Definitions

The matter was remanded by the Federal Circuit to the District Court, and, as we blogged in December, several additional pre-trial rulings again favored the JMRI project, including a ruling on the eligibility of software code that is distributed for free for copyright infringement damages. The settlement was reached with a trial date on the not-too-distant horizon.

With the settlement, the Federal Circuit and District Court rulings will not be subject to direct appeal. Given the rarity of litigation over open source software, it seems unlikely that the reasoning of these two rulings will be questioned judicially in any other open source litigation for some time.

The settlement agreement is here, and the permanent injunction is here.

The explanation of the settlement on the JMRI site indicates that the proprietary software company has agreed, among other things, not to misuse the JMRI software at issue, or to register any domain names incorporating certain terms attributable to the JMRI project, and will make a payment of $100,000. Future disputes will be settled by mediation or arbitration.

Scherillo v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., 2010 WL 537805 (E.D.N.Y. Feb. 17, 2010)

I teach my Cyberspace Law students that the most effective online contract formation process is a "mandatory non-leaky clickthrough agreement":

* mandatory = the user cannot proceed to the destination without going through a screen soliciting their consent to the user agreement.
* non-leaky = there are no alternative ways the user can reach the destination. I realize this is redundant with "mandatory," but I remind students that a seemingly mandatory process can have leaks. For example, if customer support representatives will manually set up user accounts occasionally, the mandatory online process has become leaky because now a few users reached the destination without consenting to the agreement.
* clickthrough = the user manifests assent to the contract by clicking, and the user is told that the click signifies assent.

There are other ways to form online contracts (e.g., email exchanges), but if executed properly, the mandatory non-leaky clickthrough process should do very well against contract formation challenges. But even this description leaves open a number of user interaction judgments. Does likelihood of contract formation vary if:

* the agreement terms are presented on the clickthrough page itself or are only available for review by hyperlink?
* the agreement terms are presented in a scrollbox? If a scrollbox is used, must the user be forced to scroll through the scrollbox?
* the user is asked to check an additional box, such as a certification that the user has read the agreement?

In all of these cases, I believe the contract should be properly formed whether the answer to these questions is yes or no. However, I'm now a fan of adding a bonus mandatory checkbox as part of the formation process after reading today's opinion. A user mounts a sophisticated challenge to a mandatory non-leaky clickthrough process, and the bonus mandatory checkbox helps squelch the challenge. I think the court would have enforced it without the checkbox, but it sure put the user in an awkward/untenable position.

Scherillo bought a financial report about a company from Dun & Bradstreet's Small Business Solutions website. Scherillo alleges that the report painted an overly rosy picture of the company, leading him to make bad investment decisions that cost him money when the company tanked. Scherillo wants D&B to cover his investment losses.

Scherillo is almost certain to lose on the merits. Indeed, this case brought to mind one of the earliest cyberlaw cases, Daniel v. Dow Jones, 520 N.Y.S. 2d 334 (N.Y.C. Civ. Ct. Spec. Term 1987). (This case is a fun read--see how the court discusses electronic networked communications almost a quarter-century ago). That case involved Dow Jones' publication of an ambiguous report via a dial-up online service that led the plaintiff to make a bad investment decision. The court said that any tort claim for publishing inaccurate information required the plaintiff to show that it had a "special relationship" (analogous to a fiduciary relationship) with the information vendor, and an ordinary customer-vendor relationship did not qualify as a special relationship.

Interestingly, D&B would rather hear the case in NJ rather than keep it in NY and hope to benefit from substantive NY law that surely would doom Scherillo's case. (Perhaps NJ has a similar law). To move the case to NJ, D&B invoked the venue selection clause in its user agreement. Let's look at the online contract formation process. The court says:

"since 2007, the SBS website has included a page that requires users to register before purchasing a Dun and Bradstreet product ("the registration page"). On the registration page, users input information, including their e-mail address and name. The bottom quarter to third of the page contains a scrollable text box with the title "Terms and Conditions" [which contained a mandatory venue selection clause designating NJ]. Directly below this text box there is more text that reads: "I have read and AGREE to the terms and conditions shown above." Immediately adjacent to this text is a much smaller, empty box ("the terms and conditions check box"). Also at the bottom of the page is another box containing the phrase "Complete Registration" ("the Complete Registration box"). Clicking on this box completes the user's registration. McDonald testified that if a user clicks on the Complete Registration box without checking the terms and conditions check box, the user is unable to complete registration and is returned to the registration page."

Check out the page yourself as I saw it in Google Chrome on Feb. 18 (with cropping). The formation process looks pretty standard to me.

Scherillo attacked the formation process by saying he never consented to the agreement because "it was possible for him to unknowingly and involuntarily 'check' the terms and conditions check box." Not only that, he lined up Sean Chumura, "a cyberwarfare and computer forensics expert" who is also [LINK NSFW] helping Perfect 10 in its lawsuit against Google, to testify that "it was possible for plaintiff, while 'tabbing' through the registration page, to inadvertently hit the space bar and thereby 'check' the terms and conditions box."

[Snarky paragraph alert] First, this may prove the adage that you can find an expert to testify about ANYTHING. Second, Scherillo alleged $75k of investment losses. For a low-value lawsuit like that, he needs a cyberwarfare expert??? Third, I believe Chumura has a MySpace page. Really...? I wonder if he uses an AOL.com email address too. The MySpace page also reveals that its author appeared to attend the Dan Quayle school of spelling.

OK, back to the case. The judge was no more tolerant of this nonsense than I am. He resolves the factual dispute by saying:

even under plaintiff's theory--that, while "tabbing" through the fields on the registration page, he accidentally hit the space bar key and thereby "checked" the terms and conditions box--plaintiff would have seen the check mark appear in the box and then still would have had to hit the "return" key (or clicked the "complete registration" box with the mouse) to complete the registration and advance to the next screen. Plaintiff would have had an opportunity to see that he checked the box inadvertently before he then hit the return key on the "complete registration" box. Thus, to accept plaintiff's theory, the Court would have to find that plaintiff hit two keys accidentally-the space bar and the return key-and that he was then involuntarily and unexpectedly sent to the next screen where he nonetheless proceeded to enter his credit card information and complete the purchase of the report. This alleged chain of events is simply not credible.

Therefore, Scherillo's click on the "Complete Registration" box manifested Scherillo's assent to the terms, even if Scherillo chose not to review them. The court says that the fact that the terms were in a scrollbox is immaterial, and the fact that some sites require the user to scroll through the scrollbox before proceeding doesn't affect the effectiveness of D&B's implementation.

I believe this court would have upheld the formation process even without the bonus checkbox, but you can see how the checkbox defused the withering assault of a cyberwarfare expert. Thus, you might consider implementing the bonus checkbox to discourage similar silly attacks against your contract formation process in the future.

FBI director Robert Mueller is still keen to get US internet service providers to keep their customers' web logs for up to two years.

Fring is an Israel based startup that has been offering its signature VoIP application for mobile devices is now available for Android phones in the Android Market. Fring is an app that allows users to connect via popular chast and VoIP tools like Skype and Google Talk.

It was first introduced a little over three years ago in beta for handsets that were running Symbian OS. Since that time it has spread across the other popular platforms to gain a foothold in the instant messaging space on mobiles. Not to mention cornering VoIP though API development with some of the most popular internet based messaging software.

Fring allows users to aggregate their connections across networks and easily send text, photos, files and now video. And yes, like anything else being released today, Fring will allow you to tweet. Happy?

The two most robust platforms for using Fring are on Symbian 9 or higher and Windows Mobile phones. The newest, Android, has a few features for now like text chat, mobile calling and personalization settings.

Using the application is fairly straight forward as you need to download and install for your phone, register and then wait for Fring to connect the together your networks and contacts. Once this step is done you can begin getting in touch with your posse(s) via your mobile.

I've had good luck with Fring when I needed to get in touch with a contact that I didn't have handy in my phone contacts and for Skype text based chats. Now that it is ready for the new kid, Android, I would suspect that more features like those for the iPhone will make their way into the app.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Android Market VoIP by Fring is a post from: TechStartups.com

As the war of words ramps up between Google and some news publishers, the latest spin seems to be how worthless the traffic is that Google sends. In reality, the traffic probably does have value, but the newspapers are likely doing a terrible job of monetizing it.

I'll give some examples in a minute, but how about an imaginary story to illustrate the problem?

Let's say a newspaper executive opens a store. They put some story headlines up in their shop window.

Now one of those old fashioned newskids comes along. You know, the type that you'd see in movies selling papers on the street. Let's call the kid Google.

Google reads the headlines and then scampers off down the street, shouting out to people things like Senate's debating health care! or 1 out of 4 homeowners are in the red!

Some of these people are interested. They ask this Google kid for more information, and Google sends them back to the news store.

At the store, the news exec owner greets visitors by asking them what the hell they want. Perplexed, they visitors say they heard about these stories and wanted to know more. The exec shouts at them. Get the hell out of my store, you freeloader! This is for members-only. We don't need riff-raff like you in here.

That's a hell of a way to run a business, don't you think? But it's pretty much how News Corporation execs seem to view the world. Consider what News Corp digital chief Jonathan Miller said earlier this month:

The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.

Today, we got similar remarks from James Moroney, executive vice president of A.H. Belo, which publishes the Dallas Morning News and other papers:

This is traffic that's not being monetized to any great degree, Moroney said. It's akin to a person who drops into town, buys one copy of your newspaper and leaves town again and yet you spend a whole bunch of time building your business around that type of customer.

Let's be clear about one reason why these statements are coming out. This is round two against Google. In round one, some publishers said Google steals our content. Google's response was that it sends them millions of visitors for free. So in round two, it's time to make out like those visitors aren't worth much. That's especially important if you're an executive who, after floating the idea of dropping Google, comes under attack as stupidly cutting your own throat.

Me, I see visitors as opportunities. This is the internet, where you can tell far more about a visitor to your web site than you can in print. You can tell:

• They're visiting for the first time or on a repeat basis
• They came from Google
• They came from a specific page, or using specific search terms
• The geographic area they're located in

And the visitor who buys your paper printed on a dead tree out of a newsstand? You can tell you sold a copy. And that's it. That regular subscriber? You know they live in a particular area, maybe some demographic info, but you can't custom your dead tree version in any way to target for that.

Can you imagine what would happen if the Wall Street Journal did a one time promotion where for a day, they gave away 1 million copies of their paper? Since there's a real cost to doing so, don't you think they'd figure out a way to make that promotion count? They'd sell special ads? They'd have a super attractive subscription offer?

But on the internet, where they're not paying anything for all that traffic flowing from Google, there just doesn't seem to be any effort. Millions of people are just written off as worthless. If they're watching The Simpsons on Murdoch's Fox TV network, they're valuable (see Free Isn't A Four-Letter Word Offline, So Why Does The Media Hate It Online?). Put the exact same people on the internet, and suddenly they're net neaderthals.

The problem isn't with the people. They didn't suddenly change when sitting in front of a computer keyboard. They don't suddenly have less money. They aren't suddenly less attractive marketing prospects. The problem is with how you're targeting them.

Remember what Miller said? That most of these visitors read a story once and then leave? Well, clearly the WSJ has some analytics running to understand that. Someone, somewhere has churned a report to arm Miller with that information. But that same data can be used to target those visitors better.

Time for a real life example. Today, at lunch, in the hard copy of the Wall Street Journal that I pay $100 per year for, I read a story bout how 1 in 4 US homeowners are underwater or owing more than their homes are worth.

I guess I have at least $100 per year in value to the Wall Street Journal, since I'm a subscriber. But that's gross revenue. Someone's being paid to deliver the hard copy to my door. There are print costs involved with producing it. I doubt the $100 I pay per year covers all that. But the WSJ also convinces advertisers that I'm somehow valuable to them, which is why they pay to place quality ads in the WSJ like this in front of me:

Now that same story is currently being featured on Google. The minute I click from Google to read it, I'm transformed. My $100 per year value is lost. Instead, I become one of those people who Miller says that he doesn't make any money from.

Well, let's see what I get:

That's the beginning of the story. It is EXACTLY the same thing I see if I read this story by clicking through to it from a link on the WSJ's home page (they've made it free to anyone from there). It's also the same thing I see when I'm logged in using my paid account.

Why is the WSJ treating the one-time / first-time visitor the same way as a regular reader? See those two big arrows I've drawn pointing into the story? I'm pointing out that one of the top goals the WSJ would have for first time visitors is to get them to take that 2 week free offer to subscribe or to take one of the free stay connected via email or RSS options. And yet, these things are shoved off to the top and side of the page.

Place them in front of the reader! At worst, you lose nothing. But more likely, you've slightly interrupted one of those freeloaders in the same way you interrupt them when they watch News Corp TV shows and get commercials. And more of them will convert. They may buy more subscriptions, or they may register so you can do outreach marketing to them.

Meanwhile, money IS being made, even off the supposed freeloaders. There's a big ad sitting there off to the site, plus another one right above. Oh, there's too much ad inventory? Then find a way to convince your advertisers to buy more ads or pay more for them, which probably means showing that your ads perform well. And if they're not performing well, fix your problem. Why aren't they?

This is an article about mortgage owners being underwater. Can we assume some of the readers are attracted to it because they may want help with their mortgages? Are there no companies that offer this to type of service? Are there no ad execs who could figure out how to reach them?

Instead, I get served with an ad from Zurich about how to buy the right insurance for my business. Seriously? That's the ad you show me? This is targeting? Roll out one of those Get a mortgage for below 5% ads that I see offline everywhere.

Even better, here's another ad that also shows for this article:

Yeah, in an article about how people can't afford their homes, you show me an ad about buying an iconic residential masterpiece in Boca Raton. And when I don't click on that, because it has nothing to do with my interests, you call me a freeloader.

Your loss, I think. I've got money to spend. Plenty of your visitors do. You're just not figuring out how to get it from me.

That visitor from Google? Show them a completely different experience, if you want. Article and ad, perhaps embedded within the content (labeled as ads, but inline, rather than off to the side). Please, go hire someone like Jeremy Shoemaker or Jennifer Slegg, both of whom live and breathe how to make as much money out of visitors as possible.

Do something. Anything. Please. Survive. But there's one thing you shouldn't do. Blame others for sending you visitors and not figuring out how to make money off of them.

I was asked to review a scenario for a friend this morning that deals with competition for mind share in an ongoing row between disparate entities. Ahem, feuding like Hatfields and McCoys as Waylon Jennings would say, and they're doing it primarily online.

Most of us choose to go about our business online without causing confrontation. You might not choose to be involved in a situation like this.

However, if you are put in this position tactics for a remedy are below:

1. Make sure all of your sites where dynamic content is being created on have RSS feeds
2. Make sure the sites are being indexed by Google . . . and recently cached by going to Google and typing in site:blogdomain.com blogdomain.com being the site URL
3. Most of the sites below (I was furnished with list including Topix and Blog Catalog to mention a couple) require registration and some code editing to claim the sites. Register with them and follow their protocol for submission into their directories for partner programs and additional synidcation
4. Create a press release(s) that contains links, not just copy, but links to the RSS feeds from clients site(s). Example, For more information on this ongoing issue subscribe to: http://www.blogdomain.com/rssfeed. The popular outlets have wide syndication
5. Use this tool from Google http://www.google.com/sktool/# and enter your sites and the sites of the competitor into it. Disregard the pricing listed on the page for AdWords and focus on the keywords. Compare the the keywords of your competitor with those of your sites and adjust accordingly in all digital communications. Organic search is king.
6. Next use this too from Google https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal once your keywords are set to see how you are doing
7. Depending on the blog or site platform you should have the ability to create keyword RSS feeds. Do this. Robots like structured data and favor feeds. Most, if not all, Google real-time alerts come from RSS feed links back to the source site.
8. Commenting on local (this is a regional battle for mind share) blogs with links to client site(s) and feeds is another way to increase chances of indexing and more favorable search results

If I were fighting this battle or one like it these are exact steps that I would take. So dear reader, if we ever lock horns, we may duel to a draw since you have my playbook.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

How to Win Mind Share in Online Battles is a post from: TechStartups.com

Should sex offenders be allowed to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking sites? Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (pictured) thinks not, and this week signed into law a bill that bans all registered sex offenders in his state from using social networks.

This sounds satisfying on first listen after all, why wouldn't we want to take every possible measure to prevent the horrendous crimes of sex offenders? But many legal blogs are pointing out that the legislation is overzealous and possibly unconstitutional.

Peeing in Public? You Might be a Sex Offender

Salon points out that in 13 states you'll be added to the sex offenders register for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present), while 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. In other words: it's not just child molesters and rapists who would be banned if such laws became accepted.

Then there's the problem of implementation: who is going to keep an eye on the thousands of registered sex offenders to see if they're using Facebook and Twitter? Surely there are better ways to spend police time than tracking the web habits of someone who had sex in high school?

NYTimes.com is Banned, Too

Other blogs, like Technology Liberation and Hacker Journalist, point out that the broad definition of social networking websites essentially bans these people from the web as a whole banned from posting a resume on LinkedIn, banned from reading the New York Times (or any major newspaper) online because it lets you set up a profile. The description reads:

Social networking website means an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.

In short, punishing rapists and sex offenders may feel satisfying, but this isn't what the bill does: it'll likely affect those who committed far lesser crimes, prove unenforceable, and may even be unconstitutional.

If you haven't done so, feel free to follow my tweets, and say Hello.

Today's Twitter Finds And Friends -

Finds -

Do you like bean bag chairs? Do you like personal finance forums? Then, you'll love Moolanomy's current giveaway. Register for the new Moolanomy Answers and you could win a Sumo Bean Bag Chair. (Tweeted by @moolanomy)

We recently spent an entire week removing clutter from our home and organizing our stuff. I'm totally digging Being Frugal's post - Why The Minimalist Lifestyle Appeals To Me. (Tweeted by @Zen_Habits)

Friends -

I am a big fan of @flexo from Consumerism Commentary.

I really enjoy @SunFinancial from The Sun's Financial Diary.

I learn a lot from @mymoneyblog from My Money Blog.

Follow me via Twitter

Twitter Finds And Friends

As a media theorist who's written about some of the most influential ideas of the digital age, Rushkoff is second to none. In Life Inc., he describes not just corporations, but how we all can change to an "open source economy" that favors decentralized value creation over banking and central currency. We spoke with to ask more about what this new economy would look like and how the Web is involved.

Sponsor

How The Web Broke The Economy

ReadWriteWeb: I was particularly struck by how you position the Web as a way for individuals to create things of value for each other, as the door to an open source economy. Can you describe what exactly an open source economy would look like, and what role software and the Web have to play in that?

Douglas Rushkoff: This program written central banking and corporatist monopolies was created to favor people who had money and wanted to make money without creating value. Technology broke the monopoly centralized banking had on centralized value creation by allowing people to develop things at low cost. The gift economy that really the real Internet was built on is anathema to the GNP.

RWW: Will enterprise software the same trend? What role is there for business-to-business transactions in the decentralized economy you've laid out?

R: When I'm at the supermarket, every once in a while the cash register crashes and they restart it and they see Windows. I get the feeling that the manager and the cashier and everyone in there thinks that this shouldn't be running Windows. They're thinking, oh my god, they're using amateur-level software. You want to think that these are proprietary perfect registers.

My feeling is that businesses and the IT of business are going to want a higher order of quality. They are going to proprietary super-pro enterprise OS's. I feel business is going to want something like the business-only IBM computer, and I think that's not a bad thing.

Localized Currencies & Technology

R: I certainly hope so. The great thing about software is that you don't need a bank because that's where all kind of bizarreness and corruption happen. But you do see every transaction; software is just really really good for that. You can see how money if flowing, how transactions are flowing. The problem with our economy is that when speculators ore extracting currency, money comes first. In a distributed system money is the result of transactions.

The main thing standing in the way of it is that people don't believe its possible. It's not they cant do it its that they can;t see it. It's like when you show someone Linux for the first time.

A New, Collaborative Mindset

R: Renaissances tend to reverse whatever the last one created. This one is towards decent partner collaboration and the sharing of value. So for sure, and we're going to get different kinds of discoveries. I think that the computer may be the most central thing to making all of this happen.

A Word for Developers & Entrepreneurs

Rushkoff: My biggest message to them is this...There's this prevalent notion is that the reason you get involved is that you create a business that you then sell. I would argue that is not the path to greatest fulfillment, I would contend that it's not the path to the great technology. The less you borrow, the less you will be required to grow, and the closer you can stay you can stay to those growth metrics that are more appropriately scaled.

Life, Inc. is in bookstores now. If you're seeking a primer on the book and Rushkoff's conception of what corporatism means, be sure to watch the short Life, Inc. The Movie below

Trademark owners with registrations can register their trademarks with Facebook in order to block potentially infringing URLs from being created. Here is a link to the submission page.

We shall see if this actually becomes an issue similar to cybersquatting in domain names, but due to the shortness of time between now and the 13th I'm posting the information here to help get the word out. Please let me know in the comments below what you think of this process and how Facebook has handled it. Personally, it would have been nice for there to have been more notice.

Solid Host, NL v. NameCheap, Inc., 2:08-cv-05414-MMM-E (C.D. Cal. May 19, 2009)

Facts

This case involves an alleged domain name theft. Solid Host is a web host and initial owner of the domain name solidhost.com, which it registered through eNom in 2004. Solid Host claims that in 2008, a security breach at eNom allowed an unknown interloper (Doe) to steal the domain name and move the registration to NameCheap. Doe also acquired NameCheap's "WhoisGuard" service, a domain name proxy service that masked Doe's contact information in the Whois database. Solid Host contacted Doe and sought the domain name; Doe asked for $12,000, and Solid Host took a pass. Instead, Solid Host demanded that NameCheap hand back the domain name and identify Doe, but Doe claimed that he had bought the domain name legitimately. NameCheap, apparently feeling like the cheese in a sandwich, demurred to Solid Host's requests. Solid Host then got a TRO ordering NameCheap to transfer the name and reveal Doe's identity, both of which occurred. For unclear reasons, Solid Host hasn't amended the complaint to name the Doe, but it is proceeding against NameCheap on various claims, including an Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) claim.

The Opinion

Who is the Registrant?

My understanding of domain name proxy services is that the service acts as the legal registrant, thus supplying its contact information, but it registers the domain name for the benefit of its customer, making the customer the beneficial registrant. An analogy: a bank may take legal title of a property as part of securing a loan on the property, but the borrower retains beneficial title to the property.

So, for purposes of the ACPA, is the proxy service the registrant of the domain name? ICANN's agreement with registrars seemingly contemplates this characterization in Section 3.7.7.3 of its Registrar Agreement, which says A Registered Name Holder licensing use of a Registered Name according to this provision shall accept liability for harm caused by wrongful use of the Registered Name, unless it promptly discloses the identity of the licensee to a party providing the Registered Name Holder reasonable evidence of actionable harm. However, it's not clear to me that a proxy service licenses the domain name, especially if you accept my lender-borrower analogy above. Alternatively, if the proxy service is the agent of the customer, the licensing analogy also breaks down.

Whether the proxy service is the registrant matters a great deal to the legal outcome, and unfortunately, the court's analysis of this important question was cursory, muddled, and possibly internally inconsistent.

In this case, the court's inquiry is made more difficult by the fact that NameCheap acted as both the registrar and the proxy service provider. As a registrar, an ACPA claim against NameCheap should be squarely preempted by the domain name registry/registrar safe harbor enacted as part of the ACPA (15 U.S.C. 1114(2)(D)). For example, 1114(2)(D)(iii) says:

A domain name registrar, a domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority shall not be liable for damages under this section for the registration or maintenance of a domain name for another absent a showing of bad faith intent to profit from such registration or maintenance of the domain name

(This provision only moots damages, not an injunction, but since Solid Host has the domain name back in its possession, damages seem like the only remaining issue).

The court concludes that NameCheap is not eligible for the domain name registrar safe harbor because NameCheap is the domain name registrant. It says, "NameCheap is, by virtue of the anonymity service it provides, the registrant of a domain name that allegedly infringes Sold [sic] Host's trademark." Thus, NameCheap is ineligible for the registrar safe harbor, which applies only when the registrar acts as a registrar.

But, having rejected the domain name registrar safe harbor because NameCheap was the domain name registrant, the court then inconsistently says that NameCheap is not the registrant for purposes of the prima facie ACPA claim. Instead, for ACPA purposes the court treats Doe as the registrant, leaving NameCheap exposed to a possible secondary ACPA liability claim. (The court acknowledges that NameCheap would defeat a direct ACPA claim because NameCheap did not have any bad faith intent to profit from the domain name. Offering the proxy service wasn't enough to qualify as a bad faith intent to profit).

Wait a minutehow can NameCheap simultaneously be both the registrant (no safe harbor) but not the registrant (thus, subjected to a secondary claim)? The court does not acknowledge or explain this apparent inconsistency.

Contributory Cybersquatting

Courts have rarely discussed a contributory ACPA claim. The only one cited by the court was a 2001 case (the Ford Motors vs. Greatdomains.com case) and I can't think of any others. Perhaps this isn't surprising because (1) as the Greatdomains.com case indicated, a contributory ACPA claim is available "in only exceptional circumstances," and (2) registrars are the most likely targets of a contributory ACPA claim, and the domain name registrar safe harbor effectively eliminates their contributory ACPA liability.

Adopting the analysis in the Greatdomains.com case, this court equates contributory ACPA liabilty with the Ninth Circuit's 1999 Lockheed standard for online contributory trademark infringement (as opposed to ACPA liability), which requires that "a plaintiff must prove that the defendant had knowledge and [d]irect control and monitoring of the instrumentality used by the third party to infringe the plaintiff's mark.'"

So how did NameCheap have the requisite control over Doe's instrumentalities? Good question. The court tosses out this gem: NameCheap was "the cyber-landlord of the internet real estate stolen by Doe." WHAT??? The court continues:

NameCheap's anonymity service was central to Doe's cybersquatting scheme. If NameCheap had returned the domain name to Solid Host, Doe's illegal activity would have ceased.

The second sentence is true with respect to NameCheap, but it is also true of every registrar for every domain name they register--and we know from the 1999 Lockheed case that registrars lack control over the instrumentalities of their registrants. So the proxy service seems to make a legal difference, but how does the proxy service evidence NameCheap's greater control over the registrant's instrumentalities? I think something is amiss here.

To complete the prima facie contributory ACPA claim, in addition to control, Solid Host must show that NameCheap has the requisite knowledge of Doe's ACPA violation. The court sets a high scienter bar--mere notice from an aggrieved party isn't enough--but the court conclusorily says that the complaint alleged enough knowledge to survive the motion to dismiss.

Why This is a Troubling Ruling

As I trust is clear, I think the court's analysis is questionable at best. I'm also troubled about the normative implications. Most obviously, this case could portend the deminse of domain name proxy services. Read literally, every proxy service is exposed to potential contributory ACPA liability for every domain name it services. I can't imagine proxy service providers will be excited about that liability exposure, and some may choose to exit the business.

If proxy services evaporate, domain name registrants will have a tougher time maintaining their privacy. This could affect at least two groups. First, businesses seeking to register domain names for unlaunched new brands often want to procure the new brand's domain names without publicly announcing their intentions through the Whois database. (Of course, some businesses register such domain name through agents or shell companies, but at a much greater expense than a proxy service). Second, gripers, whistleblowers, critics and others may want to use proxy services to make it harder for their targets to unmask their identities. This ruling jeopardizes the potential privacy options available to both groups.

I'm also troubled by this ruling's narrow reading of the domain name registrar safe harbors. There haven't been many cases interpreting those safe harbors, and this case might influence other courts to read them narrowly.

A Mini-Trend of Lawsuits Against Registrars

I've noticed a small but troubling increase in lawsuits against domain name registrars in the past few months. In addition to this case, see the Vulcan Golf v. Google lawsuit (which named some registrars as defendants), OnlineNIC cases, Philbrick v. eNom and uBid v. GoDaddy. Personally, I believe this litigation trend mirrors the expansion of new and legally untested non-registration services offered by registrars. I explored this issue with Elliot Noss of Tucows in the most recent installment of TWiL (worth listening to, IMO). Discussing the uBid lawsuit, Elliott explained how registrars monetize dropped domain names before being returned to the available pool of unregistered domain names. The delay is putatively for the benefit of customers who mistakenly let a registration lapse; but this also has the happy (?) by-product of letting registrars create new ad inventory that they are monetizing.

In the past, a lot of the legal attention regarding domain names has focused on trademark owners vs. registrants. From my perspective, those lawsuits are becoming pass. The real litigation growth industry appears to be trademark owner vs. registrar lawsuits over new registrar service offerings that trademark owners don't like. Rulings like this one, with a broad reading of contributory ACPA liability and a narrow reading of the domain name registrar safe harbor, raise the specter that registrars may find more legal trouble than they anticipated.

The pro se attorney plaintiff in Burcham v. Expedia brought suit against the travel site under Missouri consumer law, claiming that Expedia knowingly misrepresented the hotel amenities for a room that he booked on the site. He sought $5 million in damages and class certification.

It didn't help the court's view of the case that the room was booked for a hotel in Missouri in November, and one of the amenities that Burcham claimed was absent when he and his children arrived at the hotel was an outdoor swimming pool. Fair enough, Burcham also claimed that the hotel lacked an indoor swimming pool, conference room, restaurant and bar/lounge. But the court pointed out that Burcham's complaint did not allege that he or his children wished to use any of the absent amenities.

Burcham was off to a bad start.

Expedia moved to dismiss Burcham's complaint, relying on the forum selection provision that specified Kings County, Washington as the proper venue. Expedia submitted evidence showing multiple versions of its terms of use, including the current and past versions, which the court concluded contained the same material terms.

Expedia also established by affidavit that Burcham's booking had been made by a process under which the user was presented with a legend stating: "By continuing on you agree to the following terms and conditions." Beneath the legend, the full text of the terms and conditions was displayed. In order to book a room, the user was required to click on the "continue" button.

Confronted with this evidence, Burcham argued that he simply did not remember seeing the terms and conditions when he used the Expedia site. He suggested that he may have used the site from a shared computer at his law office without checking to see if the prior user of the computer was already logged onto the site. Thus, he argued, the prior user may have clicked past the terms and conditions, but they were never presented to him.

The court briefly reviewed the relevant case law (e.g., Specht v. Netscape, Register.com v. Verio, ProCD v. Zeidenberg) and the distinctions between clickwrap, shrinkwrap and browsewrap agreements, and quickly concluded that Expedia had an "enforceable online clickwrap agreement" with Burcham. Burcham's argument that he never saw the terms and conditions was dismissed both on the facts and the law.

On the facts, the court found, Burcham offered no evidence to support his "clever theory" that someone else clicked past the terms and conditions, and the undisputed facts showed that the user account created at the time the terms and conditions were assented to was associated with Burcham's own e-mail address. On the law, the court concluded that if Burcham in fact had accessed the Web site under someone else's account, he was still bound by the terms and conditions to which that user had assented, citing, e.g., Motise v. America Online, Inc., 346 F.Supp. 2d 563 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) (individual using the online account of another user bound by the same terms and conditions as the account owner).

Burcham also tripped over the evidence he himself submitted to the court along with his brief. The court noted that the Expedia Web pages Burcham submitted as exhibits contained a hyperlink at the bottom to the full text of the Expedia terms and conditions. The court noted that the terms and conditions stated that users of the site consent to be bound by those terms and conditions by accessing and using the Web site. Thus, the court concluded, even if Burcham wasn't clickwrapped, he was browsewrapped.

Finally, the court quickly dismissed Burcham's arguments that the forum selection provision was unreasonable and in contravention of Missouri public policy and that the contract as a whole was one of adhesion.

The ruling in Burcham v. Expedia is a win for the enforceability of online agreements, and another loss for pro se attorney plaintiffs for whom courts seem to have little sympathy. See, e.g., Field v. Google, 412 F.Supp. 2d 1106 (D. Nev. 2006) (rejecting pro se attorney plaintiff's "manufactured" copyright infringement claim based on Google Web crawling and caching).

Burcham v. Expedia, Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17104 (E.D. Mo. Mar. 6, 2009)

The blog Wonkette reports that this over-reaching requirement was removed from the final bill by Senate Republicans. All but six of our freedom-loving Democratic majority voted to keep the registration requirement in the bill, but these votes allowed the Republican minority to remove the requirement.

ShareThis

This local case caught my eye because of the unusual result: preliminary relief denied despite the court's conclusion that consumer confusion was fairly likely.

Plaintiff, a law firm specializing in patents and trademarks, registered spiegelaw.com in 1999. The domain name was registered on the Supplemental Register in 2000, and plaintiff applied for registration on the Principal Register after five consecutive years of use; that registration issued in 2006.

In 2008, defendant, an attorney with a sole practice focusing on employment law, created a website at spiegellaw.com. Plaintiff sued and asked for a preliminary injunction shutting down the website.

You know the plaintiff has an uphill climb when the court starts out with a reminder that preliminary injunctions are extraordinary remedies, to be granted only sparingly and in limited circumstances. In trademark infringement cases, a presumption of irreparable injury is generally used when a plaintiff shows likely confusion. However, the balance of harms here favored the defendant, and the other elements of the preliminary injunction standard were uncertain. Even with irreparable injury, a court must still balance the harm to the defendant. An irreparable harm may be small.

The court assumed a likelihood of confusion, triggering a presumption of irreparable harm. Plaintiff argued that the harm was significant here because many people, including foreign clients, seek to reach it through its website, and defendant's use threatened its goodwill. The court agreed that there was some threat to plaintiff's goodwill, given that the names are nearly identical and that people searching for plaintiff could be misled or diverted to defendant's site, especially if they were working from oral instructions to visit the site. There was evidence that at least one person was confused by defendant's site, though that person was a fellow lawyer and not a potential client (apparently the lawyer cc'd defendant and plaintiff both, suggesting at least one typo).

However, the court determined that harm during the pendency of the litigation was not likely to be significant. Plaintiff's practice is specialized; a search for a patent lawyer named Spiegel would not end with defendant's site. And someone who heard the address given orally might just as easily visit spiegel-law.com, another website in use by a solo practitioner named Spiegel. In other words, the online presence of Defendant does not pose a wholly novel threat to the ability of potential clients to locate Plaintiff's Website. There may well be a likelihood of confusion, but not of serious harm. There was no evidence of any attempt to poach clients, which would be counterproductive for an employment lawyer. The single misdirected email was an isolated instance, not large-scale confusion among clients.

On the other side, enjoining spiegellaw.com would significantly harm defendant, who uses the site primarily in his capacity as class counsel in a civil rights class action lawsuit. Shutting the site down would disrupt defendant's law practice and harm the interests of his clients. The nature of a class action lawsuit puts a premium on the ability of counsel to communicate with individuals who may be geographically diverse and, indeed, may never meet their attorney in person. Disrupting a major line of communication and information sharing between class counsel and a class of plaintiffs poses a real threat to the ability of counsel to advocate in an effective and efficient manner. Thus, the balance of harms favored defendant, requiring a stronger showing of likely success on the merits before a preliminary injunction could issue.

The court was uncertain whether plaintiff's mark was protectable, making overall likelihood of success uncertain. Plaintiff argued that its mark was stronger than merely descriptive and more likely than not suggestive, given that spiegelaw.com could connote the provision of a variety of legal services via the internet. You know, I wouldn't give a student much credit for making that argument on an exam: the mark, describing the provision of legal services by somebody named Spiegel, is descriptive. Deal with it.

The real argument here is acquired distinctiveness. The registration was prima facie evidence of validity, but defendant could challenge this. The evidence of secondary meaning was unclear at this stage. (Defendant also argued that any secondary meaning wouldn't extend beyond IP lawyering, but that's not an argument for unprotectability; that's just an infringement consideration.) It's not clear from the opinion what evidence, if any, defendant submitted here: it doesn't seem likely that he could have overcome the prima facie validity of the registration from argument alone, but I'd have pointed to that spiegel-law.com site at least as evidence that plaintiff's use wasn't exclusive.

The public interest favors protecting valid trademarks, but also communication between lawyers and clients. It wasn't any help here. On balance, plaintiff wasn't entitled to a preliminary injunction.

I found it interesting how this issue was resolved without any overt reference to something that the common law would have considered quite important: defendant's name really is Spiegel. Of course that factors into the mark's descriptiveness, its protectability, and probably the likelihood of confusion, but that just shows that the law of personal names has been basically submerged into broader trademark doctrines.

The St. Paul, Minn., firm, which makes software letting Mac and Linux users run Windows on their machines, launched the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge this summer. The idea, as CodeWeavers put it, was to encourage President Bush to make the most of his remaining days in office by accomplishing a major economic or political goal by January 20, 2009.

One of those six goals was to reduce gas prices in the Twin Cities to $2.79 a gallon. Two weeks ago, that happened, and as the prize, CodeWeavers said it would let users on Oct. 28 only download its software for free.

Then techie sites Digg and Slashdot, both of which have a rapid following, linked to CodeWeavers or posts about the offer, and the volume of traffic took the site down.

As of this afternoon, Codeweavers.com displays a placeholder page where visitors can register to get a serial number in a few days. We apologize for any inconvenience. We still love Digg, even if our server disagrees. ;-) the site says.

And if another goal gets fulfilled during President Bush's waning days, the offer will restart. They are:

• Return the stock market to its 2008 high
• Reduce the average price of a gallon of milk to $3.50
• Create at least one net job in the U.S. this calendar year
• Return the median home price to its Jan. 1, 2008 level
• Bring Osama Bin-Laden to justice

- Andrew LaVallee

Sponsor

Dynamic, Social Content

With the new SmartSpace service from GoDaddy, anyone can create a personal web site which aggregates your activity from across the social web, combine that with other sources of news and information, and then create a personalized start page containing everything of interest to them. The service can also be used as a blogging platform with social elements like chat already built in. The idea is that you can use the SmartSpace platform to create the kind of site that's right for you, whether that's a social network of sorts, a traditional web site with social elements, a place to host your podcasts, or whatever else you want.

SmartSpace is designed to be easy to use, even for non-technical users. With a click of a button, you can grab content from sites like flickr, YouTube, Google News, Facebook, MySpace, or any other web site that offers an RSS feed.

You can even customize this content to your own personal preferences. For example, if you only want to see Flickr photos of lolcats, you can just type in "lolcat" in the tag field provided. Alternatively, you could select the RSS feed of a particular person's photos.

In addition to this dynamic content form across the social web, GoDaddy also makes available various pre-selected news feeds which you can add if desired. This content is categorized by subject, and is similar to the types of selections that many of today's personalized homepages offer.

Chat & Email

The Chat application lets you have online text conversations right on the site. With the included administrative controls, you can launch a room, invite users, ban users, and participate in both public and private chat sessions. Again, there's nothing technical involved in adding this to your page - the app is already set up and ready to use. All you have to do is make a few choices about how it's displayed and whether it's loaded by default when you log in.

Also, because SocialSpace users have purchased a domain name via GoDaddy, there's an option to set up email addresses using that name. The interface for doing so is much easier to manage than GoDaddy's usual UI for creating email addresses (an ugly and geeky interface). Here, you're basically able to push a button and set up multiple email addresses associated with your domain. The inboxes for these can then be added as widgets to your homepage.

Photo Albums

If you don't keep your images online with a web service like Flickr, you also have the option to make your SmartSpace an online photo album using the SmartSpace photo application. With this, you can upload photos from your computer and then share those photos both publicly and privately in albums that are added to your page.

Web Site and Blogs

For text-based content, you can choose to either add a web site or blog to your homepage. With these options, you can select from a number of pre-built templates to configure the site. Although not as robust a platform as WordPress, the blog will probably work fine for casual users who want to take advantage of the other elements of the SmartSpace service.

Just Another Personalized Homepage Or A New Type Of Social Network?

SocialSpace could be linked to some patent filings the company filed earlier this year which describe a web portal that functions as a social network aggregator. According to those filings, the aggregation could be done using login systems like OpenID. Although there's no mention of OpenID integration in the SmartSpace support documents yet, we hope that integration is something they plan to add in the future.

Still, even without OpenID, what GoDaddy has launched today is a viable competitor to the other personalized homepages out there like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes, etc. But GoDaddy's SocialSpace goes beyond what those sites offer in a number of ways. Although widgetized content like photos and RSS feeds can be added to nearly any start page today, GoDaddy actually lets you own a domain name, set up a blog or website and then easily, instantly turn it into a personalized social network that aggregates content from the social web and includes chat functionality for instant interactions with your friends.

Will SocialSpace kill MySpace and Facebook? That's highly doubtful, but it could be a nice aggregator for those looking to establish a web presence with minimal work. And because it's from GoDaddy, a household name thanks to their high profile TV commercials and ad campaigns, this move also represents what may be the final leap where "social media" fully crosses over to the mainstream use and acceptance.

More Info

Prices for SmartSpace start at $4.99/month for 2 months. From there, the prices are as follows: 12 mo: $4.74/month, 24 mo: $4.49/month, or 36 mo: $4.24/month. You can watch a short introductory video here. Discuss

Back in 1995 I was one of the first people who as a hobbyist and a user of Internet Telephony saw the future impact of the technology on the future of communications. For me it was the thought of telephony as a software rather than a service that caught my attention. Thirteen years later as a person who uses social media in his everyday life, I believe that social media will have a huge impact in the way we communicate in the months and years ahead.

In this seminar I will be sharing some of my social media experiences and connecting some of the dots in terms of how I see various social media platforms having an impact on the future of business communication. Back in the late 1980s through the mid 1990s we all dealt with the introduction and dependence of email on our corporate and personal life. I believe that social media will have an even stronger impact in our immediate future.

The first seminar will be held on Long Island in Melville, New York at the pulver.com offices on October 28th. The morning will be an interactive lecture followed by lunch and an afternoon questions and answers session.

Seating will be limited to keep this as a intimate experience with the people attending.

The cost to register is $995 if you register by October 17th, $1195 afterwards. If you would like to attend, please contact me and I will follow up with you.

Tags: Social Media, Social Communications, Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, Jeff Pulver

Next week I'll be participating in a webinar with one of our clients, SnapLogic, on data integration in the cloud and with RIAs. Originally, we'd billed this as being about RIA's and data integration, but there's been so much interest in getting data integration in the cloud that we've expanded the scope a tad, which suits me just fine.

Adding Data-Meat to the RIA Skeleton

I've been fond of pointing out that content (a consumer friendly word for data) is still king in the land of RIAs, and the same holds for cloud computing. Being able to pull in data to RIA is key: you've got to have some reason to use them other than watching videos.

More importantly, from the business side of the house, there are piles and piles of dark data out there in business systems waiting to be used in new and exciting ways: think of how much use we get out of maps now that all that geo-data is wired up, or how sites like Zillow that finally pulled together mounds of public data to do something useful and delightful. Businesses have similar reams of data that are just looking for a simple and pleasing interface.

Middleware for the Cloud

In my view, RIAs (along with plain old web applications) are part of the thin layer of frosting on-top of most cloud computing: they provide the application layer where people actually do things. Running around right below them is the layer of cloud middleware where components like SnapLogic's really simple integration open source stack helps wire things up.

This idea of using cloud computing for applications isn't an exclusive claim to how the cloud can be used, of course: clearly, there are headless, batch-jobs (more akin to grid-think of old) that cloud computing can be used for as well. There's the now canonical NYTimes/EC2 example.

Sign up!

Most of the webinar will simply be a conversation on this topic - laced in with some slides - along with a small demo from SnapLogic and Q&A at the end. If this general topic seems interesting, you can sign up for it for free and come join the fun next Wednesday, July 9th at 1PM Eastern/12PM Central/10PM Pacific.

Disclaimer: SnapLogic is a client and is paying for my participation in this webinar.

Share This

I would wager that most of the people who know they need an SSH tunnel also know the Terminal commands to make it happen. But if those people happen to be Mac users, it's quite likely they wouldn't be averse to having menu bar access, Growl integration, Bonjour capability and a nice GUI to handle their tunnels. And to those who just know they want secure browsing, email and other network activities but aren't SSH ninjas, such things might be even more attractive.

Code Sorcery Workshop's Meerkat is a handy application that provides all of the above tools and offers setup wizards to provide the right settings for the particular tunnel you need. It turns setting up a quick SOCKS proxy for web browsing into a 2 minute task. Setting up a tunnel for Mail is just as simple. Whether you're already using tunnels or looking to get some protection while browsing at the coffeehouse, Meerkat may be able to help out.

You can try Meerkat out for free with a time-limited demo. If it should become something you can't (or don't want to) live without, you can register it for $19.95.

Thanks, Mark!

There's been some discussion in the last few days about so-called blogging 2.0. Here are a couple of quotes that explain the new paradigm of blogging 2.0.

via The Inquisitr:

If blogging 1.0 was about enabling the conversation on each blog, blogging 2.0 is about enabling the conversation across many blogs and supporting sites and services. The conversation has matured and no longer is it acceptable to believe that as a content owner you hold exclusive domain over conversations you have started. Users/ readers today demand more than a conversation on one site, and blogging 2.0 facilitates this.

via Louis Gray:

Blogging 1.0 centered around who could:

• Amass the most page views
• Display the most ads
• Get the most comments
• Attract the most RSS subscribers

But then came along some inconvenient wrinkles to the mix:

• Full RSS feeds took page views away from the blog
• Readers installed ad filters, and didn't click
• Comments started to live elsewhere
• Every blogger in an industry covered the exact same stories

The world of blogging has changed. Those bloggers who accept the changes will have a natural advantage over those who do not. The additional time it takes to engage on FriendFeed, Twitter and other social media sites will absolutely pay off in the end, even if it's hard to understand for those who've always accepted things for what they are.

Call me blogtarded, but this blogging 2.0 idea seems to be missing the most basic thing that has made the growth of blogging and Internet media interesting: the Internet is unrelentingly lowering the barriers to content publishing, to the point that it is becoming trivial to publish content.

You Can Do It

The fundamental idea of blogging is that You can do it.

You can go to a website, register and be blogging 5 minute later. You can install Wordpress on a cheap Web hosting service and create your own site.

The same idea is central to podcasting. You can use a microphone and Garageband and podcast to the world. You can use your video camera, or even the camera built into your computer, to create a vlog or video podcast.

When people talk about blogging being about getting the most page views, getting the most comments or displaying the most ads, they are missing the point. Worrying about page views and ad views are traditional media concerns, and are not things that differentiate blogging.

And you have to wonder if we should be navel-gazing about blogging 2.0, when 55 million people in the US alone haven't even caught up with email 1.0.

Blogging, vlogging and podcasting are still too hard for most people, and that makes the Internet a lot less interesting than it could be.

What makes blogging and podcasting interesting is that you can do it. You can make the long tail longer.

And when you make the long tail longer, that means there's more tail for everybody. (Or something like that!)

Image: Mrcio Cabral de Moura

UPDATE: The Google News example is reproduced here instead. You're reading this in RSS or email a day after I posted it because this post was so large it broke my Feedburner feed. Too much content breaks the web there you have it. Keep reading for my original argument.

If you've made it this far, you may have noticed the absence of blogs from the sources. So this is far from a representative sample of all of the websites that published a version of this news story.

Let's check out Techmeme, again reproduced in its entirety, because seeing is disbelieving:

Yahoo!:

Yahoo! Issues Statement in Response to Microsoft SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 03, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company issued the following statement today in response to Microsoft Corporation's announcement that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo!:

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: TechCrunch, StepForth SEO News Blog, BBC NEWS, Forbes, I4U News, VoIP Blog, Geek News Central, Furrier.org, Tech Trader Daily, LiveSide, Paul Kedrosky's and Geek Speaker

Discussion:

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Yahoo Responds: The distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us

Ross Dunn / StepForth SEO News Blog: Microsoft Backs Down from Yahoo

Darren Waters / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Walking away

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: What Microsoft Will Buy Now Expect to hear more from Steve Ballmer.

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Bid Withdrawal

VoIP Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Proposal

Todd Cochrane / Geek News Central: Yahoo is Toast and Yang needs to be Fired

John Furrier / Furrier.org: Victory for Silicon Valley; The Silicon Valley Poison Pill Worked - As Predicted

Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily: Ballmer Calls Yang's Bluff: Microsoft Walks

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: Yahoo! responds to withdrawal - issues statement

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Response to Yahoo

Geek Speaker: Why Yahoo is worth more than 50 billion & why Yahoo! For Good

All Related Discussion

Hide All Related Discussion

RELATED:

Microsoft:

Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo! Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Search Engine Land, Googling Google, Between the Lines, CNET News.com, Web Worker Daily, TechCrunch, WeBreakStuff, Simon's Blog, I4U News, Microsoft News Tracker, TechBlog, DealBook, Paul Mooney, Pocket PC Thoughts.com, TechSpot, Joe Duck, TechBays, Epicenter, All about Microsoft, Digital Trends, SEO and Tech Daily, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Mark Evans, Los Angeles Times, WebGuild, Mashable!, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Valleywag, Quick Online Tips, GigaOM, Profy.Com, AppScout, ClickZ News Blog, The Register and Scobleizer

Discussion:

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land: Leaving Las Yahoo: Microsoft's $5 Billion Mistake?

Garett Rogers / Googling Google: Microsoft withrawls bid for Yahoo, Google wins

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo: Assessing winners, losers and Plan Bs

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo-Google ad deal could be announced next week

Mike Gunderloy / Web Worker Daily: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Web Workers

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Microsoft/Yahoo: Summary Of Today's News & Bonus Gillmor Gang

Fred Oliveira / WeBreakStuff: MSFT and YHOO: It's finally over

Simon Brocklehurst / Simon's Blog: YAHOO! BLOWS IT - HOW LOW WILL THEY GO?

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Microsoft officially withdraws Yahoo Bid

David Hunter / Microsoft News Tracker: Microsoft withdraws offer for Yahoo

Dwight / TechBlog: Microsoft to Yahoo: Never mind

DealBook: Will Microsoft Really Walk?

Paul Mooney: Yahoo Prevails Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!

Darius Wey / Pocket PC Thoughts.com: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo!

Julio Franco / TechSpot: Weekend tech reading (5.04)

Joe Duck: Ballmer has left the Building

Carlo Maglinao / TechBays: Microsoft Yahoo! Deal: the NO votes win

Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter: Microsoft Walks! Says Yahoo Demands Don't Make Sense

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft: Microsoft takes its ball and leaves Yahoo on the Web 2.0 playground

Geoff Duncan / Digital Trends: Microsoft Abandons Yahoo Takeover

Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily: Microsoft pulls the plug on Yahoo!

Michael Santo / Alice Hill's Real Tech News: No Microhoo: Microsoft Walks Away from Yahoo! Deal

Mark Evans: Let's Get the (Yahoo-Microsoft Blogging Party) Started

Los Angeles Times: Microsoft drops bid to acquire Yahoo

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Ballmer's Letter to Jerry Yang Withdrawing Microsoft's Offer

Paul Glazowski / Mashable!: Breaking: Microsoft Corporation Rescinds Offer For Yahoo Inc

Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog: Ballmer's internal e-mail on Yahoo decision

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Ballmer to Yang: How stupid are you?

Quick Online Tips: Microsoft Unable to Buy Yahoo!

Om Malik / GigaOM: Microsoft To Yahoo: Take a Hike!

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira / Profy.Com: Steve Stands Jerry Up for the Internet Prom

Brian Heater / AppScout: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo! Bid

Anna Maria Virzi / ClickZ News Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Bid for Yahoo

Drew Cullen / The Register: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo!

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

MicroHoo: The Odd Couple Meetings Led Nowhere After today's events, I guess you could say Yahoo and Microsoft tried, holding a series of meetings about a possible takeover that ended up proving exactly how incompatible the companies were. Kind of like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but not funny in any way at all.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Between the Lines, Valleywag and Paul Kedrosky's

Discussion:

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks: Five reasons why it's a good move

Jackson West / Valleywag: YAHOO'S $37 DEMAND TALKS, MICROSOFT'S $33 OFFER WALKS Microsoft

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: First Tick-Tock of Da Deal Gone Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:

OK, so what's Microsoft's plan B? With Yahoo apparently off the table, it's time to see what Microsoft's back-up plan looks like. Microsoft has said for some time that it has a strategy with or without Yahoo, but it's a strategy clearly in need of a jump-start.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs and About Mobility Weblog

Discussion:

Steve / The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Ballmer now looking for other companies to not buy

Ceo / About Mobility Weblog: Steve Ballmer as The Creature

DealBook:

Guessing Yahoo's Opening Stock Price Well, Yahoo seems to have gotten what it wanted. The company managed to fend off Microsoft's unwanted advances, even after the software giant sweetened its bid by $5 billion an amount Yahoo felt still wasn't enough.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Discussion:

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider: Why Yahoo (YHOO) Should Go Ahead With Google Outsourcing Deal (GOOG)

Terry Heaton / Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog: Ack! Microsoft walks away. Winner? Google.

Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price Microsoft Corp. said it abandoned its offer for Yahoo Inc., as the two companies failed to bridge a gap between them on price. Microsoft Saturday released a letter from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check and Tech Beat

Discussion:

Peter / Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price - WSJ.com

Rob Hof / Tech Beat: Microsoft Drops Yahoo BidAt Least For Now

Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:

Report: A peek behind the Yahoo-Microsoft meltdown Curious how Microsoft's multi-multi-multi-billion dollar buyout bid for Yahoo sputtered, then crashed? Kara Swisher's BoomTown column in All Things Digital has an interesting account of the missteps, sidesteps

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo's Nightmare Scenario: I'm From Google and I'm Here to Help! Here's what a top-notch source at Yahoo joked to me tonight, after Microsoft walked away from its unsolicited takeover bid to acquire the long-troubled Internet giant. Google is now officially our best friend. Oh no.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Groundswell

Discussion:

Charlene Li / Groundswell: What's next for Microsoft and Yahoo!

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Yahoo's Tough Week Ahead At around 4:30 California time today news broke that Microsoft has formally withdrawn its offer to acquire Yahoo (see Ballmer's email to Microsoft employees here). Among other things, that ends a three month stock party where the market value of Yahoo jumped

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Guardian Unlimited, Microsoft Watch, MediaShift and Paul Mooney

Discussion:

Jack Schofield / Guardian Unlimited: Microsoft walks out of Yahoo deal (updated)

Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch: The Microsoft-Yahoo Blame Game

Mark Glaser / MediaShift: Yahoo-Microsoft Drama::Takeover Tiff Best Thing to Happen to Yahoo

Paul Mooney: A YAHOO RUN, OR A RUN ON YHOO?

Yi-Wyn Yen / Fortune:

Blame it on Google Microsoft CEO Ballmer said the software giant decided to walk away from a bid because Yahoo would become undesirable' if it formed an alliance with Google. (Fortune) Google proved to be the final straw that broke Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's back.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: MacDailyNews and CNNMoney.com

Discussion:

MacDailyNews: Ballmer's Folly ends: Microsoft abandons Yahoo bid because of Google

Mark M. Meinero / CNNMoney.com: Microsoft withdraws bid for Yahoo

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:

Analysis of the Microsoft Decision, Plus Yahoo's Hari-Kari Here is my first-cut analysis of what has happened here: On the friendly front, Yahoo drew a hard line at $37 per share, well above the $33 that Microsoft now says it told Yahoo this week it was willing to go

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: broadstuff

Discussion:

Alan Patrick / broadstuff: MICROHOO NO MORE.. So the deal is off - though whether

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Email From Steve Ballmer To All Microsoft Employees The following email was sent to all Microsoft employees from CEO Steve Ballmer at 5:17 pm PDT (see Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal): To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: InsideMicrosoft, WebProNews, VentureBeat and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Discussion:

Nathan Weinberg / InsideMicrosoft: Microsoft Drops Plans To Buy Yahoo

Nathan Weinberg / WebProNews: Microsoft Is Done Pursuing Yahoo!

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Microsoft now has $50 billion burning a hole in its pocket

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Steve Ballmer's Email to Microsoft Employees

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal (Updated)

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: BoomTown, Beyond Binary, Reuters, The Next Web, BBC NEWS, Coop's Corner, Voices, LiveSide, Electronista, Valleywag, mathewingram.com/work, Business Technology, SarahLacy.com, Master of 500 Hats, Thomas Hawk's Digital , Search Engine Journal and WinExtra

Discussion:

Kara Swisher / BoomTown: BoomTown Decodes Microsoft's Steve Ballmer's Letter to Yahoo (The Kiss-Off Edition)

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary: Ballmer's e-mail to staff on Yahoo

Reuters: Microsoft says it withdraws offer for Yahoo

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten / The Next Web: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo deal

Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Microsoft v Yahoo - post-match analysis

Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner: Post-Microhoo: Winners and losers

Ina Fried / Voices: Microsoft's Move: Is It Just a Feint?

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: No MSFT-YHOO deal; now what? Microsoft just walked away

Electronista: Microsoft backs out of Yahoo bid

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Is Ballmer on his way out and if so, who's the next CEO?

Mathew / mathewingram.com/work: YHOO and MSFT: Jerry Yang should be fired

Ben Worthen / Business Technology: The Most Famous Non-Deal in Tech History

Sarah Lacy: Or Maybe I Won't Be Working for the Evil Empire

Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats: MicroHooFreude! (Memo to Jerry: Prepare to be Sued)

Thomas Hawk / Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Remember When Thomas Hawk Said If He Were Microsoft He'd Lower His Bid for Yahoo?

Arnold Zafra / Search Engine Journal: Microsoft Cancels the Yahoo Acquisition Deal, Finally!

Steven Hodson / WinExtra: Please tell me it's so

New York Times:
Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: CNET News.com, The Big Picture, deal architect, Slashdot, HipMojo.com and Digg

Discussion:

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo: Microsoft's price just wasn't right

Ritholtz / The Big Picture: Ballmer, Yang Agree to See Other People

deal architect: Back to customer focus So the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal appears finally off.

Timothy / Slashdot: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Takeover Offer

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Should Investors Sue or Back Yang?

Digg: Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: DSLreports, Forbes, CNET News.com, Business Week, Smalltalk Tidbits , Scobleizer, Techlog, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, InformationWeek, HipMojo.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, paidContent.org, CenterNetworks, Search Engine Land, John Battelle's Searchblog, WebGuild, MacRumors, Engadget, VentureBeat and Digital Daily

Discussion:

KathrynV / DSLreports: Microsoft Rescinds Yahoo Offer - No agreement could be reached in talks yesterday

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: Forget It, Ballmer Says To Yahoo!

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Is Google ad deal really Yahoo's best option?

Robert Hof / Business Week: Microsoft Drops Bid for Yahoo

James A. Robertson / Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: Reality 1, Scoble 0

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: How will Yahoo heal after Microsoft walked away?

Harry McCracken / Techlog: No MicroHoo? Hallelujah!

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Microsoft Retreats or Withdrawls, Depends on Your View

Alexander Wolfe / InformationWeek: Microsoft Yanks Yahoo Bid

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Latest Chess Move: MSFT Withdraws Offer

Kevin Heisler / Search Engine Watch Blog: Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer; Yahoo Responds

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org: Microsoft-Yahoo: Yang's Response: With Distraction Behind Us

Allen Stern / CenterNetworks: What's Next for Yahoo? Merging With AOL Still My Pick

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land: Microsoft Yanks Its Offer For Yahoo

John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog: MICROSOFT BAILS, YAHOO'S GOOGLE THREAT APPEARS TO HAVE WORKED

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo

Arn / MacRumors: Microsoft Walking Away from Yahoo Acquisition

Ryan Block / Engadget: Microsoft pulls bid for Yahoo!, Microhoo will never be

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Yahoo breaks the wrist, Microsoft walks away

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily: Ballmer to Yang: Dear Jerry, Drop Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: BloggingStocks

Discussion:

Peter Cohan / BloggingStocks: It's off. Microsoft withdraws its offer for Yahoo for now

BBC:
Microsoft walks away from Yahoo

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Gizmodo and TECH.BLORGE.com

Discussion:

Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo: Microsoft Retires Yahoo Offer, Won't Try Hostile Takeover

Erna Mahyuni / TECH.BLORGE.com: No Microhoo - Microsoft terminates bid on Yahoo

Kara Swisher / BoomTo

Tags: microsoft yahoo news google discussion ]]>Microsoft withdrawing its offer to buy Yahoo is a sufficiently large story to demonstrate the problem of redundant news content on the web. Google News is currently tracking about 2,000 versions of this story. To get a better sense of why it's a problem to have 2,000 stories about the SAME THING, I've reproduced about ten percent of them below just the headlines and ledes. If you have the stomach to scroll through them all to see what else I have to say about it, check out the sources as you scroll:

UPDATE: The Google News example is reproduced here instead. You're reading this in RSS or email a day after I posted it because this post was so large it broke my Feedburner feed. Too much content breaks the web there you have it. Keep reading for my original argument.

If you've made it this far, you may have noticed the absence of blogs from the sources. So this is far from a representative sample of all of the websites that published a version of this news story.

Let's check out Techmeme, again reproduced in its entirety, because seeing is disbelieving:

Yahoo!:

Yahoo! Issues Statement in Response to Microsoft SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 03, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company issued the following statement today in response to Microsoft Corporation's announcement that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo!:

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: TechCrunch, StepForth SEO News Blog, BBC NEWS, Forbes, I4U News, VoIP Blog, Geek News Central, Furrier.org, Tech Trader Daily, LiveSide, Paul Kedrosky's and Geek Speaker

Discussion:

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Yahoo Responds: The distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us

Ross Dunn / StepForth SEO News Blog: Microsoft Backs Down from Yahoo

Darren Waters / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Walking away

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: What Microsoft Will Buy Now Expect to hear more from Steve Ballmer.

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Bid Withdrawal

VoIP Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Proposal

Todd Cochrane / Geek News Central: Yahoo is Toast and Yang needs to be Fired

John Furrier / Furrier.org: Victory for Silicon Valley; The Silicon Valley Poison Pill Worked - As Predicted

Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily: Ballmer Calls Yang's Bluff: Microsoft Walks

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: Yahoo! responds to withdrawal - issues statement

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Response to Yahoo

Geek Speaker: Why Yahoo is worth more than 50 billion & why Yahoo! For Good

All Related Discussion

Hide All Related Discussion

RELATED:

Microsoft:

Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo! Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Search Engine Land, Googling Google, Between the Lines, CNET News.com, Web Worker Daily, TechCrunch, WeBreakStuff, Simon's Blog, I4U News, Microsoft News Tracker, TechBlog, DealBook, Paul Mooney, Pocket PC Thoughts.com, TechSpot, Joe Duck, TechBays, Epicenter, All about Microsoft, Digital Trends, SEO and Tech Daily, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Mark Evans, Los Angeles Times, WebGuild, Mashable!, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Valleywag, Quick Online Tips, GigaOM, Profy.Com, AppScout, ClickZ News Blog, The Register and Scobleizer

Discussion:

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land: Leaving Las Yahoo: Microsoft's $5 Billion Mistake?

Garett Rogers / Googling Google: Microsoft withrawls bid for Yahoo, Google wins

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo: Assessing winners, losers and Plan Bs

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo-Google ad deal could be announced next week

Mike Gunderloy / Web Worker Daily: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Web Workers

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Microsoft/Yahoo: Summary Of Today's News & Bonus Gillmor Gang

Fred Oliveira / WeBreakStuff: MSFT and YHOO: It's finally over

Simon Brocklehurst / Simon's Blog: YAHOO! BLOWS IT - HOW LOW WILL THEY GO?

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Microsoft officially withdraws Yahoo Bid

David Hunter / Microsoft News Tracker: Microsoft withdraws offer for Yahoo

Dwight / TechBlog: Microsoft to Yahoo: Never mind

DealBook: Will Microsoft Really Walk?

Paul Mooney: Yahoo Prevails Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!

Darius Wey / Pocket PC Thoughts.com: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo!

Julio Franco / TechSpot: Weekend tech reading (5.04)

Joe Duck: Ballmer has left the Building

Carlo Maglinao / TechBays: Microsoft Yahoo! Deal: the NO votes win

Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter: Microsoft Walks! Says Yahoo Demands Don't Make Sense

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft: Microsoft takes its ball and leaves Yahoo on the Web 2.0 playground

Geoff Duncan / Digital Trends: Microsoft Abandons Yahoo Takeover

Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily: Microsoft pulls the plug on Yahoo!

Michael Santo / Alice Hill's Real Tech News: No Microhoo: Microsoft Walks Away from Yahoo! Deal

Mark Evans: Let's Get the (Yahoo-Microsoft Blogging Party) Started

Los Angeles Times: Microsoft drops bid to acquire Yahoo

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Ballmer's Letter to Jerry Yang Withdrawing Microsoft's Offer

Paul Glazowski / Mashable!: Breaking: Microsoft Corporation Rescinds Offer For Yahoo Inc

Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog: Ballmer's internal e-mail on Yahoo decision

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Ballmer to Yang: How stupid are you?

Quick Online Tips: Microsoft Unable to Buy Yahoo!

Om Malik / GigaOM: Microsoft To Yahoo: Take a Hike!

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira / Profy.Com: Steve Stands Jerry Up for the Internet Prom

Brian Heater / AppScout: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo! Bid

Anna Maria Virzi / ClickZ News Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Bid for Yahoo

Drew Cullen / The Register: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo!

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

MicroHoo: The Odd Couple Meetings Led Nowhere After today's events, I guess you could say Yahoo and Microsoft tried, holding a series of meetings about a possible takeover that ended up proving exactly how incompatible the companies were. Kind of like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but not funny in any way at all.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Between the Lines, Valleywag and Paul Kedrosky's

Discussion:

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks: Five reasons why it's a good move

Jackson West / Valleywag: YAHOO'S $37 DEMAND TALKS, MICROSOFT'S $33 OFFER WALKS Microsoft

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: First Tick-Tock of Da Deal Gone Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:

OK, so what's Microsoft's plan B? With Yahoo apparently off the table, it's time to see what Microsoft's back-up plan looks like. Microsoft has said for some time that it has a strategy with or without Yahoo, but it's a strategy clearly in need of a jump-start.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs and About Mobility Weblog

Discussion:

Steve / The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Ballmer now looking for other companies to not buy

Ceo / About Mobility Weblog: Steve Ballmer as The Creature

DealBook:

Guessing Yahoo's Opening Stock Price Well, Yahoo seems to have gotten what it wanted. The company managed to fend off Microsoft's unwanted advances, even after the software giant sweetened its bid by $5 billion an amount Yahoo felt still wasn't enough.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Discussion:

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider: Why Yahoo (YHOO) Should Go Ahead With Google Outsourcing Deal (GOOG)

Terry Heaton / Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog: Ack! Microsoft walks away. Winner? Google.

Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price Microsoft Corp. said it abandoned its offer for Yahoo Inc., as the two companies failed to bridge a gap between them on price. Microsoft Saturday released a letter from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check and Tech Beat

Discussion:

Peter / Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price - WSJ.com

Rob Hof / Tech Beat: Microsoft Drops Yahoo BidAt Least For Now

Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:

Report: A peek behind the Yahoo-Microsoft meltdown Curious how Microsoft's multi-multi-multi-billion dollar buyout bid for Yahoo sputtered, then crashed? Kara Swisher's BoomTown column in All Things Digital has an interesting account of the missteps, sidesteps

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo's Nightmare Scenario: I'm From Google and I'm Here to Help! Here's what a top-notch source at Yahoo joked to me tonight, after Microsoft walked away from its unsolicited takeover bid to acquire the long-troubled Internet giant. Google is now officially our best friend. Oh no.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Groundswell

Discussion:

Charlene Li / Groundswell: What's next for Microsoft and Yahoo!

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Yahoo's Tough Week Ahead At around 4:30 California time today news broke that Microsoft has formally withdrawn its offer to acquire Yahoo (see Ballmer's email to Microsoft employees here). Among other things, that ends a three month stock party where the market value of Yahoo jumped

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Guardian Unlimited, Microsoft Watch, MediaShift and Paul Mooney

Discussion:

Jack Schofield / Guardian Unlimited: Microsoft walks out of Yahoo deal (updated)

Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch: The Microsoft-Yahoo Blame Game

Mark Glaser / MediaShift: Yahoo-Microsoft Drama::Takeover Tiff Best Thing to Happen to Yahoo

Paul Mooney: A YAHOO RUN, OR A RUN ON YHOO?

Yi-Wyn Yen / Fortune:

Blame it on Google Microsoft CEO Ballmer said the software giant decided to walk away from a bid because Yahoo would become undesirable' if it formed an alliance with Google. (Fortune) Google proved to be the final straw that broke Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's back.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: MacDailyNews and CNNMoney.com

Discussion:

MacDailyNews: Ballmer's Folly ends: Microsoft abandons Yahoo bid because of Google

Mark M. Meinero / CNNMoney.com: Microsoft withdraws bid for Yahoo

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:

Analysis of the Microsoft Decision, Plus Yahoo's Hari-Kari Here is my first-cut analysis of what has happened here: On the friendly front, Yahoo drew a hard line at $37 per share, well above the $33 that Microsoft now says it told Yahoo this week it was willing to go

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: broadstuff

Discussion:

Alan Patrick / broadstuff: MICROHOO NO MORE.. So the deal is off - though whether

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Email From Steve Ballmer To All Microsoft Employees The following email was sent to all Microsoft employees from CEO Steve Ballmer at 5:17 pm PDT (see Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal): To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: InsideMicrosoft, WebProNews, VentureBeat and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Discussion:

Nathan Weinberg / InsideMicrosoft: Microsoft Drops Plans To Buy Yahoo

Nathan Weinberg / WebProNews: Microsoft Is Done Pursuing Yahoo!

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Microsoft now has $50 billion burning a hole in its pocket

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Steve Ballmer's Email to Microsoft Employees

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal (Updated)

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: BoomTown, Beyond Binary, Reuters, The Next Web, BBC NEWS, Coop's Corner, Voices, LiveSide, Electronista, Valleywag, mathewingram.com/work, Business Technology, SarahLacy.com, Master of 500 Hats, Thomas Hawk's Digital , Search Engine Journal and WinExtra

Discussion:

Kara Swisher / BoomTown: BoomTown Decodes Microsoft's Steve Ballmer's Letter to Yahoo (The Kiss-Off Edition)

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary: Ballmer's e-mail to staff on Yahoo

Reuters: Microsoft says it withdraws offer for Yahoo

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten / The Next Web: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo deal

Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Microsoft v Yahoo - post-match analysis

Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner: Post-Microhoo: Winners and losers

Ina Fried / Voices: Microsoft's Move: Is It Just a Feint?

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: No MSFT-YHOO deal; now what? Microsoft just walked away

Electronista: Microsoft backs out of Yahoo bid

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Is Ballmer on his way out and if so, who's the next CEO?

Mathew / mathewingram.com/work: YHOO and MSFT: Jerry Yang should be fired

Ben Worthen / Business Technology: The Most Famous Non-Deal in Tech History

Sarah Lacy: Or Maybe I Won't Be Working for the Evil Empire

Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats: MicroHooFreude! (Memo to Jerry: Prepare to be Sued)

Thomas Hawk / Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Remember When Thomas Hawk Said If He Were Microsoft He'd Lower His Bid for Yahoo?

Arnold Zafra / Search Engine Journal: Microsoft Cancels the Yahoo Acquisition Deal, Finally!

Steven Hodson / WinExtra: Please tell me it's so

New York Times:
Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: CNET News.com, The Big Picture, deal architect, Slashdot, HipMojo.com and Digg

Discussion:

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo: Microsoft's price just wasn't right

Ritholtz / The Big Picture: Ballmer, Yang Agree to See Other People

deal architect: Back to customer focus So the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal appears finally off.

Timothy / Slashdot: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Takeover Offer

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Should Investors Sue or Back Yang?

Digg: Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: DSLreports, Forbes, CNET News.com, Business Week, Smalltalk Tidbits , Scobleizer, Techlog, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, InformationWeek, HipMojo.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, paidContent.org, CenterNetworks, Search Engine Land, John Battelle's Searchblog, WebGuild, MacRumors, Engadget, VentureBeat and Digital Daily

Discussion:

KathrynV / DSLreports: Microsoft Rescinds Yahoo Offer - No agreement could be reached in talks yesterday

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: Forget It, Ballmer Says To Yahoo!

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Is Google ad deal really Yahoo's best option?

Robert Hof / Business Week: Microsoft Drops Bid for Yahoo

James A. Robertson / Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: Reality 1, Scoble 0

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: How will Yahoo heal after Microsoft walked away?

Harry McCracken / Techlog: No MicroHoo? Hallelujah!

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Microsoft Retreats or Withdrawls, Depends on Your View

Alexander Wolfe / InformationWeek: Microsoft Yanks Yahoo Bid

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Latest Chess Move: MSFT Withdraws Offer

Kevin Heisler / Search Engine Watch Blog: Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer; Yahoo Responds

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org: Microsoft-Yahoo: Yang's Response: With Distraction Behind Us

Allen Stern / CenterNetworks: What's Next for Yahoo? Merging With AOL Still My Pick

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land: Microsoft Yanks Its Offer For Yahoo

John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog: MICROSOFT BAILS, YAHOO'S GOOGLE THREAT APPEARS TO HAVE WORKED

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo

Arn / MacRumors: Microsoft Walking Away from Yahoo Acquisition

Ryan Block / Engadget: Microsoft pulls bid for Yahoo!, Microhoo will never be

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Yahoo breaks the wrist, Microsoft walks away

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily: Ballmer to Yang: Dear Jerry, Drop Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: BloggingStocks

Discussion:

Peter Cohan / BloggingStocks: It's off. Microsoft withdraws its offer for Yahoo for now

BBC:
Microsoft walks away from Yahoo

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Gizmodo and TECH.BLORGE.com

Discussion:

Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo: Microsoft Retires Yahoo Offer, Won't Try Hostile Takeover

Erna Mahyuni / TECH.BLORGE.com: No Microhoo - Microsoft terminates bid on Yahoo

Kara Swisher / BoomTo

Tags: microsoft yahoo news google discussion ]]> Mon, 05 May 2008 04:21:15 -0400 tag:croncast.com,3967 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/E-commerceLaw/~3/274121575/federal-court-i.html Shared item

On April 15, 2008, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed a lawsuit filed by a YouTube user in the wrong venue. In Bowen v. YouTube, Inc., 2008 WL 1757578 (W.D. Wash. 2008), the Court enforced YouTube's Terms of Use which require that all suits arising from YouTube's website be brought in San Mateo County, California. In support of the ruling, the Court noted that

[while] new commerce on the Internet has exposed courts to many new situations, it has not fundamentally changed the principles of contract . . . when a benefit is offered subject to stated conditions and the offeree makes a decision to take the benefit with knowledge of the terms of the offer, the taking constitutes an acceptance of the terms, which accordingly become binding on the offeree.

Id. at *2 (quoting Register.com, Inc. v. Verio, Inc., 356 F.3d 393, 403 (2d Cir. 2004).

This case further demonstrates the importance of including an enforceable choice of law provision in a website's terms of use.

Tags: terms youtube court inc offeree ]]>

On April 15, 2008, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed a lawsuit filed by a YouTube user in the wrong venue. In Bowen v. YouTube, Inc., 2008 WL 1757578 (W.D. Wash. 2008), the Court enforced YouTube's Terms of Use which require that all suits arising from YouTube's website be brought in San Mateo County, California. In support of the ruling, the Court noted that

[while] new commerce on the Internet has exposed courts to many new situations, it has not fundamentally changed the principles of contract . . . when a benefit is offered subject to stated conditions and the offeree makes a decision to take the benefit with knowledge of the terms of the offer, the taking constitutes an acceptance of the terms, which accordingly become binding on the offeree.

Id. at *2 (quoting Register.com, Inc. v. Verio, Inc., 356 F.3d 393, 403 (2d Cir. 2004).

This case further demonstrates the importance of including an enforceable choice of law provision in a website's terms of use.

Tags: terms youtube court inc offeree ]]> Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:31:03 -0400 tag:croncast.com,3868 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gapersblock/merge/~3/266461516/ Shared item Zombie Pub Crawl. April 26 in Andersonville. $10 in advance. Be there or be eaten.

Tags: andersonville advance eaten april crawl ]]>Zombie Pub Crawl. April 26 in Andersonville. $10 in advance. Be there or be eaten.

Tags: andersonville advance eaten april crawl ]]> Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:48:12 -0400 tag:croncast.com,3839 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/netbanker/~3/245361461/social_networking_meets_savings_accounts_smartypig_launches.html Shared item How about this recipe? Take a basic FDIC-insured savings account, spice it up with automated electronic transfers and email communications, mix in gift/debit cards, wrap the whole thing up in a social network, and top it with a memorable name. What do you have? SmartyPig, the most innovative financial service we've seen since Prosper launched two years ago.

The site is in the final week of private beta. To register, you still need an invitation code. The company asked me not to publish it, but it's OK if I distribute by request via email. Send a note to info@netbanker with "SmartyPig" in the subject line. Or simply wait until after this weekend when the site goes into public beta.

How it works:

1. Users create savings accounts at the site. Deposits are held at West Bank, a Des Moines, IA- based financial institution with $1.3 billion in assets. Funding is through ACH (electronic) transfers from outside bank accounts. SmartyPig currently pays a high, 4.3% APY on deposits.

2. After the account is established, users are encouraged to create savings goals funded through automatic monthly ACH transfers until the goal is met.

3. Now here is where SmartyPig diverges from a typical bank account. The savings goals can be made public or kept private. Public goals can be funded in part, or entirely, by outside contributors. Think of grandma and grandpa contributing birthday money to help junior buy a new bike. Contributions are funded through credit card charges with a maximum charge of $500 and a per transaction processing fee of $4.95. To make sure grandma's $50 doesn't go to a Mario game, the money cannot be withdrawn until the savings goal is met (or canceled by the primary account holder).

4. After goals have been met, the user can elect to take the funds out in the form of a MasterCard debit card or a gift card from a retail partner such as Amazon.com. Participating retailers add a up to 5% bonus to the savings goal so that $1000 saved for the plasma TV is worth $1,050 if redeemed via Amazon gift card. That's a great added incentive to use the service.

Gift Cards
SmartyPig also sells gift cards that can be redeemed towards new or existing savings goals. These cards, issued in denominations of $25 to $500, are meant to be given as gifts or employee incentives. They cannot be redeemed outside the SmartyPig system. Physical card are produced and delivered for a processing fee of $4.95 plus delivery fees of $5.95 or more. Or consumers can deliver a virtual card through email to eliminate the delivery charge (but the $4.95 processing fee remains the same).

Summary of Fees

• Public contributions: $4.95 flat processing fee for each contribution made by an outside contributor. Contributions can be from $25 to $500 and are funded via credit card.
• Gift cards: Gift cards incur a $4.95 processing fee and an optional $5.95 shipping fee. The shipping fee can be avoided if a virtual gift card is chosen which is fulfilled via email.

Analysis
Although, not everyone is going to want to go through the extra steps to save this way, we are impressed with SmartyPig and are awarding it our first OBR Best of the Web award for 2008 (see note 1). We like how it's part gift registry, part savings account, and potentially a big help in getting users in the habit of saving for larger goals. The look-and-feel is very Web 2.0 and should resonate with teens and twenty-somethings.

There are a few rough edges that need better explanation and/or minor redesign. For instance, there is no way to simply add funds to a savings account without first setting up an automatic funding plan. But the site isn't even officially launched yet, so these issues should be ironed out during the beta period.

The processing fee of $4.95 per transaction is a bit on the high side. One could argue that it's worth price of a triple mocha for the convenience and benefits of the savings account. But for smaller deposits of $50 to $100, it's a pretty high percentage of the overall deposit.

It would be nice if the company could lower the fee, perhaps by creating an ACH funding option. Another way to reduce costs is to lower the 4.3% APR. I'm not sure the savers attracted to this account really need that high of a rate. A lower interest rate combined with lower fees might make the service more palatable overall.

The company may have to tweak its business model going forward. But the real lesson here is that savings accounts can be made stickier with automation and incentives. Leave it to the Iowans to show us the way (note 3).

Screenshots

1. The main account screen: I set up a savings account for my son. Then set a savings goal of $300 for a new bike. SmartyPig requires that the savings goal be funded in equal monthly withdrawals from the linked checking. It would be helpful if you could opt out of the automated savings plan so that the savings goal could be funded manually.

2. Public goals: If you opted to make your savings goal public, anyone can find it by searching via email address under the "Friends' Goals" tab on the top (you can see this one by searching for jim@netbanker.com).

Users can publicize their goals with a widget (see inset, and link at bottom of screen above) or by sending email to friends.

After making a contribution, the following screen is displayed.

Note:

1. Online Banking Report (OBR) Best of the Web awards are given for products that "raise the bar" in online financial services, usually for pioneering a new feature. Recent winners are covered here. Five awards were been handed out in 2007: two for Wesabe, and one each for Jwaala, Buxfer and Obopay. In the past 10 years, 67 companies have won the award.

2. Full disclosure: I was born and raised in Iowa and my brother lives within a few miles of the SmartyPig world headquarters.

Tags: savings account smartypig gift goals ]]>How about this recipe? Take a basic FDIC-insured savings account, spice it up with automated electronic transfers and email communications, mix in gift/debit cards, wrap the whole thing up in a social network, and top it with a memorable name. What do you have? SmartyPig, the most innovative financial service we've seen since Prosper launched two years ago.

The site is in the final week of private beta. To register, you still need an invitation code. The company asked me not to publish it, but it's OK if I distribute by request via email. Send a note to info@netbanker with "SmartyPig" in the subject line. Or simply wait until after this weekend when the site goes into public beta.

How it works:

1. Users create savings accounts at the site. Deposits are held at West Bank, a Des Moines, IA- based financial institution with $1.3 billion in assets. Funding is through ACH (electronic) transfers from outside bank accounts. SmartyPig currently pays a high, 4.3% APY on deposits.

2. After the account is established, users are encouraged to create savings goals funded through automatic monthly ACH transfers until the goal is met.

3. Now here is where SmartyPig diverges from a typical bank account. The savings goals can be made public or kept private. Public goals can be funded in part, or entirely, by outside contributors. Think of grandma and grandpa contributing birthday money to help junior buy a new bike. Contributions are funded through credit card charges with a maximum charge of $500 and a per transaction processing fee of $4.95. To make sure grandma's $50 doesn't go to a Mario game, the money cannot be withdrawn until the savings goal is met (or canceled by the primary account holder).

4. After goals have been met, the user can elect to take the funds out in the form of a MasterCard debit card or a gift card from a retail partner such as Amazon.com. Participating retailers add a up to 5% bonus to the savings goal so that $1000 saved for the plasma TV is worth $1,050 if redeemed via Amazon gift card. That's a great added incentive to use the service.

Gift Cards
SmartyPig also sells gift cards that can be redeemed towards new or existing savings goals. These cards, issued in denominations of $25 to $500, are meant to be given as gifts or employee incentives. They cannot be redeemed outside the SmartyPig system. Physical card are produced and delivered for a processing fee of $4.95 plus delivery fees of $5.95 or more. Or consumers can deliver a virtual card through email to eliminate the delivery charge (but the $4.95 processing fee remains the same).

Summary of Fees

• Public contributions: $4.95 flat processing fee for each contribution made by an outside contributor. Contributions can be from $25 to $500 and are funded via credit card.
• Gift cards: Gift cards incur a $4.95 processing fee and an optional $5.95 shipping fee. The shipping fee can be avoided if a virtual gift card is chosen which is fulfilled via email.

Analysis
Although, not everyone is going to want to go through the extra steps to save this way, we are impressed with SmartyPig and are awarding it our first OBR Best of the Web award for 2008 (see note 1). We like how it's part gift registry, part savings account, and potentially a big help in getting users in the habit of saving for larger goals. The look-and-feel is very Web 2.0 and should resonate with teens and twenty-somethings.

There are a few rough edges that need better explanation and/or minor redesign. For instance, there is no way to simply add funds to a savings account without first setting up an automatic funding plan. But the site isn't even officially launched yet, so these issues should be ironed out during the beta period.

The processing fee of $4.95 per transaction is a bit on the high side. One could argue that it's worth price of a triple mocha for the convenience and benefits of the savings account. But for smaller deposits of $50 to $100, it's a pretty high percentage of the overall deposit.

It would be nice if the company could lower the fee, perhaps by creating an ACH funding option. Another way to reduce costs is to lower the 4.3% APR. I'm not sure the savers attracted to this account really need that high of a rate. A lower interest rate combined with lower fees might make the service more palatable overall.

The company may have to tweak its business model going forward. But the real lesson here is that savings accounts can be made stickier with automation and incentives. Leave it to the Iowans to show us the way (note 3).

Screenshots

1. The main account screen: I set up a savings account for my son. Then set a savings goal of $300 for a new bike. SmartyPig requires that the savings goal be funded in equal monthly withdrawals from the linked checking. It would be helpful if you could opt out of the automated savings plan so that the savings goal could be funded manually.

2. Public goals: If you opted to make your savings goal public, anyone can find it by searching via email address under the "Friends' Goals" tab on the top (you can see this one by searching for jim@netbanker.com).

Users can publicize their goals with a widget (see inset, and link at bottom of screen above) or by sending email to friends.

After making a contribution, the following screen is displayed.

Note:

1. Online Banking Report (OBR) Best of the Web awards are given for products that "raise the bar" in online financial services, usually for pioneering a new feature. Recent winners are covered here. Five awards were been handed out in 2007: two for Wesabe, and one each for Jwaala, Buxfer and Obopay. In the past 10 years, 67 companies have won the award.

2. Full disclosure: I was born and raised in Iowa and my brother lives within a few miles of the SmartyPig world headquarters.

Tags: savings account smartypig gift goals ]]> Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:24:30 -0500 tag:croncast.com,3669 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pmarca/~3/236452325/irony-is-dead-l.html Shared item

February 2008:

Four large newspaper companies are joining forces to sell advertisements on the Internet, hoping that the combined heft of their Web sites will encourage large advertisers to spend more money.

Each of the four companies the Tribune Company, the Gannett Company, the Hearst Corporation and The New York Times Company is transferring a portion of its online ad space to quadrantONE, a new company that will be announced Friday.

The purpose of the joint venture, which will be based in Chicago and will hire 17 people [commitment!], is to let national advertisers place ads on local Web sites with a single phone call [phone call!].

The sites belong to papers like The Los Angeles Times (which is a Tribune property), The Des Moines Register (Gannett), The Houston Chronicle (Hearst) and The Boston Globe (The New York Times Company).

Some of the companies' flagship sites, however, will not be included, because they are not considered local. These include the sites of USA Today, a Gannett paper, and of The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, which are owned by the Times Company. [These are also known as the ones that actually have reasonable numbers of readers.]

Executives involved said the newspaper companies understand [by which they mean, "used to have a local monopoly but don't anymore"] the local market better than Google, Yahoo and Microsoft...

The companies were also all part of the New Century Network in the late 1990s...

Source: New York Times.

March 1998:

[W]hen New Century Network was kicked off last April by nine [newspaper] giants teaming up to conquer electronic competition, even the launch party bombed...

In a ballroom at the Newspaper Association of America convention in Chicago, a thousand bottles of champagne emblazoned with ''New Century Network: The Collective Intelligence of America's Newspapers'' awaited the hordes expected to come to toast the watershed new-media joint venture. When fewer than 100 people showed up, Chief Executive Lee de Boer made an abbreviated speech before retreating...

The reception was the first public humiliation for New Century Network, but only one in a series of blunders that culminated in the company's abrupt shutdown on Mar. 10. Created in 1995 to unite newspapers against Microsoft Corp. and other competitors girding to woo electronically advertisers and readers, New Century Network came to embody everything that could go wrong when old-line newspapers converge with new media...

Started with $1 million each from Knight-Ridder, Tribune, Times Mirror, Advance Publications, Cox Enterprises, Gannett, Hearst, Washington Post, and New York Times, New Century seemed an entrepreneurial dream. The Internet had just opened to the world, creating vast new competition for readers--and for the advertisers that pump $40 billion into newspapers. But it also gave newspapers a chance to capture national accounts that favored the one-stop-shopping convenience of TV and national magazines...

[T]he [newspaper] companies had wildly diverging philosophies about how newspapers should make the electronic leap and what role the new venture should play. ''You had private companies and public companies and companies that were risk-averse and those that were risk-tolerant,'' says Harry Chandler, head of new media for Los Angeles Times. ''You had big-city papers and small chains. We shared a need. But it was frustrating trying to come together.''

While the wired world moved at warp speed, New Century spent 18 months hiring a permanent ceo and two years creating an electronic doorway to 140 newspapers... ''This [Internet] thing is really racing,'' says Al Sikes, the former Federal Communications Commissioner who is president of Hearst New Media. ''Organizations of a number of co-equals can't turn on a dime.''...

The partners ultimately invested more than $25 million in the virtual venture... The board decided... to pull the plug, coming to a remarkably quick agreement--for the first and final time...

Source: Business Week.

Tags: companies times company century newspapers ]]>

February 2008:

Four large newspaper companies are joining forces to sell advertisements on the Internet, hoping that the combined heft of their Web sites will encourage large advertisers to spend more money.

Each of the four companies the Tribune Company, the Gannett Company, the Hearst Corporation and The New York Times Company is transferring a portion of its online ad space to quadrantONE, a new company that will be announced Friday.

The purpose of the joint venture, which will be based in Chicago and will hire 17 people [commitment!], is to let national advertisers place ads on local Web sites with a single phone call [phone call!].

The sites belong to papers like The Los Angeles Times (which is a Tribune property), The Des Moines Register (Gannett), The Houston Chronicle (Hearst) and The Boston Globe (The New York Times Company).

Some of the companies' flagship sites, however, will not be included, because they are not considered local. These include the sites of USA Today, a Gannett paper, and of The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, which are owned by the Times Company. [These are also known as the ones that actually have reasonable numbers of readers.]

Executives involved said the newspaper companies understand [by which they mean, "used to have a local monopoly but don't anymore"] the local market better than Google, Yahoo and Microsoft...

The companies were also all part of the New Century Network in the late 1990s...

Source: New York Times.

March 1998:

[W]hen New Century Network was kicked off last April by nine [newspaper] giants teaming up to conquer electronic competition, even the launch party bombed...

In a ballroom at the Newspaper Association of America convention in Chicago, a thousand bottles of champagne emblazoned with ''New Century Network: The Collective Intelligence of America's Newspapers'' awaited the hordes expected to come to toast the watershed new-media joint venture. When fewer than 100 people showed up, Chief Executive Lee de Boer made an abbreviated speech before retreating...

The reception was the first public humiliation for New Century Network, but only one in a series of blunders that culminated in the company's abrupt shutdown on Mar. 10. Created in 1995 to unite newspapers against Microsoft Corp. and other competitors girding to woo electronically advertisers and readers, New Century Network came to embody everything that could go wrong when old-line newspapers converge with new media...

Started with $1 million each from Knight-Ridder, Tribune, Times Mirror, Advance Publications, Cox Enterprises, Gannett, Hearst, Washington Post, and New York Times, New Century seemed an entrepreneurial dream. The Internet had just opened to the world, creating vast new competition for readers--and for the advertisers that pump $40 billion into newspapers. But it also gave newspapers a chance to capture national accounts that favored the one-stop-shopping convenience of TV and national magazines...

[T]he [newspaper] companies had wildly diverging philosophies about how newspapers should make the electronic leap and what role the new venture should play. ''You had private companies and public companies and companies that were risk-averse and those that were risk-tolerant,'' says Harry Chandler, head of new media for Los Angeles Times. ''You had big-city papers and small chains. We shared a need. But it was frustrating trying to come together.''

While the wired world moved at warp speed, New Century spent 18 months hiring a permanent ceo and two years creating an electronic doorway to 140 newspapers... ''This [Internet] thing is really racing,'' says Al Sikes, the former Federal Communications Commissioner who is president of Hearst New Media. ''Organizations of a number of co-equals can't turn on a dime.''...

The partners ultimately invested more than $25 million in the virtual venture... The board decided... to pull the plug, coming to a remarkably quick agreement--for the first and final time...

Source: Business Week.

Tags: companies times company century newspapers ]]> Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:44:41 -0500 tag:croncast.com,3593 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/234570345/making-up-new-words-creativity Shared item Posted by Jane Copland

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making up new words for something that, as it stands, can't be properly named or described with existing language. Quite simply, this is how languages evolve and grow, and it would be next to impossible to name everything with words that already exist. However, there should be a reason behind naming, coinage and the general invention of new words. On top of that, there should be a conscious effort not to invent words that can easily turn into annoying memes, or which become just plain laughable. This is not to say that invented names for online businesses have to mean something, although the good ones often do.

Digg is a good name. Long before Kevin Rose and Owen Byrne launched a popular social media company, people talked about "digging" stuff that they liked. The word is still in use, although I'd like to guess that people who use Digg tend to confine its use almost solely to their actions within the site. If I heard someone say that they "dug" something," I'd hear it with two "g"s. Digg managed to one-up its competitors by easily spawning verbs - a common indication of success. No one I know of "reddits" stories.

A lack of a verb aside, Reddit is also a great name. It doesn't really matter that when I first heard of it, I immediately thought that their icon would be a frog. The idea that you read it at Reddit completely validates the name, even if the homepage is often littered with [PIC] submissions. StumbleUpon also scores very highly on the "good name" charts. I made a pretty good guess about what the service did before I used it: I assumed that it would have me stumble upon things on the Internet, which is exactly what it does.

More browsing, reviewing and agonising over Web 2.0 Award nominations has had me uncover some of the best - and worst - named sites. To me, a well named website has at least had some thought put into its name's creation. Its name has been coined for a reason, no matter whether the name initially appears to make sense.

Badoo is one of the sites I've come across recently whose name I don't understand. It is a content sharing and social networking service. Some successful online businesses have named themselves in odd ways (Lulu, Bebo, Wufoo, Monster), but it's a risky move. Taking that risk probably means a putting up with a tougher time when it comes to early name recognition and branding.

There's also a balance between creative and silly, and sometimes the two can overlap. "Twitter" is creative and relevant: it's a real word (which isn't common amongst web 2.0 names) and it alludes to what people use it for. Birds sit in trees and twitter at each other, supposedly imparting small pieces of information. The problem with the word is that it's annoying and easy to make fun of. Ideally, I'd say you'd want to avoid this.

Think of the words that you can make from "Twitter." Immediately, we have "twit" which many of us use when we're referring to total idiots. While twit isn't a particularly American term and the company was founded in San Francisco, it's often useful to take a look at the world-wide usage of the language you're using and figure out of other cultures might see your name differently.

Even SEOmoz is pronounced differently by North Americans than it is by most other English speakers. In U.S. and Canadian English, the "moz" sounds like "maahz"; most other English speakers pronounce it with a more rounded "o" sound. This site explains why way better than I can. Being an employee here, I pronounce the company's name the way my co-workers do. It sounds odd to me when I hear it said in the way I'd have pronounced it if I'd never worked here.

Luckily for us, our company's name doesn't change enough between dialects that it becomes inappropriate, and its meaning doesn't change. I don't expect that you can account for every regional subtlety that might exist around the world, but most Americans are at least aware that calling someone a twit isn't complimentary. Despite the fact that Twitter is a real word and relates to the service, I would not have used it. It success makes my argument weaker, only it stands that people who dislike the phenomenon usually cite its name in the list of things that turn them off.

The additional words that Twitter tends to spawn are also annoying: tweet, twittering and, most recently, tweeple might not aggravate everyone, but they're certainly polarising. Consider how variations of a name might evolve... Although we definitely didn't invent it, "Moz" has found plenty of uses in reference to SEOmoz (mozzers, Mozplex, MozSquad etc). Some people probably find this irritating. However, I'd hazard a guess that a smaller percentage of people will dislike this usage than will turn away from using "twit" on a regular basis.

In terms of whether a name should indicate what a site does, it seems that most successful businesses at least hint at their service in their name. Myspace's name is great, especially considering that its most useful feature is providing bands, comedians, film makers, etc with a space to promote themselves and their work. That the site has morphed into everyone's gaudy space makes its name even more relevant. Facebook isn't quite as relevant a name (without having heard of it, you may think of a Hot-or-Not style site), but it also managed to combine two real words to make a somewhat-descriptive name. Even Google means something. Not so sure about Yahoo! though. If anyone knows exactly why Yahoo! was named thus, add the reason in the comments. Or make up your own, because that's fun, too.

If you've been using the Internet for more than a few minutes, you'll have seen the infamous list of inadvertently terrible domain names. Rarely do you see anyone makes mistakes as blatant as this, but it is worthwhile researching alternate meanings for your potential names. I would also stay away from the completely meaningless names, as inventive as they may sound. Let me leave you with an instant message discussion Rebecca and I had yesterday about the naming of websites. We talk to each other on the Internet even though we sit about five feet from each other:

jane.copland: Sometimes you read these web 2.0 site names and think, "wait. What? That meant NOTHING"

may as well have been a string of words in totally random order.

relizkel: it's like throwing a dart at a bunch of words on a wall. FLING. "Pop!" FLING. "Chance!"
jane.copland: Case in point: "Badoo is a truly worldwide online community that provides its members with the ability to communicate and share their lives with people both locally and around the globe."
relizkel: FLING: "Slinky!" And you end up with slancepop.com.

Don't become someone else's IMed joke: name your business with care.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Tags: name words site names even ]]>Posted by Jane Copland

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making up new words for something that, as it stands, can't be properly named or described with existing language. Quite simply, this is how languages evolve and grow, and it would be next to impossible to name everything with words that already exist. However, there should be a reason behind naming, coinage and the general invention of new words. On top of that, there should be a conscious effort not to invent words that can easily turn into annoying memes, or which become just plain laughable. This is not to say that invented names for online businesses have to mean something, although the good ones often do.

Digg is a good name. Long before Kevin Rose and Owen Byrne launched a popular social media company, people talked about "digging" stuff that they liked. The word is still in use, although I'd like to guess that people who use Digg tend to confine its use almost solely to their actions within the site. If I heard someone say that they "dug" something," I'd hear it with two "g"s. Digg managed to one-up its competitors by easily spawning verbs - a common indication of success. No one I know of "reddits" stories.

A lack of a verb aside, Reddit is also a great name. It doesn't really matter that when I first heard of it, I immediately thought that their icon would be a frog. The idea that you read it at Reddit completely validates the name, even if the homepage is often littered with [PIC] submissions. StumbleUpon also scores very highly on the "good name" charts. I made a pretty good guess about what the service did before I used it: I assumed that it would have me stumble upon things on the Internet, which is exactly what it does.

More browsing, reviewing and agonising over Web 2.0 Award nominations has had me uncover some of the best - and worst - named sites. To me, a well named website has at least had some thought put into its name's creation. Its name has been coined for a reason, no matter whether the name initially appears to make sense.

Badoo is one of the sites I've come across recently whose name I don't understand. It is a content sharing and social networking service. Some successful online businesses have named themselves in odd ways (Lulu, Bebo, Wufoo, Monster), but it's a risky move. Taking that risk probably means a putting up with a tougher time when it comes to early name recognition and branding.

There's also a balance between creative and silly, and sometimes the two can overlap. "Twitter" is creative and relevant: it's a real word (which isn't common amongst web 2.0 names) and it alludes to what people use it for. Birds sit in trees and twitter at each other, supposedly imparting small pieces of information. The problem with the word is that it's annoying and easy to make fun of. Ideally, I'd say you'd want to avoid this.

Think of the words that you can make from "Twitter." Immediately, we have "twit" which many of us use when we're referring to total idiots. While twit isn't a particularly American term and the company was founded in San Francisco, it's often useful to take a look at the world-wide usage of the language you're using and figure out of other cultures might see your name differently.

Even SEOmoz is pronounced differently by North Americans than it is by most other English speakers. In U.S. and Canadian English, the "moz" sounds like "maahz"; most other English speakers pronounce it with a more rounded "o" sound. This site explains why way better than I can. Being an employee here, I pronounce the company's name the way my co-workers do. It sounds odd to me when I hear it said in the way I'd have pronounced it if I'd never worked here.

Luckily for us, our company's name doesn't change enough between dialects that it becomes inappropriate, and its meaning doesn't change. I don't expect that you can account for every regional subtlety that might exist around the world, but most Americans are at least aware that calling someone a twit isn't complimentary. Despite the fact that Twitter is a real word and relates to the service, I would not have used it. It success makes my argument weaker, only it stands that people who dislike the phenomenon usually cite its name in the list of things that turn them off.

The additional words that Twitter tends to spawn are also annoying: tweet, twittering and, most recently, tweeple might not aggravate everyone, but they're certainly polarising. Consider how variations of a name might evolve... Although we definitely didn't invent it, "Moz" has found plenty of uses in reference to SEOmoz (mozzers, Mozplex, MozSquad etc). Some people probably find this irritating. However, I'd hazard a guess that a smaller percentage of people will dislike this usage than will turn away from using "twit" on a regular basis.

In terms of whether a name should indicate what a site does, it seems that most successful businesses at least hint at their service in their name. Myspace's name is great, especially considering that its most useful feature is providing bands, comedians, film makers, etc with a space to promote themselves and their work. That the site has morphed into everyone's gaudy space makes its name even more relevant. Facebook isn't quite as relevant a name (without having heard of it, you may think of a Hot-or-Not style site), but it also managed to combine two real words to make a somewhat-descriptive name. Even Google means something. Not so sure about Yahoo! though. If anyone knows exactly why Yahoo! was named thus, add the reason in the comments. Or make up your own, because that's fun, too.

If you've been using the Internet for more than a few minutes, you'll have seen the infamous list of inadvertently terrible domain names. Rarely do you see anyone makes mistakes as blatant as this, but it is worthwhile researching alternate meanings for your potential names. I would also stay away from the completely meaningless names, as inventive as they may sound. Let me leave you with an instant message discussion Rebecca and I had yesterday about the naming of websites. We talk to each other on the Internet even though we sit about five feet from each other:

jane.copland: Sometimes you read these web 2.0 site names and think, "wait. What? That meant NOTHING"

may as well have been a string of words in totally random order.

relizkel: it's like throwing a dart at a bunch of words on a wall. FLING. "Pop!" FLING. "Chance!"
jane.copland: Case in point: "Badoo is a truly worldwide online community that provides its members with the ability to communicate and share their lives with people both locally and around the globe."
relizkel: FLING: "Slinky!" And you end up with slancepop.com.

Don't become someone else's IMed joke: name your business with care.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Tags: name words site names even ]]> Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:52:27 -0500 tag:croncast.com,3554 http://mashable.com/2008/02/11/squidoo-moneybrain-lens/ Shared item