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>>Kara: Ok. Hi everybody. Thanks for coming at the end of the day here, I know its tiring
and you wanna get to drinkin', as do I, but --
[audience laughs}
but we will, this is gonna be sort of a conversation so try to close your little laptops and various
devices. And, and we're gonna try and have a good conversation about where Social is
going. And talk about, we have some great panelists here, it's a large panel.
I think I was brought in because I did one recently at Twitter's, what was that called?
SHERP or whatever. How funny. So they so they I was brought in to sort of, of abuse a panel
of dudes and here I am again which is my favorite thing. So, again, once again, a panel--
>>Adam: Of dudes.
>>Kara: Dudes, so it's essentially Sausage Fest Part 2. So,
[panel laughs]
I think I can handle them, though. So, we're gonna introduce, everyone's gonna introduce
themselves and we have about an hour and I'm gonna spend the last 15 minutes of questions,
it would be really great because I certainly don't always ask the best questions. I ask
some good questions, but I think you guys probably have better questions than I ever
could. So, just think of some questions you want to ask, and we're talking about a wide
range of things from privacy to mobile to where it's all going to mistakes that you
all might have made. I know it's not possible for Google to make mistakes because their
brains are so big, but I think we're gonna talk about where that's going. Don't laugh.
Ok, anyway, let's introduce ourselves. Starting with Kara and going.
>>Chris: So, my name is Chris Messina. I am the Google employee on the panel. I actually
work in Developer Relations on the Social Web team and I recently joined Google, actually
in January. So, before that I worked for myself as an Independent Consultant and more recently
I've started working on the Buzz APIs. So, doing a lot of work to move forward in our
operability in the Social Web and open things up in general.
>>Neil: Neil Sample, I'm Vice President of the Social, Open, and Publishing Platforms
at Yahoo. I've been at Yahoo for about six years and in the valley forever. So I guess
I've probably seen all of it, built a third of it, and clearly like the Google guys, have
never made any mistakes or stepped in it.
>>Kara: Heh, that's not true. Anyway, go ahead, thanks.
>>Chris: I'm Chris Cole. I'm a lead architect with MySpace Developer Platform with OpenSocial
and I've been there a couple years and taken some licks and I predate the dot-com stuff
so I've seen the that the wave a couple times. And other than that, I'm looking forward to
the panel.
>>Kara: Great.
>>Adam: Hi, I'm Adam Nash. I'm the Vice President for Search & Platform Products at LinkedIn,
so I'm responsible for our search engine and search capabilities as well as our APIs both
on-site and, and off-site and our mobile products.
>>Angus: Hi, I'm Angus from Microsoft and I work on Windows Live, specifically the partnerships
that we do around social technologies like Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, and SkyDrive.
>>Ryan: Hey, I'm Ryan Sarver and I'm the Director of the Twitter platform. For us, it's obviously
the third-party developers, APIs, content syndication, and I joined about a year ago
so it's been an interesting ride.
>>Kara: Great. Ok, I'm gonna refer to you by like: Twitter dude, Microsoft dude, LinkedIn
dude, if you don't mind. Not to be rude or anything, but that's how I'm gonna remember
best. So, let's talk first, I know, just so you know one group that's not here is Facebook,
which is obviously, if you've heard of them, they're a big social network that people seem
to like. So, they aren't gonna be able to talk about themselves so, let's, you know,
bash them. But one of issues obviously this week around Facebook is, they should, we should
have a Facebook person here. That said, issues around privacy have become a big deal this
week. A lot of it focused on Facebook, but each individually, each of your companies,
Google with Buzz, various, Microsoft has issues, Twitter's issues with, with privacy and what
happens in this thing. Let's start there because that's the hot button issue at this moment.
So, Chris, talk-- talk a little bit about how you look at this debate. Is it overblown?
Is it something that's just too much? Do consumers care?
>>Chris: Sure.
>>Kara: That kind of stuff.
>>Chris Cole: So, this is one of the, the things I've been talking to a lot of people
about lately. And I think this is an industry wide issue which is why each one of us has
had different experiences I'd say with, with privacy in general. And I think that on the
one hand there are expectations that are changing. The desire for people to be able to publish
things and have their friends be able to find them in a way that's meaningful to them, is
very important. On the flip side of that when people are surprised by information being
shared that they hadn't necessarily anticipated being found by certain people, then that creates
a tension and erodes trust. So one of the hardest things that we're having to deal with
now in general and I, I say we as in the industry is coming up with interaction models that
I think address people's expectations. And at the same time don't overwhelm them with
too many choices. Because on the one hand you can frontload all this stuff, like I'm
sure everybody reads every terms of service before you install software and so if you're
willing to that and you're one of those people then you probably love eight thousand--
>>Kara: You probably don't have any friends, then.
>>Chris: That's possible too but if we frontload the user experience around the privacy stuff,
then people won't use the stuff. If it's not made so that people have a clear understanding
of where the stuff is gonna go and who's gonna see it, then they get upset later on. And
I think there's a there's an interesting balance. One of the things that we're betting on or
at least that I think is necessary in the industry is for more interoperability. People
can experiment, try new things have different services that start up with say as being public
like Twitter By Default and let that flourish and see how that goes and then try other services
that start private By Default like email.
>>Kara: Right. Now, Yahoo has hasn't done as much they do a lot they've been bringing
Facebook in and some other services into the service, but in terms of you've tried Yahoo
360, but it wasn't --it was a valiant effort-- but it didn't work in any way whatsoever.
But what--
>>Neil: It's huge in Vietnam, actually.
[laughter]
>>Kara: Oh, great.
>>Neil: But write that down.
[laughter]
>>Kara: It's like Orkut. I had Orkut saying, "You know, we're big in Brazil." I'm like,
"Nice work."
[laughter]
Anyway, that said, how do you how do you look at because Yahoo's been very protective of
people. It, it hasn't been gotten stuck in these privacy problems. What do you think
the big issues are when you look at the other companies or--
>>Neil: Yeah, I think it's, it's we don't wanna be throwing stones you know those folks
who live in glass houses. I mean, we've still got a lot of investment in privacy a large
investment in trust and of course as soon as I say something some security hole is gonna
open up. I think Yahoo has been more conservative than, than some of our partners. And that's
one of the reasons why we still have a high level of, of trust. And I, I have to act on
Chris's point, you have to make it simple, you have to make it obvious, you can't really
frontload the experience. If you go through all the nuance of the toss, again, it's not
that there's anybody like that they don't have friends --they just don't have software--
the crap's too scary to start engaging. So, you have to make it simple and you have to
make it clean. But the, the interesting thing I think we've seen the thing that's perhaps
unexpected is that there's, there's almost no limit to the level of recourse that that
folks seem to be giving right now for Facebook. That there's enough value in it that, "Ok,
we're gonna, we're gonna screw up and we're gonna tell everybody what your Christmas presents
are. And then a couple years later we're gonna accidentally out you through an API and a
couple years later after that we're gonna move everybody sort of surreptitiously to
public broadcasting of status." And then people will notice and they'll spin up a group--
>>Kara: And then someday we'll be imprisoning people with red hair just because we don't
like, I mean it--
>>Neil: The gingers are everywhere. Right!
[laughter]
And I don't know when people are gonna rise up and say, "No!" That's the thing that's
been really surprising--
>>Kara: That's Google I/O 20/20 just so you--
>>Neil: Yeah, exactly. The end of the gingers. But, folks have been burned several times
and yet they're still coming back. I have to believe that there's gotta be a line somewhere.
But we still don't know quite where it is. That, again we've, we've seen fast and loose
play with people's privacy in industry and, and nobody's really paying the price yet.
>>Kara: So, MySpace was one of the original companies that really was sharing. I mean,
pioneered the idea of excessive sharing, some might say. This has moved to a level well
beyond that. At the time that MySpace started, it was it was somewhat controversial, somewhat
embarrassing for some people.
>>Chris Cole: Yeah, well MySpace came on at the tail end of the dot-com bubble. And if
you remember back then everyone was absolutely beside themselves with fear with this whole
notion of a "cookie". And that you might be attachable to what you're doing online. And
this debate went on for many years. And then all of a sudden people are enjoying sharing
things with their friends. But-- but what bothers me about trend recede is it's gone
so far as there's a difference between posting something online and having it publicly available
where maybe your friends will copy it and they might send it to someone you don't know
or don't want it to have it. There's, there's a stark contrast between that and having something
broadcasted to everyone in the world without you're necessarily being aware that this is
happening.
>>Kara: Just what Facebook just did.
>>Chris Cole: Yeah.
>>Kara: All of a sudden my children's' pictures were up on the Web not with my friends kind
of thing.
>>Chris Cole: Yeah, and this is the--
>>Kara: What goes into the mentality of that because you guys have to, you just put new
privacy policies out?
>>Chris Cole: Yeah, and some of that is more highlighted in what we've already been doing.
We're constantly tweaking this, but we have a really deep background in respecting people's
privacy and there's been a number of things over the years where--
>>Kara: Well, the ***, the *** incidence.
>>Chris Cole: Yeah, we've had, we've had a very sordid history of, of that certainly.
>>Kara: That--
>>Chris Cole: and among other things.
>>Kara: Oh, those pedophiles.
>>Chris Cole: And we've cleaned up a lot of that over time, so we've been burned our,
in our own right. My fear is that this is gonna be ignored by the industry to the point
that it'll have to be settled through lawsuits and tort law and it's the precipice that we're
walking up to right now.
>>Kara: Well, it's a perfect thing for an Attorney General to make a lot of noise over
for sure.
>>Chris Cole: Yeah, and you're seeing that in Washington right now.
>>Kara: Oh, I think the FCC is gonna move very soon if they feel brave. Let's go to
Twitter first. Now, you guys are all about public broadcasting, so it's as much of a,
I think you've had a Geolocation things like that where people somewhat are willing to
do that. You guys started out sharing. I mean, Facebook you started off thinking it was just
your friends and then they suddenly broadcast all your information outward. Google Buzz,
even Walt Mossberg called me and said he's my partner, called me and said, "I can't stop
it." You know what I mean? And if someone who's like the worlds expert on technology
can't stop something from propagating there's an issue. But, you guys started out that way.
So, how do you, I mean people know they're sharing with one million of their best friends
kind of thing.
>>Ryan: Yeah, I think part of it's about the premise that it's founded on. We were somewhat
fortunate through product decisions and, and just luck in terms of stumbling on a certain
model that that resonate, but people came to the service having that expectation from
day one. And you opt into that and that expectation is shared throughout the network. When you
start on a premise of private and small networks and have to then shift the user base to an
area where you want them to share. I think that's where a lot of the consternations starts
to happen because most users aren't in tune enough in the same way we are in the valley
around like, what all that actually means, what the implications five to ten years down
the road are. So it's very hard to let them understand the nuances over time. So, we've
been fortunate that we started out with that initial premise and that seems to be the one
that people are trending towards and we're able to stay where we are and that just--
>>Kara: You're adding more specific things, Geolocation, that kind of things, which is
a little more intrusive I would say.
>>Ryan: Intrusive but it's still opt in, right? And we give people the granularity to choose
what they wanna share. And we, we talked a long time when we were originally doing Geolocation
cause we wanted it to be like private and you choose who it goes to and it, it breaks
the model. Like, we want what you share to be the exact same object that everyone else
sees. So, we try and do it in the same way. We try and maintain that same product vision
that what you see about your own content and what your friend sees about your own content.
If it gets syndicated out to Google to someone you don't know, they will see that exact same
object. And its, so it's about the expectation of what you're sharing, but I think changes
how people share and people expect--
>>Kara: You think most of the things should be opt-in? Because this is, opt-in is like
a dirty word for most of these companies.
>>Ryan: [sighs] I think Chris hit on it a bit, it it's a tough balance between like,
transparency and knobs to turn and all that kind of stuff. Because users, at some point,
there's a threshold that they just stop looking at them. So you can give them all the knobs
in the world and I think that's what you're seeing on Facebook. There's a lot of good
intentions to give people all the control they want but users, like they look at a--
tossed and glean right over it.
>>Kara: Well, why can't it just be like a thing that just popped up, "We're about to
put all your pictures out for all your stalkers to see. Yes or no?"
[Ryan laughs]
I, I'm sure I can write something rather clear about what's gonna happen.
>>Ryan: Well, I think that's why you see the, the content shared on Twitter is very different
from the content shared on Facebook, right? You don't see a lot of photo albums of like,
families and stuff. You see a single shot of like some event or something you're expressing
or experiencing as opposed to these more personalized content.
>>Kara: I wonder why it can't be easier. I mean, why, why--
>>Ryan: I mean it's the simple nuances of human nature. I mean, there's, you're trying
to take it and make it this digital thing that has knobs and selections. And there's
different types of relationships and data flows much more easily, which I think is also
harder when you're dealing with human relationships it's a little easier to keep it contained.
But where it's digital and it can flow throughout the network and be syndicated out to millions
of people across the world instantly. It changes the nature of how you have to think about
it.
>>Kara: But explaining it to people is that hard? I mean, I think they're, they're aggressively,
purposefully being confusing in a lot of ways.
>>Chris: So, actually, I would, I would respond to that. Because it's been interesting to
watch how Facebook has tried to explain some of these things. Specifically, my girlfriend
was using Facebook. And there was some time many months ago they put up this "terms of
service change" thing where they were inviting people to go participate. To read whatever
it was they were gonna change. And it was there for two or three days at the top of
the News Feed, I think this was before the redesign. And I asked her several days after
when she was like surprised that the terms had changed. Like, "Didn't you see that thing
sitting at the top of your News Feed, like blocking your view?" And she's like, "Oh.
I saw that but I just, I didn't engage with it." So, we've had a similar experience with
Buzz. Where we've also provided certain types of disclosure about: " Look, you know, you
can enable this if you really want to" but I think people are oftentimes, they have an
objective in mind when they arrive at something and they're gonna blow through whatever else
gets in their way.
>>Kara: Perhaps, I mean, unless you give them a chance. One of the things we did on our,
we, Walt was very particular about making people aware of cookies and --
>>Chris: Sure.
>>Kara: our headline was "We're watching everything you do right now. Do you want to do something
about it?" We were very; we were very, getting their attention. We're sneakily following
you everywhere on the Web. They're always to alert people.
>>Chris: And I guess if you use it like that, like, like there's someone looking over your
shoulder right now, don't turn around kind of thing. I mean, maybe that would work, but
I think when we try to do all these things across all these different sites in a way
that isn't too alarmist--
>>Kara: Right.
>>Chris: but still informs, I mean, you're right, unless we're screaming at them.
>>Kara: Why not be alarmist?
>>Chris: I think that--
>>Kara: The weird guy from high school can find you now. Something like that.
>>Chris: I do want to AB test that. You guys wanna try that?
[panel laughter]
>>Kara: So, Microsoft, one of you guys, how do you look at the, cause you have a business
part that is quite privacy oriented and then you have struggled in a consumer space more.
But how do you look at this idea where people are doing this aggressive sharing?
>>Angus: I think the key thing is that privacy is in our DNA. I mean, like you said that
there's the business side where we are quite private. There's one privacy, like, central
organization inside Microsoft or our Trustworthy Computing. That's a part of every engineering
process, whether you're working on like, shippable software, like box product, or whether you're
working on online services. So, I mean, when it comes to Windows Live, specifically, I
think a lot of what Chris said is, is important. Like, do not surprise people. And the scary
thing about that is if someone's surprised then you've already done something wrong.
Like, people need to be able to choose who can see what of theirs and they need to be
able to get granular or that we need to make sure that the defaults are set to an appropriate
level. So, it's just about expectation management. And I mean, with, I think it's about 500 million
people currently have Windows Live ID's, that's a huge number of people that are, that we
want to make sure we get privacy right for.
>>Kara: Mm-hmm. Do you think it's because Microsoft's, I mean, of all, I mean, based
on the promiscuous scale, Facebooks way down here, Microsoft hasn't been as successful
because their lack of promiscuity. I'm trying to-- you know what I mean?
>>Angus: I mean, I'm not even gonna go there, actually.
>>Kara: You're not as easy!
[panel laughter]
>>Angus: Yeah.
[pause]
>>Kara: But, why, why, you need to have to do that?
[laughter]
Do you need to have to get there to be successful; to be that, you know, give--
>>Angus: I don't think so. I think you can build a perfectly good business that satis--,
that satisfies tons of consumers and advertisers by keeping everything legit.
>>Kara: Right. I'll move to a vacuum cleaner metaphor. They have a giant sucking vacuum
cleaner; yours is less, set on a less level. I mean, can you be successful when it's not
like that? When it's not sucking every piece of information ever about you in-, indiscriminately?
>>Angus: I think you can absolutely be successful. Yeah, definitely.
[laughter]
>>Kara: LinkedIn guy, dude, so you guys I have to say I think do have the most, the
easiest used tools. To-- and the people on LinkedIn do want to share. They want to share
information about themselves a lot for jobs, a lot for job search, and stuff like that.
So the intent is very clear. I find the tools simple to use; it's very clear about how,
what you're putting up, who's getting what and it's actually quite protective about a
lot of things.
>>Adam: Well, I think that's, that's actually part of makes these problems so hard is that--
>>audience1: Microphone.
>>Adam: Sorry? I think that's part of makes it such a hard problem across the, the social
Web is that context really matters. This isn't just a technical problem, it isn't just a
cognitive problem understanding what we could or couldn't do. The fact is no one ever writes
down social contracts, right? Communities form, then they evolve. We've been very fortunate,
you know. LinkedIn's always taken privacy very seriously because in business context
there is some information that you really do guard, right? If you're unhappy with your
employer and you're looking around for a new job, that's something very private. We take
it very seriously that we always want people on LinkedIn to feel like they put their best
foot forward. We would never want to embarrass someone. On the flip side, LinkedIn users
have always been, ever since we launched the feature, delighted to find out that the first
time that someone Googles them, that their LinkedIn profile comes up high because that
professional side of you, that professional persona that we all spend decades kind of
working on through our careers; that's actually the default one that a lot people are comfortable
with a stranger seeing.
>>Kara: Mm-hmm.
>>Adam: And so, I think yeah, LinkedIn has done well in this area, but I think that's
partially because we're very focused on our context and what users want from that context.
>>Kara: But you don't have a whole lot of information on your thing. I mean, I love
LinkedIn because if I, I'm able to reach all the Yahoo executives I want to leak to me,
for example, but--
[laughter]
and Facebook works really well, too. Sorry. Not you. So, not yet.
[laughter]
Do you need to add more stuff to that because you imagine having, you don't have any pictures,
it's somewhat, not, that's not the right word. It's somewhat plain vanilla kind of stuff.
>>Adam: Well, yeah, it's focused--
>>Kara: It's like a resume. It's looking at someone's resume with a little bit more.
>>Adam: Yeah, but, it's only a mix of information that people share etc., but for the most part,
yeah, your professional profile first and foremost is that first value proposition that
people get. That, "Hey, when someone looks for me online, they're gonna see me this way.
This is my role at LinkedIn and previously I worked at these companies. I went to this
school." We spend a good chunk of our lives accumulating these experiences and skills
and so I wouldn't say we don't have a lot of information, I think it actually is not
only a significant amount of information, I think it's very important to people. It's
just in this context. That's how people want to present it.
>>Kara: Can you imagine having more information there? Like, more pictures, videos, things
like that?
>>Adam: To be honest, we're very, we react what our users want. So I think that as more
and more users want more rich content, we'll probably provide more rich content. But really
it responds to what do people feel like they need to represent themselves professionally
online. To date, that hasn't involved a lot of that rich media.
>>Kara: Mm-hmm.
>>Adam: People don't feel like they need to represent themselves professionally with photo
albums of their kids or that sort of thing.
>>Kara: Right, right.
>>Adam: I don't think that that's likely.
>>Kara: Right, that's what I think. Let's move on to, from, before you get into privacy,
what do you think the greatest mistake has b-, by your own company, by another thing
that has been a, the greatest mistake made in this area so far? Chris, you start.
>>Chris: You know, I'm, I'm new at Google so I don't have like, a whole long legacy,
but I think one of the things that was very interesting to, to watch unfold was the interesting, the collapsing
of context with Buzz and Gmail. So, we use Buzz internally at Google, to great effect
I think. And it's been a very, very positive thing, especially when I first started working
at Google, it was a great way to learn about my coworkers and learn what was going on.
[clears throat]
One of the things that's very interesting about dogfooding a lot of these things is
that we learn about the products early. We try them out. We get great use cases. And
we have a very clear, I think, idea about how email works and how Buzz works and things
like that and so, watching peoples, I guess, questions about--
>>Kara: I would say horror, but go ahead.
>>Chris: Questions about the way that they interpreted Buzz being in their inbox was
something that was fascinating, I guess. Because it's like, oh, like people expect that if
there's this public context within an inbox then all of a sudden their inbox is gonna
be made public as well. And, of course, that's not the case and never was the case, but there
were a lot of people that had that concern. And I think that there's also a greater context
where there's been conversations happening about Facebook and about Twitter and about
all these other social services where people just hadn't anticipated this type of social
environment to be merged in this very different type of social environment.
>>Kara: Well, it's the way you got in, the way you're trying to get in. Facebook has
sort of run away with the other part. Right?
>>Chris: You said it. So, I think it's been interesting to see that unfold and I, I, one
of the things that I'm most excited about with the APIs is to actually allow people
to build external and different context for the, the Buzz experience--
>>Kara: Ok.
>>Chris: that can give people a different type of social expectation or social environment
in which to conduct their daily activity.
>>Kara: Do you think it was a question of communication, or that Google people just
aren't like other people, regular people?
[laughter]
>>Chris: I think--
>>Kara: I'm saying the last one is true no matter how you slice it, but what do you think
the problem was?
>>Chris: There's something special about Googlers, for sure. But I think, I think there's also
a different type of expectation and desire that a lot of us have at Google to be able
to share one another.
>>Kara: Your test group of dogfood eating was not a usual group of people.
>>Chris: It was, for someone new to Google, it was very eye opening.
>>Kara: Mm-hmm, ok.
>>Neil: You know, I think one of the interesting things about Yahoo is that, you know, collapsing
context is, is not just an exception like Buzz and, and Gmail kind of combination. It's
more like, you know, taking ev--, a scoop of everything at Baskin-Robbins and, and putting
it in a blender and then mixing in some motor oil and then saying, "Mmm, drink this."
[Kara laughs]
You know, yeah, they did. It is, it's a new product. The McSlurry.
[audience laughs]
But, you know, the interesting thing is, you know, we had these; we had listings properties,
right? Where, where folks where they're at Hotjobs. You know, you were there for sort
of this commercial intent job seeking. We had Yahoo Personals where you were there looking
for somebody but you sure as hell didn't want anyone to know you were looking for somebody.
And then we have email. And then have photos in the form of Flickr. And then we have media
experiences where sometimes it's programmed and other times it's sharing, it's groups,
it's answers, it's message boards, it's all these sorts of things. And so the biggest
challenge, and I think, the thing that we never really have solved and, and has again,
led to some of our conservativism is it's seemingly impossible to cross all of those
streams. Is that if you start with a sort of vertical notion, you know, whether it's,
it's sort of LinkedIn, right? It's, its business oriented, it's very specific, the purpose
is there. Or even Twitter where it's a channel. You just say, "Look, I've got a channel and
I'll let the user program it in any way they want." It's, it's fairly straightforward to
go ahead and manage that. And so I think one of the reasons we've been slower and, and
have missed other opportunities, if you will, that other folks have captured, like 360,
is that it, there's no compatible way to mix all of the Yahoo pieces together. And so I
think that remains a challenge.
>>Kara: It wasn't confusing to the user.
>>Neil: Right. It wasn't confusing and therefore, we didn't do it, right?
>>Kara: Cause it does freak them out. I remember when Facebook went on The Huffington Post
and think, and I didn't turn the thing off and I wasn't in stealth mode and then I realized,
everyone realizes, all I read is Brittney Spears' stories and Lindsey Lohan's stories,
so.
>>Neil: We knew.
[laughter]
>>Kara: I know you knew, but, arrested! She's getting, she is, by the way.
[laughter]
When she enters the state again, she'll be in jail, deservedly. So, but I mean, I think
it was the lack of; it doesn't mix. I was just reading The Huffington Post and all of
a sudden I was sharing my strange predilections on celebrities and--
>>Neil: Right. And you know, we, we had an internal discussion recently about Facebook-like
buttons. You know, the thing is when you share something on Yahoo, i--, it's not as bad as
here you're stalker buddy is gonna see it, but we, you know, we are sort of in your face.
It's a proactive notification and there's a message that says, "This is who it's gonna
go to." If we were to take, you know, like buttons and put them all over our media pages
or sports or you wanted to like a team or like a sports figure, there's no notification.
It's a different model and so, so maybe it's ok for those users for a while until you know,
again, the next, the next--
>>Kara: They realize.
>>Neil: the next boo-boo or mistake happens, but you know, we found that even the open
parts of the Web are a bit more promiscuous than our users are willing to take.
>>Kara: What about at MySpace or anywhere else?
>>Chris Cole: So, I would say--
[audience member coughs]
with regards to privacy, there's probably two mistakes I've seen over the years. The
first one would be to initially over allow photos and things that should be private to
get out there. Like, early on you alluded to a lot of the problems with the under 18
versus over 18 and then how do you manage privacy between these groups. And because
of those early mistakes, the company overcorrected and has been very conservative in how we allow
people to share. And in some ways, I think we put in undue friction, like when we initially
launched the Developer Platform one was allowed to invite one friend at a time to share some
sort of game or app with them. And the reaction was developers found workarounds to that that
were incredibly annoying to the user and we've missed on opportunities like Twitters broadcast
channel that perhaps we would've been really well positioned to have taken advantage of
had we continually re-examined this notion of privacy. So, it's, it's a really hard line
to walk where you're private enough that you're not damaging your user base but public enough
that you're allowing people to have social experiences.
>>Adam: Yeah, you know when I think of different challenges we've had here, actually we similar
to Yahoo may have had a little bit of the reverse where. I'm very excited that we were
able to launch the open developer platform with LinkedIn around Thanksgiving; that was
only about six months ago. Until then, you know, people who wanted to build business
applications or other applications to integrate with LinkedIn, they either had to queue up
and wait for personal attention, which, of course, being a small company was hard to
provide. Or they'd have to find another way through the shadows, through the grey areas.
And you know, everyone knows, we're all very clever. We can come up with clever ways to
solve these problems. You know, one of the benefits of having an open platform now means
that first of all, our users have come to expect that they've invested a lot of time
in their LinkedIn identities; they don't really understand why all applications don't have
access to that information. They expect that if they give permission they should be able
to access that anywhere on the Web. But more importantly, it brings that activity in to
the light. Right now, people are using a real, robust authentication system. People are now
putting all that activity through in a way that our standards for privacy can be enforced
across all those interactions. So, while I'm very proud that we have that open platform
today and we're actively working on improving it and expanding it, I think it was a mistake
to not have it until six months ago. I mean, there were a lot of things we were figuring
out, but I'm glad that we have it now.
>>Angus: A few people have talked about missed opportunities and I think that what I would
like to see more of is actually spending time together working on these complex problems.
So, like, I was just at an Internet Identity workshop earlier this week down at the Computer
History Museum and there were like, key people from each of the large and small online services
all in one place. That should be where like, I personally wanna drag my engineers down
to. I wanna spend more time, I wanna get more people from these companies to spend more
time and I think that's the, that's both a challenge and it's also a competitive edge--
>>Kara: I like that coming from Microsoft. You mean you regret being a bully for all
those years.
[laughter]
You should. Just sayin'. It's so funny, Microsoft is so friendly now, it's really hard, I covered
the Microsoft-, I covered the Microsoft trial; you weren't always so friendly, just FYI.
But, it's nice. It's Angus. It's the accent, anyone, it's Scottish, right? Yeah, anyone
who talks Scottish to me, I'm like, "Oh, you're so nice."
>>Angus: I'm Australian. Come on!
[laughter]
>>Kara: Ok, that's good, whatever. OH! Oh, no!
>>Angus: Are you Canadian?
>>Kara: Right, I like Australians, too.
[laughter]
No, I'm not Canadian. Although, I was married in Canada, not that anyone cares, but anyway.
[laughter]
>>Ryan: You know, I, I think we're still going through a learning, we're s-, I think such
a different model, we're still trying to figure out where the edges of it are and what mistakes
we're making. I think some of ours aren't gonna show up for a little while longer, but
it's still sort of--
>>Kara: You fail well. I go right to fail well.
>>Ryan: Well, that's too obvious sometimes--
>>Kara: Not really, but a pretty big mistake.
>>Ryan: And there's all sorts of company learning's, but if we're talking about the social aspect
of it, I think some of that is still yet to be determined and allowing applications to
like, for you to give trusting applications they can essentially go do anything for your
account. We've kind of fought very strongly to keep away these like, very discreet permissions
around this app can do this and this app can do that because, I think, we don't wanna get
into that kind of checkbox fever of like--
>>Kara: The only thing is it becomes third party applications then you do one, say that.
Because those, that's not Twitter, necessarily, I mean, that's an issue on Facebook when you
give permission to third parties if you don't know who they are.
>>Ryan: Well, well, and so we, I go about that the other way. I think trying to give
the granular permissions to apps up-front aren't the right way to go; it's more about
policing them and using trust models within social graphs, trying to understand which
apps you trust as opposed to saying, "This app can do these things--
>>Kara: But the company should be the one determining who's trustworthy.
>>Ryan: No, I think it's the users and the set of users that determine which apps are
trustworthy. We actually even backed this idea of expectations in our privacy policy,
we've said, like "Don't surprise users with anything you do and if you surprise them for
any reason, like Tweet on their behalf and you didn't make it clear enough and you thought
you made it clear enough, but if they're still surprised, we have the ability to revoke your
application."
>>Kara: Let's talk about mobile; where we're going with mobile. This sort of geo-, I think
it was combined with Geolocation and mobile, where that's going. And we'll finish up talking
about, and we'll get to questions about where things, sort of where it's all going and,
and even, you know, there's so many social networks and so many choices people have to
join now. You have to be on Foursquare, then you're on Facebook, and then you're on MySpace.
It, it's very confusing for users I think. We'll talk a little bit about that. Let's
very quickly talk about mobile and how you look at it. I think it's critically important;
a lot of this mapping and location and it creates a more useful experience to a lot
of these social scenes. So, let me start. How do you look at the mobile space right
now? And where do you think the key, the key players are in it?
>>Ryan: I mean, mobile is original part mobile is part of our DNA. I mean, that's where Twitter
and the short code and the short character count and all that stuff; it's pure mobile.
We happen to have a Web service that allowed you to surface the content. But it was about
sharing things on the go, in real time, with people pushing messages back and forth. So,
everything we do have a very deep mobile consideration. Location is something kind of near and dear
to my heart, too, because I spent a bunch of years in that. I'm really excited to see
confluence of like, real time, location, and mobile all coming together because all sorts
of new use cases and experiences are gonna come together and flourish because of those
things coming together at one time.
>>Kara: What's the most interesting use you've seen of that so far?
>>Ryan: Some of the ones I, I personally love are the ones like the Food Carts and Emergency
Accounts or seeing this like, real time data that's pertinent to you because it's about
the proximity in your relationship to it. There an Emergency NSF account and there was
a gas leak like two blocks away from my apartment the other day, and I get device updates for
that and granted, it was just outside of the zone, but it's something, it's something you
wanna know. I wouldn't have tapped into the Web to notice that, so you want that to your
device. It would be better if the device knew exactly where I was and where the originating
Tweet was and could make that connection easier.
>>Kara: Get away from the gas leak.
>>Ryan: Get away from the gas leak, yeah. If you get this run--
>>Kara: Run now.
>>Ryan: Run now. We're not gonna tell you which direction, but--
[laughter]
So, I think that's the kind of stuff that I love seeing those kind of use cases come
out of it. And I think we're gonna see more and more of those as all those technologies
come together. Location for so long was so impossible to get to and now it's like, free
on every major device and that is just like game-changing in so many ways. I'm excited
to see how it starts to play out.
>>Kara: It's becoming more specific, which is nice; really locating you nearby. One of,
one of the things Walt tested once is this thing you put on children and you locate them,
except the kid was always like, three blocks away from where it was. It was close, and
the company said, "Well, it's close." And we're all like, "Do you have children? Because
if the ***'s like three blocks away and." And now it's becoming like, location,
we're happy it's getting specific. Anyway, so, Angus from Australia, --
>>Angus: I'm glad you remembered my name.
[laughter]
>>Kara: I do.
>>Angus: It's no longer Microsoft guy.
>>Kara: Microsoft dude from Australia. Anyway, Aussies, kangaroos, I got it. Koalas. So,
shrimp on the barbie.
[laughter]
What, how do you look at location? You guys are doing amazing things in mapping. I mean,
in that area, Microsoft's been incredibly aggressive and really giving Google a run
for its money in terms of like, putting out features and doing interesting stuff in mapping.
So, I think you and Google are pretty, the leaders in this area, sort of, pioneering
innovations.
>>Angus: In terms of location, I think it's, it like, location is about exactly where you're
at and that means it could be physical home. Like, someone could stalk you if you accidentally
connected to
a network that leaks it out to the public Web. That's like, real danger. So, it needs
to be watched super carefully--
>>Kara: Well, if you leave your house. I'm leaving my house now with my 16 iPads and
that kind of thing, please, help yourself.
>>Angus: Yeah. I think the thing that bums me about location and mobile is that there's
so many different places where my friends spend time. So, I've got some friends on Foursquare,
all the hip ones, then got some other unhip ones on Gowalla, and some, some other services.
>>Kara: Leave poor Gowalla alone.
>>Angus: And, and it's hard for me to stay across exactly what they're doing. And if
I wanna be able to consume that information, I wanna be able to bring together the places
where I feel I have people I care about and I quickly wanna get that into an easy to consume
interface.
>>Kara: So, you'd like to have that confederated in some fashion.
>>Angus: Yeah, and some of the stuff we've been working on with Windows Live Messenger,
in terms of bringing in things you care about from your best friends.
>>Kara: Your company could be one that confederated Facebook, Google's another. I mean, in terms
of there being so many of them. There's Booyah, there's all kinds of ones you guys just did
the Booyah deal.
>>Angus: Yeah. But, we've been doing some of this with the social networks. So, we announced
a partnership with Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn--
>>Kara: And you did a Foursquare one, too, I think.
>>Angus: There was a brief, little demo with Foursquare. But, once again, location is an
area that you need to be careful and you pointed out that we were down one end of the scale
and I think that's probably a space that, but, I'm not sure where we're moving in terms
of location.
>>Kara: Right. Is there other location issues with LinkedIn?
>>Adam: Not issues--
>>Kara: Mass rush for this job down the street?
[laughter]
>>Adam: Yeah, well, if the economy hadn't gone a certain way, it might have been a bigger
thing. We'll probably be active in consumer location. Events like this are part of what
we hear from professionals, right? People wanna know, not just which of their connections
are here at the conference, but who are the people they should meet at this conference?
>>Kara: That sounds really annoying, I have to tell you. But go ahead.
>>Adam: Yeah, well, that cuts both ways. But, we haven't, this is what we're hearing from
users, right? You know, we haven't built a feature like this yet, but we hear from professionals
is that, there's some people who are here from Google I/O for fun and entertainment,
but most people are here because it directly relates to what they do for a living. Their
job, their profession, building their skills. A lot of people spend their time thinking
about who they can meet here, when they can meet and that sort of thing. And we don't
have all those pieces, but we do have that professional context, we do have reputation,
their connections, etc. We do think we have a role to play to provide some of those features
to make that a more productive experience. I mean, an ideal sense, it would help you
just as much to make sure that you're spending your time with the people you should be rather
than ending up spending your time with just whomever you randomly run into, if that makes
sense.
>>Kara: Good point, that's a good point.
>>Chris Cole: For us, is we're looking at the trends. It, it's very clear that all of
the growth is on mobile and something like 30 to 50 percent of our users are dealing
with mobile devices and I think it's a majority of status updates are coming from mobile devices.
So, so it's very clear that mobility in this always on always with you connection is really
kind of, where the social--
>>Kara: You guys are doing a lot of events around that, about event-going--
>>Chris Cole: Yeah. We're doing a lot of Geolocation. Not so much at the point geolocation, at this
point more of the geolocation of "you're in this city" and then "these are the concerts
coming towards you that you might be interested in". But, but it's also interesting because
I was talk-, I forget who I was talking to, but they were looking at the usage patterns
and some mobile devices are used first thing in the morning and then very late at night
right before you go to bed and the type of content you're gonna tailor to that is gonna
be very different than say, looking through someone's photo album of their trip to the
Caribbean and their marriage.
>>Kara: Tell me something cool you've seen it used for.
>>Chris Cole: Well, something I haven't seen yet, but may be out there would be location-based
activity stream updates so that you could then prioritize what's around you, stuff that's
really happening. Because right now the stream comes through and it's your friends, which
there's some geolocation just naturally from that, but something that, we consume the Twitter
stream, have partnerships with a lot of people, so we have this massive amount of data and
if you could create some sort of graph notes structure then had location and made it more
relevant by location, that would be very interesting.
>>Kara: Something through in a Firehose now and it's somewhat relevant--
>>Chris Cole: I mean, the Firehose is amazing, but it is just a Firehose. You can't drink
it.
>>Kara: Ultimately irrelevant, excuse me, relevant. I recently used Foursquare to bother
Fred Wilson because he was in a restaurant around the corner. I was just like, "Hi! Nice
to see you." Freaked him out, even though he's an investor in Foursquare. He's like,
"How did you find me?" And I'm like, "You're an idiot."
[laughter]
So, what about, what do you see that's interesting in mobile? Something, some interesting use
of it, or where do you imagine that?
>>Neil: Yeah, I think, you know for Yahoo mobile it's, it's just obvious. One of the
differences for the way we do it in--
>>Kara: You have a mobile announcement Monday. Wanna tell us what it is?
>>Neil: My manager would kill me.
>>Kara: Yeah, well, I'll be writing about it tonight.
>>Neil: I heard when she was walking over that you'd already gotten there.
[laughter]
>>Kara: Yeah.
>>Neil: Suck it.
[laughter]
So, you know one of the interesting things is traditionally mobile has been more of a
read experience for Yahoo.
>>Kara: Right, you guys had Yahoo Go, which was a very, another valiant--
>>Neil: Yeah, eh, eeh.
>>Kara: Valiant.
>>Neil: Marco, love him, you know.
>>Kara: Yeah.
>>Neil: I know he was a friend of yours, but for us it was a read-mostly experience and
so we hadn't, because we're not often writing location except to our own APIs because you're
searching for a restaurant or a review, or you're there on search and you're drawing
a picture around the neighborhood that you want results from, you know, that kind of
thing, it's not as much of a challenge in the social space because we tend not to be
exposing. Or if you look at the new iPad app, you know, it's there about consuming media,
whether it's media content, reviews, and that sort of thing. So, for us, it's an obvious
vehicle to push our content, to push our experiences, but we haven't had the same privacy concerns
because we're not generally publishing from the devices that often. So, we use the mobile
cues; use the geosignal and that sort of thing. But it's, it's, it's far less intrusive because
we don't have a, a privacy issue.
>>Kara: What would you like to see Yahoo do?
>>Neil: You know, in the ideal world it would be nice to just forklift everything. That
you could take Yahoo, run it through a magic filter, and then all of a sudden it's appropriate
for a two inch UI. I think, you know, there's some promise in HTML5 and some other technologies
that will get us closer to that as we move to, to standards and, and portable development
that'll work well in both places, but you know, that's more of a technology thing than
a social thing. I mean, that's the ideal is sort of the write once, run anywhere and I
don't have to care if it's on a, on an IP TV or a set-top box, or a com-, or a full-fledged,
you know PC or hack a two inch device, right?
>>Kara: It's a nice dream.
>>Neil: Yeah. It is. It's the Holy Grail.
[laughter]
>>Kara: The impossible dream.
>>Neil: Yeah.
>>Chris: Actually, on that point, I would say that that's a nightmare. Being a designer
by training, because I feel like when we separate out mobile from other types of computing experiences,
we tend to put it in this like, little bastardized tube that like, says, you know, "Have these
experiences over here and we just wanna take all these desktop experiences and just throw
them into this small two inch real estate, and things are just gonna magically work out."
And I actually think that mobile demands and deserves a certain type of thinking that's
much more contextual, that takes much less for granted, and greatly simplifies the computing
experience. So, like, awhile ago, I started thinking about how there's this emerging trend
in computing that I call "pop computing", which is about simplifying these experiences
that we take for granted that we'll have with a mouse and a keyboard and getting them down
to like, a single mouse-touch, sorry, a single finger-touch, and that changes everything.
It's a fundamental paradigm shift in, so--
>>Kara: Well, isn't it computers, well, don't you feel, I feel that computers are going,
I mean, I have a five year old who literally touch-, literally every screen he touches,
like he bangs on it like it's like, a village--
>>Chris: Essentially, yeah, it's, it's, he can't touch it right? So, we have these weird,
stupid screens that sit there and you like, like, paw at them and they don't do anything
and it's like, "Well, it's broken."
>>Kara: Mm-hmm.
>>Chris: So, in a couple years, I can imagine people are gonna have these expectations,
or they're gonna look back at us sitting in these weird cubicles with these computers
that we interact with in this way that seems very foreign to them because they're used
to having tactile experiences. So, if you couple that tactile experience in mobile devices
with location, which is all about relevancy and what's around you, and what's very immediate
to you, I think people's expectations are changing. And so, we have to think about the
context that someone's gonna find themselves in from a social perspective, from a geographic
perspective, and from an immersive sort of like, "Are they driving while they're tapping
on your device? And if so, they really should not be having like 40 lines of text like in
front of them." So, it demands a whole new discipline and that I think we have to consider
and not just port, you know, what we've had to that.
>>Kara: Very good point. Country-minute Nicole Kidman? I'm just curious, Microsoft had a
wonderful movie idea a couple years ago about this idea of on-the-go, also Russell Crowe,
they had a really good movie of this idea of on-the-go computing kind of thing. Did
you see it? It was called The Future of the Future, or something like that. It was one
of those great Microsoft movies of things they're never gonna make but it looked terrific.
It was like, you touch things, you move things, you, you sweep things--
>>Angus: Minority Report?
>>Kara: Yeah, it was like Minority Report, it was really cool.
>>Angus: Yeah, I've seen a couple of things there, but I haven't seen that one. But I've
seen Office 2019: Workplace of the Future. Actually, sorry, Chris, I was sitting next
to someone with a laptop, a Windows PC, and they were tweaking the screen yesterday. So,
it happens, right?
>>Chris: It's coming.
>>Angus: That happens, sorry. And one last thing, I just wanted to update. What cuts
me really deep about mobile and social is that I have a set of friends. I, I use a certain
device cause it was given to me for work. You guys use other devices because, for whatever
reason. I hate that the device or the app defines who I can interact with in a certain
way.
>>Kara: Good point.
>>Angus: That really bums me out.
>>Kara: That's perfect. Let's get to that: devices. Now, let us try not to insult Apple
27 times today, it's gotten a little much today.
>>Ryan: I love them.
>>Kara: You do? Ok, good. Your boss not so much. But, but, let's talk about what the
important devices. That is, there have, we're getting into this ridiculous, juvenile, typical
of Silicon Valley war between all these platforms, with Apple and Google being the most obvious,
but Facebook and, and Google and all these people in these different and all the different
devices fighting with each other and then Palm's over here dying slowly until HP buys
them. How do look at, it's a good save, how do you look at this, this idea, what you're
talking about cause it's very, it's problematic because there are all these little fascist
organizations here and here and here and you belong to the, you know, it's like the tea
parties versus the crazy liberals versus the crazy, well, the nutters, you know in this
country are politics now become the nutters running each side of the spectrum, running
everything. And the people in the middle are just vomiting, you know, quietly in their
mouths.
[laughter]
So, how do you look at, how does this solve itself when these devices don't, you know,
my, I mean, I have a Nexus One, my, but there is a certain use case of these things that
you become this, this Apple person, or this Google person.
>>Angus: I think the key thing is that, first off, Chris mentioned that the experience on
mobile is key. And generally you'll see the first party, like the service owner, they
order a killer client a la Twitter. You guys build a killer client for certain devices.
And then it comes to, "Well, what other devices do people want to build for?" And making sure
that, like, as a service owner, you should be saying, "I'm not gonna build for that device,
but I'm gonna find the best person that builds on that device and I'm gonna give them all
the love and the attention so they can satisfy the people that have friends that use my services
on other devices."
>>Kara: But you do have to choose now. A lot of these devices, you know, even on our site,
we're not gonna spend a lot of money, but we went to the iPhone first and then we were
gonna go to the Blackberry, and then we decided to go to the Android, but here's the iPad.
You know, I guess we'll go to the iPad first; it just becomes for the developers worse and
again these wars that are going on.
>>Adam: I think, sorry, I think that this is actually pretty important. Mobile is a
big deal for us because professionals have two things. They tend to be higher income
so they can afford these latest devices and services and they're never at their desks,
so they really depend on the mobile devices. But, I don't see the problem, the reverse
there it is a problem, but it becomes an obligation from a design standpoint. People pick their
devices just for reasons and I don't think it's wrong to ignore them, right? You know,
we, we have, at least in the Android application, we had a lower, you know, working on one--
>>Kara: The first one was an iPhone, right? As are most peoples.
>>Adam: The first one was an iPhone. But you have to ask that question, "Why do people
love the iPhone?" Right? That's part of why they chose that device and that fits into
what do they need to go, like, we design our applications. We don't say, "Well, what parts
of the website can we bring onto this mobile device?" Its, "We have a mobile professional.
What do they need to get done one the go, quickly, easily. And how can we bring it to
them in a way that they're truly gonna enjoy?" The, the, a mobile device, like a PC, is a
very personal device. It knows everyone you're connected to, you pick it and there's this,
and the tactile thing makes it even more personal, so it may be a problem in terms of you can't
possibly build your app for a hundred different devices, but for me, at least from the design
perspective, it feels very important to make sure that if you're gonna build an application
for Android, it's gotta be a great Android application.
>>Kara: I'm talking about the ability of being in the silos--
>>Adam: Yeah.
>>Kara: which is the opposite of open--
>>Chris Cole: I think in, in this crowd in particular, we talk about ok, iPhone versus
Android and whatnot. And we're ignoring this entire class of devices out there that we
have a much younger skew on our user base. So, these aren't people that can walk out
and plop down two hundred dollars for a device. You know, you live in Silicon Valley, you
live in Seattle--
>>Kara: You're talking about the [inaudible] phones.
>>Chris Cole: You walk around and everyone's got their iPhones in their hand and more and
more you see a lot of Androids. And the reality is that you're ignoring a significant portion
of the population if you don't look at the older feature phones and the WAP browsers
and what they can do. And this is, I would say, I wish I had committed all these statistics
to memory, but it was close to the 50 percent mark, over or under or older WAP devices that
are connecting to our site. And, you know, we talk about what we're doing, but particularly
in a social situation, you're trying to get information and interaction out as wide as
they did a great job.