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This has been one of the more interesting stories to track down. We got word over the weekend that Yahoo is in the process of moving large numbers of engineering jobs within the YOS group to Bangalore. Yahoo PR mostly denies this. This includes YDN (Yahoo Developer Network, the platform for third party apps to be installed on the Yahoo home page) for the most part. And Yahoo confirms that some California based YDN engineers are being moved to other projects, calling it a "pretty minor internal shift of resources." But At least two senior engineers were fired outright, we heard (we're holding the names until Yahoo confirms of denies that). The YOS (Yahoo Open Strategy) group, run by SVP Jay Rossiter, includes YDN as well as other products aimed at developers like YCW and YQL. The idea, a few years ago, was to counter Facebook platform. Only problem is the third party developers never showed up to the party.
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Vlad Savov / Engadget: Windows Phone 7 ad promises ‘the revolution is coming’ (video) — Usually we'd advise you not to read too much into this — we'd point out that this was a themed ad served up before the showing of Lawrence of Arabia at London's Secret Cinema event — but what the hell: Microsoft says the revolution's coming.
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CB Insights: Pure-Play Twitter Startups Attract 50% Less Venture Capital and Angel Investment Than Last Year — For information on private companies and the people behind them, access CB Insights for free, sign up for the CB Insights newsletter or follow us @cbinsights on Twitter.
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It looks like we're not the only ones doing some crazy things with our logo tonight. Google's latest logo doodle is currently setting the web on fire -- or driving people insane, depending on what you read. Sure, it's nothing new for Google to change its logo, but today's variation is particularly interesting because it's in motion. Dozens of dots or balls makes up the standard blue, red, yellow, and green logo today. When you first load up Google.com, these dots are scattered all over the place but quickly fall into the Google logo. But when you move your mouse anywhere near this logo, the dots freak out and jump all over the page.
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Last week we changed the TechCrunch logo for a day to salute Twitter - specifically the first crazy Twitter logo with no vowels. And we had so much fun doing it that we decided to keep doing it. Starting today and for the next 50 days we'll change our logo every day to high five some interesting or important startup. And there will be a few surprises too. If you miss one you'll be able to see the archives on this page, and we've also added a link to the top of TechCrunch so people will know what's going on. And yes, we've allocated a few slots to sponsored logos as well, you can see details on that information page.
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This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He started his first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London, leaving in 2005 and selling to a publicly traded French services company. He founded his second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP Product Management. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies. I've had a post in my head for months - maybe longer - about the role of a CEO. My primary role was "chief psychologist" and as I've learned over the past few years the same has been true as a VC. Both are basically people businesses.
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Thomas Ricker / Engadget: LG Optimus 7 Windows Phone 7 prototype flicks photos to TVs, launches October — We were a bit surprised to find LG's prototype Windows Phone 7 device for developers, soon to be unveiled officially as the Optimus 7 when released in its production form, hanging out in the wilds of IFA.
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Catherine Rampell / New York Times: Once a Dynamo, the Tech Sector Is Slow to Hire — For years the technology sector has been considered the most dynamic, promising and globally envied industry in the United States. It escaped the recession relatively unscathed, and profits this year have been soaring.
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Danah Boyd / The Huffington Post: How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers and Other Abusive Scumbags — What's Your Reaction: … For the last 12 years, I've dedicated immense amounts of time, money and energy to end violence against women and children. As a victim of violence myself …
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Oracle has confirmed that former Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd has found a soft place to land after this year's most juicy techscandal, Hurd will be joining the company as Co-President alongside his close friend and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. This comes as no surprise judging by yesterday's rumors of his hire coupled with the fact that Ellison came to Hurd's defense during the controversy surrounding allegations of harassment by former HP contractor Jodie Fisher.
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Ashlee Vance / New York Times: Former H.P. Chief Joins Oracle as Co-President — SAN FRANCISCO — In naming Mark V. Hurd, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, as Oracle's new co-president, Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle's chief executive and largest shareholder, really has put his money where his controversial mouth is.
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I've ignored more press releases in my time than I care to remember, but I still scan, and sometimes even read, a bunch of them every single day. Comes with the territory, and I've long accepted that - I'm sure a lot of PR folks think of those as necessary evil almost as much as we do. Almost. But as boring as it is to read the same frickin words over and over and over and over again, there are certain times - albeit very, very few - where we manage to distill some actual useful information from the writings (but please, again, stop using words like "leading" and "award-winning" in the first paragraph all the time. Pretty please?). And then there the rare ones that put a smile on our face. Press releases we actually enjoy reading. Not because they're ballsy (it's easy to provoke and get attention by running your virtual mouth) but because they're whimsy and just the right degree of ballsy, rather.
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Venture firms seem to have realized that Twitter accessories may not provide huge financial gains. It's the platform, not the extras, that matter in the Twitterverse.
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Sid Yadav / VentureBeat: Nike iPhone app keeps track of where, how fast you run — There was a time when going out for a run meant putting on some sneakers and leaving for a jog around the park. But if you need any indication of how far we've come, take a look at Nike's latest Nike+ GPS app for the iPhone, released today on Apple's App Store.
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We’re not going to lie to you—this video may feature the world’s worst Skype connection. And that was after 45 minutes of trouble-shooting. While we have no problems connecting to entrepreneurs in Russia or Kenya, apparently London is the land that Skype forgot, which is pretty ironic given it was funded there. But such old-world telecom connections are the new reality for Monty Munford who moved from uber-telecom connected India back to the UK last month. Munford has worked in two if the industries where India has outdone many other countries: Mobile and Bollywood. (See him above getting pampered.) As we discussed a few weeks ago with mobile in Kenya - and as Munford wrote in his guest post on Somaliland yesterday - India is one of many countries trying to export what it has done well to Africa. Is Bollywood the model?
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We'd heard this was a great discussion but haven't been able to get our hands on the footage until now. On July 29th senior corporate development executives from Cisco (Derek Idemoto), Facebook (Michael Brown), Google (Amin Zoufonoun), Microsoft (Fritz Lanman), Twitter (Jessica Verilli) and Yahoo (Taylor Barada) convened at Startup2Startup to talk about what kinds of companies they want to buy, and why. The panel was moderated by CODE Advisors founder Michael Marquez, who was also a former corp dev executive at both Yahoo and CBS. He put together a panel of buyers that will represent most or all of the M&A activity in the online space over the next year or so, with the possible exception of AOL. My favorite part is at 27:30 where each panelist says the top acquisitions that the person to their right should make. Watch everyone's body language - lots of nervousness up there on stage. But the entire hour is worth watching if you're even thinking about selling your company right now.
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Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac: Complete iOS 4.1 Walkthrough — With iOS 4′s launch only days away, we thought it would be interesting to provide a complete walkthrough of the new operating system. iOS 4.1 will be a free upgrade to all iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPod touch 2G, and iPod touch 3G users.
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Robin Wauters / TechCrunch: Recommendations Working Like A Charm: Twitter Follower Growth Is Accelerating — It's been about a month since Twitter turned on its people recommendation engine, a set of algorithms that enables the service to automagically suggest people you don't currently follow but may find interesting.
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Mark Ehrman / Mobile Magazine: IFA: Mini Key keyboard from Nuu converts iPhone into a flipping clamshell — Nuu Mini-Key clamshell QWERTY flip case for the iPhone Photo: Mark Ehrman — Although the iZone at the IFA Berlin was chock full of interesting and attractive aftermarket enhancements for all things prefixed “i”.
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I've got to admit, the concept of "branded content" on the Web makes me cringe. It is generally used to refer to Web videos created and packaged specifically for an advertiser. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I like my videos created for the audience first, not advertisers. And yet, in the budding Web video industry, branded content is bringing in some serious dollars and even some serious talent. There is a lot more going on here than advertisers bankrolling the production of their own videos because there isn't enough professionally produced Web video to show their ads against (although that is part of it). The rise of advertiser-produced video entertainment is but a sign of a much larger shift that is happening as people consume more video on the Web. Advertisers love broadcast and cable TV because of its massive reach into every home. They are finding it nearly impossible to replicate that reach on the Web. The only way they can do it is by spreading ads across tens of thousand of sites through video ad networks. Many of those video ad networks also create their own content for their own sites, but some are also starting to become broader video distribution networks as well. One of the biggest video ad networks that specializes in creating branded content is Digital Broadcasting Group (DBG). Last week, I met with COO Rick Kleczkowski, who told me about a few of the Web video shows DBG is producing, including the upcoming ControlTV, Built Green, and Family Versus Chef. We also got into a spirited discussion about why branded content seems to be taking over the Web, and whether or not that is a good thing (see videos below).
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