The plan is for companies that buy into Allied Security to buy up unused patents, issue themselves nonexclusive licenses for a song and then sell the patents. While it's not clear if Allied Security is a nonprofit, former IBM veep Brian Hinman who heads up the organization asserts it's not a profit-making venture. IBM, of course, has done much to refashion itself as a promoter and producer of open-source software — something anathema to Microsoft's culture.

The same can't be said of Intellectual Ventures, which was founded by former Microsofties Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung, Intel's Peter Detkin, and Gregory Gorder of Seattle law firm Perkins Coie, which counts Microsoft as a top client. Myhrvold has been buying up patents left and right, and while his company has yet to sue anyone, he hasn't ruled it out. Microsoft executives have traditionally aped Bill Gates hard-line rhetoric when it comes to intellectual property, and there's little reason to believe Myhrvold and company are any different. While Google is also an investor in the fund (along with Apple and eBay), the Mountain View company must be worried enough about the fund's plans and ties to have helped create a potential competitor.

In other words, if Intellectual Ventures continued to aggregate patents in a competitive vacuum, it could become just as if not more dangerous a monopoly than Microsoft in the company's heyday by commanding premium royalties or denying access to patents entirely in order to hobble products and competitors. It's yet to be seen if Intellectual Ventures will carry water for the Redmond software giant in court, and for now, Allied Security is collection of legal documents and yet an actual owner of patents, but this could shape up to be one of the most boringly important battles in the coming years.

In its defense, eBay says this is simply an attempt to "to protect uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice and the livelihood of law-abiding sellers." The company's system by which manufacturers can flag suspicious and possibly fraudulent sales was not enough to mollify manufacturers or the French magistrate. It certainly sounds a lot like YouTube's laissez-faire approach to policing copyright on the video sharing site. But YouTube has the protection of the DMCA here in the United States and a broadly equivalent law, DADVSI, in France. There are no laws on the books in either country to protect eBay's right to operate like Los Angeles's Santee Alley or New York's Canal Street markets. (Photo by L. W. Yang)

Law.com went to a handful of lawyers to the startup stars to get their unofficial advice on how Craigslist could might have behaved better with counsel in-house, such as wrestling with eBay over the status of the few shares not held by Newmark and Buckmaster. Mike Godwin, general counsel to the Wikimedia Foundation, offered that at his organization no one would blog about a lawsuit in progress, as Buckmaster did. Yes, take a lesson from a lawyer who represents the organization founded by über-slut Jimmy Wales: no matter how nutty Craig and Jim's actions are, having a legal team on the payroll to answer for them is the solution. (Photo: miketippett)

With video and text chat allowing managers to check in on employees and feed them scripts, as well as cheap international calling and archiving conversations, it can work as a cheap and easy tool for managing remote customer-service centers to close those deals made on eBay and keep the credit card charges flowing into PayPal. In other words, it's about lubricating "transaction friction" by increasing buyer confidence and decreasing credit card charge-backs and complaints. Now if only there was a country with lots of English speakers and really low wages.

These days Facebook, MySpace, Google, Apple, Salesforce.com and LinkedIn all call themselves platforms and hope third-party developers will believe it. One reason eBay stands a chance: Like all of those services, it has millions of users; unlike most of those services, all of eBay's users visit the site to spend or make money. If a developer can build an app to "reduce the friction" in an eBay transaction — as an MBA might put it — then there's a chance they could get away with taking a tiny cut for themselves. Already, outside developers have built 12,000 programs, accounting for a quarter of all eBay listings.

I am the owner of ten Facebook profiles. Every single one of my profiles has at minimum 200 friends. I have aggregated the friends for each persona organically. I will briefly mention the manner in which I compiled a list of genuine friends for each persona.



Step 1: Develop a persona with an intense interest on specific subjects/topics
Step 2: Integrate that individual into communities/forums based on their interests
Step 3: Stimulate conversation inside communities/forums and interact with other users
Step 4: Establish the persona inside the communities/forums
Step 5: Begin to add friends organically



The ten profiles I have are as follows, and can be sold separately if requested:

• Samantha (age 19) – loves music, makes art, and enjoys the outdoors
• John (age 35) – health purist, into yoga, active runner, amateur cyclists, and into healthy eating.
• David (age 23) – Computer programmer, big gamer, into the latest gadgets, and is a blogger
• Michael (age 42) – Intellectual, reads books, enjoys poetry, has a weakness for fast food, and loves his two kids
• Carrie (age 26) – Fashionista, craves gossip magazines, doodles potential outfits, and follows celebrity developments
• Erik (age 29) – Big beer drinker, watches a ton of sports, likes sports cars, and likes to cook
• Holly (age 18) – Big into volunteering, loves reading, loves school, and interested in travelling abroad
• Peter (age 19) – Athlete, big into college life, likes drama and mystery movies, and can’t live without mac and cheese
• Shannon (age 33) – Design aficionado, into exploring a city’s culture, active artist, and
  is latched onto her iPhone
• Kristin (age 40) – Live at home mom, loves cooking for her family, wishes she had a new car, wants a vacation to the beach, and is really into gardening

These personas are geographically dispersed, and they all live in major cities across the United States. I am leaving the last name of the profiles absent, as not to be identifiable by Facebook employees. I am not providing a screenshot of the profiles either, but they are available if a serious request is made.



All of these Facebook personas engage on a daily basis with other Facebook members, they share content, and they update their status. They have a variety of applications installed on their Facebook page, and they have a substantial amount of comments left on their wall. Additionally, these personas post pictures they find interesting on their Facebook page.



I currently am testing the waters, and would like to see if any marketers are interested in using these. Under the right conditions and for a fair price you will receive full control of these personas, as well as associated emails. A walk through each of the characters is possible if an individual is serious about their interest, and is willing to assign a value to the persona ahead of time.



I would love to hear from you. Please contact me at: pseudopr@gmail.com for questions

VeriSign chairman Jim Bidzos
An employee's advice to senior management:

Don't drag out the divestiture process in an effort to get a few extra bucks. And if you're going to kill the whole thing, be honest with employees about opportunities.

AMD chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz
An employee's advice to senior management:

AMD needs to go back to basics. What business is AMD in, who do you need onboard to lead the company in that business, who do you need that can create demand for the product, and what do the customers want? Ignore the "how" and focus on the "who." Stop treating employees like costs and more like assets. Threatening cubical hoteling and pushing the "do more with less" story is oppressive, not inspiring. The most marketable talent will leave first.

EMC CEO and chairman Joe Tucci
An employee's advice to senior management:

Senior management needs to respect its employees, listen to feedback and not bury its head in the sand as it relates to issues of sexism and lack of diversity. The culture continues to be predominantly young white men and this is largely because people hire who they know. "Breaking the glass ceiling" requires a lot of sacrifice! They will cite a few examples of high profile women, but these are the exception, not the rule. Work/life balance is not a priority in this company. Most of the highest ranking professional women in this organization are unmarried or do not have children. They need to recognize the need for more flexible work options that promote the importance of family. And most importantly, there need to be consequences for illegal and unethical behavior, regardless of who commits it! People cannot be protected from this. There are too many blind eyes turned when sexual harassment, illegal business practices, or other unethical acts occur.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang

An employee's advice to senior management:

Be more open to the workforce opinions. Be more humble. Be less political. Listen more, do more, and quickly.

eBay CEO John Donahoe
An employee's advice to senior management:

Streamline the process so people can focus more on getting their work done. Share more of the details of the vision for eBay and the competition of eBay.

Symantec CEO John Thompson
An employee's advice to senior management:

Open your eyes to how the actually successful companies are doing it. Use your talent pool and clear the way to innovate internally. Shift the focus from salesmanship to inherent quality. Build products that sell themselves rather than needing an aggresive sales cycle to move.

Hewlett-Packard chairman, president and CEO Mark Hurd
An employee's advice to senior management:

Stop screwing the employees. Stop reducing benefits every week. Stop saying you plan to invest in research and development when you are actually reducing everything except your bonuses. Start treating people as people. Get some moral fiber.

EDS chairman, president and CEO Ron Rittenmeyer
An employee's advice to senior management:

As I said above, either learn to trust the junior leadership you put into place or replace them. Set goals and then GET OUT OF THE WAY and allow the leadership the flexibility to execute to them. If they don't perform, release them. The micromanagement culture has to stop.

IBM chairman, president and CEO Sam Palmisano
An employee's advice to senior management:

One thing is missing though, an acceptance of the fact that there are "superstars" in the world, and that these superstars perform several orders of magnitude better than regular employees. What is missing within IBM is the ability to seek out, and nourish these superstars. Over time superstars will leave IBM because they will get much more recognition in other organizations. This has an impact on IBM's ability to deliver some things.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
An employee's advice to senior management:

There is a severe lack of leadership in the company. With so many things going on it takes executives too long to commit to business decisions and too long to pick up on competitive responses to disruptive technologies.Microsoft promotes based on 2 facets - technical knowledge and political saavy. What Microsoft does not promote based on is leadership ability, managerial ability or business saavy.

(Photo of Ballmer by AP/Sarbach)

Kind of like that anonymous complaint about eBay's anticompetitive practices in Australia "accidentally" displaying data which identified Google as the author. If the conspiracy theorists are right about Google blocking access to PayPal through App Engine intentionally, then why not just say that turnabout is fair play after eBay pulled similar stunts to keep Google Checkout off the auction site? That seems easier.

The file had an electronic stamp showing it was generated from a Microsoft Word document titled ""ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public 2.DOC." So much for the secret jab. Google runs its own payments service, Google Checkout, and the PayPal rivalry is often intense. Last summer, Google planned a Boston Tea Party to promote Checkout to merchants during the eBay Live conference in Boston. eBay complained and, even though Google canceled the event, eBay pulled its advertising from the site for several weeks.

Baba's teachings include the precept that showing kindness to others is the highest form of devotion to God, and writings compiled by noted mystic Ram Dass in the book Miracle of Love. It's an opportunity for Zuckerberg to appear deep when discoursing on management philosophy. More importantly, he can now share the experience with other tech titans as a sort of rite of passage in the tightknit world of the Valley's ultrarich. (Photo by Ken Wieland)

When eBay's then-CEO Meg Whitman was wooing Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster, she was so nice! She even promised that they'd get lots of playdates on the board with dreamy eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and Newmark and Buckmaster believed her when she said Omidyar held the same Sunday-school values they did:

Mr. Newmark and Mr. Buckmaster were impressed by Ms. Whitman's presentation; most notably the importance to eBay of its community and eBay's dedication to Pierre Omidyar's Community Values — particularly the values that "We believe that people are basically good;" "We believe than an honest, opn environment can bring out the best in people;" and "We encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated." These were very similar to craigslist's own principles and, in reliance on eBay's expressed commitment to these principles, along with Ms. Whitman's representations, craigslist agreed to resume discussions.

At the time, eBay did not disagree with Craig's impression, but instead enthusiastically embraced it. For example, when Mr. Price [Ed. Note: Garrett Price, VP of new ventures] of eBay (who witnessed virtually all of the negotiations involving the transaction) was provided a late draft of Craig's blog entry, his response was "[I] Love it." However, eBay did not post a link to Craig's blog entry on its own website once the transaction had closed, as eBay had promised it would.

And that was only the start of eBay's bullying behavior. Included in the complaint is a screenshot of text ads on Google that Craigslist offered as evidence of eBay's trademark infringement, false advertising and anti-competitive practices.

Of course, none of this will be settled any time soon — a case management conference isn't scheduled until October 10. And based on how nasty this is getting, I doubt a settlement — at least one not involving lollipops — will be reached anytime soon.(Photo by AP/Jeff Chiu)

Facebook evangelist Dave Morin touts the ability to take one's real identity from Facebook to other websites. And indeed, that's one reason why I mocked MySpace's move; its users' pseudonymous logins have no particular value as sources of identity.

But do I really want to interconnect all my online identities? That's the premise of the "data portability" movement — that we really want nothing more than to take our friends with us from one website to another. And yet I'm content to segregate, say, the work acquaintances I have on LinkedIn from the more personal relationships I track on Facebook. Would Valleywag's commenters want to have their real names attached to their accounts? Some are happy to, while for others, that's a deal-breaker — and the site would be the lesser if it lost them.

Mark Zuckerberg's original, brilliant insight — to connect Facebook's identities to real names, schools, and workplaces — is its advantage over rival social networks like Bebo and MySpace. But I'm not sure I want a Web with non anonymity. Morin and others will hasten to note Facebook's privacy options — but surely they realize that when others give up their anonymity, there will be peer pressure for most to do so.

Real identity has value, say, when conducting commerce, which is why it's laughable that eBay partnered with MySpace and not Facebook — just another sign of that company's clueless technological leadership. But anonymity has its benefits. Facebook Connect threatens the anonymous Web. For that reason, I can't wish Facebook Connect anything more than partial success.

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg

Buckmaster may win points in the court of public opinion. Ordinary Craigslist users may well believe his spin, that eBay is the bad guy in this fight for seeking to protect its rights to a stake in the company it bought fair and square (and at a substantial profit to Buckmaster and Newmark).

But the complaint eBay filed makes clear what happened. Newmark and Buckmaster, upset that eBay had launched a competitive classifieds site, Kijiji, invoked a provision that cancelled a right of first refusal they held over eBay's shares — a right that forced eBay to offer its shares first to Craigslist, should it wish to sell. They landed in trouble with eBay by trying to force it to sign a new right-of-first-refusal agreement.

Newmark and Buckmaster, in short, are idiots. In a snit over Kijiji, they cancelled a valuable power they held over eBay. They are now engaging in what appear to be dirty boardroom tricks to reinstate that power, using means eBay finds questionable. It is understandable that they dislike eBay's competition. But had they just kept quiet about it, Newmark and Buckmaster could have kept eBay at bay indefinitely, and kept raking in the lion's share of Craigslist's profits. The trouble they are in now is entirely of their own making.

(Ilustration by Ismael Rodan/WSJ via Craigslist)

But Newmark and Buckmaster have always operated Craigslist more as their private money machine than a real company. That they issued shares to themselves without discussing the matter with eBay, a major shareholder, is merely typical for them.

Here's one more thing that's interesting. A source familiar with Craigslist's stock ownership told me that, of the shares left over after eBay's stake, Newmark owned roughly 60 percent of the remaining shares, and Buckmaster 40 percent. That means Newmark's owns 41 percent of Craigslist, and Buckmaster 27 percent. Here's a disturbing thought: If Buckmaster were ever to switch his loyalties, he and eBay combined own enough of the company to outvote Newmark.

The two appear utterly sympatico, so a Buckmaster defection seems unlikely. But Buckmaster has taken the lead in Craigslist's dealings with eBay. The auction giant, so far, has been the target of Buckmaster's Machiavellian scheming. But he is the swing vote. If Buckmaster turned against Newmark, Craigslist would no longer be Craig's.

[B]reaching their fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and good faith by implementing certain self-dealing transactions challenged herein which were designed specifically to benefit themselves to the detriment of eBay.

• In 2005, Buckmaster complained that eBay's unfortunately-named classified service Kijiji competed directly with Craigslist, telling then CEO Meg Whitman "we are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder."
• Whitman responded that eBay loved Craigslist, and that "we would welcome the opportunity to acquire the remainder" of the company.
• In October of 2007, Buckmaster and Newmark met with lawyer Edward Wes, and issued themselves "reorganization shares" which diluted eBay's stake under the 25 percent threshold that gave eBay special rights in the election of board members.
• They further tried to poison the share well through right of first refusal clauses that eBay alleges would "make Newmark, Buckmaster, or the Company they control the only possible acquirers of eBay's shares."
• Newmark and Buckmaster didn't bother to tell eBay about these moves, as well as changes to the corporate charter, until January 3rd of 2008. Now eBay wants the moves overturned in the courts.

• Jeffrey Dahmer drove Whitman out of the "murderabilia' business: " I had gotten emails from customers not only about Dahmer's refrigerator but autopsy photos - the whole category of items around murders — so-called 'murderabilia.' And we heard from victim's families. The team talked about it and decided we don't want to go there."
• Bored eBay users emailed Whitman because they were lonely: " I can get anywhere from 50 to thousands of emails a day. And because we are the locus of their economic life and also in some ways their social life, there is lots of commentary on almost anything that we do."
• Whitman may have camped out with the technology team during the 1999 outage, but she all but admits she did so as a media stunt: "There was nothing I could do other than be a cheerleader and a coach to the technology team.... We had CNN parked outside the building wanting an update on the status every 60 minutes.... Every hour I had to go out, looking more tired each time.So it was in some ways just leadership by being there."
• Whitman is now spending her time cleaning out her house. She started with the garage.

(Photograph by Art Streiber)

Dear Craig's List, I LOVE U VERY MUCH!!! PRETTY-PLEASE let me know if I can do ANYTHING to support you. I am a Powerful,Licensed Massage therapist in FL who will use ALL of My intellectual BICEPS & anything I've got to be your dutiful minion.

Why, precisely, is Craigslist trying to dilute eBay's stake? Silicon Alley Insider's Peter Kafka speculates that Craigslist is looking for an outside investor. Nonsense; as Kafka himself points out, Craigslist doesn't need the money. Far more likely: Newmark and Buckmaster are angling to issue more shares to themselves so they don't have to share as much of the company's profits with eBay.

Depicted in the portrait as a charming toddler, she grew into quite the Lady before being bled to death by her doctors at age 36. The amount and nature of her contribution to computing is controversial, with rumors attributing her with everything from substance abuse and gambling to manic depression and delusions of grandeur. Which tells me not much has changed in the developer community over the past two centuries.