Google Gets the Department of Justice’s Seal of Non-Approval

I can hear it now. We normal folks won’t be able to hear this signal (kind of like a dog whistle) but this is being sounded across the US to Washington, DC from Mountain View, CA as we speak.

“Calling all ex-Google employees in DC! Calling all ex-Google employees in DC! (Especially if you still have stock) I repeat – Calling all ex-Google employees in DC! This is your real leader, Eric Schmidt, and we need you to ‘talk’ to some people about this ‘problem’ that the US government has with our book deal. Remember where your allegiance is and who is more powerful. Go and do your duty for the Goog immediately. Thanks and have a great day!”

OK, so it really is a ridiculous thought but I bet the folks at Google wish that could happen when a road block like this happens to a deal that seems quite important to one of the most powerful companies in the world. Sfgate.com tells us

The Department of Justice said in a filing late Thursday that revisions to the proposed legal settlement allowing Google Inc. to publish millions of books online didn’t do enough to allay antitrust, copyright and other legal concerns.

The landmark deal would allow the Mountain View search titan to move ahead with its ambitious project while establishing a system for identifying and paying appropriate rights holders.

The government acknowledged “substantial progress” on several issues, but said in a statement filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that core concerns remain unresolved, including the amount of power granted to Google.

There is quite a bit at stake with this book deal for sure and there are those who are both for and against. Those against include library groups, academics and competitors who have privacy and anti-competitive concerns. Those for the deal include student, minorities and the disabled because the service would provide the ability to access more information than ever.

Google is doing an “act as if” and not really publicly recognizing this decision that could influence whether this gets past the government’s scrutiny or not. This whole drama has been two years in the making and Google has had a similar battle in Europe. Whether this will ever reach the point of an agreement that allows Google to do what is proposed for many out of print volumes is a major TBD (to be determined).

Google keeps running precariously close to the line that reads “If crossed people will yell monopoly!” I suspect they would like just one victory but whether that will happen in this case may be more out of their control than usual.

How do you feel about this book agreement? Have you followed it? Do you care? If Google gets the green light is it truly giving them to much power? If they can’t do it will any of these books ever be seen again by anyone?

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Can Kindle Resist Apple’s Attempt to Douse It?

Since its unveiling last month, the iPad has been labeled a Kindle killer. The parallels are obvious—the largest (and newest) Kindle has the same size screen, both have Internet connectivity, and both can be used to read books. But that just about sums up the Kindle’s selling points, and the iPad’s features list continues on out the door. So could a full-color touchscreen tablet computer and a B&W eReader really be considered the competitors the media continue to make them out to be?

Heck yes, if Amazon has anything to say about it. Last week, Amazon acquired touchscreen maker TouchCo. The small startup had developed a new way to add touch screen technology. (Kindle direct competitor the Sony eReader already has a touchscreen version, which outsells its cheaper alternative.)

Meanwhile, the technology for adding color to the E Ink device has long been in the works. The exactly-like-paper interface has long been the biggest selling point of eReaders, but despite the development of a color version by E Ink four years ago, nearly all E Ink displays are in black and white. The acquisition of creator E Ink by PVI last year seemed to pave the way for a color Kindle by the end of this year.

But does Kindle really care? They’ve released an app for the iPhone, enabling the Kindle’s parent company, Amazon, to continue to benefit from other devices. If users are willing to put up with the eyestrain from reading hundreds of thousands of words on an LCD screen, Amazon is willing to take their money on ebooks. (We can debate over how much Amazon makes or loses per ebook right now—their ultimate goal could just be to make us all dependent on them for all our ebook needs.)

Then again, maybe they do. The New York Times takes a look at job listings for Amazon’s Lab 126, developer of the Kindle:

One job opening in particular, for a Hardware Display Manager, tells the applicant that “you will know the LCD business and key players in the market.” The key point here is the word “LCD,” which means the Kindle is possibly exploring color (unless they are hiring an LCD manager to simply gain an understanding of the color-display market).

Other job openings include Wi-Fi specialists (the current Kindle has only a 3G wireless connection), and openings for someone to “lead the software development teams that develop and maintain the applications.” The applications division could signal a move to create more apps for the Kindle, or someone who will manage the latest app store developments after Amazon announced a new software development kit was released last month to independent programmers.

What do you think? Is Amazon gearing up to pit the Kindle against the iPad—and will it be enough?

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Bing & Facebook Expand Search Agreement

Two years ago, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240M—and with the agreement that Bing would be providing web search on the world’s most popular social network. That deal is now expanding, according to the Bing blog—to not only take in an expanded, enhanced search but also more countries around the world. Most importantly, however, Bing is giving up its claim on selling Facebook advertising.

Their enhanced search is a joint effort between FB and Bing “to provide even more compelling experiences to Facebook users.” Right now, Bing provides the basic ten blue links through Facebook’s web search option, but that will expand to include “richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions,” in keeping with Bing’s “decision engine” branding. This partnership is also growing beyond the US to a worldwide agreement.

Before the last deal, Microsoft was selling advertising for Facebook in the US. The original deal expanded that relationship for Microsoft to sell display advertising on Facebook around the world. However, that’s all going away now:

[W]e made the mutual decision that Facebook would take over responsibility for selling display advertisements on its own site. We have been working together on advertising for a long time, creating the best experience for Facebook users and advertisers. Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy. MS will continue to provide search advertisements to Facebook.

At the time of the original deal, Facebook had more than 49M active users. Now, they’re up to well over 300M. While Bing is losing that display advertising market, they may be on their way out of selling advertising anyway with the pending Yahoo/MSFT deal.

What do you think? Is this a move up or down for Facebook and Bing individually?

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Facebook Slow Rolls New Home Page Design and More

Facebook has begun introducing a new home page redesign to about 20% of the total 400 million ‘users’ of the social media platform. It appears as if the gist of the changes are just moving certain elements to different parts of the page so they can get more attention from users. More usage of the functionality means more stickiness means more opportunities to make cash. It’s that simple. Inside Facebook tells us

First off, a lot more people are engaging with notifications in the new design, Facebook’s Peter Deng tells us, which isn’t surprising since it’s at the top left-hand side of the site instead of the right hand of the bottom toolbar. Notifications for third parties will appear within the new interface for the rest of the month, until Facebook removes them on March 1.

Matthew Sanders put together a good group of photos here. While there are other changes on the way you have to like the way Mark Zuckerberg promises what is coming down the pike by saying:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also tells us that the company is planning to roll out “something cool” every month from now on, but no word on what products we’ll see.

Is this the new leadership way? Tell people something that gets them interested but provide no real information about it or no road map? While I trust that Facebook is going to be innovating (they have to in order to figure out ways to get more cash from the service) we’ll sit back and relax until something actually happens rather than get all revved up about ‘the next big thing’.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reports on one project that a Facebooker was willing to leak. It’s called Project Titan and it is a full blown webmail application for the service.

Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Internally it’s known as Project Titan. Or, unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.

That’s some big talk about being a Gmail killer. The folks at Facebook should relax a bit on the hyperbole but hey you aren’t one of the cool kids these days if you aren’t taking swings at Google or having Google take swings at you, right?

So here’s to innovation at Facebook. So far it’s 20% of their accounts having a homepage redesign and the prospect of a webmail service and the promise of monthly improvements. Part of me is interested and another part of me wants to yawn.

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The 3 Biggest Risks You Take With Social Networking Profiles

Online reputation management isn’t always about big corporate brands. In fact, half of my book Radically Transparent is dedicated to building and managing personal reputations.

Just in case you’re not convinced that you need to worry about your personal reputation online, you might want to check out the interview I did with WCCO Radio:

Listen to the Radio Interview

In it I discuss three important themes:

How your social networking profiles can hurt your career and job hunting.How debt collectors are tracking people down via social networks.How scammers and thieves are praying on the naive.

If you’re not an audio person, the same advice was recently published on Yahoo Finance via an interview I did with Bankrate.com.

Drop a comment with any case studies or other risks you can think of. Thanks!

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29% of Companies Have a Social Media Policy

Does your company have a formal policy on employee social media usage during the work day (or after)? If not, you’re not alone: a report from employment services firm Manpower shows that only 29% of companies have a formal social media policy in place.

Obviously, far more companies block popular social media sites—another study in October showed that half of all companies block YouTube, Facebook and/or Twitter. But, as Mashable points out, those two stats aren’t mutually exclusive: there’s a difference between a written policy and simply avoiding the issue with blocking sites.

Most companies with a written policy (63%) say that it’s effective. But social media policies can cover much more than just work hours. They can also cover the company’s assets: in a written social media policy, you can establish guidelines for what employees can and can’t mention in social media (trade secrets and insider trading type stuff should be obvious, but isn’t always—and naturally, these rules can go too far, and could become the subject of unlawful termination lawsuits. Woot.).

I’m pro written policies: make it clear that your employees are not to spend work time watching YouTube videos, and enforce it. (Fire them, if that’s the policy.) However, this gets a little trickier when you’re using social media for business purposes, as more and more of us are—and even more tricky when you got on LinkedIn to send a message to get the contact info for a vendor and get sucked into the Q&A for two hours. (Apparently, most workers spend less than 30 minutes a day on social networking sites—which may be why most employers haven’t felt it necessary to come out with formal policies. Yet.)

What do you think? Should companies have formal social media usage policies for employees?

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Google Partners with the NSA? The Same Agency That Tapped Our Phones Illegally?

If you’re a government conspiracy theorist, you probably shouldn’t read this post. You won’t sleep for weeks.

The National Security Agency is rumored to be working with Google in light of the cyber attacks that reportedly came from China.

Think about that for a second. Big Brother just partnered with big brother, to try and fight off communist China.

Doesn’t that make you just feel so warm and fuzzy?

No one is publicly admitted that the NSA and Google are collaborating, but the source of the story isn’t some blogger looking for publicity, it’s The Washington Post–so there must be some smoke surrounding this alleged fire.

“The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?” said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.

Erm, I think we’re there!

While it’s unlikely that Google’s going to hand over any user information, I still don’t like how close–and how quickly–Google is snuggling up with perhaps the scariest of all government agencies. This is the same agency that tapped your phones and emails without a warrant after 9/11. We’re supposed to feel confident it won’t take a poke around Google’s sensitive data?

Don’t get me wrong, Google is of the utmost importance to the USA. We can all agree on that, right? But, I still have an uneasy feeling about it working with the NSA. Especially when it’s a relationship that even Google doesn’t want to confirm publicly!

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C Suite Resignation Via Twitter

When people in the industry or anywhere else for that matter look to C-level participation in social media Sun’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, is viewed as a pioneer. He was the first Fortune 500 CEO to blog. Well, now he has broken some new ground by being the first CEO of his stature (or maybe any for that matter) to tweet his resignation. Yup, he’s given his last 140 characters on behalf of Sun Microsystems.

The New York Times Bits column says:

Jonathan Schwartz, the last chief executive of Sun Microsystems, has become the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation.

Late Wednesday night, Mr. Schwartz used Twitter to publish a haiku about his exit from Oracle, which just completed its purchase of Sun last week.

“Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more,” Mr. Schwartz wrote.

Mr. Schwartz has been fond of using the Internet as a soapbox. At Sun, he became the first chief executive of a major company to put up his own blog. Mr. Schwartz also pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission to put blogs on equal footing with press releases and filings when it comes to disclosing critical business matters to investors.

Considering the bad blood between Schwartz and his new boss Larry Ellison the resignation is not a surprise. Ellison last week said he expected the resignation was coming. Using Twitter as part of his resignation ‘process’ may have been a surprise, though. You have to give Schwartz credit for going out with a tweet.

Now it’ not like we are rooting for this to become a trend but I would suspect that many of you have your own favorite CEO that you would love to see craft a 140 character exit. (If you want to get creative and make a few for some of those folks feel free to leave them in the comments here). Are there any remaining social media firsts for business that you can think of?

In the end, what might be the best thing about all of this is the message of hope that we should all be focusing on that Schwartz left in an e-mail about his resignation.

As for what’s next, Mr. Schwartz said in an e-mail: “In the short run, I’m planning to spend some long overdue time with my family. Longer run, with a few million businesses and a few billion consumers on the Web, rumor has it there are some interesting opportunities to be had.”

Family time and opportunity. Now, that’s a good message and only 27 characters with spaces!

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Toyota’s Recall Antics Spread Virally

Over the past few weeks I have been watching the Toyota recall fiasco out of the corner of my eye. It began as a news story (which is different than its actual start date) and it has not gone away. Well, you know the online “you know what” has hit the fan when you can go to Comedy Central’s site and see this

Now, it appears that Toyota has really done some serious long-term damage to one of the most respected brands in the world. How? By being slow to react and being aloof enough to give enough fodder to someone like Jon Stewart to skewer them. Sure Jon’s not NBC, ABC or CBS but he’s more influential

So what will this do to the car industry? Many other manufacturers will reap some of the benefit of Toyota getting bad press both online and off from the likes of traditional media and even Steve Wozniak. Yup, that Steve Wozniak. Jalopnik reports:

At a speech on Monday Wozniak claimed his new 2010 Toyota Prius, which isn’t under the current Toyota recall, randomly accelerated while in cruise control mode and that he could duplicate the event. After reading a similar story on Gizmodo Wozniak commented that he was having difficulty reaching the manufacturer to tackle his issue.

We called Toyota and they were clearly anxious to speak with Wozniak and so was he according to his assistant. “That’s exactly what we were hoping would happen,” she told Jalopnik. After passing on the contact info for a Toyota technical expert the company called us and asked us if we could actually send him Toyota U.S. President Jim Lentz’s personal number.

Ouch. Well, here is my totally unprofessional and unbiased thought on who could reap the greatest reward from Toyota’s mess. Hyundai. I say unbiased because I don’t own one and I get no remuneration for this opinion. I just hear really good things about their cars as of late. They have real strong word of mouth and what is the car buying public gonna do, turn to Detroit? Ha! Toyota with its feet dragging approach has left the door open for someone to knock them down several notches. I know they are off my list for future car purchases, what about yours? In this day and age if you can lay low and do some good work you can count on the top dog of your industry doing something really boneheaded at some point to create opportunity. And the mistakes of today are more deadly because of the online spread of the bad news. Where have you heard that before?

So here’s to Toyota’s taking the mantle for reputation gaffe of this short year. Can’t wait to see what the rest of 2010 holds regarding “stupid company tricks”.

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Cup of Joe: It’s All About The Benjamins

So, a few days ago I was on Twitter and a friend of mine asked her followers how much she should pay a designer for a new logo. My response was, “well, pay them what ever they invoice you for.” She then explained that this designer didn’t know how to price his logos and needed help. I remember when I first started my business I had no idea how to price products. I used to spend days analyzing the market, comparing other products and thinking of different marketing options. And then one day I realized how simple pricing really is.

I was talking to a potential client over the phone and they asked me if I could give them a ball bark figure on how much their project would cost. At the time I already had several clients and didn’t see myself getting to their project for awhile. So I figured I would try something different with them. I ended up sending them a quote for about 3 times what I had ever charged a client, thinking that they would look at the quote and I would never hear from them again and that would be history. In a few hours they emailed me back and said that they thought the quote looked reasonable and they wanted to move forward! I thought to myself, wow! All I have to do is ask for it!

Now I realize that the correct price for a product is the highest amount that your market is willing to pay. And, the only way that you can find out what that amount is, is by asking for it. This type of pricing method is called Value Based pricing. With Value Base your price reflects the value that your market places on the product.

Now sure I know what you are thinking. Isn’t it dangerous to price yourself to high? Aren’t you afraid of pricing yourself out of the market? To answer these questions let’s take a look at Wally World. Here is a corporation that’s motto is “Always Low Prices”. When Sam Walton coined that phrase in 1962 he wasn’t just launching a insightful marketing campaign, he was in fact laying the groundwork for their future pricing structure. Walmart’s dominance is dependent on selling at low prices at high volume. As a result their stores across the world are always packed.

But do you really want to be like Walmart? I mean, sure they do a lot of business, but it’s all at very low profit margins. Now, let’s take a look at the other side of town and the shops on main street. These are the locally owned mom and pop joints that maybe your neighbor runs. These shops can’t compete with Walmart’s prices and as a result they do less business. Can you guess which business model I would rather have? Well, if you guessed the local mom and pop shop, you win! Running a business that caters to the market’s lowest price point will guarantee a steady flow of consumers. But you really need to ask yourself, do I really want to do business with the cheapest folks in my market? Trust me, you don’t, they are annoying and will eat up all your time and money.

So how can you start getting paid more for your products and services. Just start asking for more. Sure you run the risk of losing potential customers, but in the end the ones that agree to pay premium prices will leave your business truly valuing their time with you, which in turn, turns into referrals and other opportunities down the road! So start asking for more and quite trying to be the “Wally World” of your industry!

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