The Woman that Helped Facebook Find Its Groove

If there’s one woman in particular who’s making her impact felt around Silicon Valley, it’s Sheryl Sandberg. Although there seems to be some unremarked upon gender conflict around her, no one is doubting that she is, in fact, the number two honcho at Facebook, the world’s biggest social network. Moreover, she’s widely pinned as the person directly deserving of a lot of the credit for putting Facebook’s always latent potential for profitability on the excellent track it’s been in for the past three years, or since Sandberg’s arrival.

In 2008 she jumped ship as Google’s vice-president of global online sales and operations to join the celebrated social network. As the story goes, right before leaving Google, Sandberg petitioned for a post with more leadership and responsibility: her request was summarily denied. Not retaining an employee with such clear leadership potential was probably one of the things that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was thinking of when he mentioned in an interview with All Things D that he had “screwed up” some things during his tenure.

Today, Sandberg may not be on Facebook’s board of directors — both she and Mark Zuckerberg claim that matter is a non-issue — but she is being mentioned as a possible future presidential candidate.

Read more:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/11/110711fa_fact_auletta#ixzz1WRgAKcUr

http://www.forbes.com/profile/sheryl-sandberg

http://allthingsd.com/20110531/world-would-benefit-from-facebook-alternative-says-google-chairman/

User Pictures and Names Come Off of LinkedIn’s Social Ads

It’s the last stretch of August and everybody’s out of the office — except yours truly, clearly — trying to cease all the promise of summer in the last few days of vacation. Given the twenty-something diurnal number all the calendars are proclaiming, it seems only to be expected that despite its immaculate primness and consistently great grasp for respectability, LinkedIn is the social network that’s easiest to forget come this time of year. That’s mostly because even the most novice of job hunters knows that it’s important to send out one’s resumes and profiles when the recipients are likely to be in the office.

But people are still paying attention to other things in the network. It was not quite two weeks ago that LinkedIn blogged an announcement concerning its decision to scrap its then-current iteration of social ads. The major issue was user complaints about the prominent placement given to user portraits and names in advertising for followed products and companies. The new version of these ads will omit user photos and names; instead, the ads will alert users to the persons in their network that following or recommending a certain product or company. Seems loyal users have a reason to sound a fanfare for their favorite space of professional connection:

Read More:

http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/08/11/social-ads-update/

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/08/linkedin-social-ads-will-stop-displaying-users-names-photos-.html

Just in Time for the First Week of School, “The Big Lebowski” for Rent on Facebook

This post was at first going to be dedicated to the news that “Retweet” and “LOL” had just been added to the revered Oxford English Dictionary. However, even bigger news has surfaced in the social media fray: “The Big Lebowski” can now be rented directly from its Facebook page. That’s really no LOLing matter; the movie’s been available since last Thursday, to the glee of its approximately 950,000 adoring fans.

Benny Evangelista, from the beautifully foggy northern peninsula that the San Francisco Chronicle calls home, reports that although Universal Studios is not the first movie house to permit one of its films to stream through Facebook — Warner Bros. and Paramount have done just that multiple times before — it is the first to do so with the F-commerce app called “Social Theater.” That app comes courtesy of Milyoni Inc., which specializes in Facebook E-commerce platforms.

So, as California’s many French tourists are saying this time of year, combien?

It’ll cost you thirty Facebook Credits, the equivalent of three dollars, to rent the perennial college favorite for 48 hours. If, even as a self-proclaimed fan, you still need additional incentives to part with your Facebook Credits, well, you can also share a one-dollar-off coupon with five of your Facebook pals.

Read more:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=95693#ixzz1Vnsuo67P

http://www.facebook.com/BigLebowskiMovie?sk=app_190322544333196

U.C. Berkeley Social App Lab Releases CitySandbox, Hopes to Network Real-World Deeds

These days, Greg Niemeyer, one of the honchos of the U.C. Berkeley Social App Lab, can be caught tinkering with a pet project: CitySandbox. What exactly is that two-word mash-up? It’s Niemeyer’s grab at getting to a finer integration of online and offline sociability, but by his own admission he still has much ground to cover.

CitySandbox is a social medium for people to “ask questions about specific places in [their] city and discuss them” with fellow residents. The goal is to create real-world action from the postings. The site is designed to promote the formation of social clusters focused on specific local issues through the virtual/real communication between its members.

It works by overlaying a Google map of a local area, Berkeley, in this case, with social networking capabilities. Users select a map location and then ask a question about it or propose a real-life event to address a particular issue.

Here goes one example. Concerning the location 1503 Oxford St., Berkeley, CA 94709, USA, CitySandbox user SEstar asked, “Who is the person that spends every night on this bench?” The user explained that the unknown person slept while “sitting upright,” “dressed in a dark long coat with a hoodie,” and kept “his/her legs crossed.”

SEstar’s query, after three weeks, only got one response, from user Shovel, who in some sort of commiseration posted: “Kind of creepy. But you could leave a note for him.” Helpful, indeed.

Niemeyer still has some way to go before hitting upon the online terrain that will truly nurture the creation of collective, real-world action from online discussions, but he feels he’s on the right track.

Read More:

http://citysandbox.com/?r=site/faq#about

http://allthingsd.com/20110811/citysandbox-berkeley-lab-launches-qa-site-for-civic-action/?refcat=social

http://www.berkeleyside.com/tag/social-app-lab/

Ashton Kutcher Thinks Social Media is “Like a Manifestation of God”

Ashton Kutcher, who, these days, is very much unironically being called a “social-media influencer,” has been gearing up for his return to television since joining the cast of “Two and a Half Men” late last spring. Some finer points about his new role have begun to emerge and media commentators are already remarking on the “meta” aspects of his giving life to an “Internet mogul” christened — a la Hollywood — Walden Schmidt.

In an interview he gave to Details Magazine, Kutcher himself described his new character as being “somewhere between an alien and Jesus Christ,” claiming he couldn’t “be more specific than that.” In another choice description provided by the one-time Michael Kelso, Ashton had this to say about social media: “It’s almost like a manifestation of God… People used to behave morally because they thought God was always watching — in some ways God today is the collective, and the collective is watching.”

By their turn, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Kutcher’s television comeback, with its steadier schedule, will “allow him to focus on tech projects” at Katalyst Media, the production company he co-founded with Jason Goldberg in 2000; the company has had a social media division since 2005.

Read More:

http://www.details.com/celebrities-entertainment/cover-stars/201109/ashton-kutcher-social-media-technology-guru

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2011/08/ashton-kutcher-two-and-a-half-men-sheen-details.html

Flickr, Twitter, and London Riots

On Flickr, it is now possible to find CCTV cam surveillance images of the London riots that have been taking place since Saturday night. London police uploaded the images themselves in an attempt at gaining assistance from the public in identifying the rioters. On August 5th, Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old with alleged gang affiliations was shot and killed by police in Tottenham, a part of the London borough of Haringey. Reports are suggesting Duggan did not fire at police before being shot.

Racial and class tensions are running high — Duggan was a mixed-race Londoner and the neighborhood where he died by police fire is being described by British dailies as home to the “fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%.” Widespread civic violence first broke out after a peaceful protest against police brutality in Tottenham devolved into the torching of two police patrol cars and a double-decker bus. By Monday the violence had reached London proper and continued to spread on Tuesday to Birmingham, Liverpool, and Bristol. 525 arrests have been made so far on account of vandalism and looting. Police are hoping the Flickr images will help them charge more aggressors.

In addition to helping police identify the rioters, through Flickr, the newly opened Twitter account @riotcleanup — already with more than 85 thousand followers — is ready to help people organize clean-ups around the town once it’s possible.

Read More:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14462271

http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/man-shot-police-was-friends-nightclub-stab-victim

Facebook Builds Momentum Among Recruiters

The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Light has just published a piece about a growing trend in job recruitment circles: trolling Facebook for job candidates. The use of social networks in the employment arena is nothing new, but the noticeable uptick in the use of Facebook for recruitment purposes is.

Facebook has traditionally been viewed as a place for personal connections, where the veneer of workplace formality is rubbed off or not bothered with at all. Jeff Vijungco, who oversees talent recruitment for Adobe Systems, Inc., told the WSJ that job candidates in focus groups reported being keenly disinclined to having recruiters reach out to them through Facebook.

Recruiters, however, are taking a closer look at the network’s advantages: Facebook has the lion’s share of users; people spend more time logged on Facebook than LinkedIn; and folks are, in general, more likely to apply for positions pointed out to them by friends and family than ones glanced at on job boards. Even job boards themselves, like Monster.com, are getting in on the trend — the popular employment site released BeKnown, a Facebook app, this past June.

Jobs2Web, a firm dedicated to keeping tabs on the origins of prospective and actual hires, crunched Facebook’s hire numbers and found that they “account[ed] for less than 1% of the total hires companies are making.” The same company is predicting that Facebook will become a real recruitment force in 2012.

Read more:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903885604576490763256558794.html

Asian-Americans Make Their Powerful Presence Known on YouTube

It’s more than likely that Asian characters are not super abundant on your living room’s TV screen. Well, that’s only if your TV still doesn’t connect to the internet. The New York Times is reporting that a new generation of Asian Americans is finding its voice on YouTube.

Among the most popular channels on the YT (get it together people!) are three whose owners are Asian American. Broadcasting all the way from Sin City, Ryan Higa has so far accumulated twenty-one years and 4.1 million channel subscribers. Ryan is Japanese American. Just what is he putting out on the Tube? A sketch comedy show. He only just recently lost the top spot as the channel with the most subscribers.

Not too far behind Higa is Michelle Phan. She’s twenty-four, Vietnamese American, lives in L.A. and has 1.5 subscribers on her makeup tutorial channel. Some other benefits she’s reaped from her YouTube fame? She obtained a position as a Lancôme spokeswoman after making it big on YouTube; before her internet star shot up Lancôme had the audacity to refuse to take her on to work glassy makeup counters.

What’s to account for the popularity of Asian Americans online? Professor Kent A. Ono told the NYT that it might have something to do with the fact that the Pew Research Center is reporting that Asian Americans are the demographic group with the most pronounced use of the internet: in 2010, 87 percent went online.

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/fashion/for-asian-stars-many-web-fans.html?_r=1&ref=technology

http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2011/Jan/Organization-for-Chinese-Americans.aspx