Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

The Web world is shell shocked: Yahoo’s ranks are shrinking.

Who says the two Silicons aren’t one big happy family, though? Fred Wilson. BUT, that was last week’s “news”!

The New York City-based Union Square Ventures blogger screwed up his Silicon Valley headline rant–wrongly calling out a fellow Silion Alley chap for West coast arrogance–and STILL believes he nailed a bi-coastal tech angst problem.

SEE: Why Silicon Alley VCs Should Do Blogging Due Diligence, Too

Today’s mutual outpouring of tech love from both sides of the Web aisle for Yahoos, however, must surely warm even a grisled venture capitalist’s heart, as not so cold hearted entrepreneurs in both Silicons embrace the poor, displaced huddled masses of Jerry Yang refugees.

From sea to shining sea–and even from Canada–the feeding freenzy over the still warm Yahoos’ blood is fevered: “Wanted: Yahoo Product Managers” and “Why canned Yahoo employees should come talk to me,” and “Memo to YHOO Staffers: Looking for a Few Good People.”

While the reaching out is touching, offers from fledging, bootstrap ventures may very well NOT be compelling to the once coddled Yahoos!

Yahoos may take comfort though that there is someone looking out for them, a woman so determined that she is staking her very future on making sure all can continue to live the American dream, even laid off Yahoos!

Who says President Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is old school? Is the American dream EVER outdated?

In what may be hailed as HER comeback (old) kid speech, Ms. Clinton rallied the El Paso troops last evening with a Texas sized cry to keep the dream alive and well, in America, under her watch:

What I think this election is about…It is about what kind of country and world we’re going to pass on…Are we going to give the same shot at the American dream that many of us were given? Well, if we make the right decision in this election, we sure are. We’re going to give not only confidence and optimism, but real results, 21st-century solutions for what we need to do to fix our problems, meet our challenges, and seize our opportunities.

Hillary may even have been thinking of the soon to be left out in the cold Yahoos when she hailed:

There isn’t anything America can’t do if we make up our minds to do it. Every once of us, every single one of us knows that tomorrow can be better than today, but it doesn’t happen just by wishing it or hoping for it. It happens by working really, really hard to make it a reality to give everybody a better chance.

I see an America where everyone willing to work hard has a job with a rising income.

SO, Yahoos: The sun will come out tomorrow, and there may be another Clinton in the White House next year!

Above all, remember, there isn’t anything ex-Yahoos can’t do if they make up their minds to do it.

ONE (not so) REFUGEE’S STORY: Antisocial Google: Googler Bradley Horowitz Mum

MORE: How Web 2.0 Meetups Displaced the New York Software Industry and Is Union Square Ventures Changing Exit Strategies? and Henry Blodget Tech Ticker Puts Yahoo Finance at SEC Risk and Silicon Alley Web 2.0 Startups: Bootstrap For Success

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

What information overload in the Facebook presidential debates? After all, Facebook users “have shared their political affiliations and opinions since the site’s inception,” the (don’t call it social networking) site boasts:

Facebook first began adding politicians to the site during the 2006 mid-term election. Today, more than 500 US politicians have Facebook Pages, where Facebook users can support candidates, learn more about them and communicate with them. These include all the major presidential candidates, most Members of Congress and many state governors. In November 2007, Facebook launched a partnership with ABC News for the 2008 presidential election – including a revamped US Politics application on Facebook and co-sponsorship of the televised debates ahead of the New Hampshire primary.

Who needs Google then? What CNN-YouTube debates? What have you done for me lately, rather! YouTube is playing the New Hamsphire priimary card with its standard “submit Your Voter Video” solicitation:

Anyone who is in New Hampshire and thinking (a la Facebook Soundboard) about the primaries can submit a video. You don’t have to be a New Hampshire voter necessarily, thought we are looking to highlight videos from the Granite Staters. Document your primary experience from start to finish. We want t shoe the natio what primaries are like, so bring your video camera along with you and give an on-the-ground view of your experience.

Facebook may be neck and neck with YouTube on the online-offline social networking political game, but in the high-stakes political power battlefield that really counts, Google is the hands down winner.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain…have all made their pilgramages to the mighty Googleplex for what Google CEO Eric Schmidt is fond of calling ”the ultimate job interview for the top job in the U.S.” The top Googler has made sure that “the presidential campaign trail winds though the Googleplex.”

Circa 2007:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt to Hillary Clinton: Welcome to Google!

Senator Hillary Clinton: I am thrilled to be at the “best place to work in America” that is “helping to invent the future” and has “revolutionized the way we live, work, think…”

So began a one on one in February between the leader of one of the most powerful corporations in the world and the (then) Democratic frontrunner in the race to become the next leader of the most powerful country in the world. The Clinton chat with Schmidt before an audience of Googlers took place after Clinton privately meet at the Googleplex with Silicon Valley leaders.

Schmidt’s Q & A with the former First Lady offered presidential candidate Clinton an opportunity to present her stands on major election issues, such as Iraq, the environment…AND Google Health!

Schmidt set-up to Clinton:

These are the people that make Google a success. You are a Google user. How can Google help your vision happen?

Clinton return:

When Eric was showing me around, we stopped at the Google Health team office, we can not get to Universal Health Care coverage unless we have a much better information base that is very reliable that people can turn to make decisions on their own, to be empowered as consumers of health care, that is something I know you are working on and we really need you to be aggressively pursuing that.

We do need more Information Technology generally in health care, if you’ve gone to a new doctor, they probably took a new history on paper, they probably don’t have electronic medical records, if you go to a doctor out of state, they’ll have to do it all over again, because they probably can’t transfer what you have at your doctor.

The health sector is woefully deficient in Information Technology, any way you can help us move our health sector into the 21st century will help us to get a base of information on which we can make better decisions to provide health care for everybody.

Sound familiar? Ex-Googler Adam Bosworth’s ears may be ringing! His December 2006 “Connecting Americans to Their Health Care: Empowered Consumers, Personal Health Records and Emerging Technologies” speech seems to have “inspired” Clinton.

Bosworth is long gone from Google and Google’s health care intiatives seem to be going nowhere, but the leader of the leading Amerian corporation still has the ready ear of the next president of the United States, whomever that may be.

Google also is making political hay daily not only in our nation’s capital, but alongside governments worldwide. Worried about Google’s determination to control the world’s information? The Google triumvarite aims to rule the entire world Googley style, really.

Facebook’s wet behind the ears Mark Zuckerberg, though, is most likely NOT prepping to meet and greet the world’s power elite.

SEE: Google Global Power Grab: Aussie Politicians in Tow and
Google to World: AdWords Need Political Freedom and
PayPerPost Warns U.S. Congress of Google Monopoly: Barack Obama to the Rescue? and
Eric Schmidt: Google Cures What Ails the World and
The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google and
Google Masters Art of Influence Peddling and
Google Joins Blogosphere in Mocking Wikia Search: Jimmy Wales Defiant

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy is stirring up a “Posties” revolt, spurring “everyday (i.e. PayPerPost) bloggers” to “write Google, and their Congressman.”

Just as Murphy took to the PayPerPost blog to lambast Google for “censorship” and a “monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertisng,” however, Google’s fave presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was patting Google and its merry band of multi-millionaire Googlers on their backs during a mutual love fest cum personal political rally under the direction of CEO Eric Schmidt and team at the Googleplex.

Obama is the seventh candidate hoping to be the next president of the United States to make his or her campaign pilgimage to Mountain View. Bill Richardson undoubetdly still is sporting his scars from his “ultimate job interview,” as host Elliot Schrage, VP Global Communications and Public Affairs, led a visceral interrogation of the Governor, spurring Silicon Valley media to cheerfully portray Richardson’s performance as “awkward” and “bumbling.”

Schrage was quoted for condescendingly retorting to his guest, Governor Richardson: “Our nutritionist may end up running for president.”

Barack Obama was welcomed as the favorite Google son, though, with the Official Google Public Policy Blog fawning over the Congressman as the defacto honorary Googler in Chief. Obama has himself to thank, he put in a rocket scientist worthy performance, prepared even to “have a ready answer for a standard Google engineering question.”

Obama also proved himself worthy of the hefty Googler political contributions coming his way: The Obama “technology platform” is a shamelessy pro-Google one.

Moral of the Obama-PayPerPost story? Murphy ought to encourage his “Posties” to “write Obama,” rather than their “congressmen” about any evil Google doing!

What are the alleged Google bad deeds, according to Murphy? Google may have revamped its own proprietary way of evaluating Web page quality for its own use in its own proprietary systems, i.e. the mighty PageRank.

Murphy is calling for a revolt against Google because not only does he believe his PayPerPost blog network is potentially impacted by prospective potential changes in “free” traffic referred by private company Google’s search engine changes, but Murphy has himself used Google’s private, proprietary PageRank calculations as currency to sell his own blog advertising products, characterized by him as “attractive alternatives” to Google AdSense.

Murphy may be able to make a case against Google, nevertheless. After all, Google flaunts that its mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usefull” and “Posties” posts are decidely part of the “world’s information”!

Murphy is not helping his anti-Google campaign, though, by proudly taking advantage of “Google Custom Search” to power the PayPerPost blog.

PLUS: Google’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: AdWords Inflation AND Google: U.S. Taxpayers To Finance GOOG Riches

PLUS: Paglo CEO ‘Nuts’ Over FREE ‘Google For IT’: INTERVIEW

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

The New York Times says consumers will soon be wielding “torches and pitchforks” against cellphone carriers. Is a “rebellion” also in store for Linkedin?

At LinkedIn, Ms. Hillary Clinton is “the man,” despite being “First Lady” and seeking to be the first FEMALE president of the United States. As sexism is defined as “behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex” (Merriam-Webster), LinkedIn’s professional “profiles” are sexist, big time.

LinkedIn prides itself on its advertiser-friendly “premium audience,” claiming executives from each and every Fortune 500 as members. Founder Reid Hoffman proudly “signs” his LinkedIn communications by underscoring the “fact” that “3,414 CEOs use LinkedIn every day.”

How does LinkedIn’s president of products, and team, visually represent each and every one of the 15 million professionals it cites as members, both men and women? WITH A GLASS-CEILING STEREOTYPE REINFORCING MINI-MAN.

For example, the professional experience of Hillary Clinton, the most powerful woman in the world, is depicted on her LinkedIn Profile by a suit-and-tie sporting male icon. Ditto for one of LinkedIn’s own powerful women, Kay Luo, head of communications, AND every other one of the female members of LinkedIn.

Last month I discussed Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Who has the Women? noting that, while updating my LinkedIn profile over the weekend, I was taken aback to see that after posting information on my “experience,” a little executive LinkedIn MAN icon now is part of my profile, NOT a little executive LinkedIn WOMAN! (same as LinkedIn’s Ms. Luo’s profile below)

I spent some time on LinkedIn this past weekend as well and, while reading the profile of a prominent female CEO, was struck once more by the absurdity of LinkedIn using exectuive men to depict all of the executive women using its site.

I wrote in October:

It may be a “little” thing, but it is representative of that old boys club notion of the inner executive MALE circle. Why does LinkedIn “decorate” all of the 14 million plus professional profiles it hosts with executive mascots representing professional men, regardless of the gender of the person the profile represents? It would be simple to use a unisex icon, rather than a definitatively male one.

Or, how about applying a male or female executive icon as gender appropriate to individual profiles. Hey, LinkedIn could really take a stand against the purported executive “glass ceiling” by making its mascot icons universally FEMALE!

Linkedin subsequently informed me they “noticed my blog mention about the executive male mascots on LinkedIn and are trying to work with design teams to change that to unisex, if feasible.”

Six weeks later, men still rule the executive LinkedIn profile ranks, even while LinkedIn touts it has recruited “Google’s Lloyd Taylor as VP of Technical Opertations to scale infrastructure and systems and Yahoo’s Anil Khatri as VP of Engineering” to accelerate innovation.

Clinton (Hillary) has vowed to “shatter the highest glass ceiling” by becoming the first female president of the United States. Her gender-based political pitch rings somewhat hollow, though, as she is pitching her candidacy at Linkedin under the guise of a male executive.

Clinton says it is “time the world adjusted” to powerful women leaders. It is also time LinkedIn adjusted its mascots to its women members.

ALSO: Salesconx Will Monetize Your Rolodex: LinkedIn Beware? INTERVIEW

PLUS: MerchantCircle CEO Aims To Disrupt Local Advertising $39 billion Spend: INTERVIEW and Google Sends Microsoft $10 million Press Release: Bye, Bye Windows Mobile!

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Does anyone really still believe Google’s slogan–organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usefull–is an innocent one?

Google isn’t even pussy footing around about its real motivations anymore. The offical Google blog declares:

AUSTRALIA READIES ITSELF FOR A GOOGLE ELECTION

But, what if Google headlines tommorow: The United States Readies Itself for a Google Election 

The next president of the United States will, in fact, be brought to us courtesy of Google:

1) CEO Eric Schmidt is corraling all the major presidential contenders to the Googleplex for the “ultimate job interview” interrogation by Mountain View’s rocket scientists,

2) YouTube is ingratiating itself with the video man on the street herlading presidential debate empowerment,

3) Google meet and greets in Washington DC woo politicians with dreams of SEM reelection goodness.

Is Google’s political lust purely a domestic game? Hardly.

Just as Google is determined to control every book in every language in the world in order to make Google.com the ONLY library in the world, Google’s political ambitions know no boundaries, geographic or otherwise.

Next political stop: Australia. Google power is already booming down under with a near monopoly search market share.

Google Austrailia is now declaring a “world first,” really:

World First Google Election Site Launched in Australia

Thanks to who? Google’s Australia-based rocket scientists AND the Australian Federal Minister himself, Joe Hockey.

Traction? “All six political parties that are represented in Federal Parliment have their own dedicated YouTube channels.” PLUS:

Google has developed four exciting gadgets that will make a wealth of Australian political information just a click away.

YAY! Let the excitement of watching Google nuzzle its way into intimate collaboration with government power brokers all around the world.

ALSO: Google to World: AdWords Need Political Freedom and Google Health SOS: NO Adam Bosworth Cure for U.S. Healthcare

PLUS: Google Privacy Hoax: Battelle and Sullivan Duped and The Moon Sponsored by Google? NO! Lunar Bluff

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Insider Chatter presidential campaign 2008 special series on what I am calling “User Generated Politics”

The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google

And, THE User Generated Politics debate question of last evening’s YouTube CNN democratic candidates debate: Chris Nolan, a democratic operative from illinois, queried abut the unseemlyness of having a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton U.S. presidential dynasty.

I have been asking the same thing; The U.S. is not Britan, after all!

Nwe York Senator Hillary Clinton, former first lady to president Bill Clinton and frontrunner to become the next president of the United States proudly declared at ther campaign Website in May: “Governor Spitzer, thousands turn out to support campaign.”

Pictures say a thousand words! Looking closely at the photograph below, Hillary has literally replaced Bill in pressing the flesh of the adoring throngs (only missing piece, of course, a Lewinsky style nod).

Below the showcase shot of Hillary in action for campaign 2008 at the campaign’s Website was a duet of photos: portraits of Hillary and Bill side by side, or rather, portraits of President Clinton and former First Lady, Senator Clinton.

Surreal or only in America? Clinton is firmly behind Clinton; HE is looking forward to returning to the White House, at HER side.

IS Hillary concerned that she is the new Bill? NO, the right man for THIS job is a woman, Hillary Rodham proclaimed last evening, via YouTube.

SEE The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN