via reuters.com
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Lessons for Google+ or How MySpace Lost Out to Facebook - Tech Europe - WSJ
By Nick Clayton
Anybody who joined MySpace when it was the only social networking site to belong to will recognise Tom Anderson. He was the president, founder and everybody’s first friend.
On Tech Crunch he has been offering advice for the latest entrant to the social networking scene under the headline: “Five Things I Learned At MySpace That Could Help Google+”. It could equally be seen as an analysis of how MySpace lost its social networking crown to Facebook.
1) Start seriously courting the journalists, tastemakers and celebrities that are using and/or pontificating about G+.
They will otherwise, he warns, get facts wrong as a result of their personal experiences. He suggests journalists initially exaggerated the size of college-oriented Facebook because it was what their posh kids were using rather than MySpace which was actually more popular at the time.
2) Exhaustively think through the privacy issues.
Mr. Anderson warns: “‘Safety’ hysteria destroyed MySpace in the press. It got MySpace banned from schools, Apple stores, and by well-meaning parents who had been terrorized by what they were reading.
3) Move Google’s top analysts onto the Google+ project.
He says: “Facebook was really good at understanding their onboarding process, knowing what key activities led to later usage.”
4) Hire the best product executors and visionaries in the world.
“I’m not referring to run of the mill product managers and UI developers or ‘social media experts,’ but rather that rare breed of people who have demonstrable experience leading users down the path to internet nirvana,” he says.
Finally he says:
5) There must be one ring to rule them all.
“No that leader won’t always get it right, but the clarity achieved and time saved is crucial. The internet moves at lightning speed. If you mess up, a resolute leader can iterate and fix. “
Could he be talking about Mark Zuckerberg?
via blogs.wsj.com
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The Associated Press: Report: 78 dead in Morocco military plane crash
Report: 78 dead in Morocco military plane crashBy HASSAN ALAOUI, Associated Press – 2 hours ago
RABAT, Morocco (AP) — A C-130 military transport plane crashed into a Moroccan mountain Tuesday in bad weather, killing 78 people, the state news agency said. It said there were three survivors.
The crash in a southern region close to the disputed Western Sahara was this country's deadliest in years.
Information Minister Khaled Naciri told The Associated Press that the military believes 78 were killed but that searches are ongoing for all the bodies.
The MAP news agency said all three survivors were seriously injured. It said the plane was carrying 60 members of the military, 12 civilians and nine crew members.
Citing a Royal Armed Forces statement, the report said that the remains of only 42 people have been found so far. It was not immediately clear how the military determined that 78 were killed.
MAP said the plane crashed around 9 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) 10 kilometers (six miles) northeast of Guelmim in southern Morocco, as it prepared to land at the Guelmim military air base.
MAP said the crash was "due to bad weather conditions," without elaborating.
Naciri said the plane was en route from Dakhla, in the disputed Western Sahara, to Kinitra in northern Morocco, and making a stop in Guelmim.
Officials at the military hospital in Guelmim could not be reached.
Guelmim is more than 600 kilometers (360 miles) southwest of the capital Rabat, just north of the Western Sahara and a few dozen kilometers from the Atlantic Coast.
Morocco took over the mineral-rich Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in 1979. The Saharawi people want to establish the region as an independent state.
U.N. peacekeepers have been there since 1991, and the U.N. has demanded a referendum but Morocco has instead proposed wide-ranging autonomy for estimated half a million people who live in Western Sahara's sparsely populated desert flatland.
The Guelmim region features contrasting desert, oasis and mountain landscapes with their valleys and gorges, part of the so-called Anti-Atlas, an extension of the Atlas mountain chain that runs through Morocco. The region also features a coastal zone known as the "White Beaches of Guelmim" with the beach in nearby Tan Tan.
Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
via google.com
Monday, July 25, 2011
Books-A-Million drops bid for Borders stores | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com
Books-A-Million, Inc. has ended its efforts to take over 30 Borders stores, the company announced today.
“The parties could not agree on terms and the going out of business sales at these locations commenced,” a company statement said.
Borders is in bankruptcy and currently liquidating all its remaining stores, including one in Flowood.
Books-A-Million, based in Birmingham, is one of the nation’s leading book retailers with 231 stores in 23 states and the District of Columbia.
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