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Bits Blog: Zuckerberg Acknowledges ‘Disappointing’ Wall Street

September 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Mark Zuckerberg at the TechCrunch conference Tuesday.Eric Risberg/Associated PressMark Zuckerberg at the TechCrunch conference Tuesday.

SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg spoke to a hometown crowd here Tuesday afternoon, acknowledging his company’s “disappointing” performance on Wall Street, hinting at new moneymaking strategies, and casting his company as one that continued to build new things in the face of criticism.

“I would rather be in the cycle where people underestimate us,” he said at an annual conference sponsored by TechCrunch, the technology blog.

It was Mr. Zuckerberg’s first public appearance since Facebook made its debut on Wall Street in May, only to see its stock price fall fast and hard. But his remarks seemed to have a positive effect; immediately after he spoke, Facebook shares rose about 3 percent in after-hours trading.

Still, Facebook shares are now worth roughly half of the public offering price, and Mr. Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, is under intense pressure to restore its credibility among investors, a problem he acknowledged.

“The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing,” he said at the conference. “We care about our shareholders.”

In a jocular, half-hour question-and-answer session with the blogger-turned-investor Michael Arrington, Mr. Zuckerberg — talking at top speed and dressed in his usual gray T-shirt and jeans — dropped a few hints about Facebook’s plans, and said that the site was handling up to a billion search queries by users every day.

Search is Google’s principal advantage, but Mr. Zuckerberg said a team of engineers within Facebook was working on improving Facebook’s search tool to vet, for instance, restaurant recommendations from friends. “At some point we’ll do it,” he said.

He sought to cast Facebook as a company with a promising future on mobile phones — and himself as an entrepreneur who did not entirely eschew moneymaking.

“Building a mission and building a business goes hand in hand,” he said. “We are about doing both.”

When Facebook announced its bid to go public earlier this year, Mr. Zuckerberg famously declared in a letter to would-be investors that his company’s mission was not just to make money for its own sake. At the conference he said he had composed that letter on his mobile device. “I do everything on my phone,” he said.

But he said the company was not making its own phone.

Facebook came out of the box last May with an extraordinary valuation of over $100 billion. Among investors, expectations ran extraordinarily high that Facebook would accelerate profits. That didn’t happen.

Revenue grew, but not as explosively as before the I.P.O. Wall Street worried about Facebook’s ability to make money on the mobile platform, because its users were increasingly logging in on their phones and tablets. And its social gaming partner, Zynga, posted dismal results this summer, which hurt Facebook’s own stock.

Even as he sought to assuage Wall Street, he used Tuesday’s public appearance to appeal to the coders in the conference crowd, saying now is a “great time” to work at Facebook. New employees, he suggested, would be rewarded with more shares, as a way to compensate for the low price of those shares.

Some analysts think Facebook’s stock could fall more. The investment firm Stifel suggested in August that Facebook might be worth buying at $16.

Mr. Zuckerberg said he thought the company should be judged on its lasting impact, not just its stock price.

“Ten, 20 years from now, the legacy of this company should be, we have connected everyone in the world,” he said. “That’s a lot.”

Article source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/zuckerberg-acknowledges-disappointing-wall-street/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Bits: Google Finds Ways to Search Faster and Without Typing

June 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

How fast is fast when talking about search? Google thinks it can be even faster — and easier — and one way is by eliminating typing altogether, at least in some cases.

Google users will be able to search by talking to a computer or dropping an image in the search box, the company said Tuesday at Inside Search, an event in San Francisco. Google will also pre-load the Web pages it predicts users are most likely to click to save two to five seconds during a search.

“Search is at the core of our business,” said Alan Eustace, senior vice president of knowledge at Google. “The investment levels are continuing and increasing.”

His title — head of knowledge, not search — is new after a reorganization directed by Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, and reflects a shift in focus at the company.

“The reason I think Larry both created the title of knowledge and also put me in this position is that his view of search is just much broader than just a query or finding a page somewhere,” Mr. Eustace said. “His view is Google should be much better at helping people understand the world, and he thought search was just too narrow.”

Google has offered voice search on mobile phones, but now users of Google’s Chrome browser will also be able to speak search queries to their computers. At the event, for example, Google demonstrated that the search engine understands the difference between Worcester, Mass., and Wooster College, words that sound the same but are spelled differently.

Google users will also be able to search by image, if they can’t remember where they were in a vacation photo or don’t know which country a flag belongs to, for instance. They can paste the Web address of an image, upload a photo from their desktops, drag and drop an image into the search box or use Chrome or Firefox extensions.

Google analyzes the fundamental features of the image, like lines and shapes, and matches it with results in its database of images. That means that it will likely recognize the Empire State Building but not someone’s home, for instance. It will not use face recognition except when the picture is of a celebrity and already exists on the public Web.

Google also introduced Instant Pages, which pre-loads likely search results so that when someone clicks on a Web page, it loads a few seconds faster than it used to.

“All this time goes back to humanity for them to go back to their quest for knowledge and search some more,” said Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who leads search engineering.

Instant Pages will be available this week in the beta version of Chrome, and the programming code is available so other browsers can incorporate it, Mr. Singhal said.

Google also announced a few small updates to mobile search, which has been growing rapidly, particularly during lunch hour, evenings and weekends, when people are away from their computers, as we have written about. The updates include the ability to do local searches, like for restaurants, from the homepage of the mobile search box and to see the locations change on the map as users scroll through results.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=39dab1e90b883be68cba979907d01f9a

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: ,

Google Introduces New Social Tool and Settles Privacy Charge

March 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Google introduced its latest social tool on Wednesday, the same day it settled with the Federal Trade Commission over charges of deceptive privacy practices last year for Buzz, the social networking tool in Gmail.

Under the settlement, Google agreed to start a privacy program, permit audits for 20 years and face $16,000 fines for any future privacy misrepresentations. This is the first time the F.T.C. has charged a company with such violations and ordered it to start a privacy program, the commission said.

The new social networking tool, called +1, lets people annotate Google search results and ads so they can recommend Web pages to friends and acquaintances. It is the biggest feature yet in Google’s long-awaited social networking toolkit.

The introduction of +1 and the F.T.C. charges highlight two of Google’s biggest challenges: heightened competition from Facebook, and near-constant criticism from privacy advocates and policy makers over its practices.

As it tries to make its services more social, the company has come under intense scrutiny from people concerned about its broad access to personal information. But at the same time, it is in the unusual position of racing to catch up with a rival, as Facebook captures more of the time, information and ad views of Internet users.

Of particular concern to Google is the fact that many people now turn to Facebook with search queries, like seeking the best place to go on vacation, because they trust the advice of friends more than that of an anonymous search engine.

With +1, which began rolling out to users Wednesday, Google wants to personalize search results.

In an interview about the new tool, Matt Cutts, a principal search engineer at Google, took great pains to emphasize that the company had learned from the privacy outcry after it introduced Buzz, which let Gmail users share status updates, photos and videos.

The debut of Buzz in February 2010 unleashed a barrage of criticism from users and privacy advocates because it automatically included users’ e-mail contacts in their social network.

Mr. Cutts repeatedly stressed that anything people shared with +1 was public.

“If you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling your friends and broadcasting this to the world, then of course you don’t have to click the +1 button,” he said.

Still, some privacy advocates were wary.

“It’s ironic it’s coming out on the same day” as the F.T.C. settlement, said John M. Simpson, an advocate at Consumer Watchdog, a critic of Google. “It seems to me there are some of the same kinds of issues that happened with Buzz. The key is how transparent and open it is about what’s going to be shared and how you share it.”

The name +1 came from Internet slang that people use to indicate that they approve of what someone has said.

People logged into their Google accounts will be able to click a +1 button next to search results to publicly recommend the pages. People perusing results will see how many Google users recommended a page and see names and photographs of people they know. Google is considering whether to use the recommendations to influence the order of search results.

Google will find people that users know through Gmail and chat contacts, as well as people users follow on Google Reader or Buzz. Later it will include contacts from other social sites like Twitter and Flickr. But it will not include contacts from Facebook, because that information is not publicly shared on the Web, Mr. Cutts said. Google has been in a tussle with Facebook over sharing information between the two services.

People will also be able to recommend ads. And if someone recommends a search result that links to a hotel’s Web site and the hotel later advertises on Google, that person’s recommendation will appear with the ad.

“That’s going to be very powerful,” said Bryan Wiener, chief executive of 360i, a digital advertising agency. “A friend’s recommendation is going to have greater influence on consumer behavior than a marketer’s message.” He said it could also lower the cost of ads because Google charges less for ads that are clicked on more.

Google’s +1 is remarkably similar to Facebook’s Like button, which lets people recommend Web sites and ads to their friends.

Later, Web publishers will be able to include a +1 button on their pages, just as many include a Facebook Like button today.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/technology/31ftc.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Google Introduces New Social Networking Tool, as It Settles Federal Privacy Charge

March 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Google is taking another stab at social networking, even as it pays a price for social networking privacy blunders it has made in the past.

Google introduced its latest social tool Wednesday, the same day it settled with the Federal Trade Commission over charges of deceptive privacy practices in its introduction last year of Buzz, the social networking tool in Gmail.

Under the settlement, Google agreed to start a privacy program and undergo privacy audits for 20 years; it faces $16,000 fines for future privacy misrepresentations. This is the first time the F.T.C. has charged a company with such violations, and the first time it has ordered a company to introduce a privacy program, the commission said.

The new social networking tool, +1, lets people annotate Google search results and ads so they can recommend Web pages to friends and acquaintances. It is the biggest feature yet in Google’s long-awaited social networking toolkit.

Both the introduction of +1 and the F.T.C. charges highlight two of Google’s biggest challenges: heightened competition from Facebook, and near-constant criticism from privacy advocates and policy makers over its practices.

As it tries to make its services more social, the company has come under intense scrutiny from people concerned about its widespread grasp of personal information. But at the same time, it is in the unusual position of racing to catch up with a rival, as Facebook captures more of Internet users’ time, information and advertising dollars.

Of particular concern to Google is the fact that many people now turn to Facebook with search queries, like seeking the best place to go on vacation, because they trust their friends’ advice more than that of an anonymous search engine.

In an interview about the new tool, Matt Cutts, a principal search engineer at Google who worked on +1, took great pains to emphasize that the company had learned from the privacy outcry after it introduced Buzz, which lets Gmail users share status updates, photos and videos. Its introduction in February 2010 unleashed a barrage of criticism from privacy advocates and everyday users because it automatically included users’ e-mail contacts in their social network.

Mr. Cutts repeatedly stressed that anything people share with +1 is public.

“If you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling your friends and broadcasting this to the world, then of course you don’t have to click the +1 button,” he said. With +1, Google wants to personalize search results. People logged into their Google accounts will be able to click a +1 button next to search results to publicly recommend the pages. People perusing search results will see how many Google users recommended a page and see names and photos of people they know.

Google will find people that users know through Gmail and chat contacts, as well as people users follow on Google Reader or Buzz. Later it will include contacts from other social sites like Twitter and Flickr. But it will not include contacts from Facebook, because Facebook information is not publicly shared on the Web, Mr. Cutts said

People will also be able to recommend ads. And if someone recommends a search result that links to a hotel’s Web site and the hotel later advertises on Google, that person’s recommendation will appear with the ad.

Google’s +1 is remarkably similar to Facebook’s Like button, which lets people recommend Web sites and ads to their friends. Later, Web publishers will be able to include a +1 button on their pages, just as many include a Facebook Like button today.

But Mr. Cutts said it differed from the Facebook feature because “it’s useful right there when you’re searching but doesn’t crowd or muck up your activity stream where people might not want to see it.”

In bringing the charges against Google, the F.T.C. said the company violated its own privacy policy when it used the information from users’ Gmail accounts for Buzz without obtaining their permission. The settlement prohibits Google from making any similar privacy misrepresentations, and requires Google to provide users with the ability to opt in to any changes to existing products that involve collecting user information.

“This is a legal order and goes further than voluntary commitment,” said Jessica Rich, the deputy director of the F.T.C. Bureau of Consumer Protection in a news conference with reporters Wednesday.

Google has apologized for the Buzz debacle before — and did again on Wednesday — but said the rules mandated by the F.T.C. would not change the way it operates.

“We don’t see this as being a significant change in how we run our business because this is the standard we hold ourselves to already,” said Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman.

The F.T.C. said it expects the settlement to have broad consequences for the Web industry.

“We think that many of the provisions in this order are good practices that we would expect to see widely followed throughout the industry,” Ms. Rich said. “The difference is Google would be subject to civil penalties if they violated it.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ba1aa219a86f6e8575f22709594890cd

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,