Ex-Yahoo Ryan Kuder started The Purple People Collective as a resource for newly laid-off Yahoos (and any other tech workers) looking to band together and find freelance work. The site, which launched last month, now has 100 listings including a few from ex-Yahoo potential acquirer, Microsoft.
Kuder says that the site, built over one weekend by the Koombea dev team, has grown 100% from, “word of mouth, blogs, Facebook sharing and Twitters — all people helping their friends find jobs.” It probably doesn’t hurt that it’s completely free to list a job or create a profile, and that the launch was timed with the most recent round of Yahoo layoffs.
Purple people (and anyone else) can get their job listings fix by following @purplegigs on Twitter. Job seekers and recruiters alike can also opt to subscribe to RSS feeds for both new jobs or new profiles. Given that the site draws Microsoft level recruiters to post and view Purple People profiles, Kuder recommends that serious job seekers create profiles to get noticed.
More Resources From Mashable
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Steve Jobs Subpoenaed For Backdated Options Case
The Daily Poll: How Did You Follow the Steve Jobs Keynote?
New Edward Burns Movie to be Released Exclusively on iTunes
No, Steve Jobs Didn’t Die; Just More Hacking
Web Jobs: The Mashable Back Catalog
Want to Work at Twitter?
Ouch: Bloomberg Mistakenly Publishes Steve Jobs’ Obituary
It’s that time: predictions for the year ahead and a look back at how we did in the year past.
Several of last year’s predictions proved highly accurate, as many of the topics we devote attention to – social networking, startups, and increasingly mobile apps – evolved according to plan. Looking ahead, we think next year is going to be defined largely by how companies and the entrepreneurs and developers behind them adjust to the more macro issues facing all of us, most notably the economy. Our forecast is largely based on this premise.
Below, a report card and continued outlook for last year’s predictions, as well as a fresh batch of prognostications for the New Year.
2008 Predictions: How’d We Do?
The Good
Hulu Gets Popular: The site most people initially wanted to hate has done well for itself, becoming the 6th most popular video destination in the US this year.
’09 Outlook: There’s no reason to think Hulu’s growth will slow down as NBC and News Corp are likely to continue to put more content online, as well as work to open up the gates to international viewers (their CEO says as much in an interview today with MediaPost)
Mobile Social Networking Takes Off … Sort Of: Indeed, it was a very big year for mobile, fueled by the launch of the iPhone 3G and the App Store. Facebook recently noted that their number of active mobile users has grown from 5 to 15 million this year.
’09 Outlook: As more consumers switch to iPhone, more handsets launch with Android, and Blackberry launches an app store of its own, the growth of mobile apps will continue. For entrepreneurs and developers, it’s perhaps the biggest opportunity since broadband.
Blogs Become Hot Acquisition Targets: It was a good year for a few blogs on the acquisition front. Most notably, Ars Technica got scooped up by Conde Nast, while PaidContent was sold to The Guardian. Several others major blogs, like The Huffington Post, raised big rounds of venture capital instead.
’09 Outlook: Old media still needs significant changes to its business models; blogs could be stretched by the economy and slumping ad sales. These two forces should lead to more deals this year.
Facebook Truly Goes Mainstream: Facebook grew rapidly in ’08, passing MySpace worldwide in terms of traffic and set to eclipse it in the US early next year. It’s also won the battle for mindshare, stealing the title of “it” social network in popular culture.
’09 Outlook: It’s hard to see any significant threats to Facebook’s growth on the horizon, although, that’s what most people said about MySpace just a couple years ago. Personally, I see Facebook continuing to grow big in ’09, far surpassing all competitors by year’s end.
Startup Consolidation: Last year, I wrote that “there are too many companies chasing too many of the same ideas.” That certainly proved to be the case, as numerous startups either folded or combined with others. For example: Six Apart and Pownce, Live Universe and PageFlakes + Revver, Buzznet and Qloud, Automattic and PollDaddy + IntenseDebate, and many others.
’09 Outlook: This trend will only accelerate next year as startups fail to raise more venture capital and are forced to either fold or combine forces with someone else.
Email Doesn’t Die: As ’08 draws to a close, my inbox has nearly 17,000 unread emails. Enough said.
’09 Outlook: Email will only get more relevant as Google and Yahoo push the concept of email as an application platform.
The Bad
Microsoft Finally Buys Yahoo: Too bad I didn’t phrase this one slightly differently. Microsoft certainly tried its best to acquire Yahoo, and the story dominated the headlines for the early part of this year. But Yahoo refused, saw its stock fall to historic lows, and CEO Jerry Yang resigned.
’09 Outlook: Steve Ballmer has said he’s no longer interested in Yahoo, but, given the slowdown in ad spending, Yahoo could get desperate and become too cheap for Microsoft to pass up. I’ll give it a 30/70 shot of happening next year.
News Corp Monetizes MySpace … By Selling It: This one wasn’t actually that far off – in the midst of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal falling apart, rumor had it that News Corp was putting together a bid that involved swapping MySpace for part ownership of Yahoo. But, it didn’t happen.
’09 Outlook: Like most media companies, the value of News Corp has taken a sharp hit this year, in-step with the overall economy. I’d expect them to hold tight and continue to expand MySpace internationally, on mobile handsets, and across the Web through MySpaceID.
The Ugly
Gmail Removes Beta Status: Nope.
’09 Outlook: Much like the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google’s homepage, I’m pretty sure the “Beta” tag on Gmail is here to stay, mainly for nostalgia.
LinkedIn Files to Go Public, Then Withdraws, Then Changes Business Model: LinkedIn stayed the course in ’08, raised a lot of venture capital, and by most accounts, continued to grow nicely.
’09 Outlook: There is absolutely no market for IPOs right now, so I’d expect LinkedIn to remain a private company. As users scramble to find jobs and opportunities in a bad economy, the site could actually have a great year.
2009 Predictions: What’s Next?
Facebook and MySpace Become Aggressive Acquirers: As startup consolidation continues, look for the two biggest social networks to become aggressive acquirers. The reason? Both have ambitions as not only media companies (side bet: look for Facebook to buy or take a stake in a big music app), but as identity providers. One sure-fire way to gain market share as an identity provider is to buy up popular but profitless sites and make their own identity system the standard. This is exactly what Google and Yahoo have done with properties they’ve acquired through the years (see: Flickr, Del.icio.us, Blogger, FeedBurner, etc.).
The eBay Break-Up: eBay has essentially become the Internet’s biggest holding company. As the owner of several businesses that don’t really fit together and facing a decline in popularity for its original auction service, the time has come for eBay to dismantle into several leaner, more tightly focused companies. Skype and PayPal are both still growing nicely – look for at least one of them to be sold or spun-off in 2009, with Google and/or Amazon as likely buyers.
A Big Year for Amazon: This past weekend’s Wall Street Journal noted how dire things are about to get for brick and mortar stores, with massive closings expected across the board. Who is that good for? Amazon, who already reported that its holiday sales were actually up this year. Amazon’s developing data business could also see gains as more Web companies look to trim infrastructure costs.
Google Chrome Gains Meaningful Market Share: One of the few products that launched this year that I actively evangelize with everyone that asks me about it is Google Chrome. For most people, it’s simply a faster and better browsing experience than IE or Firefox offers. Already out of beta, expect Google to market Chrome aggressively, signing distribution deals with PC manufacturers, bundling it with other software, and devoting unsold ad inventory to the browser.
At Least One Big Newspaper Goes All Digital: The Christian Science Monitor already did it, and I expect more to follow in 2009. More specifically, I expect at least one large daily newspaper in the US to announce plans to eliminate a print edition. No more trucks and no more dead trees. And, while it might not happen until 2010, I expect them to have great success with it.
Comments Become the New Blogs: People are commenting everywhere, whether it’s on Twitter, Friendfeed, or actual news sites and blogs. A new platform will emerge where users can truly take ownership of their comments in a blog-like format. We’re already starting to see this with Disqus, and Movable Type’s announced Motion product might go in this direction too. This will become a popular alternative to the traditional personal homepage or blog, because it’s so much easier to update.
Startup Incubators Flourish: Venture capital might be dead for the time being, but the biggest opportunities right now, as I see it, are concepts that require very little up-front investment. Red hot areas like mobile applications, services that leverage data portability, and micropublishing are all low-cost businesses to enter. With investors shying away from big bets and re-upping in bloated, unprofitable startups, look for many more funds of the YCombinator and TechStars ilk to emerge.
Twitter Doesn’t Go Mainstream: Twitter will keep growing, but I don’t see it going “mainstream” as us bloggers like to say. I see it evolving much more like personal blogging: it will keep growing, but eventually it will hit a plateau. Ask people outside of your work life about Twitter and the response will likely be “why would anyone care what I’m doing or thinking?” Sure, they’ll passively consume Tweets as the service continues to be integrated into media, but the number of active Twitter users will not come close to matching what you see on Facebook or MySpace. The value proposition simply isn’t as strong.
How’d We Do?
It’s nice to see so many of our stories from 2008 ended up intersecting with the various predictions we made at the end of last year. What do you think of our forecast for ’09? For that matter, what subjects would you like to see us devote more or less time to on Mashable? Let us know what you think of all of the above in the comments.
We look forward to bringing you continuous coverage of our ever-changing social media landscape in 2009.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
The Daily Poll: Your Predictions for Hulu
GotZapp - Mobile Social Network Launching
2007 Predictions Response
G1 and the iPhone Are Nice, But I Want My Prepaid Back
Make Money with Mashable
Nostradamical: 50% Chance of Survival
Bank On It: Facebook Will Pass MySpace in US Popularity
In a nod toward privacy, today Yahoo said it would only keep personal data on searchers and portal users for 90 days (double that in cases of fraud or suspicious activity). This ups the ante for other search firms Google, which halved its data retention time to nine months in September, and Microsoft, which has said it will drop its data retention times to 6 months if its competitors did. Prior to this announcement, Yahoo kept data for 13 months.
Here’s how Yahoo plans to scrub the data, which includes not just search, but page views and ad views as well:
- Delete the final octet of the IP address
- Yahoo! ID will be one-way secret hashed and the last 50% of the hashed identifier is truncated
- Cookie identifiers are one-way secret hashed
- We add an additional search filter for personally identifiable info in search logs such as credit card numbers or social security numbers
The search firms are responding to increasing government and consumer concern about online privacy–namely a European Union effort to get search firms to delete user information after 6 months — and likely the creation of a telecommunications-backed lobbying group that hopes to set the nation’s agenda when it comes to online privacy. Microsoft has a member on the board of that group, called The Future of Privacy, but Yahoo and Google do not.
Yahoo’s move is a good start for those concerned about privacy, but we’re still going to have to start talking about what controls consumers have with regard to their data and when privacy trumps the greater good.
Microsoft has arrived in the iPhone App Store.
The company’s first official app, released today, has been a fun distraction for us this evening: SeaDragon Mobile lets you “View thousands of images over the air, quickly view massive gigapixel images, explore Photosynth collections in 2D, including your own, add your own PhotoZoom / Deep Zoom Composer content [and] subscribe to Deep Zoom RSS feeds.”
The aim is to highlight Microsoft’s photo-display tech on mobile devices, explains TechFlash, and we place it firmly in the “cool but not so useful” category. And yet, Microsoft has many, many useful applications: will we see those in the App Store soon?
You might assume Microsoft will fail to embrace the iPhone. After all, there are scores of great Windows Mobile Apps already, and why promote a rival platform?
And yet…there’s Microsoft Office for the Mac, and we’ve received confirmation that Microsoft’s Office Web, a web-based version of Office, will work in Safari and on the iPhone. And as early as March this year, Microsoft had a team investigating the possibilities of Microsoft on the iPhone.
Microsoft Office coming to the App Store someday? The prognosis is better than you might imagine.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Free iPhone Apps!
World’s Simplest iPhone App
Apple’s iPhone Directory is Really Real!
Apple Making a Directory for iPhone Apps?
Nokia Bringing Silverlight to Symbian Phones
iPhone. Europe. September.
Google Reader + iPhone = Awesome
Microsoft has arrived in the iPhone App Store.
The company’s first official app, released today, has been a fun distraction for us this evening: SeaDragon Mobile lets you “View thousands of images over the air, quickly view massive gigapixel images, explore Photosynth collections in 2D, including your own, add your own PhotoZoom / Deep Zoom Composer content [and] subscribe to Deep Zoom RSS feeds.”
The aim is to highlight Microsoft’s photo-display tech on mobile devices, explains TechFlash, and we place it firmly in the “cool but not so useful” category. And yet, Microsoft has many, many useful applications: will we see those in the App Store soon?
You might assume Microsoft will fail to embrace the iPhone. After all, there are scores of great Windows Mobile Apps already, and why promote a rival platform?
And yet…there’s Microsoft Office for the Mac, and we’ve received confirmation that Microsoft’s Office Web, a web-based version of Office, will work in Safari and on the iPhone. And as early as March this year, Microsoft had a team investigating the possibilities of Microsoft on the iPhone.
Microsoft Office coming to the App Store someday? The prognosis is better than you might imagine.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Free iPhone Apps!
World’s Simplest iPhone App
Apple’s iPhone Directory is Really Real!
Apple Making a Directory for iPhone Apps?
Nokia Bringing Silverlight to Symbian Phones
iPhone. Europe. September.
Google Reader + iPhone = Awesome
Microsoft Live Labs has just released Thumbtack, a new online notebook service of sorts, allowing you to create different collections where you can store links and content and share it with friends. Microsoft offers a few examples of how you might want to use this: finding a new apartment with your roommate, creating a list of your favorite restaurants, or storing data on different cars if you’re in the market for one.
The most comparable competitor is probably Google Notebook, which lets you create an unlimited number of lists that can be shared with your contacts. Just like Notebook, Thumbtack offers a bookmarklet so you can add to your collections as you browse the Web. Here’s a demo of Thumbtack from the Live Labs team:
I could see this being somewhat useful for very specific tasks, but generally speaking, simple bookmarking and tagging of Web pages works just fine for organizing links I’d like to remember. Do you think Thumbtack is something you’d use? Or, are you using any online notebook tool for that matter?
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Rumor: Microsoft Wants To Buy Ustream.TV
Microsoft Loses Court Appeal. Must Pay $690M for Market Dominance.
Steve Ballmer Attacks Google’s Gmail Ads
Microsoft and Digg Sign Ad Deal, Acquisition Mentioned
Developing: Microsoft Reconsidering Yahoo Offer
Will Microsoft Buy Facebook?
MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion
Facebook has postponed its employees’ stock sale, perhaps indefinitely, the Wall Street Journal reports today. Facebook’s postponement is an understandable bow to market reality — and it prevents the company from setting an official valuation that the social networking site’s investors would consider too low. The market is pretty sure the company is worth less than the $15 billion Microsoft bought into, or even the $4 billion internal valuation, but until a sale occurs, that value is theoretical (even if that theoretical value has very real business impacts). Maybe by the time its investors are required to officially asses the value of their investment in the social network, times will be flush, and they won’t have to write it down. But given the Microsoft money, I really doubt it.
The Web has been huge for unsigned musicians. Many artists have leveraged social networking tools and music discovery services to find record deals, while others have built large online fan bases. Looking to capitalize on this trend, MSN has added a feature called “Unsigned” to its music channel in the UK, allowing artists to upload music videos and have their work featured on the site.
Unfortunately, that’s just about all Unsigned offers. As a visitor, you can do a simple browsing of the most recently uploaded videos or check out profiles for a few of the bands that MSN has decided to feature. But there are no interesting discovery features, no community, and not much content, other than a few generic articles about how to get a record deal. Additionally, the uploaded process is cumbersome – MSN explains how to do it in a 13 step tutorial.
The one thing that MSN Unsigned does offer is traffic. MSN’s UK site boasts 5.4 million visitors every month. Is that enough to attract a few bands to upload videos? Absolutely. But AmieStreet, Sellaband, and the dozens of other websites targeting this crowd need not quiver in their boots over the arrival of Microsoft in their space.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Amazingtunes Pushes ‘Fair Trade’ Music, Launches Record Label
WeMix’s Never-Ending Remix Contest. Collaborate with Ludacris.
Free Streaming Music Is The Next Big Sound
SmugglersMusic Launches Band Sales & Promotion Site
Fuzz Launches Another Network for Bands
25 Tools For The Independent Musician
MySpace Music Tackles Copyright
The Sunday Times of UK reports (more like speculates) that Microsoft is going to buy Yahoo’s search business for $20 billion in a very complex transaction. The Sunday Times claims that Jonathan Miller formerly chief executive of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media are going to run the new management team.
Under the terms of the proposed transaction, Microsoft would provide a $5 billion facility to the Miller and Levinsohn management team. The duo would raise an additional $5 billion from external investors. This cash would be used to buy convertible preference shares and warrants which would give it a holding in excess of 30% of Yahoo. The external investors would also have the right to appoint three of Yahoo’s 11 board directors. The talks with Yahoo involve Microsoft obtaining a 10-year operating agreement to manage the search business. It would also receive a two-year call option to buy the search business for $20 billion. That would leave Yahoo to run its own e-mail, messaging, and content services. It is expected that the operating agreement would boost Yahoo’s income by as much as $2 billion per annum.
If true, that would value the search business — not exactly a champion — more than Yahoo’s actual market value of approximately $16 billion. Microsoft might be desperate to win online, but as we have seen time and again, trying to buy share in search is a failing strategy. With little or no sources, I find this story as unreliable as a piece of swiss cheese left for too long in the pantry. Levinsohn who described Times story as “total fiction” seems to agree. What are your thoughts?
Microsoft’s battle to conquer the web has a certain Moby-Dick-like quality. Me-too products, muddled branding strategy and constantly playing catchup with competitors has reduced the king of software to a punch line. The more they try, the further they get. In the third quarter of 2008, Microsoft’s online revenues were $770 million, up 15 percent from Q3 2007. But the losses jumped 80 percent year-over-year to $480 million. Adam Lashinsky succinctly sums it up:
Microsoft is so busy playing defense against Google. Yet Microsoft hasn’t done a great job with that either. Even as it has spent money on data centers and marketing gimmicks like giving cash back to users of its search engine — the online equivalent of banks handing out toasters for opening accounts — Microsoft continues to lose share to Google.
Microsoft’s portion of U.S. search queries was 8.5% in September, according to comScore, down from 10.4% in January 2007. During the same period, Google’s share rose from 53% to 63%. And Facebook, MySpace, Google’s YouTube, and other, newer sites have reduced MSN to also-ran status in terms of web popularity.
That at least five high-ranking Microsoft executives have a piece of the online portfolio illustrates another part of the company’s predicament. Microsoft doesn’t speak with one voice when it talks about the Internet. (via Fortune)
Perhaps that explains why it was willing to make a deal with that bureaucratic quagmire called Yahoo. Regardless, do you have any advice for Microsoft as it tries to win on the web?
Photo courtesy of Microsoft Corp.
