Google+ Chief Grounded From Twitter By Larry Page 135
theodp writes "Vic Gundotra, formerly Sr. VP of Social (and now, of Engineering) at Google, and head of the company's social networking service Google+, hasn't posted anything on his Twitter account since July 2011. Why? Responding to a question about his own social networking behavior at SMX 2012, Gundotra explained that he was asked by Google CEO Larry Page not to tweet anymore. 'I was asked not to tweet again.' Gundotra said (video). 'I was asked not to do that by my boss [Page]. I tweeted a tweet about two companies [Microsoft, Nokia] that went viral, went very very viral and made a lot of headline news.' So, what does it say when the Google CEO who reportedly tied all Googlers' bonuses to social networking apparently finds it too dangerous to permit the head of Google+ to participate in social networking?"
i had been wondering (Score:1)
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It means that "Social Networking" is for the little people. Its' for the rubes you are taking. It means, like everything else in this society - it is hierarchical and tiered. They only participate to manage you. Not as your social peer.
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Socail Networking = Antisocial networking
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An inmate escaped from one of the small jails we serve and the jailers needed me to give them instructions over the phone on how to listen to the inmate phone calls. (Which is kind of insulting because the interface is web based and simple enough that a 12 year old can figure it out.) Anyway, here is an inmate who was planning to break out of jail COMPLETELY and OPENLY talking about the escape plans over the phone with their accomplice. A phone which has
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It means that "Social Networking" is for the little people.
No, no it doesn't. It means that, a "big" person needs to be careful what they say to the public. And if they can't, they can't say anything to the public. This is true for any time they talk to the public. Not just "social networking"
And really that is true for anyone. Its just that for "little" people, when they say something stupid it generally only affects a small handful of people.
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To be fair, I don't go to jail for insider trading and they do.
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If you like corporate-fudalism so much, why don't you... Oh, yeah. Too late.
Serf Music (Score:4, Insightful)
"Everybody's Serf-ing now, Come on a safari with me.."
"Serf-ing USA!"
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Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
(If this was a tweet, it would likely not be true [slashdot.org].
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I'd always wondered about your username, until I saw your signature and realized you were a fan of Michael Moorcock. So, in that context, JC makes perfect sense. Well played, sir.
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:-) My signature is by Bill Murray...
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Sorry, I meant home page... /brainfart
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Per Benito. ;-)
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In Soviet Amerika, Communism moves to YOU!
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Gorbachev: Soviet-style disintegration awaits US [presstv.ir]
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If Gorbachev were not so dumb USSR would not disintegrate, I would not value his opinion.
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Hence one of the "winch operators" for the previous dismantlement, is publicly, prepping ground for the next...
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And to be honest, I can see exactly whe
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a) Disclose I work for them when relevant to the discussion and order to potential hidden bias
b) State that what I am saying is my personal opinion, and not the IBM opinion.
That is IMO a good rule.
SEC (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't somebody just get investigated by the SEC for sharing something on FaceBook? It sounds like a smart decision. Sad and depressing that it needs to happen, but smart.
Re:SEC (Score:5, Informative)
I don't find it sad, other than it's sad that some public companies are run by people who don't understand their responsibilities to the public.
We have financial disclosure laws and public-release laws because of situations like this: http://www.businessinsider.com/worst-insider-trading-scandals-2011-11?op=1 [businessinsider.com]
Re:SEC (Score:5, Interesting)
We have financial disclosure laws and public-release laws because of situations like this...
The problem is that, as usual, the law hasn't kept up with changes in technology and how people communicate. It's possible to view anything posted on Twitter (to the best of my knowledge) without logging in to view it. That would make it, by definition, "public". Anyone can access it. This differs from Facebook where an account is required to view it.
Thus, Twitter at least would seemingly meet the requirements for public disclosure; The information is available equally to everyone, and at the same time. And yet, here we are. The fact is, social media websites are where people are, and if you want to talk to them, you have to go there. The SEC however hasn't caught up with that, and still believes in pomp and circumstance like quarterly meetings and reports -- information exchange at the speed of molasses in an age where milliseconds matter.
Re:SEC (Score:5, Insightful)
information exchange at the speed of molasses in an age where milliseconds matter.
If milliseconds matter, then something has gone seriously wrong. It is part of the SEC's job to keep markets reasonably stable and on the rails. Hair-triggered reflexes are usually a sign that you are about to shoot the wrong man.
Re:SEC (Score:4, Insightful)
We have financial disclosure laws and public-release laws because of situations like this...
The problem is that, as usual, the law hasn't kept up with changes in technology and how people communicate. It's possible to view anything posted on Twitter (to the best of my knowledge) without logging in to view it. That would make it, by definition, "public". Anyone can access it. This differs from Facebook where an account is required to view it.
Thus, Twitter at least would seemingly meet the requirements for public disclosure; The information is available equally to everyone, and at the same time. And yet, here we are. The fact is, social media websites are where people are, and if you want to talk to them, you have to go there. The SEC however hasn't caught up with that, and still believes in pomp and circumstance like quarterly meetings and reports -- information exchange at the speed of molasses in an age where milliseconds matter.
It is not the law's job to "keep up with technology" which will always be a moving target. It is the responsibility of people to be cognizant of the law and obey it.
The SEC exists to look out for the general interests of investors. It is not in that interest to have to monitor all of potentially thousands of publicly-available news sources for unannounced releases of information so they don't lose a millisecond-long race to buy or sell on the basis of such information.
Re:SEC (Score:5, Insightful)
What a silly idea!
Of course the law needs to keep up with technology, because the law needs to keep up with society.
"The law" doesn't exist as some immutable monolithic construct laid down by our ancient forefathers for all eternity. We have mechanisms in place to change the law precisely because it needs to deal with the realities of today, not 4000BCE, not 1776CE, and not 1976CE.
That said, we also have "tiers" of laws that take more effort to change, because we consider them fundamental rules of human behavior rather than situationally dependent - But even those can still change, and in fact, that makes one of the best counterarguments to your premise: In 1800, the US didn't recognize slaves as complete humans, largely because the technology of the day required the use of human labor to keep the economy moving. By the civil war, technology had almost made (agricultural) slavery barely a breakeven (and more popular in the South largely because they had slow-moving swamps rather than the North's swiftly flowing rivers). By 1900, using human labor instead of technology would cost more than it would save.
The law doesn't always get it right. And when the law disagrees with reality, reality will always win - eventually.
Re:SEC (Score:4, Informative)
By the civil war, technology had almost made (agricultural) slavery barely a breakeven (and more popular in the South largely because they had slow-moving swamps rather than the North's swiftly flowing rivers).
None of this makes historical or geographic sense.
Cotton was famously resistant to mechanization. There is no such thing as a commercially viable mechanical cotton picker until 1943. Cotton picker [wikipedia.org]
. The crop comprised more than half the total value of domestic exports in the period 1815-1860, and in 1860, earnings from cotton paid for 60 percent of all imports.
Cotton [history.com]
The South had as prosperous and extensive a riverine and coastal trade as existed anywhere on earth. Before the Erie Canal and the railroad almost all commercial traffic in the US states and territories moved north to south by water.
The pull would later threaten the foundations of Canadian nationalism.
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"Navigable" doesn't mean "suitable for hydro-power".
And yes, you can find counterexamples to anything. Would you care to address my point now, or continue to pick nits over throw-away asides?
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Correct. That is called Religion.
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keep licking those boots, citizen.
also, pick up that can.
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It is not the law's job to "keep up with technology" which will always be a moving target. It is the responsibility of people to be cognizant of the law and obey it. keep licking those boots, citizen. also, pick up that can.
In time, Grasshopper will appreciate that pissing into the wind only makes one smell bad.
Grasshopper may also come to appreciate that mentioning insider information at a cocktail party, texting it to your buddies and posting it on a blog are all the same thing. The laws regarding insider trading need not distinguish between them.
Also, Grasshopper can pick up his own damn cans.
Re:SEC (Score:4, Informative)
This differs from Facebook where an account is required to view it.
You do not need a Facebook account to view public pages.
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This has nothing to do with law not keeping up with technology. You have to disclose certain private things to the SEC before you communicate it in non private circles. Be that a public announcement or telling your friends (warm blood friends or imaginary facebook friends makes no difference).
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Actually, no. Twitter has protected tweets [twitter.com] which are viewable only by approved followers, as well as direct messages [twitter.com] viewable only by sender and recipient. There are, in fact, people who use Twitter without posting any public messages at all.
I don't really understand what point you were trying to make with this public/private distinction, but I thought I'd correct the factual error.
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Exactly. That Twitter of Facebook are "public" is irrelevant.
First of all, they are privately owned and operated services, subject to the whims and policies of their owners.
Second, SEC has certain requirements for disclosure, not necessarily because it is "public", but because it is a clearinghouse. It is not reasonable to expect traders, investors and analysts to keep track of the 100s of thousands of Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, company blogs, CEO/CFO/CIO/etc blogs, even if they are all "public". That's
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I don't find it sad, other than it's sad that some public companies are run by people who don't understand their responsibilities to the public.
The comment in question was made by the Netflix CEO on his public Facebook page, which has 200,000 followers. The SEC is investigating because it may be unfair disclosure of material information.
.
What I do not understand is how can disclosure on a public Facebook page with 200,000 followers be considered "unfair disclosure," while disclosing similar information to a dozen or so financial analysts in a private analyst meeting is considered to be "fair disclosure."
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Because the company files a form called a 10K that explains how and where they will make public disclosures, so that anyone can go to the SEC's website and find out. They did not list the CEO's facebook page as one of those places.
It says... (Score:1, Informative)
Larry Page is a dictator. A tyrant... but that's what we've conditioned our society to look for in a 'good' CEO.
Was Steve Jobs any different? Most of these CEOs sound like complete assholes (especially when you listen to them talk to or about other humans).
I really wish more CEOs would be like Carnegie or Gates. True models of men that more people really should emulate.
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At this rate, I predict by the end of the decade Google will be a faded memory.
Re:It says... (Score:4, Interesting)
Larry Page is a dictator. A tyrant... but that's what we've conditioned our society to look for in a 'good' CEO.
Was Steve Jobs any different? Most of these CEOs sound like complete assholes (especially when you listen to them talk to or about other humans).
I really wish more CEOs would be like Carnegie or Gates. True models of men that more people really should emulate.
You forgot the sarcastic smiley at the end. Bill Gates? The man that oversaw stealing or otherwise abusing monopoly power in an effort to force his sub-par crap on the world? I don't have any specific history on Carnegie's CEO exploits that are positive or negative, only noting that he rose to prominence during a time where such as he were termed "Robber Barons". I will note one positive - he actually did something good with some of his wealth - he created libraries. He also, unlike Gates, did not believe that philanthropy was merely the giving away of large amounts of wealth, but targeted his giving to help people help themselves. I would argue that Gates is primarily dropping bandaids, and has yet to make a single meaningful "gift", but I could be wrong.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#Controversies [wikipedia.org]
Carnegie did a lot of great and a lot of terrible things.
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Carnegie didn't run a company that depends on innovation (yes, he needed and adopted the Bessemer process, but he licensed that -- as many were doing). If a company itself depends on producing R&D .. it needs capital -- lots of it, and the only way to raise that capital is with profitable companies. And the only way to have profitable R&D companies -- it seems .. at least today .. is by having prick CEOs. It's very easy to waste money in R&D. Sun Microsystems used to have non-prick CEOs for a sh
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It also says he hasn't really changed much in the past few years [wsj.com].
A wise man said (Score:2)
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
-Batman
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You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
-Batman
I've always disliked Batman for various reasons over the years, but if that is a real quote I think it highlights one of his
worst attribute. I'll keep this in mind when I introduce my kid to comics.
The world is not a large set of Boolean logic. Epic Batman fail. Even Superman (who seems to be either full-retard,
or alien-super-genius depending on the year) knows this.
Re:A wise man said (Score:5, Informative)
That wasn't Batman. That was Harvey Dent, before he became Twoface.
Re:A wise man said (Score:4, Insightful)
You couldn't misunderstand Batman more even if you tried.
When it was introduced, Batman was the first comic that didn't take place in a manichean world. The sentence means that anyone claiming to be pure white will in time necessarily become grey.
Committing a single thing against the law is enough to be villain, while you have to not do anything against the law to be a pure hero. Not white is not equal to black.
The point of Batman is that, unlike Superman, it is not a simple world of black and white, since even the main character, a dangerous vigilante, often fighting for revenge or his own selfish reasons, is morally ambiguous. The good guys can act like bad guys, and sometimes the bad guys do good things too (or at least have good intentions).
I suggest you don't teach any stupidity to your kid at all. Let him learn things by himself and reflect on them.
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Batman's a scientist!
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I'm Batman. You're Spartacus.
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As far as I can tell, all of these are valuable traits and not "illnesses".
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You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
-Batman
Harvey Dent isn't Batman.
Now only if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most social media is talking at each other, not to each other. Forums are already hard enough, but most forums are for a specific purpose and smaller in membership and thus easier to moderate. General purpose forums have proven impossible to moderate with all have access- Usenet was the first example of that.
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Most social media is talking at each other, not to each other. Forums are already hard enough, but most forums are for a specific purpose and smaller in membership and thus easier to moderate. General purpose forums have proven impossible to moderate with all have access- Usenet was the first example of that.
We should carve up our lives into specific topics and areas of interest. Anything that falls outside of those bounds is of no interest to anyone, certainly not the people we have chosen to bestow the title 'friend' upon. Human relationships would be so much better if we could only subscribe to the parts that we, personally, have an interest in. Rather than taking each relationship as part of a whole person, why can't we just pick and choose the parts we like and discard the rest?
Modern social networking sho
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If social networking allowed one to define either the character of the post with some predefined categories as key words, or if there were well-written software that could define the content of the post. One could choose what to see from one's "friends" instead of seeing everything.
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...we could get everyone else to top using Twitter or other modern social networking...
Slashdot is social networking. I do find it funny/sad that Slashdotters love to rail against Facebook and do this on their own niche social networking site.
Most social media is talking at each other, not to each other.
Yep, sounds like Slashdot.
Re:Now only if... (Score:4, Insightful)
I like Slashdot's method of interaction for the most part. It's not perfect, but it's the best that I've seen so far.
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Why is this insightful?
You obviously don't know what twitter is, or how it works.
People make general comments certainly but if you follow /actual friends/ or people who have an interest in your opinion or are receptive to at least hearing it. You can engage in many conversations through twitter and include images, attach your location and so on. You can also easily "cc" friends - and friends who are following can observe and join in as well.
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General purpose forums have proven impossible to moderate with all have access- Usenet was the first example of that.
What? The vast majority of users didn't need or want mods, which is why they were always add-ons and never the main newsgroup... When the rest of us didn't feel like wasting time on the relatively rare trolls would just tell their newsreader to ignore the latest one and any replies to him/her. It was a great hangout into the early 00s, when spammers deluged it in so much crap that our newsreaders' filters couldn't keep up, ISP-wide blocklists interfered with users' posts being seen around the world, and NN
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Well, good luck to them. If dead online services have taught me anything it's that "MySpace" should really be named "TheirSpace" until it works in a decentralized way like Diaspora (or better), where the users can host their own nodes, then I'm not interested. I still can't see what benefit any new "social network" has over Lurking a few mailing lists & IRC rooms I'm interested in, with RSS for web sites I'm interested in. Sharing photos? IRC p2p transfer, a personal/family blog, email, or one of th
Google+ head barred from Twitter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Google Corporate Continues its Twitter Use (Score:5, Informative)
Except Google itself apparently has an official corporate Twitter account [twitter.com] that's active and has 5.4+ million followers ("Verified Profile"). BTW, Apple also has an official YouTube Channel [youtube.com] despite Steve Jobs' feelings towards Google.
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Proof: https://plus.google.com/+VicGundotra/posts [google.com]
Still a bad idea IMO.
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I know a number of Apple's top engineers personally. I don't want to out anyone, but we're talking about people who are widely known to the public as technical innovators at Apple. The most popular phone among them is usually a Google Nexus device. And on a tangent, they all use Windows 7 instead of OSX.
"Knows a number of Apple's top engineers personally" = read a couple Wozniak interviews
And he uses, or plays with, pretty much all the computer and phone OSes - not just Windows.
This isn't about social networking (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This isn't about social networking (Score:5, Interesting)
It is about which networks you use.
Twitter is a service primarily organized for paid PR shills release carefully crafted tweets under corporate branded officer names which journalists read and comment on. Its basically the worlds briefest PR news release distribution company which is open to the general public, although most people don't use it. Its completely inappropriate for an underling to issue his own news releases without talking to his boss first, and apparently Sr. VP Eng is not supposed to upstage the marketing department by releasing his own PR messages.
G+ is not quite the same business model. If you want to publish cat pictures or comment on your competitors, or whatever, do it there.
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G+ is not quite the same business model.
G+ has a business model?
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Very much so.
I would expect the head of Google+ using mainly Google+ for his social networking needs, not the network of a competitor. He should not even need to be told that explicitly.
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Vic (Score:5, Informative)
Vic posts all of the time on Google+. He hasn't been banned from social networking.
Re:Vic (Score:5, Funny)
Why? (Score:5, Informative)
So, what does it say when the Google CEO who reportedly tied all Googlers' bonuses to social networking apparently finds it too dangerous to permit the head of Google+ to participate in social networking?"
1) Because he's in a Senior VP! What he says can influence the stock price, among other things.
2) Twitter and Facebook are the competition.
That was very complicated, wasn't it?
So, Why is Google Corporate Using Facebook? (Score:2)
Google has 11.6 million "Likes" on its corporate Facebook account [facebook.com].
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Yes, that's the second time you've mentioned Google's Facebook presence. What's your point?
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The other mention was Twitter, but the same applies - if Twitter and Facebook are truly viewed by Google as competitors, it would seem odd to ban employee use of the services while Google corporate finds them too valuable to resist. Another possibility might be that Google is afraid to let even a top exec - the one charged with heading its own social networking initiative - use other social networking services for fear of the consequences. Perhaps Vic or Larry will explain someday. :-)
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Old news about an even older event (Score:2)
This story made the rounds over a week ago, ran its course and faded into the background again. I was surprised to see it appear here - Slashdot is probably the last place on the web to run it as a front page story.
I don't think that everything that runs on Slashdot needs to be completely current, particularly if the subject is interesting, deep or has long term implications. This story is none of those things - it almost had a gossipy tabloid quality to it ("Vic Gundotra banned from Twitter!"). Oh, and
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If Slashdot were broadcast news, this article would be the "dog bites man" story, except no-one was bitten, and it's a cat.
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If Slashdot were broadcast news, this article would be the "dog bites man" story, except no-one was bitten, and it's a cat.
No , if Slashdot were Broadcast news the article would be "Tired Gay Succumbs to Dix" [reuters.com].
Because while the title is TECHNICALLY accurate, it is entirely missing the point of the article.
What it says (Score:2)
What it says is that corporate officers need to be measured in all of their communications, much more so than most other persons. Twitter, in contrast, seems to tempt its users to make spontaneous postings.
It's not inconsistent for Google to say that Google+ is a good service for many, but not all, persons
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Google+ is awesome. It's fantastic to have a social network that is 99% populated by Google employees, all in one place. Talking about Google. And Android. And Motorola.
Astro turfing (Score:2)
It means that "social networking" is often expected to be used, not for frank communications, but for company managed advertising. I've actually attended staff meetings where staff were urged to talk up their own company's products and to help drive criticisms of their products to the next page of product reviews. I was not surprised, but saddened: the flaws were very real and could have been used as a great opportunity for the company to address the problems and turn that negative review into a great examp
Timothy, our own Wayback Machine (Score:2)
Everyone one of his posts is like a little time capsule. "Hey, remember back when that was news? Yeah man, good times. Can't believe we ever cared about that shit."
Not surprising... (Score:2)
Because, even beyond disclosure. It makes sense to have the person in charge of your companies Social Network, to be using -it-, not your competitors.
Best way to develop a good product, is make the developers eat their own dog food and use it.
grounded from? (Score:2)
What a load of arse. One can be banned from, warned off, or kicked out of something. Being grounded takes no indirect object; one is grounded or one is not, period.
It Says Nothing (Score:2)
"what does it say when the Google CEO who reportedly tied all Googlers' bonuses to social networking apparently finds it too dangerous to permit the head of Google+ to participate in social networking?"
It says nothing.
The social networking is a product, not an in-house employee tool. Just because a company sells something it does not mean that they want or should want their employees using it all the time.
What's surprising is that Page had to ask.. (Score:1)
Can you imagine a senior executive at Ford driving a Volkswagen?
Maybe a Coca-Cola executive publicly drinking Pepsi?
What about an executive from Microsoft using an Apple for a presentation with journalists?
Get the point? Employees, specially if they are very senior in their companies, are not supposed to adhere to competitor's products.
Using Twitter for the world to see is exactly adhering to a competitor product. If you work for Google and you are senior, you cannot do it.
Actually, what surprises me is not
And of course the other point is (Score:2, Insightful)
Is that Twitter is horseshit. Worthless noisy horseshit and the people who do it should be punched in the face until they are more or less retarded.
Maybe it's the SEC (Score:2)
It means we're now a publicly traded company... (Score:1)
It means we're now beholden to shareholders, a board of directors, the whims of Wall Street, and can be made or ruined with overreactions to any statements coming from any known associate.
He posts every day on google plus (Score:2)
here's his profile
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+VicGundotra/posts [google.com]