Updated at 8:30 p.m.: to correct that DST has no funding from the Russian government.
As reported earlier, Facebook is taking a $200 million round of funding from Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment company. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a conference call Tuesday morning that Facebook revenue numbers were up, that the company was growing, and that Facebook was, "on track to creating a nice, self-sustaining business," he explained that at Facebook, "we're open to interesting offers."
With many companies wanting to invest in Facebook, what made the DST offer so interesting?
Regional knowledge
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told me that Facebook was "not actively seeking investments." DST input will be key to Facebook's Eastern European business growth, though. "This is an investment with a strategic partner. We're excited for the learnings," she said.
New Facebook investor Alexander Tamas of Digital Sky Technologies.
(Credit: Facebook)But a source familiar with DST laid it out for me a bit differently: if Facebook wants to be successful in Russia, DST can bring a lot to the table besides knowledge. DST is close to the government there, the source said, and while outright involvement (or obstruction) from the Russian government is highly unlikely, if Facebook wants its business to go more smoothly, DST can help.
For example, should Facebook want to hire Russians, a connected investor like DST could help. DST influence could be even more important if Facebook wanted to acquire companies in the region.
DST's Alexander Tamas told me his company is private and does not have many interactions with the government. There is no government funding in DST. Still, our source says that DST's connections to the government, subtle though they may be, are important because the Russian market is not friendly to outsiders. "It's a market where you want a partner," I was told.
DST's investment gives it no power over Facebook in the United States, and reportedly no control of the company nor access to U.S. customer data. But through this arrangement, Facebook will likely have an easier time growing its market share in Russia, of obvious benefit to its new investor.
... Read the full post at CNET's CES 2010 blogDear Microsoft,
What the heck is wrong with you people?
Let me ask you the question another way. When I set up a birthday in Outlook, what makes you think that when the time zone changes, a birthday should move forward or back accordingly? But that's just what happened when I got my automated patch for the new daylight-savings time. Between March 11 and April 1, all my appointments moved back one hour. My father-in-law's birthday became a 24-hour event that takes place from 1 a.m. on March 21 to 1 a.m. on March 22. Since the event was changed everywhere it appeared on my calendar, not just on his 2007 birthday, I had to call my wife to figure out which date was actually correct.
A weird birthday.
(Credit: CNET Networks)All my appointments from March 11 to April 1 also moved, including repeating daily appointments that Outlook now wants me to be late for, and even air travel appointments that Outlook wants me to miss entirely.
The same thing happened to my wife's calendar. She's fuming. And I'm just waiting my dad, whom I do tech support for, to call me up, utterly bewildered by this change. I'm also not looking forward to what's going to happen to my calendar when I update the daylight-saving period on my Windows mobile phone.
Microsoft's official position on this? According to its own knowledge base, "Consider any calendar items in the extended DST period to be suspect. If you are not sure, verify the correct time with the organizer." This is in spite of a Microsoft Web page and a downloadable utility that's supposed to fix time-change mishaps. But the utility, in addition to being confusing to use, doesn't work reliably (it fixed the birthday problem for me, but not other meetings).
A confusing fix.
(Credit: CNET Networks)I've never liked the way Outlook handles time zones. It changes appointments around when you change the time on your computer, which is hardly (if ever) what you want it to do. Hello, Microsoft: Just because I adjust my clock, it doesn't mean I want you to rewrite all my calendar entries.
Now, I know that there are reasons for Outlook to try to integrate time-keeping with its calendar. In an organization that uses Exchange, for example, people in different time zones can set up appointments with each other and everybody will show up at the right time. That's very nice. Until, of course, someone gets on an airplane to come to a meeting they've set up in their home time zone, and shows up at the wrong time because they changed their PC's clock to the time at the destination, only to have Outlook move the appointment on them.
This is why Web-based calendars are so much better: Because they don't try to be clocks, too. The functions are different, and Outlook needs to be fixed so it's not trying to be both at once.
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