Hopefully this is PR spin. If it's not, it's pretty disturbing that allegations of one mean merchant can cause an algo change. How many businesses will be collateral damage of this update? How many fake negative review campaigns with this spawn? If this is a real algo change, it was done in an extraordinarily hasty, reactionary, and cavalier manner. (Please don't ding my site G, nothing personal)
DoubleDutch (http://www.doubledutch.me) has three internship positions open: bizdev, engineering, marketing. Based in the Mission District of San Francisco, close to Bart.
"The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala."
Privacy and social networking are naturally opposing ideas--social networking is all about sharing information with people and privacy is all about keeping information from people. That's like saying Google ("organize the world's information") overlooked the importance of disorganization or ignorance. It won't be privacy at all that Facebook overlooks, it'll be something completely orthogonal to that axis.
It is, however, true that Facebook is unlike Google in that, while nearly everyone wants to find information, not everyone wants to share information with other people.
Socializing however is all about varying levels of privacy.
I won't tell my coworkers or boss the same things I tell my friends, I won't tell my friends what I tell my close friends, and my family sits on the highest tier.
Maybe facebook will get this maybe it won't, or in general maybe it is impossible on the web where information tends to be so open.
Nobody at Facebook told you that Facebook was the best way to discuss the most personal aspects of your life with the people who are closest to you--though it includes private messaging, which may be good enough if you can't see them in person.
If you want privacy, don't share private information on Facebook. If you want to remain ignorant of your favorite sports team's latest scores or the most disgusting new genre of porn or how some movie you haven't seen yet ends, don't look them up on Google. The "next big thing" that Facebook is going to miss is not something people can already get by simply restricting their usage of Facebook, it'll be on a different axis entirely.
"Privacy and social networking are naturally opposing ideas"
No is not. Privacy is about managing social networking, the ability to connect to those I want as I want,not someone else telling me how should I do that.
As you get more social, you get more people telling you private things.
Agreed that privacy and social networks are opposing ideas. But, they are opposing ideas only because how Facebook defines a user's "social network." The entire world is not my "social network." So, IMHO, addressing privacy may need a change in that thinking/definition of what a social network is.
That's certainly what Facebook believes. What it doesn't really understand (possibly because its people have gone straight there from college and continued in the same atmosphere) is that normal people want a certain amount of separation between their networks, e.g. work/social/personal.
yeah but...those lines are blurring and not just because of facebook. partially to do with increasing ease of travel and long-distance communication, partially to do with changing attitudes about family maybe? surely there are many other factors, and more still around the bend.
this isn't to say that i don't ever want to say something to my friends but not family, or vice-versa. more often my issues with the "audience" for my facebook posts have to do with various groups interest in the subject of the post - people i went to high school with mostly don't care about python, or some great restaurant out here across the country.
Self employment in Mexico City is a bit different than the startups you find in San Francisco.
No, it's not a bit different. It's completely different. It's another universe.
The vast majority of self employment in DF is a fruit stand or selling cigarettes at traffic lights (not that there's anything wrong with that).
I spent some time with an Italian entrepreneur a few weeks ago and he told me "we have three VCs in our country. and two are out of money."
The Sobering Reality of Entrepreneurship in the US is that we have it better than everybody else in the world, and even more so if you are an entrepreneur in SF, NY, Boston, Austin, etc.
Yes, the US economy is better than most places where entrepreneurship is a necessity. But it's also a world of paperwork, high tax and stifling administrative work -- and that's if you happen to be making a profit.
The problem is that the US is hostile to small businesses. Are you a single member LLC? Then you are personally liable for claims against your business. Want health insurance? Get ready to pay through the nose. How about at tax time? You'll have self-employment tax, and most likely special state taxes on businesses (NY has this) to look forward to. The list goes on.
If you have a successful software business and don't need to be in the US it's actually better to leave and run it elsewhere.
Do you think it's better anywhere else in the world. Up until a year ago, the country I am in made it inconceivable to be an entrepreneur. And they invented the fking word! You think paying taxes at tax time is bad. How about paying taxes before you are allowed to start your company.
If people could do a startup elsewhere you don't think they would already. Taxes, liability, and health care are the least of the problems for a startup.
You might as well be saying people should emigrate to country other than the US. There are far easier entry ports, yet the US still manages to be #1 no matter how many hoops they make you jump through.
Yes, many countries are better than the US for entrepreneurship. I'm sorry that France is not one of them, but that doesn't really speak for the rest of the world -- your countrymen invented the word 'entrepreneur,' but they also invented 'bureaucracy' and 'laissez-faire'.
In Austria, if you become unemployed, and want to use that as an opportunity to start a company, the govt will extend your unemployment benefits by 6-18 mos, and give you a big break on your social taxes for years.
Also, you get unemployment insurance as a self-employed person, as of a few years ago.
And, naturally, everyone - no matter what they do or how much they earn - is covered by social health insurance, which is excellent. (Also pensions!)
Also, yes, you have to come up with 20-30K euros to start a true LLC -- but you can do business for "free" as a selbständig, or self-employed person, including employing another. However, if you do set up an LLC, you can never be liable for more than that 20-30K euros - it is not a fee, it is an escrow. If you were to close the business, without outstanding liabilities, you would get your money back.
Taxes, liability and healthcare may SEEM like the least of worries for a startup -- right up to the point where they suddenly become life-or-death, mission-critical. Naturally.
You've only addressed the bureaucratic part of startup. Many countries are only now seeing the benefits of encouraging entrepreneurship instead of taxing them out of existence. But just because the government writes a decree doesn't mean everyone stops what they are doing to change course.
There is a reason its called a startup culture. It takes a societal shift to get one running not just a few tax incentives.
Also unemployment doesn't change it. There are certain people that have what it takes to run a successful startup. These people are in demand and are never unemployed.
I enjoyed his "curious choice" description of Apple choosing to go with default wallpaper that looks like a series of deep scratches on the screen. Glad I wasn't the only one who gasped "crap, it's scratched!" when I booted it up.
Yeah, when I went to the Apple store to play with one, I thought for like 5 seconds that it was scratched (as floor models on electronics are sometimes beaten up, though usually not 2 days after launch). Then I felt for the scratches and didn't feel them, and then I opened an app, fixing the screen heroically!
