Twitter Adds Global Talent Sleuth To Accelerate Recruiting

With hundreds of millions in the bank from the company's most recent venture round, and hundreds of new employees having "joined the flock" just in the last two years, Twitter is bursting at the seams with resources to help the company expand from its current position to playing an even greater role in tomorrow's social Web. Joining the company today to help find even more people to help with the creation, curation, distribution, discovery and storage of the world's 140 character missives is Marcus Thorpe, who goes by the moniker of @Talent_Sleuth.

Thorpe joins the company by way of a Skype, where he spent the last year, after a full five years at Google. Billing himself as an international staffing guru, Marcus helped build out Google's European offices and says he was the first member of the EMEA Engineering and Operations recruitment team for Google in Europe, when he worked for the search giant from June 2005 until September of last year. His LinkedIn profile suggests he had a hand in the recruiting of more than 800 European employees for Google over the five-year period.

Marcus, International @Talent_Sleuth to Make Calls for Twitter

After leaving Google last fall, he joined Skype, which was recently acquired by Microsoft for more than 8 billion, quite possibly making the role a bit less interesting than when it was a more scrappy independent company. Now he'll be making phone calls on behalf of Twitter. No idea if he prefers to use Skype to do his recruiting.

Billions of Awesome Pieces of Content Served Daily?

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, and Barack Obama, USA's interim CEO, dueled for attention this morning in what turned out to be an intriguing one-two punch on the state of social globally and then then the state of the nation broadly. Zuckerberg promised us something "Awesome", while Obama dueled with opposing party leaders claiming he didn't keep his own promises. Not bad considering both were completed before noon Pacific.

Zuckerberg, possibly feeling a little defensive after a week-plus of early adopters fawning over Google+, possibly the biggest and most direct alternative to Facebook since the network started, focused primarily on the introduction of group chat, anticipated since the Beluga acquisition earlier this year, and the integration of video calling, powered by Skype, also expected. While that particular awesomeness could be debated, more important was the company's shift away from measuring raw user counts - which is mind-boggling at 750 million active accounts, far and away the leader, but pushing more attention on the amount of content shared on the network. Zuckerberg said that number, growing exponentially, ahead of user growth, is now at 4 billion unique items per day.

4 billion. Per day. Just on Facebook.

We know people don't share equally, with a nice 5 or so shares per registered user per day, but as Zuckerberg highlighted, there are more and more ways to update your Facebook stream. It may have started simple, with your interests, but now all manner of application and service can post to your feed, whether you're there or not. You can check in, or tweet in, or upload your photos, or have your blog posted there, and yes, still add status updates, comments, likes and so on. No wonder more updates are happening per person and this number is growing.

Exponential Content Growth on Facebook (Image via TechCrunch stream)

Selfishly speaking, this is why I've highlighted my6sense and teamed up with them for the past year. Zuckerberg highlighted the growth in mobile and the growth in content being shared per person leading to this incredible tsunami of data that shows no sign of decreasing. What this presents to us is, unsurprisingly, a question of quality. Facebook is for many a necessary utility to connect people and act as an online Rolodex. It's a service our parents understand and our little sisters too. Maybe our grandparents and assorted relatives are there too. I know mine are, and I've had to hide a lot of their stuff, trust me.

When Google+ launched, I gave the team kudos for not immediately jumping on the aggregation bandwagon. It is this aggregation and the introduction of so many different ways to update Facebook that has helped power the content numbers, and theoretically decreased your ability to find the best stuff. Google+ is addicting for many of the first users who know that the content was created and shared with them in mind. For Facebook, while they want more than anything to keep you on their site and to keep you engaged, which is working very well, there's a question, especially among the bleeding-edge geeks, as to whether they are spending real time on the network and contributing directly.

Think about two other things Zuckerberg said today. One was that many (he almost said most) people do not make friend requests, but react to them in a passive way. That's been my case as well. Second, he said that groups work when everybody knows who is in the group, typically started by one person who is the ringleader of sorts. This tells me that people, counted in those 750 million users helping post 4 billion items a day, are possibly sleepwalking through the network. They're not working to expand their contact list or to create groups, but reacting to others. This is happening because they're tapped out. They're tapped out on time and on interest. They probably don't want more friends, more connections, more groups because they're already at the point where they're full, and they're often full on the junk food equivalent of content.

Creating new features for 750 million people at once and making it simple enough for your grandparents to use is incredibly difficult, and Facebook made it look pretty simple today in their demos. While not the most advanced, as early comparisons to Google Talk and Google+ pointed out, the goal was simple and successful. Group chat, if it's anything like Beluga, should be a sure win as well. But I continue to worry about the site's ability (and others like it) to accurately discern what the most interesting and relevant updates are for me. They know, just like I've said for a long time, that the amount of content being created and shared is increasing, and is at all time highs. Now, they've delivered to us a number - a new metric to watch, because it's only going to get a lot busier from here.

Billions and billions and billions of pieces of content. Every day. And that's just on one network - a huge one yes, but just one. Impressive.

Disclosure: I am vice president of marketing at my6sense, a Paladin client. Our service supports Facebook streams for relevance.

Meg Whitman's eBay Resume a Target In CA Governor Race

Although there is a full month left before the calendar flips to 2010, candidates for next year's gubernatorial candidacy in California are already lining up to take the state's top spot when Arnold Schwarzenegger leaves office. Among them is Silicon Valley notable Meg Whitman, whose years at the helm of eBay are being made the centerpiece for much of her promotional advertising, including radio spots and a good part of her online presence. Early polls have her tied with repeat runner Jerry Brown at 41% in a hypothetical matchup. But as great a story as eBay has been, the company's focus just lends itself to creative opponents and speechwriters.

Start with the tagline... Will Meg Put Your Children's Future Up for Auction?

Of course, replacing "your children's future" with "your business" or "your home" or whatever your favorite buzzword is still works.

And don't forget what auctions are all about... Selling out to the Highest Bidder. Without saying I think Meg is any better or any worse than Brown, in a world of politics where lobbyists are frowned upon and outside influence is distrusted, one could spin Meg's approach to politics or issues as doing just that.

After all, can't you just name a "Buy It Now" price at eBay? What is the price for a politician?

Whitman's bio, an impressive record including her education at Princeton and a Harvard MBA, floats through her work with Bain & Co., Stride Rite, Procter and Gamble, FTD, Hasbro and Disney - talking about her taking what ended up bring a dream job, when she joined eBay in 1998, and delivered an "unparalleled business success story", saying she "revolutionized the way goods are bought, sold and paid-for on line."

There is no question eBay changed the game online - managing to fight off competition from Amazon, Yahoo! and others - an unquestioned success. But if I were in politics, I would highlight the fact that eBay is the place to take old junk you don't want any more, or a place to find last year's models today. Meg Whitman's audio ads are talking about "change", just like every other politician talks about change to elicit voter interest, even as eBay's current campaign says things like "This season's shows still look great on last season's HD TV."

While it's easy to anticipate GOP opposition targeting Brown, who served from 1975-83 in the role of governor, as recycling old ideas, being tied so much to a company that champions this very thing doesn't exactly put Whitman in the driver's seat in terms of next generation forward-looking thinking.

Additionally, during Whitman's tenure at eBay, at 2005, the company very visibly purchased Skype for $3.1 billion. While the company also purchased PayPal on her watch, which has been a fantastic success, the majority of Skype was sold from eBay earlier this year, with a valuation well under that mark, after the deal never really made sense after years of stalling. Brown and other opponents' handlers could see the Skype buy as a costly billion dollar gamble that distracted eBay from its core business. With California being in such budget peril these days, it's a story that almost writes itself.

Regardless of your political leanings, it is clear these kinds of comparisons are going to come up. And lest you think we have moved on in politics away from soundbites and taglines, we haven't. If Whitman becomes the GOP candidate, or a front-runner, eBay could be as much a hindrance as it ever was a benefit. Her opponents should be dreaming of fun taglines, and her team should be getting ready to respond when they do.

iPhone Call Recording: It Makes Too Much Sense Not to Do

The introduction of the Voice Memos capability on Apple's iPhone was a nice touch. Now, in theory, if I am out and about and don't want to type in a note, I can speak into the Voice Memo and save a short audio clip. The process is also good for recording short snippets of music, or even the babies babbling, if I want to save it as an MP3 file and send it somewhere. But I've been thinking that Apple could be sitting on a much bigger use for this functionality - doing podcasts and interviews, which would take money out of the pockets of services like WebEx and Skype, and into its partner, AT&T.

Apple's iPhone already features a number of calling options once you are connected - including adding a third line, hitting mute, putting the call on speaker, and putting calls on hold. Given the iPhone's parallel option to record audio, why not add a red "Record" button alongside the conversation?

Before privacy and security advocates call foul, I assume it is very simple to have a mandatory introductory audio phrase, like "this call is being recorded", as well as beeps along the way.


Marrying Voice Memos With Phone Calls Should Be Easy
Today's world of podcasting usually deals with a third party hosting service, like Talkshoe, or gathering all parties on a Skype call, while one person manages the process. I think it would be dramatically easier to use the same way you make any other call, and just have Apple do the work of gathering the call into an MP3 file, and making it available in your iTunes for later listening, so you can upload as you please.

In theory, if Apple could enable this "Record" calls functionality, we would only be a few steps away from what could be seen as a panacea, not just for podcasters, but anybody conducting interviews. It shouldn't be too hard for a phone call to take place and to identify words and phrases by phone number (or the Address Book contact) of the person speaking. At that point, you could run the information against a new application, and have the call automatically transcribed. While this may sound like fantasy, the world we live in isn't that far from delivering excellent speech to text functionality. Pointing that tech at a recorded phone call you make on your iPhone shouldn't be that much more difficult.

Let's just turn on the record button and go.

Skype Hates Me. Maybe That's Because I Treat It Like Net2Phone?

When I worked at 3Cube nearly ten years ago, we helped design one of the most feature-rich and well-designed online conference calling and Web meeting products out there, with a service we called PhoneCube. You could, from your Web browser, initiate a conference call to up to 32 participants, and manage the entire conference, including putting people on mute or hold, from your Web browser. You could also invite them, on the fly, to a Web meeting, and share a presentation or your desktop. But as a small startup, we ran into two major issues. The first was that WebEx had raised scads of money and was spending tens of millions on marketing, including a Super Bowl ad featuring RuPaul. The second was that pricing the product, no matter how we did it, seemed expensive, as users were not comparing our 15 or 25 cents per minute per line rates with that of traditional conference call services, but instead, with the pennies on the dollar VoIP alternative, Net2Phone.


The old PhoneCube.com Web site, Circa 2000 (via archive.org)
Rising in the era of Napster and Web browser bars, like AllAdvantage, that promised to pay you money just for surfing the Web, Net2Phone's dirt cheap, but awful quality, got significant use, especially for those folks making international calls - many of whom thought we should drop our rates to basement levels found only online or on gift cards picked up from 7-11. And thus were my feelings cemented about what this cheap PC to landline connection represented. So you can imagine my hesitancy when it comes to Skype.

After finally giving in and getting a Skype account last year, to participate in the occasional podcasts, I have dealt with frequent bugs that have me wondering if the Skype application has a personal grudge against me thanks to our history. Whether I have participated on the ReadBurner Weekly podcast, the FFundercats podcast, or yesterday, when I was a guest on This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte, I always get dropped, without warning, around 20 minutes into the call, like clockwork.

And I hate looking like a tech fool. My Mac is up to date in just about every respect. I have the latest version of Skype downloaded. I have a headset which works. But regardless of what time of day or who I'm talking to, I know that I should keep my calls to 15 minutes, or you can expect me to have to dial in about 3 to 4 times an hour. (See yesterday's TWIT, episode 194 for a great example)

So, community of Skypers... you tell me. Should I relegate Skype into the same bucket of ugly 1999 quality Net2Phone, or should I give it another try? Is it my fault? Is it Comcast (my ISP)? Or is it Skype? Reasonable responses and suggestions will be tried.

Location, Location... Mobile

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Two years ago the mobile web was not a huge deal to me. I hated the way Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) displayed web pages. Add that to the fact that I was deeply committed to graphic design at the time, and you'll understand why I ignored this market. It was frustrating to look at, and even harder to interact with. At the time, no one could reach me there. It was...(gasp!) a dead zone! (Dun, dun, duuuuuun!)

Today in Mobile

Fast forward to today when I'm checking my e-mails and RSS feeds from my iPhone. I'm getting directions from the Google Maps app on both my iPhone and Nokia E-75. I prefer Live Search Mobile on Motorola Q9c running Windows Mobile. Now that the mobile landscape is changing I've been changing with it. You almost have to have a mobile app or optimized site in order to pitch me.

I have three cell phones utilizing two of the best mobile web browsers available: Skyfire (Nokia, Windows Mobile) and Mobile Safari (iPhone). I'm also a lot more mobile than I was two years ago. Mobile optimized sites are simply becoming a must in this day and age. I'm here to let you know that you'd better hop on the bandwagon. However, don't just hop on the iPhone's bandwagon, Instead, make your services available to every mobile platform.

Mainstream Web Compatibility

With three devices running three different Mobile OS' and browsers, it should come as no surprise as to why mobile web cross-platform support is important to me. However, this isn't just personal. Mainstream users are dying to catch on to the mobile web too. The problem: the junk doesn't work on their phones. You can blame it on the handset all you want, but your users shouldn't be forced into buying a specific phone just to play with your service. In the same breath, they shouldn't be tied to their computer either.

Of course this doesn't apply to everyone. Limited functionality is a given with the mobile web, but you can't expect it to improve if you don't at least attempt to improve it. My friends are really trying to get into accessing information on the go while we're out and about. They see me do it all the time on my iPhone and think the iPhone is some sort of gadget god. They should be thinking that your app or service is great, not just the iPhone. They can't do that because if you take the iPhone out of the picture, they still wouldn't be able to use quite a few of the services I use.

Mobile Me & You

My location is ever-changing. I'm deeply invested in accessing information on the go. It's making my work more flexible and allowing me to make my day more productive. Now I can still go outside and socialize, with everything I need only a tap away on my phones, and I hate when I encounter something that can't be done until I'm back home with my laptop.

These days I'm waiting for Skype's iPhone App to be released. Can we say unlimited calling for cheap? I'm loving all the location awareness and Geo-tagging features that are being rolled out into mobile apps. However, the sites need the same love people. Not everyone owns an iPhone, you know.

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.