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Qualcomm's CEO Paul Jacobs Talks About Smartbooks and More!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:36:52 +0000

When in San Diego recently, BoomTown paid a visit to Qualcomm and its Chairman and CEO, Paul Jacobs, to talk about a new “smartbook” device the wireless-technology company unveiled last week.

Well, sort of–while I got a gander at a prototype, the real one is not actually set to debut until the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in January, where Jacobs will deliver his first keynote address.

There, he will show off what is essentially a combination of a smartphone and a netbook using wireless technology and an always-on capability, an attempt to push yet another innovative device type onto the market.

It will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip, and the first ones will be made by Lenovo and offered by AT&T (T)–to try to get the device widely used by consumers.

Smartbooks will be videocentric and have a Linux-based user interface, a keyboard and a range of popular widget applications, such as email and Facebook.

Obviously, this will be a competitive market and, really, Apple (AAPL), with its upcoming tablet computer, is also pushing into this mobile-phone-that-ate-computers space.

Moving into new markets has been important for Jacobs and Qualcomm (QCOM), which recently gave fiscal-year forecasts under Wall Street expectations and has had a rocky time in recent quarters.

Along with the econalypse, the company has attributed this to the decline in handsets with CDMA wireless technology, which Qualcomm pioneered.

Here’s my interview with Jacobs about smartbooks, as well as augmented reality and the company’s new FLO TV device, coming out soon. Plus, a wireless bandaid!:

[ See post to watch video ]

MSN Debuts Online Health Service

Kara Swisher — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:20:35 +0000

MSN, Microsoft’s online portal, released a beta version of a service to let users manage their health information on the Web.

Called My Health Info, the Microsoft (MSFT) offering, which includes a range of widgets and other Web tools, wades into an area that many are attempting to crack, including Google (GOOG).

The service, which will be located on MSN’s health site, will use Microsoft’s HealthVault platform and Silverlight technology, taking the company’s effort to create a platform for storage of health information into the mainstream.

Due to issues of privacy and security, consumers have been slow to warm to loading up their personal health information on the Web.

Microsoft said users can also “research medical concerns, read the latest health news, gain guidance from medical experts, learn about nutrition, and monitor conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes.”

Google has a similar beta product called Google Health, and there are others. In fact, the former head of Google Health, Adam Bosworth, has a similar start-up called Keas.

All efforts are trying to get consumers to embrace and feel comfortable in putting their health information online and offer easier tools to do that.

Here’s a screen shot of My Health Info:

Here’s the Microsoft press release on the service:

MSN Introduces Online Tools to Help People Make Smarter Health and Lifestyle Decisions

From swine flu info to symptom checkers, MSN My Health Info includes a broad range of widgets and tools to attract health-minded consumers.

REDMOND, Wash.–Oct. 1, 2009–Today, MSN released the beta of My Health Info, a new online service that helps people manage their health information on the Web. My Health Info is a unique service that offers people a variety of tools and widgets to upload, organize and monitor health information stored in their personal Microsoft HealthVault accounts. The new service allows people to research medical concerns, read the latest health news, gain guidance from medical experts, learn about nutrition, and monitor conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes.
In addition, MSN is launching a specialized swine flu information center today on the MSN Health & Fitness home page (http://health.msn.com), spotlighting the virus that is currently top of mind for people. MSN works with trusted consumer health information providers such as Harvard Medical School and the MayoClinic.com to keep people informed and armed with data to help them prevent contracting the virus, assess for risk factors, find out where to get vaccinations in their local neighborhood when they become available, and more.

My Health Info delivers features designed for busy parents, adults who are managing the health concerns of aging parents, and people managing chronic conditions and multiple medications. Because the data is stored in Microsoft HealthVault, people can access their information via the Web whenever they need it and share it across multiple connected health applications. My Health Info will allow consumers to do the following:

Customize their page with tools such as allergy, medicine and blood pressure trackers, a lab results bank, body mass index calculators, vaccination information and more

Use information from personal health devices such as heart-rate monitors and pedometers

Access profiles of multiple family members at one time, allowing caregivers to more easily manage not only their information, but their family’s as well

Stay informed by receiving the latest in health news from sources they trust

“People care deeply about credible, timely and comprehensive information about health topics. MSN My Health Info will provide an exceptional selection of resources, tools and information available from a variety of sources in one convenient location,” said Scott Moore, U.S. executive producer, MSN. “We are committed to delighting our customers with information, services and tools that keep them informed and simplify their lives.”

Consumers are increasingly looking for online solutions that help them take better control of their health decisions and their families’ information, and that connect them to the broader health ecosystem in which they interact. The My Health Info service enables MSN to offer a timely service to its users, which will be continually updated to help ensure that consumers are offered relevant tools. The service is connected with Microsoft HealthVault, which stores consumer health information in a controlled and privacy-enhanced environment, while enabling consumers to easily collect and transfer their data across the health system for a more holistic and better quality healthcare experience. The My Health Info site is powered by Microsoft Silverlight technology to deliver a rich, interactive Web experience.

“As consumers are increasingly being asked to manage more of their health and wellness, they are looking for solutions that help them navigate an overwhelming amount of information, enabling them to take control of their personal health data,” said David Cerino, general manager of consumer health in Microsoft Health Solutions Group. “Building on the power of HealthVault, My Health Info demonstrates how we are continuing to provide consumers with the trusted and relevant tools they need to make more informed decisions in support of their health and the health of their families.”

Sale of iLike to MySpace–$13.5 Million in Cash, $6 Million for Talent Retention–Delayed Over Tax Issues (Really!)…Plus, the List of Other Suitors!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:25:06 +0000

The board of iLike planned a meeting earlier tonight to go over a buyout offer by MySpace, several sources close to the situation said. But it was suddenly canceled because of some thorny tax implications related to the talent-retention part of the deal to purchase the social music start-up.

This does not mean the pending acquisition is in jeopardy, sources said, and it could be on track to be signed as early as today, barring any more complications.

That is what both iLike and MySpace execs are hoping, said sources, one of whom described the outstanding issues as a “technicality.”

What’s also been unclear is the actual price the social networking giant is paying for iLike, which has been reported as about $20 million.

In fact, only $13.5 million will be paid upfront in cash, with about $8 million of that money likely going to one of its major shareholders, Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM), due to its preferred shares.

Another $6 million has been promised by MySpace in forward payments to retain some key employees–including iLike co-founders and twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi.

Although those employees can remain in Seattle, where iLike has its HQ, they must stay employed at Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace for two and a half years to get their money.

It’s that talent part of the deal that caused the Partovis to cancel the iLike board meeting, which they explained to key investors was necessary due to some confusion over how the money paid to these employees would be taxed.

A person briefed on the issue said that if it was taxed as compensation, it would have a much higher tax rate than if it were considered long-term capital gains.

The Partovis said in the email that they were working on the problem with their advisers on the sale, Allen & Co., as well as with lawyers and accountants.

Tax snafus in the middle of a sale are not exactly the way the entrepreneurial Partovis envisioned it was going to go for iLike (see my various video interview related to iLike below) when they created the compelling music sharing and recommendation service in 2006.

After only a few years, the innovative start-up claims it has 50 million registered users overall.

A lot of that growth was due to iLike quickly becoming one of the most popular widgets on social networking sites like Facebook, where it has also been the top music application, with 10 million active monthly users.

The Partovis–who once were close with execs at Facebook (see my party video below), particularly founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg–placed great faith in its growth lifting all Web 2.0 boats.

It did not turn out that way, though, especially from the important financial point of view, and iLike scrambled to diversify.

The iLike service recently began offering a music downloading service, for example, as well as other such features, all of which would be attractive to the music-centric focus at MySpace.

Once an Internet sensation, MySpace has been struggling to restructure itself after losing momentum and buzz in recent years, as well as a huge advertising revenue drop in its most recent quarter.

Its owner, News Corp. (NWS), replaced its founders with new management four months ago, including former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta as CEO.

After making major staff layoffs and rejiggering management, Van Natta and his new team have been working on an overhaul of the MySpace product and seem to be refocusing it to become a global music and entertainment service.

MySpace also has a joint venture with major music labels, MySpace Music, which has been trying to attract consumers and build a viable business. Sources said MySpace Music could also buy into the iLike deal or simply license its technology to improve its features.

Thus, purchasing iLike would fit in well with MySpace’s overall plans.

And iLike has also been in need of a fix itself.

For all its popularity, especially on Facebook, it has moved slowly toward profitabilty, and its $17 million in funding has been dwindling, as has its viability as a standalone company.

Back in more frothy Web 2.0 days, iLike’s generous funding gave it a valuation of more than $50 million, which has also lost steam over time and as the economy has worsened.

In the last quarter of fiscal 2008, for example, Ticketmaster wrote down its $13 million investment by $6 million.

Tensions between its execs and iLike have gotten worse over time, although some thought at one time that Ticketmaster would buy iLike.

No longer, which is why the founders turned to Allen & Co., as MediaMemo reported as far back as November, to find another big investor or buyer.

Wrote Peter Kafka: “Delivering free music on the Web has so far proven to be a high-cost, low-revenue endeavor…”

So, the New York deal-making firm ginned up a small group of suitors, which included Facebook, Activision Blizzard (ATVI) and Microsoft (MSFT), as well as MySpace.

Of the three, Activision was most serious, with interest in integrating iLike’s community and technology tools with its Guitar Hero franchise.

But Activision never actually made a formal bid, said sources.

Both Microsoft and Facebook also considered the purchase, but sources said they would only offer stock in a deal. But iLike wanted cash in the deal.

The Partovis were also was wary about working at either place.

Both Partovis, for example, had worked at Microsoft (Ali after selling it LinkExchange in 1998 for $265 million; Hadi several times, once following Microsoft’s acquisition of Tellme Networks, which he co-founded).

As it has turned out, in its short life, iLike’s last, best alternative is apparently MySpace.

“Look, iLike has been shopped around for a while, and while the team and technology are great, it only has one choice and that’s to be sold,” said one person involved in the various scenarios. “The question for the buyer then is whether it was worth it to pay up or just move on and do it ourselves.”

So until the bean counters settle this IRS nightmare, here is my video interview with Hadi Partovi about a year ago at iLike’s HQ in the Capitol Hill section of Seattle, when times were a little more hopeful:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is a very dark and very shaky video I did when iLike threw a fete in Silicon Valley to celebrate its start-up two years ago and to send some appreciation in Facebook’s direction–it is so dated that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is in the video, is still at Google (GOOG).

(Full Disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Yahoo Finally Rolls Out New Homepage to the Masses–and, Drum Roll, It's Good (Plus Screenshots)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:00:47 +0000

Although it’s not news that Yahoo has been readying a new version of its homepage and has spent a lot of time doing so–in fact, it’s gone all Handy Manny with a whole lot of test renovations–the Internet giant begins the massive rollout of it tomorrow.

The official launch of what was code-named “Metro,” which Yahoo had previously said was coming in the fall, will take place on an opt-in “beta” basis for the hundreds of millions of users in the U.S. and will be extended to France, the U.K. and India later this week.

When users log in, they will get a choice–for now, there will be no forcing it–to switch over to the new version, which Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat, SVP of Integrated Consumer Experiences, said in an interview with me today by phone, is the “the most fundamental change to the homepage ever.”

And, indeed, the new look is much different, even than previous launch candidates, featuring an almost complete rejiggering of the look and feel of the most important page at Yahoo (YHOO) and one of the most trafficked on the Internet.

The change is an important one for Yahoo, since its front page is perhaps its most powerful calling card to users and advertisers, as well as to Wall Street. Its homepage gets 330 million unique visitors every month.

Yahoo has redone its homepage many times since its founding in the mid-1990s (you can see the various incarnations of it here), but this new design is perhaps the most dramatic.

(See screenshots of the new regular page and one with a Facebook app featured below; click on the images to make them larger.)

The most striking change is a prominent left-side “My Favorites” area, with 65 specially designed applications that users can customize, including giving a quick hovering glimpse of email, stocks and of third-party sites like Facebook.

Not quite a dashboard or exactly a social networking page, it feels a little as if Yahoo took a browser tab or a toolbar, put it in a vertical format and gave it some great functionality.

Full disclosure: All Things Digital, as well as several other Dow Jones news properties, are in its special alphabetical apps gallery, although I had no idea it would be there.

Yahoo also allows users to create such widgets on the fly from most any Web site and they can have up to 36 apps on the homepage.

There is advertising in the boxes that pop up when hovering over these apps, which is a way of dealing with the issue of purposely sending users away from Yahoo rather than keeping them there. It is a much better version of that trap.

“We want to be the center of people’s lives online and want to do it in an open, innovative way, all while providing a compelling experience,” said Bhat. “It marks the beginning of a renaissance of Yahoo, a renaissance where every pixel matters.”

After looking over the history of Yahoo’s homepages since 1994 (see them all here), it has pretty much told a story of a site with increasingly smaller font sizes and more stuff packed on it.

“It had nothing to do with the user, but what Yahoo wanted the user to do,” said Bhat, rather frankly.

Thus, he said, everything going forward will focus on what the user wants, which, he explained, essentially boils down to a “my world” and “the world” outlook.

In the my-world bucket: Email, favorite Web sites, stock info. In the the-world: General news, search, what’s hot.

But, unlike its highly customized MyYahoo product, Bhat said that Yahoo wanted to make it easier for users to create a page where “there is destination for everything you are about in just a click or two.”

The programmed “Today” module remains, although users can indicate which kind of information–finance, news, entertainment–gets top billing.

The module is also localized, depending on the user.

“We wanted to provide broadcast and narrowcast in one place,” said Bhat.

That includes updating status, right from the homepage, including integration with social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

But–in a very big mistake–there is no ability to update status to the popular microblogging service Twitter on this part of the homepage, as yet. You can make it an app, though, as Twitter can appear in your Yahoo updates.

And there is a big advertising module still on the right, along with a what’s-hot section. And, finally, there will also soon be complete two-way syncing with mobile devices, said Bhat.

Interestingly, although CEO Carol Bartz has often said internally that she does not like the color purple, which has been the company’s signature one since its founding, the main page keeps up the violet tradition with a lighter tone.

“Yahoo’s color is purple and it is known for that,” said Bhat (deftly not taking my delicious bait).

As to why it has taken so long to get its front page redone–it was originally set to debut late last year–Bhat noted that such a major shift of such a trafficked page was, well, complex.

“It involves bringing users along and also rewiring everything within Yahoo,” said Bhat, who gave Bartz credit for turbocharging the effort, since she first arrived at the troubled Silicon Valley icon in January and quickly put the brakes on the planned launch. “Now, we are looking at Yahoo holistically, all centered around the user.”

Time will tell if it is a success, but it is certainly a good and even innovative effort, in much the same spirit Microsoft (MSFT) has had with its new Bing search offering.

And while some might complain that it is not cutting-edge enough, it seems just the right amount of rejiggering and open feel for the mass of users it serves.

For Yahoo, at least when it comes to this one, change is indeed good.

Slide's Max Levchin Talks About Web 2.0, Redux!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:27:54 +0000

Almost two years ago, just as Web 2.0 was heating up, BoomTown did a three-part interview with Slide founder and CEO Max Levchin.

Soon after, the popular maker of social networking applications, often called widgets, grabbed a big pile of cash from new investors–$50 million from Fidelity and T. Rowe Price–which put the value of the company at $550 million.

So, it was high-time for another visit to see him, especially after the recent recession has forced a lot of high-flying Silicon Valley darlings like Slide to wise up a little and get down to business.

That has meant tightening up costs, abandoning some business plans and drilling down on others.

Previously, Slide’s financial strategy had included making money from selling premium versions of its software, as well as selling advertisers on its large, although disparate, audience with display ads.

Now, says Levchin, it is still about premium products, but also about selling a brand “experience” rather than less effective and increasingly commoditized network-style advertising.

The products have also evolved, although Slide still essentially makes a wide range of innovative widgets that have been attracting many millions of users each. They include everything from slide shows to a software program called SuperPoke that allows a user to poke another in a super way.

A lot of Slide’s initial growth had been through taking advantage of the popularity of MySpace and Facebook.

But, since then, the company has been trying to be a kind of distributed content and application company that is not wholly dependent on large platforms.

Here’s a video of my interview with Levchin at Slide’s new HQ in San Francisco:

[ See post to watch video ]

New ATD Features: Topic Pages and Finding Jobs (No, Not Steve!)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:57:42 +0000

Here at All Things Digital, we are always fussing away on our site, making a variety of improvements regularly to deliver a better experience to our readers.

In that vein, we have recently added two new features over the last few weeks, both of which deserve a look-see: Topic pages and job listings.

The first is our attempt to offer a new and easier way for the ATD audience to navigate specific information, by gathering in one place a selection of blogs, columns, videos and photos on the site, all related to a single popular topic, all without requiring a user to search via keywords.

The variety of our topic pages will grow over time. But right now we have special pages for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3GS, the Palm (PALM) Pre, the new Bing search service from Microsoft (MSFT) and news from Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference.

Secondly, we’ve partnered with Simply Hired to offer paid job listings on AllThingsD.com, right from the front page. Starting this week, you’ll find Simply Hired widgets with current job opportunities on pages across our site, including here.

Recruiters can post jobs directly to the ATD jobs page, and these listings are also distributed to more than 5,000 partner sites in Simply Hired’s network, including GigaOM, Mashable and WashingtonPost.com.

(Full disclosure: Simply Hired, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has raised some of its funding from the News Corp. (NWS) digital unit, Fox Interactive Media. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

BoomTown's Top 10 List of Fact-Challenged Revelations That Should Be in the Facebook Tell-All Book

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:34:39 +0000

How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! So much so that I called all my book industry contacts–hey, I am a published author, ya know!–even though I have not actually completed reading a book since the Internet started and gave me permanent attention deficit disorder.

But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of Mezrich’s tome, “The Accidental Billionaires,” which is set to come out July 14.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck. But the drama around the book should be interesting, to say the least.

More so, since this week also came news that actors Michael Cera and Shia LaBeouf are being considered to play founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and that David Fincher, the director of the lugubrious Brad Pitt snoozer, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” is “attached” to the movie version.

Even better: “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin will pen it and actor Kevin Spacey will produce the Columbia Pictures film, which will be called “The Social Network.”

Well, Hollywood sure came up with an original title!

It certainly does not signal the juiciness of the proposal for the book–which did manage to leak out last year–with a lot of tale tales in it that seem to have pretty much tracked on its oddly purple subtitle of “The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.”

The cover–which you can see on the book’s Facebook page (the delicious gall of Mezrich!)–features a spilled martini glass and a red bra flung nearby.

Martinis? Red bras? Sex? Facebook? Really?

Obviously, Mezrich has not actually met Zuckerberg, who is a very nice geekish young man, but who has approximately the sex appeal of a rack of Facebook servers.

Powerful yes! Spockish? Yes! Sexy? Um, no, no, no.

I will not even begin to parse the red bra thing, although I am attributing the martinis to stylish former COO (and now MySpace CEO) Owen Van Natta.

But, apparently, the sex part seems to have to do with Zuckerberg starting the company with others while an undergrad at Harvard University, as a scheme to meet some ladies.

I would say there are easier ways to attract the womenfolk–not that I could give tips or anything–but whatever!

Thus, since I cannot get my mitts on the book (yet!), here’s my list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair things that should be in the book.

10.) Facebook was actually going to be called OnlyPrettyLadyFacebook, but cooler heads prevailed.

9.) The Wall? A clever plot by Zuckerberg to build his online service on a fascist construct, touting his hegemony over all he surveyed.

Wait, that actually happened, and now some Russians are even investors.

Long live the Zuckrepublic of Palo Alto!

8.) Reason for stealing, oops, borrowing, oops again, completely separately developing an exact replica of ConnectU social network at Harvard:

The Olympically muscle-headed Winklevoss twins used to beat up the brainy Zuckerberg on his way back to the dorm, prompting a “Revenge of the Nerds” plot line.

7.) Facebook’s Beacon advertising? All Randi Zuckerberg’s idea, so she could find out what she was getting for her birthday from her billionaire-on-paper brother.

6.) Zuckerberg’s famous flip-flops were made in China under dubious working conditions. Wait, that’s true too.

5.) The 20-something Zuckerberg is actually 93 years old, a real-life version of Benjamin Button, which would explain the social awkwardness and staring-into-space-sometimes thing.

4.) The no-breast-feeding-pictures controversy pretty much proves no one is interested in bras or, more precisely, what goes in them at Facebook.

3.) COO Sheryl Sandberg is a cyborg sent to Facebook from Google for purposes of infiltration. She and her crafty sidekick, Elliott Schrage, will become self-aware in 2012 and hunt down Zuckerberg in a thrilling chase that will also become a movie.

2.) The sex, drugs and rock-and-roll stuff actually all took place at MySpace, which really pisses off certifiably dashing co-Founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson because, once again, Zuckerberg stole their mojo!

1.) This work of fiction, oops, “fact”-ion, oops again, nonfiction, is probably not going to sell many copies because it will mysteriously be uploaded in its entirety by a widget that will distribute it free to Facebook’s 200 million plus users while simultaneously SuperDuperPoking Mezrich, by throwing real sheep at him.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Ben.

(By the way, here is an extra for you: The $15 billion valuation for Facebook, along with all the other Web 2.0 ones? Totally true. Just ask any VC.)

And, in case anyone was wondering what the real Facebook looks like, here is a recent video tour I did of its new HQ in Palo Alto, Calif.:

[ See post to watch video ]

How Is Yahoo's Massive "Metro" Homepage Redesign Going? It Depends on Who You Ask.

Kara Swisher — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:38:26 +0000

Late last night, Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat (pictured here) posted an update on the ongoing redesign of the Internet giant’s homepage, a massive undertaking given that 300 million people visit it each month.

Bhat, who is SVP of Yahoo’s Front Doors, Communities and Network Services, said the company was completing the first phase of its “bucket testing” and collecting feedback, but that, “Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.”

Indeed not, according to several sources at Yahoo (YHOO), who said that the massive underhaul of the homepage has been a much more complex, much dicier effort and was taking a lot longer than expected to launch.

(You can see examples of the redesign and also Bhat’s post last night on Yahoo’s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal, below.)

When the redesign–which is called “Metro” internally–was announced last September, Bhat said the changes would initially impact less than one percent of worldwide users in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and India.

But he also said they would then be rolled out to a wider and wider circle over the next six months. That has not happened, obviously.

Why? One key reason: Some results in limited testing showing actual declines in traffic, both from pointing outward more and also having people stay on the homepage with beefed-up “one-click” features.

The biggest issue is openness, which is aggressive in the new design, especially for Yahoo.

But it is a move pushed strongly by former CEO Jerry Yang. The idea is that Yahoo was a “starting point” for consumers was one of his key strategies.

That includes adding in lots of widget-like applications, or apps, onto the homepage from outside partners, and many more links to sites all over the Web.

“We’re pointing people off Yahoo and they are going,” said one exec about Yahoo’s first massive redesign since 2006. “While being open is a good thing, it also means less traffic inside Yahoo.”

Said another: “A lot of us want it to point more to great Yahoo services we offer instead of giving everyone else the benefit of our size.”

And the results so far, several sources said, have definitely caught the attention of new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who some say might be considering slowing the wider rollout of the new homepage that insiders said was expected to be well on its way by spring.

Delay is, of course, common in massive projects like this, especially in this case, since the Yahoo homepage is a powerful “firehose” all over Yahoo and the Web.

When I contacted Bhat earlier this week to ask about the status of the homepage redesign, he would not comment about when it would roll out widely or about results of the testing, or give me access to the redesigned pages.

But he did kindly offer to walk me through the progress so far, next week at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale.

Then an update from Bhat suddenly appeared last night, in which he outlined that positive and negative feedback from that small number of Yahoo customers who have been using the new homepage.

Apparently, testers love the streamlined look and feel and the apps, and prefer the new page over the current one.

They also want even more apps, though, and think Yahoo should nix the darker color, as well as give easier access to mail and other services.

One assumes that is just a tiny bit of the feedback, especially given how dramatic the changes are.

In a post last fall when the redesign was announced by Bhat, I wrote that Yahoo was “employing a design that more significantly allows users to customize the starting page in a way that essentially amounts to a kind of My Yahoo-lite for everyone.”

That meant the ability to get to information and services more quickly, with links to outside email providers, initially from Google (GOOG) and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL.

The test design also includes a prominent left-hand vertical bar, with applications from both Yahoo properties and third-party services like eBay (EBAY), which are easy to add and remove.

Eventually, Bhat said at the time, there would be thousands of apps, from Yahoo and also from outside developers.

“People want broadcast and narrowcast at the same time,” said Bhat then. “They want choices, but they also don’t want to do the work involved [in programming their own homepage].”

Noting that it was not the dashboard approach of My Yahoo or iGoogle, Bhat added at the time: “People are time-starved…so it is important to the user to get to their relevant daily information as quickly as possible without having to click around.”

But, said several sources at Yahoo who have seen the Metro results so far, by giving them more options, especially outside ones, clicking around is precisely what users do.

More next week when I visit with Bhat…

Until then, here is a screenshot Bhat posted of the latest look for Metro last night, and below it are several screenshots of the initial Yahoo redesign, as well as Yahoo’s current homepage (click on the images to make them larger).

In addition, Bhat’s whole post last night about Metro’s progress is at the very bottom.

This is the latest iteration of the homepage redesign:

This is the homepage that was rolled out in September 2007:

This is a homepage rolled out in September 2007 that includes more outside apps:

This is the homepage rolled out in September 2007 that shows how email from Yahoo and Google and AOL would look:

This is a screenshot of Yahoo’s current home page:

And here is the full text of the Bhat post from last night, below.

Update on our new homepage testing

Posted February 13th, 2009 at 8:08 pm by Tapan Bhat, Front Doors

As many of you know, we started testing new concepts for the Yahoo! homepage last fall, with the goal of helping to simplify the Web for the more than 300 million people around the world who visit the site each month.

We are wrapping up the first phase of our “bucket testing” and have gleaned some great insights from people in the US, UK, France and India who have tried out the new page. We’ve done a number of things to collect input–from reading your comments here on Yodel to reviewing online feedback forms and customer care inquires to meeting with many of you in person and online. Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.

Before I share details around what we’ve learned, I wanted to give a quick recap of some of the functionality we’ve added over the past few months since just a fraction of you have experienced it firsthand.

Back in September, we introduced a new section called “My Apps.” The great part about having apps on your homepage is that you can easily check in and get more done–from reading and responding to multiple email accounts to browsing local movie listings–all without leaving the page.

Today, we’ve enhanced that experience and we’re testing more than 25 apps that will keep you updated with whatever you want to know. New additions include apps from eBay, Forbes.com, Wired.com and more top brands. We’ve also beefed up the Sports and Finance apps, for example, providing schedules, team standings, blogs links and more, plus one-click access to your stock portfolios and stock quotes. The best part is that the “My Apps” section is now customizable so you can add and remove apps (check out this screenshot) so your homepage reflects what matters most to you.

Heres what we’ve heard from our testers:

Positive Feedback

* People are happy with the streamlined look and feel
* There’s lots of love for the applications
* Most testers said they prefer the new homepage over the current homepage

One comment that sums it up nicely:

“Well–I was surprised at first at how little change was introduced, and liked that. Now I’m surprised by how much change actually is packed in, but is more interaction based…Basically it’s deceptively different–looks and feels the same, but much more functionality built in at a new layer.” –Thomas

What We’re Working On

Now that we’ve got a critical mass of input, we’re translating it into updated versions of the page for ongoing testing. Here are some highlights.

* The #1 thing we’re hearing you want is more apps and we’ll be adding many apps in the coming weeks
* Most didn’t like the dark color that we tested initially–see the screenshot below of the new visual treatments we’re testing
* Easier ways to access and preview email and instant messaging accounts are in the works
* It should be easier to get to other Yahoo! services that you’ve come to rely upon

Metro test

We don’t take changes to your homepage lightly and your input is critical. To help our designers and engineers, tell us what else you think we should consider. Is there a killer app that you’d love to see?

Know that we’re working hard to create a new homepage that you’ll love and we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to launching. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Tapan Bhat
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Front Doors, Communities and Network Services

Twitter: Where Nobody Knows Your Name–The Sequel

Kara Swisher — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:00:08 +0000

BoomTown’s been just one week gone and yet another goofy, traffic-generating debate “erupts” in the blogosphere, involving the usual suspects.

(Hey, it’s Loïc Le Meur and Michael Arrington again, fresh from their equally meaningful Are-French-folks-lazy-or-what? debate!)

This time, while the Mideast burns and the economy continues its meltdown, they and many others are going at it about the favored hyped Silicon Valley company of the moment, Twitter.

The new bone being gnawed on is something I can hardly grasp the point of–some drivel argument about what constitutes the authority of a tweet.

While tweet status would seem only important to, say, a Warner Bros. cartoon character like Sylvester, all I can think is: Who cares?

While I know I seem to say this a lot these days, I guess I am not really clear why people can’t use these various Web tools in any way they like, without a bunch of tech pundits pushing their self-aggrandizing agendas.

You want to rank tweets? Fine–knock yourself out! You want to use tweets to tell your family about your trip to Buffalo? Maybe not so much, but what the heck!

I think, though, the real story is the endless echo chamber of Silicon Valley that seems to persist in overestimating the meaning of Twitter, especially compared to so much more that is going on in the tech industry.

With only about six million registered users (with a much lower number of active ones), Twitter gets written about as if it were a mover and shaker extraordinaire, instead of just being what it is: An interesting status-alert start-up that makes zero revenues and turned down a very large buyout offer from another once-too-overhyped start-up (Facebook).

Well, after yet another week in the real world, I am here to tell you, precious few people still have any clue what Twitter is or how it works.

This is not to say Twitter is not useful or cool or that its growth is not impressive. All that is true about the service.

But the fact remains that Twitter is simply an unknown to most average people in a way other tech trends have not been.

The last time I did a What-the-Heck-Is-Twitter? experiment was in April and it went as follows:

So I was in Washington, D.C., this past weekend for a lovely wedding, traveling back to a city where I started my career and worked for 15 years after college.

And I conducted a little experiment among the more than 100 folks gathered for the wedding, all of whom were quite intelligent, armed with all kinds of the latest devices (many, many people had iPhones, for example) and not sluggish about technology.

They were also made up of a wide range of ages and genders, from kids to seniors.

And so I asked a large group of people–about 30–and here is the grand total who knew what Twitter was: 0

FriendFeed: 0

Widget: 1 (but she thought it was one of the units used in a business class study).

Facebook: Everyone I asked knew about it and about half had an account, although different people used it differently.”

This time, I asked yet another group of about 40 folks, in New York, Scranton and Buffalo, many of whom were young people and all of whom used the Internet regularly.

Those who knew what Twitter was: 3 (two only because they’d read about it being used in the Mumbai terror attacks).

Those who could actually explain how it worked and had used it: 1 (a journalist, natch!).

Friendfeed: 0 (even my family had not bothered to look at my recent post on the cool start-up).

Widget: 25, except most people now call them apps and are talking about using them in an Apple (AAPL) iPhone or an iPod Touch. Everyone was surprisingly knowledgeable, especially younger people, about apps for smartphones.

Facebook: 40–a perfect score, and almost everyone I talked to had a Facebook profile, which accounts for its huge growth to more than 140 million users worldwide.

You get the idea–while the digerati have moved away from Facebook as an important trendsetter, I am thinking that perhaps its time has just started.

Not that I have the tweet authority to say so or anything.

Van Natta Takes Playlist CEO Job, With New Investment by Pittman

Kara Swisher — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:00:39 +0000

Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist. Pittman will also join its board.

Playlist has previously raised several million dollars, said sources, but the new funding is many times that, to total about $18 to $20 million.

The move to Playlist is an interesting one for Van Natta, who has looked at a number of jobs since leaving the high-profile social-networking site earlier this year.

He has talked to a wide range of companies, sources said, including Microsoft (MSFT) and a range of start-ups, as well as with MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS). (News Corp. also owns this site).

Those talks between Van Natta and MySpace to run its new music initiative did not pan out for a variety of reasons.

But he has long expressed a desire to become a CEO of a company, rather than just head to another executive job within a larger company, so the move to run a start-up is not a surprise.

In an interview this afternoon, Van Natta told me he got very intrigued by the possibilities at Project Playlist, which was the first iteration of the start-up and in which he is an investor, due to its viral growth.

And, indeed, Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, sharing playlists via its Web site and also widely distributed embeddable widgets. The site has tens of millions of daily page views, according to surveys.

To get to those big-scale numbers, Playlist essentially has offered users a giant linking service for music, not unlike Google (GOOG) with all information, pointing users to promotional, free and sometimes illegal music and music video tracks all over the Web.

Those links to illegal music have resulted in a lawsuit aimed at Playlist from the music industry, sources said, a sadly typical experience of many online music services.

The usual tactic for the music giants: Sue first and shake down later.

Under Van Natta, I would guess, Playlist is likely to reach out to music companies and strike deals.

The company also needs to settle on its main business plan, which appears to me to have been less important than its explosive growth.

Playlist currently does have some small amount of advertising on the site, and seems to be making most of its scratch from sending leads to ringtone sellers.

Van Natta did not want to reveal specific strategies for Playlist going forward, only noting the opportunity is large.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”

That said, there have been a lot of music-aimed efforts like Playlist in the music space, with a lot of different business plans and varying degrees of success, ranging from the Apple (AAPL) behemoth iTunes site, which sells single songs, to the CBS (CBS) music service, Last.fm, which relies more on advertising revenues.

Other contenders in the space include the Rhapsody subscription service from RealNetworks (RNWK), music discovery service iLike and many others. MySpace has also waded deeply into the music space, and Facebook is also reportedly weighing its own service.

Van Natta was one of Facebook’s earliest and most prominent execs, serving in jobs like COO and also Chief Revenue Officer while there.

He came to Facebook in the fall of 2005, after a stint as VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon, and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.

“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken many months off since he left Facebook in February.

Video of RockYou Founders Talking About the New $17 Million Funding for Asian Expansion

Kara Swisher — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:00:05 +0000

Yet another Web 2.0 wunderkind got itself more shelter from the economic storm–widget maker RockYou announced today that it has nabbed a $17 million investment from two Asian firms, SoftBank Group and SK Telecom Ventures.

The investment will be added to $35 million from the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up’s C round in June. Overall, RockYou has raised a total of $67 million from investors, including DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and Sequoia Capital.

It is unclear if the company’s valuation is at the previous $400 million level or not.

In a video interview with BoomTown on Friday (see below), the company’s co-founders, CEO Lance Tokuda and CTO Jia Shen, said the money would be used to expand into the Asia-Pacific market, including onto Xiaonei, one of China’s largest social-networking sites.

As part of the investment, SoftBank–which has major Web investments all over Asia–and RockYou, the company said in a press release, “will also set up a new joint venture company that will develop widget and application products and services for use on PCs and mobile devices in the Asian market, in particular the Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese markets.”

Well, that’s a horse of a different color, what with most Web 2.0 outfits pulling in their horns of late.

Indeed, RockYou said it would also use the money to open offices in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit and look at making some opportunistic acquisitions, as well as adding to its advertising sales force and developing more brand and vertical channels.

The company’s NYC sales office, previously a one-man shop, is expanding, adds MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka. It hired two people since August and still has one position open and plenty of applicants, says sales boss Paul van de Kamp.

Why all the frenetic activity from RockYou, which says it had over 100 million monthly uniques with over eight billion page views from its popular third-party applications like Super Wall?

Well, a few good reasons, such as: the need to keep up with its key competitor, Slide, which raised its own huge war chest; to find new audiences away from the two top social-networking site, Facebook and MySpace, from which it gets most of its traffic; to improve its products, in order to get better ad rates; and, most of all, to weather the current econalypse in the ad sector.

While RockYou’s execs believe the ad market for widgets and social networking is on the rise in comparison to other kinds of media, it will still be a glum outlook for everyone for a while.

Tokuda and Shen talk about that, as well as the investment, in the video here, and below that is a video I did a year ago with the pair:

[ See post to watch video ]

Slide Sidles Up to Old Media in Search of New Revenue (Apparently, Max Cannot Live by SuperPoking Alone!)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:04:43 +0000

You almost have to admire the shape-shifting–if not a wee bit slippery–stylings of Slide CEO Max Levchin.

The serial entrepreneur– whose current start-up has made him the massively-funded widget-king of Web 2.0–has signed distribution deals with Time Warner’s Warner Bros. unit, CBS and Comcast’s E! Entertainment channel to allow users of its new FunSpace Channels video service to look at clips from shows.

Slide’s other media partners in the new deal include Current Media, Hulu, Universal Music Group, as well as 236.com, Break Media, CollegeHumor, FUEL TV, Howcast Media, Video Detective and YouTube.

The FunSpace video service will recommend content based on how much users forward clips to others.

To make money, Slide will get a cut of ads sold by its media partners, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Oh my, how incredibly traditional of Levchin (pictured below on a wacky magazine cover).

But it should probably come as no surprise that Levchin is singing a bit of a different tune these days, as the daunting task of actually building a sustainable business model and attracting long-term advertisers has dawned on him–and probably many other Web 2.0 wunderkinds.

“Television is a world advertisers love,” said Levchin in The Journal article–a quote in which you can almost hear the quarter drop and the connection made that trying to earn real money from sheep-throwing and SuperPoking is perhaps not the most stable of business plans.

Of course, it was only a year ago that the business model for the high-profile social-networking applications maker–loudly touted by him and others at the company–was centered around “user-initiated” ads and in consumers becoming “brand ambassadors” for products.

These kinds of unproven ad schemes seemed fanciful to me when I first heard about them, although they doubtless sounded great to the many investors who ponied up tens of millions of dollars in funding to give Slide an eye-popping and still-undeserved $550 million valuation.

At the time, I wrote:

Ah, brand ambassadors! Like perhaps being dispatched to a posting in the tenth ring of hell.

It seems, though, that the old canard about getting audiences to carry water for brands and loving it has found new life, as social networks and the widgets that live off them search for business models.

Now I am not against widgets, those small third-party applications that people can put on their Web pages on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, in general.

While there are now many too many, and most are simply features and not companies, some are actually helpful and substantive and introduce a plethora of innovation and features into a service like MySpace that the service itself would or could never have offered.

And I also think that these widget-makers need to find a way to make money, especially the very popular ones like Slide, if they are to stay around.”

That’s more true than ever before as the economy tightens and kooky experimentation is no longer tolerated.

In fact, Levchin noted in the article that Slide had dumped one of its typically fun but profitless widgets–a digital fortune cookie service.

Said Levchin to The Journal: “We asked ourselves, can they generate cash and are they going to be engaging to users a year from now?”

Um … no and no, which should have been obvious from the get-go about a lot of social-networking apps, which I had labeled juvenile and ultimately ephemeral.

While such goofy stuff has given Slide a lot of traffic–it attracts more than 160 million viewers a month–that has not necessarily translated into big revenues since much of the traffic is pretty low-rent and because the ads are limited by the big social-networking sites where Slide apps are popular.

One of the most striking things in the article was the contention that Slide expected $30 to $50 million in 2009 revenue, which is probably on the low side. To be fair, Levchin always told me he was not as focused on revenue generation as on growth.

But with this move, Levchin is now clearly focusing on revenue, and it’s long past time to do so.

Of course, with nuclear winter in advertising of all kinds approaching fast, let’s hope Slide still has a sheepskin or two around to keep warm until the thaw.

As an added plus, here is one of three interviews I did with Levchin last year, giving him somewhat of a hard time about revenue issues (and he gave back as good as he got):

[ See post to watch video ]

Clearspring Plus AddThis–But Does That Add Up to a Real Business?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:45:05 +0000

In a move to dramatically increase its traffic and give it more tools to offer publishers, Clearspring Technologies said it will acquire AddThis, the top bookmarking and content-sharing tool on the Web.

As with many social-networking start-ups, whether this disparate traffic can be easily translated into a reliable revenue-generating business remains to be seen.

The McLean, Va.-based Clearspring–one of several widget networks seeking to connect publishers and advertisers with social tools by helping them embed small pieces of content across the Web and monetize that content–would not disclose the price it paid for the Princeton, N.J.-based AddThis.

My guess: A few million dollars in cash and maybe more in some kind of stock swap.

What exactly is Clearspring getting for this?

For starters, a tiny icon with a lot of popularity to help it toward its goal of being the universal sharing standard in the new socially-networked Web paradigm.

Clearspring claims the pair together will reach 20 billion views per month and more than 200 million unique visitors, noting it would now have a “worldwide audience comparable to the seventh largest Web property.”

While adding up such piecemeal traffic is not quite the same to advertisers as a major central Web site like Yahoo (YHOO), for example, AddThis is the most used tool for sharing Web pages through email or from Web site to Web site.

Its main competitors are ShareThis and Yahoo’s Del.icio.us, even though it has only a handful of employees.

Of course, that viral success around universal sharing might not mean massive revenue generation, even if it is a popular consumer tool.

But Ted Leonsis, chairman of the board at Clearspring, and CEO Hooman Radfar said revenue would come via advertising and, eventually, valuable data analytics the services collect about Web behavior.

Currently, said Leonsis, AddThis has negligible revenue and Clearspring has about $10 million in annual sales. Neither is currently profitable.

Nonetheless, Radfar said, “AddThis is the biggest small thing on the Web,” referring to its tiny icon that expands to offer users a choice of Internet sharing services and updating tools to a variety of social networks.

And indeed, AddThis icons are widespread across the Web, seen mostly at the bottom of content items on big sites like Time.com and MySpace.

While some question whether a big business can be created through such a far-flung network, Leonsis–one of the early execs at AOL in its glory days–said it was how the Web is evolving.

“If you said to me 10 years ago that you were going to be successful by sending people away from your site, I would have said you were crazy,” said Leonsis. “But that is what the Web is about now, and having a central network that can track this is important for advertisers.”

Well, we’ll see about that, but Clearspring certainly has a lot of money to try.

The company has received more than $35 million in funding since it was founded in 2004. Investors include former AOL head Steve Case, as well as the venture firm New Enterprise Associates.

Clearspring has about 100 employees.

The Entire D6 Interview With Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg (2 of 4)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:03:40 +0000

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

Unfortunately, due to issues too complicated to go into, we have to post all the D6 interviews in several 15-minute parts (I know, I know).

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s Part 2 of 4 of an interview I did with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. (I will post one video part of the discussion with Zuckerberg and Sandberg every day this week, starting yesterday and concluding Thursday.)

The social-networking site has had quite a year as the hottest and most hyped on the Web 2.0 landscape. With fast growth and still-questionable monetization power, where Facebook is going will be a journey plenty will be paying attention to.

In this video, Zuckerberg talks even more about sharing information, explains why he wants to stay CEO, discusses mistakes like Beacon and successes like Facebook’s open platform, and defends widgets.

Meanwhile, Sandberg talks about why she came to Facebook from Google, compares widget popularity to Elvis fans and talks about where advertising spending is going online (think virtual ice cream cones).

[ See post to watch video ]

All Grown Up: Apple Apps Are for Adults (There, We Said It)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:26:22 +0000

When Apple releases its third-quarter earnings after the close today, Wall Street will be looking hard for a solid performance from the company to help buoy a tech sector smacked silly by weak reports from industry leaders Microsoft and Google last week.

It’s a lot of weight to put on the slim shoulders of Apple (AAPL), even though the company has shifted in recent years–largely due to the iPod and now iPhone phenomena–from a maker of devices for the elite to a mass consumer icon and a major influencer of key technology trends.

And, as has been much written about, Apple’s iPhone has brought the vision of a touchscreen minicomputer-on-the-go to the kind of reality that seemed impossible only a few years ago.

But more important to me is what is happening with the plethora of third-party apps now available from the iTunes App Store–both free and paid (picture below)–for use on the iPhone platform.

That’s because Apple has built a platform for adults.

Like many, I have downloaded dozens of iPhone third-party apps over the last several days.

And–unlike what one can discover on the other hot apps platform–namely Facebook–they are uniformly superb, lovely, useful and fun in a really nonjuvenile way.

The iPhone Facebook app is, by the way, stellar.

It’s more than a little ironic, then, that about a year ago it was the social-networking site that reinvigorated the idea of the importance of having a platform that a multitude of developers could thrive on.

It’s not exactly a new idea–Microsoft has nourished an ecosystem of developers for its powerful Windows software platform for, like, forever.

But Facebook surely made the idea bigger, looser, wilder and more exciting. Except that a lot of what has been created for Facebook has been profoundly stupid.

Last year, Boomtown set off a mini-tornado of debate when I suggested that I was less than impressed by the quality and endurance of most of the new Facebook apps–also called widgets–that began to take off.

In a post called: “The Children’s Hour: Facebook Apps Are for Toddlers (There, We Said It),” I wrote:

I get it, I get it. Millions upon millions of people are downloading and using these apps, part of a very clever ecosystem [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg unleashed in late May.

Under the scheme, widget-makers got to go wild on Facebook, and Facebook got to offload a chunk of its feature development onto others.

‘Until now, social networks have been closed platforms,’ said Zuckerberg at the [f8] event, calling on outside developers to integrate their applications into the service. ‘Today, we’re going to end that.’

But so far, as popular as those apps have become, what Zuckerberg and the widget-makers have wrought is mostly silly, useless and time-wasting, and the kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children.

I never thought I would call the often frivolous AOL back in the day–very simply, a Neanderthal version of Facebook–a mature offering in comparison.

While I will admit when I am not chewing nails that a lot of these apps are somewhat fun, I can’t help but ask myself that lyric from the old Peggy Lee classic: ‘Is that all there is?’

And if that is all there is, can Facebook really build a viable and long-lasting business on what is essentially a bunch of games that will ultimately become wearying for users? Doesn’t it need more robust apps that actually are useful and relevant and make Facebook the service that Zuckerberg has often told me was a ‘utility’?

While Facebook–with a cleaner and more strict look and a better navigation–is surely less goofy than rival MySpace for anyone over 12 years old, and its video, photo and email features are nice, the vast majority of its apps are still mostly as dumb as a box of hammers.”

Too harsh?

I think you would not say so after looking over a lot of what is available at the App Store on iTunes.

Lots and lots of the apps there are games, of course, which are the most popular.

But what amazingly clever games, like MotionX Poker with the delightful rolling dice, or the humming swish of PhoneSaber (totally silly, but in a profound manner that Vampire-biting on Facebook will never achieve).

And the list of useful stuff–Pandora Radio, Starmap, WeatherBug, Evernote and WHERE (pictured here)–is long and growing longer, and these seem to enjoy as much prominence and popularity as the sillier stuff.

In addition, the ability to truly use other Web services in a mobile setting–from Photobucket to Yelp to AIM to the New York Times–makes the iPhone an even more useful device to me.

And for each of the apps I can also imagine various monetization schemes that now make a lot more sense since the iPhone platform enhances them with mobility and simplicity (Carling’s branded iPint is very smart, for example).

I also get the feeling that, knowing they would otherwise not be granted entrance into the elegant kingdom of Steve Jobs, developers tried to design their apps just a little more perfectly.

I cannot say the same about adding widgets to Facebook, which only seem to put more burden on my experience there.

Some are great and some are truly awful, but you never know exactly what you are getting until you go through the typically onerous addition process.

That will soon change with the new Facebook redesign.

I do have great hopes for it, as it gets rolled out this week for users, because it looks like it will make the service much easier to manage and enjoy.

I hope so, because right now, Facebook feels too much like a garden in constant need of weeding.

Perhaps this is because these apps or widgets are more useful in a mobile setting, when you are truly looking for a wide range of discrete pieces of information, rather than on a large screen–which gets larger all the time–at home when the browsing experience lets you handle more information coming at you from all over.

I don’t know, but I do know that I have gotten more use out of my iPhone apps than any Facebook app so far, making me more productive and happy in the process.

Yes, the BubbleWrap app is pointless, but it did give me a few minutes to decompress and read the newspaper as my six-year-old son digitally popped away in glee this weekend.

You know what I mean–it’s called adult time.