In a lengthy “Why I quit” letter, former Google software developer James Whitaker blames Facebook envy for the company’s decline: Advertisers and publishers cherish [detailed] personal information, so much so that they are willing to put the Facebook brand before their own. Exhibit A: www.facebook.com/nike, a company with the power and clout of Nike putting their own brand after Facebook’s? [...]
It’s the largest newspaper The St. Petersburg Times has ever delivered to subscribers door steps. “Last year it was a record sized paper, it’s even bigger this year,” said Bruce Faulmann, VP of sales and marketing. The paper will be over three inches thick and weigh more than four pounds. “We call it thud factor. A lot [...]
Google has started celebrating Thanksgiving just a few days before the rest of us. An illustration of a blinking turkey with unusual headgear and colorful plumage has replaced the trademark Google logo on the search engine’s homepage. The interactive, holiday-themed Google doodle is based on the “hand turkey” drawings that are a Thanksgiving tradition in elementary schools across the [...]
Gary Morgenthaler, Siri’s first investor, believes that the digital assistant foreshadows Google’s unraveling: A million blue links from Google is worth far less than one correct answer from Siri. People don’t really want search engines. Rather, they want “do” engines. They want to get things done. Siri is the precursor to a revolution in search that provides far [...]
Farhad Manjoo puts a fork in the social network: Why am I so sure that Google+ can’t be saved? Because there’s no way to correct Google’s central failure. Back when companies were clamoring to create brand pages on the network—or users were looking to create profiles with pseudonyms, another phenomenon that Google shut down—the company ought to have [...]
There’s inside baseball and then there’s the story about Jim Romensko, a prominent media blogger who resigned from the Poynter Institute after being accused of “not properly attributing words written by other writers in links on his self-named media news website.” I myself am guilty of this same sin because, like Romensko (and by like Romensko, [...]
ABCNews.com and Yahoo.com will livestream the following interviews today: Huntsman at 8:10 a.m.; Bachmann at 9:30; Paul at 11; Perry at 11:15; Romney at 12:15 p.m.; Santorum at 2; Cain at 2:30; Gingrich at 3. – Sen. Marco Rubio will be the guest at the next interactive Politico Playbook Breakfast on Tuesday, November 15, at [...]
Lance Ulanoff ruminates over Google’s redesigns: I’m reading Steve Jobs’s biography right now and learned that he hated — HATED — corners. Everything had to be curved. He was obsessed with chamfers. Take a look at your iPhone or iPad and you’ll see that design sensibility. Google, though, is going the other way. Gmail for the iPhone is all hard lines [...]
My online (and recently met in person) friend Robert Neff keeps up the criticism of the St. Petersburg Times‘ name change: The St Pete Times announcement to change their name and rebrand themselves demonstrates how out of touch their leadership is with their readership. There is no strength in their arguments. For example, the statement [...]
