Graph Search highlights Facebook's unwillingness to bend to Wall Street

The "Hacker Way" is alive and well at 1601 Willow Road, and that means focusing first on the demands of business, not the demands of Wall Street.



Facebook bends to no one, particularly not bankers and investors looking for perfection. That's the message Wall Street received with the beta release of Graph Search, the social network's first milestone launch since becoming a public company.
Graph Search is Facebook's experimental take on search and alters the social-networking experience to support discovery through natural language queries on people, photos, places, and interests.
Graph Search is so significant in scope and purpose that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg anointed the product a "third pillar," which makes it as core to Facebook as Timeline and News Feed. The status also makes Facebook's decision to release an unfinished product quite curious. Lest Zuck forget, the company now has investor expectations to live up to.
The puzzling decision is actually an easily decipherable message that reads like this: Facebook intends to hold true to its risk-taking, ship-early-and-ship-often "Hacker Way" mentality.
This should not come as a surprise. Zuckerberg warned investors with a letter in the company's prospectus that this would be the case. On Tuesday, he followed through on the promise with a Graph Search release strategy that seems to closely emulate the pre-IPO launch of Timeline, which debuted in half-baked form before going out to the general public months later.
"Facebook is still the same company post-IPO," Altimeter industry analyst Susan Etligner told CNET. "They're still using agile development. They'll release products the same way. They go to market when they want to."
When they want to is exactly right. Tom Stocky and Lars Rasmussen, Facebook's product leads on Graph Search, told CNET that the rollout will take months, not weeks.
"Part of this slow rollout is so that people can get used to this new world," Stocky said. Wall Street's expectations or possible reactions didn't factor into the company's release strategy, he added.
The we'll-do-it-our-way attitude, which some said would never pass muster in the public market, is already clashing with Wall Street types who have high expectations. Facebook has lost its market momentum since Tuesday's announcement, dropping to $29.85 Wednesday from around $31.50 before Zuckerberg lifted the veil on a piece of still-unfinished software.

Twitter engineers battle page rendering issues

The microblogging site says its users are experiencing "intermittent problems" with the way their feeds appear on browsers.

If your Twitter feed suddenly looks a bit squirrely, it's not your eyes or computer.
The microblogging site announced on its support account that engineers are working to solve rendering issues.
Although Twitter referred to the situation as "intermittent problems," the issue appears to be pretty persistent; a hard reload sometimes succeeds at summoning a normal-looking page.                  

                                                                                                                                       

We are experiencing intermittent problems with twitter.com rendering properly. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

In the meantime, here's an example of what many users are apparently seeing:

 

 

Google Nexus 7 tops iPad in Japan: Is this a trend?

Google's Nexus 7 is making serious market-share headway against Apple in Japan, according to Nikkei.


Google's Nexus 7 is gaining market share in Japan and topped Apple's iPad in one survey.
Japanese digital device consumers are some of the savviest in the world. So, a report Thursday showing that the Nexus 7 has bested the iPad in market share is worthy of attention.
Based on a survey of 2,400 consumer electronics stores in Japan, Google's Nexus 7 tablet had 44.4 percent of the market versus the iPad's 40.1 percent, according to Nikkei, Japan's largest business daily. The survey was done by market research firm BCN in December.
Not surprisingly, one of the big draws of the Nexus 7 -- which is co-branded with Asus, the manufacturer of the tablet -- is price, according to Nikkei. It's about a $100 less in Japan than Apple's least expensive tablet, the iPad Mini.
The survey did note, however, that there was a shortage of the iPad Mini at stores and that this may have contributed to Apple's market share decline. But the gist of Nikkei's analysis is that the Nexus 7's price is a bigger factor.
Tablet sales in Japan were 3.6 million units in 2012 and this is expected to swell to 4.9 million in 2013, according to figures from IDC Japan that Nikkei cited.

YouTube said to be investing more cash in Vevo

Although Google's video site already invested in Vevo, rumor has it that it wants a bigger stake.



Word has it that YouTube is looking to throw some cash in the direction of the music video site Vevo, according to AllThingsD. If these rumors are true, it shows that YouTube is increasingly moving toward the content market.
ouTube already owns a small stake in Vevo but is reportedly looking to up that investment, according to AllThingsD. If indeed the video giant does partner with Vevo, the way consumers view content on the site will supposedly stay the same -- which means watching big label music videos for free.
Vevo was reported as the third most-watched video site in the U.S. last May, with 49.5 million viewers per month, according to ComScore. No. 1 was Google, with 157.7 million viewers, largely through its YouTube operation, and second was Yahoo. YouTube helped create Vevo's back end, and Vevo's videos are best known for appearing on YouTube.
According to AllThingsD, the investment is reportedly slated to be more than $35 million.

U.S. Attorney defends office's conduct in Aaron Swartz case

Challenging the notion that her office's actions led to the suicide of the Internet activist, Carmen Ortiz said that the conduct of her prosecutors was appropriate.


The Justice Department official who oversaw the criminal case of Aaron Swartz before the Internet activist's suicide last week defended her office's handling of his case.
Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, was prosecuting Swartz on charges of illegally downloading a large number of academic papers. A vocal advocate for open access rights to documents on the Internet, Swartz had faced the possibility of as much as $4 million in fines and more than 50 years in prison if convicted. Critics of the prosecutors in the case accused the feds of unfairly trying to make an example out of the 26-year-old Swartz.
Saying that as a parent she sympathized with Swartz's friends and family, Ortiz challenged the notion that her office's conduct led to Swartz's suicide.
"The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably," Ortiz said in a statement (see below), adding that prosecutors recognized that Swartz's conduct did not warrant the stiffest of penalties allowed under sentencing guidelines. "That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct -- a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting."
In the statement that follows, Ortiz says her office never intended to seek the maximum sentence:

As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office's prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.

I must, however, make clear that this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct - while a violation of the law - did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct - a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek - or ever tell Mr. Swartz's attorneys that it intended to seek - maximum penalties under the law.

As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.

The computer fraud laws used to prosecute Swartz have been targeted for reform by a Democratic congresswoman from Silicon Valley. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said yesterday that she had authored a bill (PDF) called "Aaron's Law" that aims to change the 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute to exclude terms of service violations.
"The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute," Lofgren wrote.
Lofgren is not the first to complain that the wording of the 29-year-old anti-hacking law was overly broad. Last April, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the government's broad interpretation of the 1984 law, warning that millions of Americans could be subjected to prosecution for harmless Web surfing at work.

Otherworldly Craigslist ad seeks 'Star Trek' role-players

Hitting new levels of hilarity, a personal ad on the classified site asks for women to assist in "The Next Generation" role-playing, while promising that "nothing weird is going to happen."

Those ladies who are fluent in Klingon but just can't seem to find a boyfriend are now in luck. Apparently, a certain someone is seeking women for "Star Trek" role-playing -- strictly "The Next Generation."
A recent Craigslist ad titled "Make It So" is making the joke rounds on Twitter today. The ad promises "no nudity, no touching" but asks for two to three women to get in character with the ad's author as he plays the "honorable" and "intellectual" Captain Picard.
Apparently Make It So has some serious issues with Captain Kirk, who he says "isn't half the Captain that Picard is" and is also a "fat chauvinist ladies man." He says that last time he tried to role-play "The Original Series," it was a "disaster." "There will be no mixing of eras," he proclaims.
Once he finds some suitable women that "know a lot about the show," the roleplaying can commence in his mom's garage where he has built a bridge and a small shuttlecraft. He will provide the scripts. The women have to have their own costumes and a phaser or VISOR would also be helpful.
What's in it for those lady callers? Maybe a lunch made by Make It So's mom and some blank doctor's prescriptions.
"Nothing weird is going to happen," he promises.

AT&T eyes international expansion for growth

Not content with its situation in the United States, the carrier is looking at potential assets to buy in Europe.


 Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T mobility, speaking at the company's investor conference in New York City in November 2012.

AT&T is interested in buying a European carrier for growth, according to the Wall Street Journal.
With the U.S. market about to get more competitive, AT&T is looking at markets in Europe where it can upgrade technology and roll out new services and pricing strategies, the Wall Street Journal said, citing unnamed sources. It reported that AT&T is studying potential acquisitions, and could strike a deal by the end of the year. In particular, AT&T is looking at the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands.
While the U.S. carriers have largely remained insular, many of the largest carriers overseas, such as Vodafone and Telefonica, have assets in multiple countries. With growth starting to slow in the U.S., it's natural for AT&T to look abroad.
But a deal isn't without risks, and the markets that AT&T is looking at are already highly competitive in their own right. These aren't fast-growing emerging markets, but fairly mature ones with several competitors already in place. Those issues, as well as the weak European markets, have led to falling valuations and potentially attractive prices for many of these companies.
AT&T, of course, isn't a stranger to doing business with a major European player. The company two years ago attempted to acquire T-Mobile USA, a unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom. That deal fell apart amid regulatory scrutiny, and the company has been focusing on smaller deals since then.
It's unclear how such a deal would interfere with or complement the company's extensive network upgrade plans. AT&T is spending an additional $14 billion to upgrade its wireless and wireline networks as it looks to new sources of growth in the U.S.
But AT&T is also looking at a market that will get more competitive in the coming months. Softbank is poised to come in and inject capital into Sprint, and its leadership has already warned that it would introduce new pricing schemes to shake up the market. Deutsche Telekom has recommitted itself to T-Mobile, which is planning to merge with MetroPCS and likewise promised to introduce new competitive plans.
AT&T does have an international presence in the form of a business arm that provides services to multinational corporations, but it doesn't yet serve consumers.
An AT&T representative declined to comment on the report.