Posts tagged Leave
Three Big Geeks Leave Microsoft in One Day, Including Barney Pell
Sep 6th
Barney Pell of Powerset, ZundHD business development lead Dave McLauchlan and Windows 7 gaming project manager Ruchit Garg all announced today that they are leaving Microsoft. Pell, a super-geek and the best known of the three, leaves three years and one month after his semantic startup Powerset was acquired by Microsoft before it even fully launched, for a rumored $100 million.
People come and people go from companies all the time, but for three well-known names from Microsoft to depart in one day has got to be dispiriting. Hopefully, when smart people leave giant companies, it means they will create something new and fabulous elsewhere.
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Pell will focus on angel investing – he probably secured a nice addition to his stockpile to invest with my sticking around for more than three years. Microsoft watcher Mary Joe Foley covers his departure in some depth this evening. The best write-up of what Powerset was as a technology and as a phenomenon is probably Matt Marshall’s Venturebeat write-up from five years ago (at least I still remember that one today). Alex Iskold provided a solid comparison of Microsoft plus Powerset vs Google when the acquisition was confirmed. It seems that a whole lot of hope, hype and technology may have gone to waste. Or maybe it’s infused throughout Bing and is one of that minor search engine’s saving graces.
Powerset was the subject of huge expectations and controversy three years ago, though. The company inspired countless conversations about the nature and potential of Natural Language Search and the semantic web.
Right: Barney Pell, photo by TechCrunch.
Dave McLauchlan has been a prominent member of the small but loyal Zune community. Tech blog Electronicista points out that he was a vocal defender of the Zune’s long-term viability just six months ago. That was, no doubt, his job though and he did note that “all consumer electronics have a lifespan.” He’ll work next on an advertising optimization company, for which he’ll have to listen to fewer jokes I assume than he has had to about Zune – which is really saying something.
Ruchit Garg left Microsoft as well today after working on web and mobile casual games for 6 years at the company, almost 3 of which were spent in India.
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CEO Beckstrom to Leave ICANN in July Amid gTLD Controversy
Aug 17th
His vision was to internationalize the oversight body of the Internet naming system, to structure it less like a spider and more like a starfish. (A starfish, you see, can regrow lost limbs.) To some extent, the dashing security expert Rod Beckstrom has accomplished that as President and CEO of ICANN since mid-2009, most notably by removing the U.S. Dept. of Commerce from its direct oversight role over ICANN.
Come the end of his term next July, Beckstrom will leave the President and CEO role of ICANN, presumably to resume his career as a world-renowned security expert. But the twilight period of his term he may have to fight at least two more significant battles, neither of which may conclude before his departure. First and foremost is ICANN’s adoption of a controversial generic top-level domain (gTLD) plan for the domain name system – one which would give any applicant with $185,000 to spare (PDF available here) a new root domain of its own alongside .com, .net, and .org.
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The latest criticism of this plan came Monday from Randall Rothenberg, CEO and President of the Internet Advertising Bureau. The IAB represents some 500 leading media firms that represent as much as 86% of the ad buys in the United States.
“ICANN’s potentially momentous change seems to have been made in a top-down star chamber,” Rothenberg said. “There appears to have been no economic impact research, no full and open stakeholder discussions, and little concern for the delicate balance of the Internet ecosystem. This could be disastrous for the media brand owners we represent and the brand owners with which they work. We hope that ICANN will reconsider both this ill-considered decision and the process by which it was reached.”
Rothenberg’s comments follow up on a letter sent earlier this month to Beckstrom by Robert Liodice, the President and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which alleges the proposed gTLD system violates the world’s existing system of trademarks.
“Implementation of a program with unlimited TLDs is economically unsupportable and likely to cause irreparable harm and damage,” Liodice wrote. “At the same time, the program contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardizes the safety of consumers. By introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace. Brand confusion, dilution, and other abuse also poses risks of cyber predator harms, consumer privacy violations, identity theft, and cyber security breaches.”
All that together might mean a fairly negative legacy for an outgoing ICANN chief. But in his response to Liodice a few days later, Beckstrom stated that Liodice had not done his homework, failing to account for strict guidelines for gTLD applicants (PDF available here) that were developed with the full cooperation of both major DNS stakeholders and the U.S. Government.
Multiple public meetings and at least 45 lengthy public comment periods were conducted and thousands of comments, representing a broad range of interests, were received. Every comment submitted (including those submitted by the ANA) was read, summarized, posted for all to see, and factored into the decision-making process. The extent of this collaborative process, the responsiveness to public comment, and the volume of changes (across seven full drafts of the Applicant Guidebook) in response to stakeholder input are well documented.
…
Your quotations from the economic studies are highly selective and lead to an unsupported conclusion that more domain names will lead to cyber security lapses or consumer privacy violations. Your claim of “enormous financial burdens” and other broad statements are offered without supporting data or rationale. I invite you to review the entire set of economic studies, which explored the current marketplace, and applied expert analysis to an examination of the potential risks and benefits as far as possible (noting that the benefits of innovation are difficult to predict). As you point out, these studies recommended the implementation of additional protections against trademark abuse and malicious conduct. ICANN formed teams of internationally recognized experts to adopt both these recommendations and incorporate many significant new safeguards into the program.
Beckstrom went on to respond to Liodice’s allegation that companies would be forced to shell out a six-digit figure to protect their trademark interests on the Web, by saying protections will be put in place to prevent any applicant from violating the legal interests of any other parties. As for whether new gTLDs will bring appreciable benefits to the Internet as a whole – as Web creator Tim Berners-Lee suggested in 2004 that they should – Beckstrom suggested that hopefully anyone taking on the task of buying a gTLD would recognize the enormous responsibility that would be assumed. “This is clearly not for everyone,” he wrote.
Is ICANN concerned that the fallout from this dispute may not subside prior to the close of Beckstrom’s tenure? ICANN spokesperson Jim Trengrove told RWW, “By the time Rod Beckstrom’s term comes to end, the new gTLD program application period will have been completed and the evaluation of those applications will be well underway. Rod already has remarked on the solid professional executive staff he has put together which will carry on implementation of the gTLD program even while a professional search for his successor is underway.”
Meanwhile, the other battle that ICANN is mitigating concerns another aspect of Beckstrom’s bold internationalization plan: It wants the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to remove itself from responsibility for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which manages the assignment of names to country-code TLDs (like .co and .tv), as well as to the zone where gTLDs would be managed.
ICANN administrator Fiona Alexander made it very clear last March: It wants IANA to step aside. “Narrowing the scope of the IANA functions framework would promote the global public interest. Narrowing the scope of the framework subject only to [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] oversight would increase global confidence in the performance of these functions.”
Is ICANN concerned this situation may not be resolved before next year? “Rod is pleased with the increased internationalization of ICANN during his watch, beginning with the Affirmation of Commitments agreed to within months of his taking over as president and CEO of ICANN,” ICANN’s Trengrove tells us. “He believes ICANN’s relationship with IANA continues to evolve in a positive direction.”
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Leave No Marketer Behind! After Show Parties at SES San Francisco #sesSF
Aug 12th
Gorgeous and sassy online marketing expert, Susan Bratton, gives a quick preview of the material she’ll be covering in her keynote at SES San Francisco.
Susan’s keynote session is on Tuesday, August 16, 9:00-10:00am. Lee Odden from TopRank condu…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
To Reduce IE6 Pain, Don’t Leave It Until the End
Aug 3rd
It’s safe to say most Web developers would prefer not to support Internet Explorer 6. They’d rather put up a notice for the user to download another browser, or maybe just display the WAP-optimized version of the site instead.
But sometimes, it’s not up to the developer to decide whether to support IE6. Your employer or client may require it. In a recent blog post Mike Davies reminds us that saving IE6 compatibility until the end of a project is a recipe for disaster. “If you leave IE6 testing and fixing to the end of your project, you have no-one else to blame for the pain but yourself,” he concludes.
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It might be tempting to keep quiet and hope the subject of IE6 support never comes up, but if you wait until the project is done and then try to bolt IE6 support on after the fact, you’ll face far more difficulties than you will if you think about IE6 from the beginning. “Leaving any requirement untouched until the end of a project is asking for trouble and pain,” writes Davies . “The fault isn’t in the requirement, but in the developer’s approach to web development.”
Also, Davies notes:
Support isn’t a binary option. It ranges from pixel-perfect rendering, to slight differences in rendering, to completely working with a simpler style, to providing only the core functionality, through to zero support at all. The right level is that which matches the enagement of your audience using that particular browser.
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Hey! Marketers! Leave Those Customers Alone!
Jul 15th
How often do you want to “engage” with your toilet paper brand? Or your phone company? What about your bank? If you’re like me, if you want to be “engaged” at all you want to initiate that engagement when you have a question or problem, and then you want that engagement to end once the problem has been solved.
You don’t want coupons for toilet paper in your Facebook stream. You don’t want to read tweets from the CEO of your mobile carrier. You don’t want to get e-mails about the interest rates on money market accounts your bank offers.
You just want to be left alone until you need something. Does that sound right?
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According to social media marketer Neicole Crepeau , despite what you may have heard “most customers don’t want a conversation with a company or its representatives.” And the glut of company fan pages on Facebook may be part of what’s driving people away from Facebook. Either way, people are un-liking businesses, and that trend is being driven by marketers trying to “engage” too frequently.
Sure, there are a handful of brand loyalists who might want to spend a lot of time following a particular company (and different industries will have varying proportions of these sorts of people). But as Crepeau writes:
It may be worth engaging that minority deeply, as brand advocates. But companies aren’t focusing on deeply engaging with the few people who deeply want to engage with them. Most companies either aren’t doing social media, or they are in a race to acquire as many fans and followers as possible and then get likes and comments from as many as possible.
It should be obvious, but getting followers on Facebook or Twitter doesn’t equate to making sales. But with the number of household products with Twitter accounts these days, it seems like this point is worth repeating. (Grocery stores may be an exception here, if the coupon offerings are strong enough.)
So what exactly should companies be using social media for? I agree with Crepeau that “Good companies will continue to monitor, respond, answer questions, address concerns, elicit suggestions, all through social media as well as other means.”
Large companies should use social media to help their customers, not ram marketing down their throats. And your social media strategy and tools (such as monitoring and analytics tools) should be in alignment with this idea. Building a fan page for your company is fine, but the real work is in keeping your customers happy. Remember: customer service is marketing.
Photo by kioan
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How To Leave Your Yacht Out Of A TechCrunch Story
Mar 31st
Having your yacht mentioned in a TechCrunch article can be alarming. Follow a few simple guidelines, and maybe you can avoid this.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Google ITA Acquisition Will Not Leave Kayak Paddling Upstream
Mar 4th
Kayak co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Paul English said he welcomes Google in to the travel search space, but thinks his smaller company can be nimble and quicker to adapt to changes in the market and points out that Google does not have the best record when it comes to being successful with adding new services through acquisition. Kayak also has partnered with Bing to help them with travel search results.
Click to read the rest of this post…
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Skype for Mac Leave Beta, Adds Premium Group Video Calling
Jan 27th
Skype has just released a new version of its software for Mac. The beta version has been out for a few months now, and Skype says that it’s made a number of changes based on user feedback.
This new version also introduces group video calling as part of its Premium package. There is a 7 day free trial for new users, but then you’ll need to purchase either a day pass ($4.99) or buy a monthly subscription ($8.99 per month) for the feature.
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Skype says that it has made some adjustments to the Mac version based on some of the feedback to the beta version. As someone who downloads a lot of new software and has a pretty high tolerance for early iterations of products, I admit, I quickly uninstalled the beta version. It was too big and unwieldy. Skype says it’s addressed that. It’s kept the single-pane UI, but “we’ve slimmed things down a bit in the new version, trimming pixels and realigning things to make the app altogether more compact.”
Still missing from this version is deep integration with Facebook, something we’ve been looking forward to since the two companies announced a partnership last year. But as Mike Melanson reported yesterday, it does seem as though Facebook is testing some VOIP calling. It’s just obviously not in this new version of the Skype client for Mac.
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs Announces Medical Leave of Absence
Jan 17th
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has just announced that he is taking a medical leave of absence. He will continue as CEO, but will pass day-to-day operations of the company to COO Tim Cook.
This is the email memo that Jobs sent to Apple employees today according to Business Wire.
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Team,
At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.
I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.
I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.
Steve
Jobs has not given a reason for the medical leave of absense. This is his second medical leave, following a battle with pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant in 2009.
Apple is slated to give its quarterly earnings report tomorrow, and perhaps more details will be forthcoming at that time.
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People Using Pseudonyms Leave Better Blog Comments [STUDY]
Jan 16th
Posted by admin in Uncategorized
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In addition to leaving more comments, people using pseudonyms are more likely to leave comments that get “likes” from other readers, according to Disqus, which operates blog commenting platforms for about one million Web sites, including ReadWriteWeb.
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Not only does the data throw the conventional web wisdom that people who use their real names leave better comment into question, it also gives Disqus and other comment platforms leverage to compete with Facebook, which has made inroads into the commenting space by allowing sites to let people leaving comments use their Facebook identities.
Disqus is one of the more than 400,000 Web sites that lets people use their Facebook profiles to leave comments. But Disqus said just 4% of its users preferred to use Facebook to leave comments with their real name, compared to 61% who used pseudonyms and 35% who logged in anonymously.
Of course Disqus has a vested interest in convincing publishers to allow anonymous comments and remarks left under a pseudonym.
But the company is maintaining that, based on its review of 500,000 comments left using its system, 61% of the comments left by those types of users gained positive reviews from other readers, as opposed to 51% for comments left by people using their identity and 34% for people who remained anonymous.
Discuss
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