn't thrilled with Google's attempt to forge its way into the digital publishing business.

"We have strong opinions about that issue which I'm not going to share," Bezos said to interviewer Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference. "But, clearly, that settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited and it is being revisited."

In a court battle rife with twists, turns, and delays, Google has been attempting to push forward its Book Search initiative, which could potentially give the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant exclusive access to digital editions of some out-of-print books. That could, as Levy pointed out, get in the way of Amazon's goal of offering every book ever printed in every language on the Kindle and its new, bigger Kindle DX sibling. And it sounds like that's where Amazon has some beef.

"There are many forces of work looking at that and saying it doesn't seem right that you should do something, kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights," Bezos said.

Bezos was speaking at the conference, which had the subtitle "Disruptive by Design," to talk about Amazon's legacy of shaking up the retail industry and now potentially the publishing industry with its Kindle e-reader device. Most of his talk was focused on the sort of business advice that one might expect a tech company to provide to a room full of big-business and old-media types ("be stubborn on the big things and very flexible on the details," "you have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time"), but he did get a few minutes to talk about how he thinks the Kindle is changing things.

In New York, a longtime global hub of the beleaguered publishing, media, and advertising industries, what he had to say was particularly weighted. The Kindle, after all, is doing extremely well: Bezos said that out of the entire offering of 300,000 books available for both the Kindle and physical retail on Amazon, that the Kindle's sales are 35 percent of physical books' after only 18 months on the market.

"Internally, we are startled and astonished by that statistic," Bezos said.

But he wouldn't promise that the device will singlehandedly save the newspaper industry.

"I never want to convey that I think we have a sinecure with any particular product offering, but if we execute well and other companies that do these kinds of electronic readers, that is going to be part of what happens with newspapers," Bezos said. "And I do think there are going to be multiple companies competing with reading devices and I think there's room for multiple winners."

Like much of the speakers at the Wired Business Conference, Bezos talked extensively about how things have changed over the past few years, and how it demands a deep rethinking of business practices in all industries. In this case, he was talking about the media business.

"Unfortunately, there's a collision of several major issues happening to the magazine, newspaper, and publishing industries all at once, including most recently the recession which has taken a bad situation and made it much worse," he said. "But the biggest structural problem in my opinion is there's just so much supply of advertising space. That's a fundamental problem that's not going to go away."

But at the same time--in keeping with the conference's theme--there's an extraordinary amount of opportunity, Bezos insisted.

"Some of the most important barriers to entry in that industry have been dissolved, and they've been dissolved permanently."

NEW YORK--Twitter executive Jack Dorsey says he's looking forward to the day when the world stops talking so much about the company he co-founded.

"I think Twitter's a success for us when people stop talking about it, when we stop doing these panels and people just use it as a utility, use it like electricity," said Dorsey, who was on a "Future of Media" panel here Wednesday as part of Internet Week New York. "It fades into the background, something that's just a part of communication. We put it on the same level as any communication device. So, e-mail, SMS, phone. That's where we want to be."

From Jack Dorsey's Twitter feed.

(Credit: Twitter)

For those who stepped in late, Twitter blew up from a cult following of geeks and news junkies into a full-out phenomenon earlier this year, when actor Ashton Kutcher kicked off a challenge with CNN to be the first account to hit one million followers and Oprah Winfrey gave Twitter her seal of approval on the air.

But Dorsey, who served as the company's CEO until he stepped down last October (retaining his chairman post), did say he isn't tired of people asking him what Twitter's business model will ultimately be--a persistent nag among pundits who are skeptical of how fast it's risen without a clear way of making money. He said that the reason why Twitter hasn't come up with a business model yet is because the company needed to let users and developers shape it first.

"I like that question because it speaks to how Twitter came to be," Dorsey said. Many features of Twitter were "behavior(s) that we did not invent. That was usage that we saw, that we made easier. The hash tags that you're seeing today, same thing. The search engine was something that was outside the company."

It's sort of a Catch-22, if Dorsey is to be believed: Had Twitter rushed in with a moneymaking strategy early on, it could have hampered the company's growth. "We took VC money so that we can be patient in that endeavor, and we're going to be patient, we're going to do it right," he insisted. "We're not going to put something on top of it that doesn't fit."