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AOL Makes Big Budget Cuts Across Blogs
AOL is making across the board budget cuts on its blogging properties, we’re hearing from multiple sources. The cuts range up to 25% of each properties total budget, which falls mostly on personnel costs - bloggers are simply being told to take a couple of weeks off for now, and there may or may not be work for them later in August.
One area that seems to be immune from the cuts: The Tech Network (including Engadget), which continues to grow like a weed and drives substantial revenue.
Employees across AOL are being asked to cut down on expenses as much as possible, even minor ones. One person complains that they’re cutting things like free bagels, and are being asked to limit travel as much as possible. Are more big layoffs coming across AOL as it gears up for a sale to Yahoo or another suitor? We’re looking into it.
Another explanation for the cuts, says one source: this is standard Q3 belt tightening. The blog properties were simply running way over budget and needed to be pruned to keep things under control. In addition to looking for a buyer, AOL is also concerned about the economy in general and trying to stay ahead of the curve to avoid more painful cuts down the road.
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Apple’s App Store: The New Walled Garden
One reason startups and developers are so excited about the iPhone is because they can create richer mobile applications for it and it promises to become a more open platform than the carrier-controlled home decks on most other cell phones. But don’t be so sure that they are not trading one walled garden for another. The home deck is being replaced by the iPhone App Store on iTunes. And Apple controls which apps get virtual shelf space in that store, and which ones get featured. There are only 700 or so apps in the App Store, but there are thousands that want to get in.
On a VC panel at MobileBeat a right now, Accel partner Richard Wong points out:
Apple is the new gatekeeper. It is a walled garden. Hopefully it is a more benevolent one [than the mobile carriers].
So far Apple is more benevolent than the carriers. It takes only 30 percent of paid apps, versus the 40 to 50 percent that carriers take for apps and services distributed through their phones. And Apple is taking almost nothing from ad-supported apps.
There are rumors of Apple blocking apps that compete with its core businesses and applications. Apple cannot play favorites if it wants to become the dominant mobile Web platform.
(Photo by Paul Englefield).
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Payoneer Raises $8 million Series B From Greylock And Carmel
When Paypal competitor Payoneer has raised $8 million in a Series B financing from Greylock and Carmel ventures. That brings the total the company has raised to $14 million. (Greylock led the Series A).
Payoneer’s advantage over Paypal in the micro-payments arena is that it makes international payments easier by not requiring a bank account for verification. Websites like iStockPhoto or Metacafe can issue pre-paid Mastercard debit cards to their customers and transfer funds electronically to the credit card account. The account can be used as a regular electronic payment transfer system as well similar to Paypal.
The Israeli startup (whose headquarters are in New York City), will use the new cash to fund expansion into more markets and invest in technologies to detect and prevent fraud and abuse by criminals and terrorists.
If you are going to go after a niche in the payments industry, international payments is about as big a niche as you can get. But it can also be a dangerous game in the post-9/11 world.
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Prepping For Mobile Web Wars At MobileBeat
Today and tomorrow I am going totally mobile. And if you are in the Bay Area, so should you. It’s not too late to get tickets for MobileBeat, VentureBeat’s mobile conference that goes all day today. You can get a 10 percent discount on tickets by using using this code: TCMB08.
I will be there moderating a panel with Rich Miner (Google’s group manager of wireless), Matt Murphy (the Kleiner Perkins Partner who runs the iFund), Sam Altman (CEO of Loopt), and J.H. Kah (SK Telecom’s SVP of Business Development). We’ll be exploring all the big platform shifts going on in mobile right now with the iPhone and the coming Android phones.
I will be continuing that discussion at our own Mobile Web Wars Roundtable tomorrow, which will be a live-streamed discussion. But that’s sold out (the venue only holds 150 people). MobileBeat is much larger and you can still get tickets.
Here is the complete list of who is speaking:
Rich Miner, Android/Google, Group Manager, Wireless Programs
Matt Murphy, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers, Partner
Ross Levinsohn, Velocity Interactive Group, Partner
Mike Baker, Nokia Interactive, Vice President
Jeff Sellinger, CBS Mobile, EVP & General Manager
John Smelzer, FOX Interactive Media, SVP & General Manager
Michael Bayle, Yahoo!, General Manager of Global Monetization
Sumit Agarwal, Google, Product Manager, Mobile
J.H. Kah, SK Telecom, SVP, Business Development
Rick Segal, JLA Ventures, Co-Manager of Blackberry Partners Fund
Steve Hegenderfer, Microsoft, Group Manager, Windows Mobile
Brandon Lucas, MySpace, Sr. Director, Mobile
Jed Stremel, Facebook, Director of Mobile
Sandi Isaacs, Paramount Pictures, Sr. Vice President Interactive & Mobile
Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, Co-Editor
Dan Farber, CNET, Editor-in-Chief
Om Malik, GigaOmni Media, Founder
Sam Altman, Loopt, CEO & co-Founder
Omar Hamoui, Admob, Founder & CEO
Jason Devitt, Skydeck, Founder and CEO
Richard Wong, Accel Partners, Partner
Jeff Brody, Redpoint Ventures, Founding Partner
Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners, Principal
Shawn Carolan, Menlo Ventures, Managing Director
Lars Kamp, Accenture, Head of Wireless Practice
Gregory Gorman, Tertius, Founder
Matthew Fix, Vodafone Ventures, Principal
Satya Mallya, Orange Telecom, Director at Orange Labs
Dr. Richard Koo, Augmentum, SVP of Augmentation Services
Mike Rowehl, Skyfire
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Open Web Foundation Officially Launches
This morning at that OSCON conference David Recordon of Six Apart will announce on stage the formation of the Open Web Foundation. The new foundation is about providing a home for the development and ratification of web-related standards efforts. The foundation will be focused on developing the technical specifications of protocols used for communication and inter-operability between applications on the web. The foundation will also set out the legal terms and best practices for the use and transport of both private and public data, and the usage of web services.
We first reported on the announcement on Tuesday of this week after Chris Saad, the co-founder of the Data Portability project wrote a post about the announcement. The Data Portability project is focused on the evangelism of data openness and transparency, while the new Open Web Foundation will be focused on implementation issues.
Yesterday at the F8 conference Facebook announced their support for the new foundation, and we have learnt that Google, MySpace, Six Apart, Plaxo and many others will also be supporting the new initiative. Google and Facebook now have an appropriate venue where they can resolve their differences and work on a standard way to have their users interact with each other between the Facebook Connect and OpenSocial platforms. The web foundation also provides the technical details, as well as policy details, on how such a relationship between companies and products could work.
Currently there is not much more at the Open Web Foundation outside of a lot of strong backing, a lot of strongly willed organizers and a lot of initiative. The foundation hopes that within the next few months after the announcement today they will be able to release their first set of work on data standards and formats.
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The Real Video Twitter: 12seconds.tv (500 Alpha Invites)
Some people think that Seesmic is the video Twitter. They are wrong (even if they are investors in the company—Mike). The real video Twitter is 12seconds.tv. On Twitter, you have 140 characters to make your point. On 12seconds.tv, you have, well, 12 seconds. (On Seesmic, you can drone on forever or for 10 minutes, whichever comes first). We have 500 invites for the alpha launch.
The idea is to share moments of your life: sunsets, deep thoughts, funny faces. Or just broadcast your current status. You can upload the videos via a Webcam or your mobile phone, follow video updates from your friends, and even import contacts from Twitter. You can even link your 12seconds account to your Twitter account and it will automatically send a Tweet with a link your videos every time you put up anew one.
Is all of this pointless? Maybe, but no more than Twitter. Although, as a communications platform, text will always be more immediate and accessible than video.
The startup was founded by David Beach and Sol Lipman six months ago. They are bootsratpping it with 10 employees working for burritos. Besides Seesmic, 12seconds.tv also competes with the UK’s Phreadz. Here are a couple sample videos.
Why 12? on 12seconds.tv
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AdMob Makes Mobile Ads Suck Less. Will Give Away One Million Dollars Worth of Ads To iPhone App Developers.
On the iPhone, even the ads are cool. Mobile advertising network AdMob is launching a whole new set of customized ads for iPhone apps. As CEO Omar Hamoui explains in the video above, the ads are specifically designed for iPhone apps. Rather than the static text or image ads that make up most of its mobile ad inventory today, these take advantage of specific features of the iPhone.
For instance, an ad for a song can stream the audio or launch the page on iTunes where you can buy it. A movie ad can open up YouTube so you can watch the trailer. An ad for a retailer can find nearby stores on Google maps. Others call a number through the phone, or can take you to a specific Web page. And just like on Facebook,where many of the ads on apps are simply promotions for other apps, an ad for an iPhone app will launch the App Store. (See video below).
To get iPhone app developers to sign up for his new ads, Hamoui is giving away $1 million worth of advertising to the developers with the most compelling apps who apply here. Each developer who is selected will recieve $5,000 worth of free ads for their apps.
Admob already serves up 34 million mobile ads a month on the iPhone’s Safari browser. But that is a mere one percent of the total that AdMob serves across all phones. Hamoui, however, believes that the new type of ads he is launching today will quickly make up the majority of his inventory. Some of the advertisers he’s already lined up include Ford, Electronic Arts, Land Rover, Jaguar, “The Mummy,” Loopt, AccuWeather.com, and MovieTickets.com.
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Facebook Takes The Fast Lane To Boring
I agree with Sam Gustin when he says that yesterday’s Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco was in the end a snoozer, but not because CEO Mark Zuckerberg failed on stage.
First of all, saying the event itself was sleep-inducing is just factually incorrect. Before and after the keynote they played music so loud that a deaf person would complain. I was alarmed and somewhat panicked by the noise, but certainly not sleepy. And on a more serious note, Zuckerberg himself was much more at ease and charismatic on stage than I’ve ever seen him previously. He’s no Steve Jobs yet, but he’s no slouch, either.
I left the event feeling fairly upbeat about Facebook. They sent a clear message to developers that they need to build compelling apps and learn to play nice. And they created a clear reward and punishment system to deal with both ends of the spectrum.
But I’ve learned that I need period of reflection after these super-shows before I can really digest what happened. And after reflecting, I’m feeling more than a little let down by Facebook’s product focus and ability to execute.
Snatching Mediocrity From The Jaws Of Victory
A year ago Facebook set the Internet on fire with the launch of Facebook Platform. Competitors rushed to respond, and since then Facebook has been on a tear.
Facebook has all the momentum as the worlds largest social network (if not the most valuable), and they’ve always been willing to launch bold and controversial new products that change the way people perceive the company (News Feeds, Platform, Beacon).
Everyone looks to them to see what comes next. When rumors surfaced in May that they were going to announce Facebook Connect, a way for third party sites to integrate their services with Facebook profile data, Google and MySpace rushed to announce their own versions of the product, with nearly identical features and, in the case of Google (Friend Connect), a suspiciously similar name.
But today they were not bold, and they did not act like thought leaders. There was no controversial but exciting new product experiment unleashed on a gushing audience. Instead, there were minor tweaks to a platform that needs a major overhaul.
Facebook Connect, the most exciting new product on the agenda, is still vaporware. A parade of partners came out on stage to talk about all the great things they’ll do when it eventually launches this Fall. Meanwhile, Google’s product is in working alpha, and MySpace has fully launched Data Availability.
The new three tier ranking system for apps, which we first wrote about in March, addresses the problem of black hat developers, but it may create more pain than it’s worth. Developers have long complained that Facebook plays favorites.
More disappointing is what Facebook didn’t announce today. No payments platform, even though developers are begging for a way to make money beyond pitifully-low (and falling) CPM ads.
Nor did Facebook address their now quaint and basically unusable messaging system, even though MySpace paved the way for them by implementing Gears nearly two months ago.
Facebook also didn’t take the opportunity today to make amends with Google and cross-integrate their products. Competition is fine, but users are best served with interoperable products. In effect, Facebook is continuing to tell their users exactly what they can and cannot do with their own data.
Finally, Facebook chastised developers who build slow applications, telling them that they need to speed things up and think about scaling. But user complaints about the slowness of Facebook in general are on the upswing. Perhaps its time for the company to listen to its own advice.
Suddenly Facebook is acting more like a company with lots to lose (and therefore defend) rather than a scrappy young underdog startup looking to shake things up, capture our imagination and change the world. It’s time for them to be audacious again, and take some risk. Otherwise, they risk becoming simply boring. And that’s the fast lane to mediocrity.
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Microsoft Rumbles, Rearms For Online War It Can’t Win Without Yahoo
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer dropped the ax today, and it landed on Kevin Johnson’s neck.
Johnson, Microsoft’s soon-to-be ex-President of Platforms & Services, has been with Microsoft since 1992. He was in the unfortunate position of leading the recent Vista effort through its very troubled launch, and running Microsoft’s online efforts while watching their lunch be eaten by Google. He takes a consolation prize: He will become the CEO of Juniper Networks, a $12 billion network hardware manufacturer.
So what’s next for Microsoft? The Windows and Windows Live products now report directly to Ballmer. All the online stuff, including search, advertising and most MSN/Live.com services will be headed by a new executive. Ballmer says they’ll look for the person to lead their Google-killing efforts both internally and externally.
Putting Johnson aside for a moment, It’s damn well time Microsoft put someone in charge of its online efforts. Johnson had to split his time with the Windows cash machine and the results have been somewhat predictable. A half time executive running a product that doesn’t even have a brand (Live? MSN? Microsoft?) can’t win against Google.
The truth is that the next guy (or gal) isn’t going to make any fast gains on Google, either, no matter how awesome Mesh and Silverlight are. Ballmer seems willing to spend as long as it takes, though, noting that the war with Google is over the long term, not the short: “In the coming years, we’ll make progress against Google in search first by upping the ante in R&D through organic innovation and strategic acquisitions. Second, we will out-innovate Google in key areas…”
That sounds like Microsoft will channel yet more Windows and Office profits into their Internet startup. There’s no question that they intend to compete in search and advertising any more. The only question is whether they have any chance of winning.
Even if Microsoft concedes that they have a years (decades?) long war on their hands, they have to face the fact that Google’s commanding lead in search, and the network-effect driven advertising wealth that comes with it, will be hard to beat. And all those client software profits won’t last forever, particularly since Google is eating away at that via their suite of free Office products.
The first thing Microsoft needs to do is buy Yahoo - all of it. That brings them to half of Google’s market share in search, and at least they’re in the game.
Another thing Microsoft needs to do is simply pick a brand name for the Internet side of things, and stick with it. Microsoft. MSN. Live. Whatever, just name it something a little catchier than “Online Services.”
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Playfish: Using Facebook As Its Gaming Console
If you glance at the top lineup of gaming applications on the Facebook or MySpace platform, you’ll notice an interesting fact. Not one is the product of a major gaming publisher. Instead a group of independent gaming startups have been the leaders in publishing games within social networks.
Co-founders of the gaming publisher Playfish, Kristian Segerstråle and Sebastien de Halleux, chalk up the growth to a profound platform shift social networks have introduced into the gaming marketplace. Traditionally, large publishers have lorded over the $50 billion gaming industry by controlling two things: access and distribution. Be it a console game or the latest PC title, only big companies could shoulder the large costs of distribution deals and advertising involved in bringing a game to market.
Social networks, however, have are an open platform that give away both access and distribution for free (the CBS backlash is an exception that proves the rule).
You may already recognize Playfish from their flashy Facebook games: Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge, and Bowling Buddies. The games have a very similar look and feel to the popular Wii, especially their latest game, Bowling Buddies. Playfish developed the 3 games over the past 6 months and has grown to about 6 million monthly users playing an average of 30 minutes a session. The team attributes this to the social infrastructure that both makes the games more enjoyable and easier to spread. For some perspective, EA’s Pogo.com claims about 14 million visitors per month and has been around since 1999.
For the large part, big gaming publishers have only stuck a toe into social networking. Gaming giant EA’s most notable release to date has been the official version of Scrabble, which currently has around 7,000 DAU (it’s also limited to USA and CAN). However, there’s certainly more to come as these networks watch startups work out the kinks. EA has already done some major releases on the iPhone and has larger plans for their latest acquisition, Rupture. Comparatively, Playfish commands 3 of the top ten gaming apps on Facebook, totaling around 1 million daily active users. The others are belong to notables include SGN, Zynga, and Serious Business.
But traditional gaming companies have been beating the startups on one key metric, monetization. PC and console games saw sales up 43% last year to $18.8 billion. Onine gaming is currently a $1 billion a year business. Pogo.com has around 1.5 million members for it’s monthly subscription service, Club Pogo, for which they pay $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. Free players of the main site are upsold to premium features and game downloads.
But Playfish is taking a similar approach, looking to monetize gamers on all points of the demand curve. Gamers who are happy to play the basic game will be subject to advertising, while players looking for more can pay for upgrades and premium games. Just this past week they released $10 paid upgrades for “Who has the Biggest Brain?” and expect these payments outpace their ad sales. Albeit, their only form of advertisement is video ads displayed after a game set is completed.
While Playfish has yet to cross outside of the Facebook platform on to other platforms, they’ve made great strides to cross continents by translating their top game “Who has the Biggest Brain?” into six languages. The London-based startup also has studios in Norway and Beijing. They’re funded by $3 million in angel financing with a $1 million bridge from Accel.
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Opposing Views Launches As A Debate Site Where Experts Go Head-To-Head
Getting average know-nothings to create content for your site is easy enough and well understood by now. But how do you get experts to create in-depth topic pages about the hot-button issues of the day, complete with videos, links, and healthy commenting? Russell Fine is trying to do that with Opposing Views, a site that launched a few hours ago. It pits experts against each other on topics such as the economy, global warming, health issues, and politics. “We are trying to create a site where people can get well-informed on a topic quickly,” says Fine.
Opposing Views is an information portal disguised as a debate site. Experts debate hot-button issues, and readers can comment and vote on who they think is right. For instance, the site has a Barack Obama adviser and a John McCain adviser debating about “Who Has the Right Plan For America’s Economy?” A NASA scientist and a Hudson Institute fellow debate, “Have We Reached Peak Oil?” The National Autism Association and a doctor go head-to-head on: “Are Autism and Vaccines Linked?”
Opposing views finds experts and associations willing to argue one side or the other, and sometimes multiple experts weigh in on a single topic. Each argument is broken down into a list of simple points with a headline that readers can click on to go deeper. The experts can argue each point, and embed supporting videos and links. Readers can add their own arguments in comments and vote on who they think is winning the debate. (The best comments can be elevated to the starting page of each debate by the experts).
In the end, fine hopes to create an information-rich site that ranks highly on Google for each topic. In that sense he is competing with About.com, Helium, and even Wikipedia and Google’s newly-launched Knol. The debate format ensures that the content will change constantly, and the participating experts and associations will lend their (link) authority to the site.
The company was founded in September, 2007 and has raised $1.5 million in angel funding from Applied Semantics co-founder Gil Ebaz, Frontera Capital, and Fine (who is also the chairman of sports forecasting company Accuscore and was previously the founder of Youbet.com).
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A Xobni Executive Leaves The Red-Hot Startup. But Why?
Xobni, the Y Combinator email startup that turned down an acquisition offer from Microsoft earlier this year, has just lost its VP Engineering and first employee, Gabor Cselle. Cselle joined the company in March 2007, sporting a seemingly perfect resume that included work on the Gmail team and a Master’s thesis on “Organizing Email”.
The departure may not be abrupt (Cselle won’t be leaving until the end of August), but it is unexpected, and frankly, doesn’t make much sense. Since launching at TechCrunch40, Xobni has shown impressive growth and received widespread acclaim - Bill Gates demoed the service at the Office Development Conference earlier this year.
CEO Jeff Bonforte (who joined the company only five months ago) says that Cselle simply decided that he was no longer happy at Xobni, and wanted to try building his own startup. Bonforte says that Cselle likely wants his own shot at glory, and because of Xobni’s quick rise to success, members of the team may believe that launching a startup is far easier than it really is.
Cselle’s blog post on his depature seems to confirm this, at least in part:
“Ever since reading a biography of Bill Gates when I was 14 years old, I’ve wanted to be a founder of a company that makes a difference. I’ve wanted to build a workplace where people can be creative, productive, and happy, and a product that delights users and improves their lives. I feel like the time is now.”
Cselle may be itching to try his own luck, but Bonforte’s explanation still doesn’t sit well with us. Microsoft just threw $20 million at the company, which it turned down, likely in hopes of a better offer somewhere down the road. Why wouldn’t Cselle wait for his payday and then jump ship to start his own company?
We’ve heard that Cselle has been unhappy at the company for months, but we haven’t been able to reach him for any further details (we’ll update the post as soon as we do). In his blog post, he says that after leaving Xobni in August, he’s going to travel the world, raising money along the way for a new email startup.
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Digg To (Finally) Integrate OpenID, If This Picture Is To Be Believed
When Digg’s Lead Architect Joe Stump took the stage at the Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco earlier today, something in one of his screen shots caught our attention. He was there to show how users will soon be able to log in to Digg without an account via their Facebook credentials (the new Facebook Connect product). But also included prominently in the screen, but not mentioned by Stump, was an option to log in via OpenID.
Digg founder Kevin Rose promised OpenID integration at a conference in early 2007, but the company has been silent on it since then. Like many other companies, they seemed to enjoy the positive press that the announcement made but were unwilling to schedule the development time to actually implement it.
Facebook Connect isn’t slated to go live until the Fall, and we assume they’ll push OpenID at the same time. We asked OpenID’s David Recordan what he knew - he said he noticed the same thing we did but doesn’t have any additional information on when or if Digg would finally implement the single sign-on solution. We also have an email in to Digg for comment.
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Apple Seeing Red For iPhone Holiday Sales
Rumors have been propagating through several popular Mac blogs that Apple will be releasing a red iPhone 3G model for the holiday season. The release will be well-timed, considering the initial iPhone hype will start to slow, and people will be opening up their wallets more for the holiday season. (Photo via MacBlogz)
The red iPhone will presumably be sold as part of the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, a charitable organization that donates money to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. Apple has released several products for this campaign previously, including (PRODUCT) RED iTunes gift cards, a red 8GB iPod Nano, and a red 1GB iPod Shuffle.
Read more about (PRODUCT) RED and the iPhone 3G at CrunchGear, including an extensive review of the iPhone 3G .
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Mass Reorg at Microsoft Platforms & Services Division
Microsoft has just announced a major reorganization of its Platforms & Services Division. It will now be split into two groups (Windows/Windows Live and Online Services) which will both report to Steve Ballmer. That’s right. Steve Ballmer will now personally be running Windows.
Kevin Johnson, who used to head the Platforms & Services Division, will soon be leaving the company to become the CEO of Juniper Networks. Steven Sinofsky, Jon DeVaan and Bill Veghte will be in charge of the newly created Windows/Windows Live group. Microsoft has not yet chosen a leader for the Online Services group.
The full press release is below.
Microsoft Announces Reorganization of Windows and Online Services Business
Platforms & Services Division to Split Into Two Groups and Report to CEO Steve Ballmer.
REDMOND, Wash. — July 23, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that the Platforms & Services Division (PSD) will be split into two groups: Windows/Windows Live and Online Services, with both groups reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer. Microsoft also announced that PSD President Kevin Johnson will be leaving the company. Johnson will work to ensure a smooth transition.
“Kevin has built a supremely talented organization and laid the foundation for the future success of Windows and our Online Services Business. This new structure will give us more agility and focus in two very competitive arenas,” Ballmer said. “It has been a pleasure to work with Kevin, and we wish him well in the future.”
Effective immediately, senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky, Jon DeVaan and Bill Veghte will report directly to Ballmer to lead Windows/Windows Live. The Windows organization recently announced strong annual sales, with more than 180 million copies of Windows Vista sold globally, and it has driven more than 100 million installs of its Windows Live suite. The organization’s innovation pipeline includes a new version of Windows Internet Explorer, the next version of Windows and the next generation of the Windows Live product suite.
In the Online Services Business, Microsoft will create a new senior lead position and will conduct a search that will span internal and external candidates. In the meantime, Senior Vice President Satya Nadella will continue to lead Microsoft’s search, MSN and ad platform engineering efforts. Microsoft recently announced a strategy to redefine search through innovations in the user experience and business models. As an example, the company’s cashback search program, announced in May, is already generating strong momentum among online shoppers and advertisers.
In addition, Senior Vice President Brian McAndrews will continue to lead the Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group (APS). APS has great momentum, having signed more than 100 new publisher deals in the past year. McAndrews will continue to focus on the display advertising opportunity for Microsoft, driving execution and integration of advertising assets, including recent acquisitions such as Massive Inc., Navic Networks, ScreenTonic SA and YaData Ltd.
“Our Windows business is firing on all cylinders,” Ballmer said. “We see tremendous opportunity in search and advertising, and we have a clear strategy for investing in success today and growth in the future.”
“Microsoft is a special place and presents opportunity to so many,” Johnson said. “I have been so fortunate to have experienced 16 amazing years of building Microsoft’s business, learning from great leaders in the company and working with phenomenally talented people.”
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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Facebook Connect Coming To iPhone This Fall
Today at the f8 conference Benjamin Ling revealed that Facebook will be releasing a Cocoa framework for the iPhone that will allow application developers to integrate with Facebook Connect. The framework is expected to be released sometime in the fall, and will take the form of an SDK that can be used by developers of iPhone applications. Facebook Connect allows applications to integrate the facebook platform and the identity of users into their own applications.
Currently Facebook Connect is only available for web applications, but the announcement of an iPhone SDK is the first sign that Facebook is considering both mobile and desktop platforms as part of their vision.
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