All Things Digital

Earlier this week, BoomTown posted our speaker list for the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, which will take place in a few weeks–May 27 to 29, to be exact–in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my partner Walt Mossberg and me.

D6 tech and media speakers include: Microsoft Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT); News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch; Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX); Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo (YHOO), and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

The pairing should make for a lively session, given all the heat around Yahoo of late, largely related to the scuttled attempt by Microsoft to buy the company.

What would you like to know about that and anything else about Yahoo?

As it so happens, you can ask!

While the conference is sold out, you can submit questions that you would like answered to Yang and Decker or any of the speakers via text or video. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose.

Ask early and often here!

In addition, the whole conference will be online at AllThingsD during the conference, via live blogs and reports of breaking news (and there will be breaking news, as there always is), along with video highlights.

And videos of all the interviews will be posted soon after it is over.

The Googlefication of Facebook continues, as Elliot Schrage, the search giant’s vice president of global communications and public affairs, takes the title of vice president of communications and public policy at the popular social-networking site.

Schrage confirmed his new job to BoomTown, right after he friended us on Facebook last night, using its new chat feature.

Way to go native quickly, Elliot!

The move to hire Schrage (pictured here) was announced to Facebook’s employees late this evening.

In a memo that BoomTown obtained (entire text below) to Facebook troops from India, where he is traveling, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said about the Schrage hire:

“This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.”

Valleywag said Schrage had interviewed for the job at Facebook in a post earlier today about the possibility of Schrage working there.

At Facebook, Schrage will report to Sheryl Sandberg, another top-level Google exec who was hired as COO by Facebook, which is seeking to beef up its management ranks.

Other Googlers who have recently moved to Facebook include: Ben Ling, who is Facebook’s director of platform product marketing and Ethan Beard, who is its business development director.

Schrage is a big name to defect to Facebook from Google (GOOG), a trend that is probably becoming irksome to its top execs.

But Google’s deep bench of execs are enticing to many companies, even as the burgeoning size of Google makes it harder to hold onto more entrepreneurial employees. In addition, Google can no longer offer as lucrative a stock package to its staff as start-ups can, even though most of those smaller companies are not likely to pay off.

With a $15 billion valuation, Facebook is a safer bet, but still has to prove its worth and remains a risky move for execs like Schrage.

Still, according to sources, he contacted Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly and did not go through Sandberg. When she left Google, as is typical for departing execs, Sandberg agreed not to solicit Google employees.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Schrage had extensive public-policy experience before heading to Google two years ago, where he was in charge of the “company’s public-facing communications, including media relations, policy strategy and stakeholder outreach, as well as internal communications.”

He will have his work cut out for him at Facebook, which has already faced some PR snafus and vexing public policy issues, including controversy around privacy and advertising practices.

Sources said Schrage was interested in Facebook, because it was a company poised for explosive growth, much like Google in its early days. In addition, unlike Google, which has grown large, Schrage would have more of an ability to make an impact in arenas he favors like public policy.

Here is the text of Zuckerberg’s memo to Facebook employees about the hiring of Schrage (with start date and new email address missing), which was released tonight at 8:55 p.m. PDT:

Hey Everyone–

I’m writing from India to share with you the good news that Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team as VP Communications and Public Policy. In this role, he will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do. The goal here is to help people understand how the internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.

Elliot is joining us from Google where he has been their VP Global Communications and Public Affairs since 2005. At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product PR to include all aspects of corporate, financial, policy, philanthropic and internal communications. Before that, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a public policy think tank, as a professor at Columbia Business School and as SVP at Gap. Early on, he began his career as a Harvard-trained lawyer.

This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.

Elliot will be starting on __, although you may see him around the office before then. If you want to send him a note to congratulate him on joining, his email is __ and I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.

Mark

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.

All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional negotiator–at the 6th D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my amazing partner Walt Mossberg and me (see us here at D5) and will take place May 27 to 29.

The conference, as we describe it on our Web site, is “unlike any other executive conference.” What we mean by that is that we try to determine the next direction of the digital revolution via unscripted and informal, but pointed, conversations about the impact of digital technology with industry leaders.

In other words, Walt and I needling at the major players of the digital sector, until they give up the good stuff.

The other digital and media leaders coming? That would be: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

To say our timing is impeccably planned would be undeserved–we had no idea so much news related to all these companies and their leaders would break out, from the tough economy to takeover battles to court face-offs to mergers to trying to create a whole new way of reading.

Also, there will be some–as yet under wraps–amazing demos onstage too.

While the analog conference has been sold out for many months, the action will be on the AllThingsD.com site throughout the conference with round-the-clock live blogging by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, as well as video highlights from stage.

In addition, we’ll be pointing all over the Web to important tech and media news that breaks at D6.

And we will also stream the entire conference in the weeks after the conference takes place, so ATD’s audience can experience the whole thing, even if they cannot all attend.

But anyone’s questions can be there, though–this year, you can submit questions to any of the speakers via text or video that you would like answered. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose. Ask early and often here!

Walt and I are very excited for D6, even after last year, when we brought together industry legends Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, for an historic joint interview.

At the time, Walt and I joked that we would not be able to top that amazing event (the video of the entire interview is below).

That interview was nearly unbeatable, but we also think that with the top-level interviewees we have assembled for D6, that it is game on.

Until then, here’s the Gates/Jobs video from D5:

Mark Zuckerberg? Who’s that? Now, at Facebook, it’s apparently the Season of Sandberg!

Ah, the appeal of a fresh face is just irresistible to the press–OK, including BoomTown, except we posted more than a month ago!–with two major pieces, in Fortune and The Wall Street Journal, rolling out this week alone, with everything you wanted to know about the new COO of the social-networking site, former Google (GOOG) exec Sheryl Sandberg (pictured here).

But if you don’t have time to read them, here’s a quick synopsis of both:

Fortune: “Meet Facebook’s New Number Two” by Jessi Hempel

Details: Just 14 days into new job; Leg-tucking white Eames chair (pictured here); as Google’s VP global online sales and ops, ran everything!; she and Zuckerberg met cute at holiday party; aced Larry Summers’s midterm and final at Harvard public economics course, much to his shock, since he implies she was kind of chatty in class with friends.

Also Harvard MBA; obligatory McKinsey stint; Treasury Department in Clinton administration; picked 300-person Google over investment banking; always 10 steps ahead; Google.org mover and shaker.

Facebook aims: A need for corporate structure pronto; also time for the bigger picture; no more one-off decisions; more international growth; hiring senior managers; oh, yes, also must invent a new ad model for social networks.

But no silver bullets!; kicks ass, talks tough, then hugs all around (we did not make this up!); take out trash from Mark’s all-night Pizza-My-Heart-and-Red-Bull party (OK, we made that one up!).

Money quote: “This feels like Google when I started.”

The Wall Street Journal: “New Face at Facebook Hopes to Map Out a Road to Growth” by Carol Hymowitz

Details: Two weeks into new job; Biz dev guy Dan Rose is already sick of her (”It feels like she’s been here six months already.”); flip-flops endangered?; is able to argue why she is right by arguing how she is wrong; dangles data before engineers like fish before seals; easygoing but intense (when will these opposing dichotomies end?); crashed Harvard computers, but it was worth it.

Taught aerobics and was a stretching fascist; more cute dinner chatter with Zuckerberg before hiring; grew Google team from four to 4,000; a feminist and hangs with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda (see aerobics!) too!; Facebook pix of Argentine waterfall-leaning; went to high school in Miami; small kids, hubby; more 10 steps ahead and shoving people out of comfort zone.

Facebook aims: Employee performance reviews; processes for identifying and recruiting new employees; management-training programs; rally troops; stop the cash burn and up ad sales; close-knit culture must go, but you get hundreds of millions of new friends!

Also must figure out how to save Beacon’s bacon; earn trust of users, while frantically searching for a business model; wants frank feedback from staff and will publicly thank such person who gives it.

Money quote: “Facebook is a different space than Google, with tremendous potential to connect people, but it needs scale, it needs systems and processes to have impact, and I can do that.”

Now in her second week at Facebook, new COO Sheryl Sandberg (pictured here) probably thought BoomTown was done making suggestions of things she needed to work on at the social networking site.

Not even close! (Although we promise eventually to do a post on things BoomTown likes about Facebook.)

But that day is not today, where the focus is on search. It is a topic you should know a lot about, given those half-dozen years you spent at the Googleplex as one of its top execs.

And while your job focus was on ad operations, one cannot imagine you did not pick up a thing or two about search, which is like oxygen there.

And, I am sorry to say, if this was the case at Facebook, we would all be turning a magnificent shade of blue right about now from lack thereof.

That’s because search on Facebook, which is billed as a place to find friends, is about as bad as it can be. In fact, it has so few features and so little usability that I would be better off tagging some of my friends with those dog-collar homing devices to keep track of them.

Case in point is my email (which I have already whined about here). Last night, I was searching for a particular email from the fall and had to slog through page after page of unorganizable emails to find it purely from memory.

And your new feature to make lists of friends is very time-intensive, even though it is described as: “Now you can easily organize your friends into convenient lists for messaging, invites, and more.”

But it is a lot harder than it seems, with only snapshots and names to use as you are selecting how to organize them.

Currently, for example, I have 661 friends I made before being able to even make lists, with 217 more requests I am ignoring, since the prospect of a massive list I cannot manage is exhausting, even though I know there are people in there I want to interact with and know about without opening up each and every profile.

While it is nice to now be able to add friends to a list, it is still much too crude a way to understand this important social graph.

So instead of being this enlightened ecosystem, my friends list feels like a really good library with all the books scattered on the floor in a messy pile.

That makes things hard, since some friends are real friends and some are people I kind of know and others people who like BoomTown, for example.

It would be nice then to just have a way to drag and drop these names or present me with some more sophisticated way search and sort them.

The same search problems are present all over Facebook, where almost nothing is searchable in an easy way.

I did a universal search, for example, of Barry Manilow–your god of music and mine (Vegas, baby!)–and got 424 mostly meaningless results (as you can see below; click on the image to make it bigger).

And don’t even get me started on trying to search for good widgets–but let’s just say it makes the quest for the Holy Grail look simple.

Thus, I have a very good suggestion with what, what, what you can do with yet another slug of money–$60 million more–that Facebook got recently from Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing.

No, not a set of those pricey Japanese massage chairs or automated toilets seats that blanket the Google (GOOG) campus from whence you came. No, not MacBook Airs for all at the startup. No, not even a lifetime supply of Red Bull for the gang-that-likes-to-work-all-night in Palo Alto.

Right now, you have $120 million from Li, to go with the $240 million Microsoft handed over, and I am guessing Facebook breaks even on operations, so you might still have some errants tens of millions left over from earlier investments.

This is a lot of scratch to work with to create a world-class search to make Facebook what your CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg calls a “utility.”

And utility means useful, so get busy on creating a search product worthy of the well-organized profile pages that Facebook is known for.

That, or fork over some dough for Google or Yahoo (YHOO) or Microsoft (MSFT) to do it for you.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

On your fourth day at Facebook, my data said to me: Sheryl will surely set us free.

But, let’s be realistic–getting ubiquitous data portability is about as likely as actually finding a partridge in a pear tree.

Still, here’s an issue the new COO can actually sink her teeth into, as the notion of who has the rights to your data on social-networking sites like Facebook and how much control you have over it yourself is a topic that will surely eventually become a political one (and politics was an arena in which Sandberg was involved as a staffer in the Clinton administration).

While I know Facebook this week joined in a Microsoft (MSFT) initiative–along with social-networking sites like LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo–on a new and, well, convoluted, scheme to allow users to move their relationship info between the services, I am sorry to say that it is just not enough. Not nearly enough.

Like the appalling situation in instant messaging, where the key services do not work together because companies put their interests ahead of consumers’ convenience, there should be an industry-wide standard to allow users to move a great deal, if not all, of their data among and between services of their choice.

Obviously, all photos and videos, as well as personal information inputted, should be easy to move. And I do realize there needs to be clear privacy parameters around moving data about your friends (who, in any case, gave you access to the data in the first place).

And I do realize this is a difficult technological issue, but you are all very smart, I am told, and have plenty of money to figure it out.

So why won’t it happen quickly?

In a post I wrote in January after blogger Robert Scoble got slapped by the company for using software to “scrape” his data from his Facebook profile, I noted an even more obvious reason.

I wrote: “More to the point, such an ability would be damaging to Facebook’s business plan around building a robust ad business. The success of that squarely relies on people staying and actively using the service because they have committed time and effort in putting up scads of information, photos and videos about themselves on the service, as well as establishing a complex and personally valuable network of friends.”

While sites like Facebook like to trot out privacy concerns about this particular issue of being able to digitally move friends’ data around without explicit permission (even though a person could physically copy all this data and move it anyway), to my mind, the issue has more to do with social-networking sites wanting to lock you into their services, rather than allowing you to do what you like.

It’s all very parental, but not very realistic.

In fact, I might have several services I use, like Facebook for fun and LinkedIn for work and MySpace to meet, say, fellow fans of Barry Manilow (yes, I am a Fanilow).

Thus, I would like to be able to move data around easily and without having to pick a certain camp to live in to do so.

After all, as the great Barry sings (sort of): Oh, Facebook, well, I came and I gave (my data) without taking.

Now, though, I want to take.

Dear Sheryl,

First off, I hope you had a nice first day at Facebook as the new COO, or, as BoomTown is going to call you forthwith: Where-The-Buck-Now- Stops.

Now that you have been issued your official social-networking company flip-flops and gotten your arms around the Beacon issue (here’s a Cliff Note on that debacle for you: AVOID!), I am here at the head of the complaints line, ready to start yammering on.

And today’s yammer? For the love of SuperPokes, please fix Facebook’s mail!

While I know this is not in your purview (products are under Matt Cohler, who is under Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom you are under), I really don’t care.

All I know is that it is a major problem within the Facebook service and its continued lameness will eventually strain your audience’s patience and, ultimately, its size. And a smaller audience means less advertising–which is your sweet spot!

If you don’t believe me, see where the lack of innovation with AOL’s (TWX) email service–which was once dominant–led. Hotmail (MSFT), Yahoo Mail (YHOO), Gmail (GOOG).

Why? Well, you could not do anything good with the mail, which was trapped inside AOL (the original blockers of data portability) and very few good options were available to save, store and manipulate it within the closed AOL service.

And there are even fewer features in your closed service. I cannot move the mail. I cannot sort it. I cannot search it. I cannot move it here and there.

What can I do? I can “Mark It As Unread,” “Mark It As Read” and “Delete” it. Wheeeeeee.

Currently, for example, I have 154 messages waiting for me in my Facebook email box that I cannot be bothered to open. Why?

Well, I already get alerted to them in my regular mail in full text, so why bother? Usually, I ask Facebook emailers to send me email directly to my regular email address in my reply.

As for sent mail? I can add a video, or share a link or send a gift (no, I am not sending you a digital ice cream cone ever!) and little else.

And while I know you have announced a soon-to-appear chat feature, it sounds suspiciously as under-featured at launch as your mail is now.

It apparently cannot be seen outside Facebook and will not integrate with popular services like AIM, third-party apps cannot be built on it and it is one-on-one only.

You can see the problem here. While I realize you would rather focus on more youth-loving stuff like your Wall (we’ll get to that later), it still seems as if top-notch communications apps should be a priority at Facebook if it wants to become, as Zuckerberg has said many times, my “social utility.”

And right now, mail–at least–is pretty useless.

Tomorrow: Data portability!

Today is the first day of work at Facebook for ex-Google executive Sheryl Sandberg, who will arrive at the social-networking company’s Palo Alto, Calif., HQ to take up the job of COO.

At Google (GOOG), Sandberg was the vice president, Global Online Sales and Operations, a major post in which she ran a large swath of the search giant’s ad operations.

Sandberg was responsible for online sales of Google’s ad and publishing products, bringing experience Facebook sorely needs. Previously, she was also the chief of staff at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration.

At Facebook, Sandberg will oversee a large part of the company, including all sales, human resources, marketing and communications, and business development.

Her job description essentially makes her No. 2 to Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, although it’s not characterized that way by him or the company.

But BoomTown is declaring it so, and plans to spend the first week of Sandberg’s tenure making suggestions on what she should get cracking on now.

No surprise, we have a million of them, well beyond our longtime complaint that third-party widgets on the site are juvenile (news flash–they still are!).

And even though our concerns are not all in Sandberg’s purview, we’re directing our suggestions her way, because, well, just because! (In actuality, the CFO and the technology and product divisions will report directly to Zuckerberg.)

Nonetheless, we want some action, including everything from improving the dreadful mail on Facebook, to giving users more ability to sort friends, to allowing data portability to figuring out a way to jack up Facebook’s ad business in a truly significant way.

Yes, that.

Today, though, we’ll give Sandberg time to move in to her office and unpack her boxes, and try to figure out where to eat now that the glories of the Google cafeteria are no longer available to her (that’s right, no more organic soy lattes or hand-fed, massaged-daily roast chicken for you!).

But tomorrow, as Scarlett O’Hara said, is another day.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

How often does a brother-in-law get the credit?

But when it comes to top Google exec Sheryl Sandberg taking over as COO at Facebook, apparently a very influential person in the move was Marc Bodnick (pictured here).

While Bodnick’s Elevation Partners colleague Roger McNamee–both are named on its site as managing directors and co-founders of the private equity firm–has been cited correctly as being key to hooking up Sandberg with Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg, Sandberg noted that Bodnick’s enthusiasm was critically infectious.

“Marc has been a real Facebook proponent for a long time and really understood first exactly how powerful a medium it was,” said Sandberg in an interview with BoomTown last week of her brother-in-law. “He really was a great influence on me.”

Of course, Bodnick would be–he serves on the board of popular Facebook developer iLike and, perhaps more importantly, is a personal investor in Facebook.

“Sheryl is a tremendous leader who has the chops in both online ads and monetization,” said Bodnick. “All of the problems of these social-networking business models are all new, and she natively knows how to deal with them.”

Sandberg (pictured here) just cleared out six years of detritus from her desk at Google (GOOG) Friday and is taking two weeks off before starting in her new and highly touted job as the COO of Facebook on March 24.

The appointment of Sandberg, news of which was broken in BoomTown (our motto: embargo-a-no-no), got a lot of attention, most especially because she is such a high-ranking and experienced Internet executive.

While we posted a few interesting tidbits on Sandberg, as well as showing off a bit of her in a video BoomTown made this summer, she and I got in a quick phone interview before she took off.

As she has said, Sandberg was, in fact, already thinking about leaving Google before the Facebook offer materialized. She had earlier been approached by one traditional media company she will not name, in fact.

“I was not looking in a big way, but I was seeking a new challenge either internally or externally after six years at Google building the online sales team,” she said.

Sandberg noted that when she came back from a recent maternity leave for her second child, she was struck by how well her No. 2, David Fischer, who is taking over for her now, managed a strong team.

“The team was in great shape and I felt like it was time for change for me,” she said.

And a good time for Zuckerberg to make an approach, which happened at a holiday party thrown by former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig. Ironically in the small world of Silicon Valley, the pair had never met before.

Still, Sandberg said she had been a longtime fan of the Facebook social-networking service and an early user.

“I used it a lot for family groups, following election coverage from my friends in D.C. and to share a lot of information,” she said.

At the party, Sandberg and Zuckerberg started talking about this, as well as how to scale organizations–you know, fun holiday chatter!–an area in which Facebook has been in dire need of help.

Zuckerberg asked Sandberg if they could continue the conversation, and over a series of dinners they discussed the company and its challenges.

“It was very philosophical at first and we did not ever talk about a specific job,” said Sandberg of the half-dozen or more meals they shared, mostly at her home in Atherton, Calif.

The pair moved closer to specific talks after spending even more time together at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, the tony annual gathering where the world’s elite gather to ogle each other.

It did not take long after that for the deal to be struck for Sandberg to come to Facebook, where she will have purview over large and important swatches of the company, especially public policy and sales.

“I think Facebook has a huge and unique opportunity to expand and have even more influence, if it leverages its amazing product in the right way,” said Sandberg. “Its biggest challenge is the same, though, and that is, do consumers like it and does it help people share information in the best way possible?”

While Sandberg says she knows the heat and hype around its $15 billion valuation attract attention, she thinks the company needs to focus on scaling operationally, scaling geographically and scaling monetization, and the rest will take care of itself.

“Our goal is to get more and more users using it and more and more of those users using it more and more,” said Sandberg in a tongue-twister of a new motto for Facebook. “Does that make sense?”

Incredibly, it does. Now, it will be Sandberg’s job to actually pull it off.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.