SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc scored in the bottom 5 percent of a customer-satisfaction survey, below Internet rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc, as the social-networking site’s frequent changes rankled users.

Facebook received 64 on a 100-point scale, while Google scored 80 and Yahoo got 76, according to a report based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which was developed by the University of Michigan’s business school. Concerns about privacy, design changes and aggressive advertising hurt Facebook’s status, the report found.

Facebook has grappled with user complaints this year, while still attracting advertisers and millions of new members. In May, the company simplified privacy settings to make it easier for people to protect their personal data. Its US users climbed to 141.6 million last month, up 84 percent from a year earlier, according to Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc.

“They’ve had this great growth — you can’t say anything negative about that,” said Larry Freed, chief executive officer of Ann Arbor, Michigan-based ForeSee Results Inc., a sponsor of the survey. “Low satisfaction means you’re starting to put that growth at risk.”

Facebook ranked in the same range as airlines and cable companies, two groups that typically score low on satisfaction surveys, according to the report.

“We haven’t reviewed the survey methodology in detail, but clearly we have room to improve,” Facebook said in a statement.
“Building a simple, useful service is the best way to earn and sustain the trust people put in us. That’s why we spend so much of our time and energy focused on improving the products we offer and introducing new ones.”

The nonprofit site Wikipedia.org ranked the highest among social-media companies, with a score of 77. Google’s YouTube site got a rating of 73, and News Corp.’s MySpace came in below Facebook, with a score of 63.

Facebook, which started as a college-networking site, is now attracting older users. They may not be as comfortable with the site’s frequent changes, Freed said.

“Satisfaction is a combination of what you get and what you expect,” he said. “Expectations play a major, major role in satisfaction.”

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 Back in January Conan O’Brien was supposed to come to San Francisco for a SF Sketchfest Tribute and Q&A about his career. And then, he lost his dream job as he said, “shit really hit the fan” and he had to cancel. He finally made good on that gig last night at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, and it was far more revealing than his 60 Minutes interview. I’d gone expecting to hear an “Inside the Actor’s Studio” style retrospective. What we got instead was more than three hours of O’Brian, Patton Oswalt and Andy Richter drinking heavily on stage and talking about how the Internet has utterly ripped the media business in two over the course of their careers.

“Those men behind the curtain—the great and powerful Oz—are scared shitless right now,” O’Brien said, adding that the chaos is so high that anyone in the audience could just as likely be running a major network in a few years. O’Brien opened by saying he was choosing to see opportunity in the volatility in his business, but over the next few hours it was clear that it wasn’t that simple.

What O’Brien went through with NBC was a more public version of hundreds of conversations I’ve had over the last ten years with people in old-media, music, independent book stores, and travel agencies—especially people who are mid-career and young enough to want to disrupt things, but old enough and have paid enough dues that it somehow feels unfair when the industry is ripped out from under their feet. To me, this three-hour out-pouring of enthusiasm for the future mixed with nostalgia of the past was like any conversation I used to have when I still worked in old media newsrooms. I wish he’d been this frank in his network interview—because this is the everyman story of the Web’s disruption. If it hasn’t happened to your industry yet—wait. It will.

If I could just embed a raw bootleg video, I’d end this post here. But given the theme of the evening, it was sad but somehow not surprising that SF Sketchfest emphasized several times that no video or photos were allowed—a contrast to O’Brien’s comedy tour when he welcomed fans to record and do whatever they wanted with the footage. That means these raw, authentic confessions and advice to the younger creative generation can’t run on the platforms where audiences would most appreciate them.

So here are my highlights instead. (I wasn’t taking notes, so I’m paraphrasing here.)

Just How Much Has Changed: O’Brien talked about when he got the Late Night Show job in 1993. He was so unknown that no one could find a photo of him to run with the news story. Imagine: No TwitPic, no Facebook profile image, no Flickr—nothing. Newspapers ran a gritty image they snapped from the television screen instead. And it took him several days to get a photo together to send out.

Today, anyone with his level of experience at the time would have thousands of clips from YouTube, from tried-and-failed cable shows, live video from standup gigs, maybe an appearance from a Funny or Die skit, not to mention thousands of images online. On the one hand, he said it had opened up opportunity for funny people everywhere, especially women, African Americans and other minorities that don’t get as many plum jobs in the entertainment world. But on the other hand, if he were up for that job today, he admits there’s so much competition he probably wouldn’t have been given a shot.

Cream Rises…or Does It? O’Brien made the point repeatedly that “cream rises to the top” online and that if you consistently put out funny stuff, you’ll start getting paid to write or perform funny stuff. But he also talked about how the Web and the reality TV/ Paris Hilton generation had set a precedent that you could be famous not for any talent, but just for making a spectacle of yourself.

He cut himself off talking about the latter, saying he was trying hard not to be judgmental—but this is clearly an idea with which he struggles. He talked about kids coming up to him and saying they were going to be on his show one day and when he asked what they did they said “nothing,” but they were “going to be huge.” He said a few decades ago if someone had said that to David Letterman or Johnny Carson the answer would have been that they sing, dance, act or something.

Success Was Being Left Alone. When O’Brien first took over Late Night the network wanted to put him on a week-to-week contract. He fought back and got a series of 13-week contracts. He and his staff did their job with the feeling that the anvil could fall at any moment. But because no one had much hope pinned on the show, they were largely ignored and allowed to do whatever they wanted. They’d throw stuff out there, and if it worked it did, if not, they’d throw more stuff out the next day. The contrast to his practically non-existent honeymoon period on the Tonight Show is obvious.

Here’s the good thing about a Web-distributed entertainment world—there’s a lot more of the former because the gate keepers are disrupted. It’s no longer an age where there are only three networks. If you want to entertain people and do good work, there a million steps in between all and nothing.

Developing a Thick Skin Is Bullshit. O’Brien said the biggest thing that held him back from both writing and performing was a fear of being criticized because he’s incredibly sensitive. He punched a big hole in one of the biggest clichés in fame—that you just have to develop a thick skin. He says he’s still just as sensitive and criticism still hurts just as much. The secret is to just keep going anyway, because you will get criticized no matter how brilliant you are.

This is clearly something that’s gotten more pronounced in a Web age, but there may be a silver lining to that. In a time when every video, photo, blog post and Tweet can easily be trashed by others, people learn that criticism is inevitable early on.

Longevity Is the Most Overrated Thing on TV. O’Brien talked about how people on TV measure success in how many years their show runs, and that he thinks that’s the wrong metric. It’s not about how many people watch you for how long, it’s about the connection you have with those people, he said. To anyone in the room, this was clearly heartfelt. I’ve heard O’Brien in interviews before the Tonight Show debacle, and he always seemed glib and jokey—almost to the point of insincere. But last night—and I’ve heard during his comedy tour—he was raw, clearly shaken by what happened with NBC and clearly touched by the outpouring of support he got from fans, enabled largely by social media.

He said several times how much people loving his work enough to support him – even if that support was a mere two-second Tweet for “Team Coco”—meant to him and how it kept him going. He clearly didn’t want to leave the stage. He threw the clock off the table when he sat down asking why there was a time limit, and towards the end sat on the edge of the stage taking questions from the audience long after they’d said they would take “just one more question.”

The evening was billed as a tribute to O’Brien, but he turned it into a tribute to his fans connected around the world by social media instead.

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By now everyone has seen the first official trailer for the Facebook movie. While there’s no question that there’s a lot of talent behind it, I’m actually quite surprised that it looks good. But that’s just my opinion. What does someone portrayed in the movie actually think of it? Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has weighed in on Quora.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Moskovitz takes some exception to what was included in the movie versus what was left out. For example, he’s never even met the Winklevoss twins, who play heavily in the film’s plot. Instead, Moskovitz wishes the filmmakers would have included more of of the other people in each co-founders’ lives that supported them at the time. Yes, there’s a reason Moskovitz made Facebook and not movies.

He also calls it “cool to see a dramatization of history.” But his money quote is this:

    A lot of exciting things happened in 2004, but mostly we just worked a lot and stressed out about things; the version in the trailer seems a lot more exciting, so I’m just going to choose to remember that we drank ourselves silly and had a lot of sex with coeds.

Moskovitz makes it seem as if he’s read both the book and the script of the film and takes exception to the attacks on CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Still, he thinks the trailer actually shows some of Zuckerberg’s more positive qualities.

“At the end of the day, they cannot help but portray him as the driven, forward-thinking genius that he is,” Moskovitz concludes. “And the Ad Board *does* owe him some recognition, dammit,” he jokes (a reference to the end of the trailer).

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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan may well be named 'Pornistan' after search trends thrown by Google indicate that it is the world leader in porn searches.

Pakistan — the land of the pure — where websites get banned for showing offensive and blasphemous material at the drop of the hat, has been ranked as the top country for searching sex-related terms, according to a Fox News report.

"So here's the irony: Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content," the report reads.

"Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for 'horse sex' since 2004, 'donkey sex' since 2007, 'rape pictures' between 2004 and 2009, 'rape sex' since 2004, 'child sex' between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, 'animal sex' since 2004 and 'dog sex' since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms."

The country also tops — or has been No.1 — in searches for "sex," "camel sex," "rape video," "child sex video" and some other unprintable searches.

Google Trends generates data of popular search terms in geographic locations during specific time frames.

Google Insights is a more advanced version that allows users to filter a search to geographic locations, time frames and the nature of a search, including web, images, products and news.

Pakistan ranked No. 1 in all the searches listed above on Google Trends, but on only some of them in Google Insights.

"We do our best to provide accurate data and to provide insights into broad search patterns, but the results for a given query may contain inaccuracies due to data sampling issues, approximations, or incomplete data for the terms entered," Google said in a statement, when asked about the accuracy of its reports.

The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview, the report read.

In addition to banning content on 17 websites, including islamexposed.blogspot.com, Pakistan is monitoring seven other sites — Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, MSN and Hotmail — for anti-Islamic content.

Pakistan temporarily banned Facebook in May when Muslim groups protested the 'Everybody Draw Muhammad Day' page.

The country's punishment for those charged with blasphemy is execution, but the question remains what — if anything — can be done about people who search for porn on the web.

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BANGALORE: Hidden Reflex, a Bangalore based software startup, has launched a browser targeted at Indian audiences: Epic.

The browser has been created by a team of Indian engineers on the opensource Mozilla platform, it said in a statement.

“Epic provides a uniquely Indian browsing experience. Epic’s India sidebar supports Indian content by providing users access to the latest national and regional news from popular publications, live television channels, videos, stock quotes, live cricket scores, top music albums, and local events,” it said.

Users can choose from 1500+ customised Indian themes and wallpapers ranging from freedom fighters to famous Bollywood and regional film stars. Writing in Indian languages is supported throughout Epic. Users can instantly write in Indian languages on any webpage or in Write, Epic’s free built-in word processor.

Twelve Indian languages are currently supported, the statement said. Free antivirus scanning and healing is built into Epic, while another security measure warns users when they’re about to visit potentially dangerous websites.

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WASHINGTON: Microsoft added Facebook to Outlook, giving users of its popular email program the ability to view status updates, pictures and wall posts from their friends on the social network.

Outlook now lets email users view the profile picture and activity of their Facebook friends in a box called the "People Pane."

"You can view your social network as you look through your email to stay connected with your friends, family, and colleagues," Paco Contreras Herrera, a group product manager for Microsoft Office, said in a blog post.

Microsoft integrated two other social networks, MySpace and LinkedIn, into Outlook in February using what it calls the "Outlook Social Connector."

"The Outlook Social Connector doesn't add another social network into the mix; rather it offers busy people the convenience of accessing them in Outlook," Contreras Herrera said. "We expect more partners down the line," he added.

Outlook 2003 and 2007 users can download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center while Outlook 2010 users can get it through Microsoft Update.

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Earlier today, we first spotted Twitter’s new name search results feature on twitter.com. At first glance, it looks to be a brilliant tool for new user discovery — especially among celebrities whose names will be searched for often. But is it more?

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb wondered that this evening, asking “Is This How Twitter Will Offer Friends For Sale?” The answer is no — not right now, anyway.

“This simple feature is meant to make Twitter easier to use.  There are no current plans to monetize it,” Twitter’s Communication Director Sean Garrett told us this evening when asked about the topic. Of course, Garrett then teased, “but one should never say never.”

I suspect Garrett’s last comment was mostly made in jest. My sense is that this is a feature Twitter has been working on simply to make user discovery a bit easier. But Kirkpatrick’s point on how the feature can be used to make money is an interesting one. For example, if you search on Twitter for “Hollywood gossip,” perhaps a user could bid to buy the rights to be a featured user near that search term — similar to the way Google AdSense works for Google Search keywords.

“I think people have assumed that Twitter would monetize search with ads the way Google has – by inserting links to destinations. Twitter is people though – so it makes sense to monetize connection to people and to brands,” Kirkpatrick writes.

This all stems from a MediaMemo report earlier this month that Twitter was considering allowing users to pay to be featured in some way to attract more followers. Garrett was coy when asked about that idea as well, basically saying that all options are on the table.

One thing for certain is that Twitter has a lot of options in front of it now for ways to potentially make money going forward. Of course, “potentially” is not “actually” — the company still has to execute and choose the methods that strike the right balance of money-making and user happiness.

The last thing anyone wants is for Twitter to be overrun by SEO spam.

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NEW DELHI: Mozilla has launched the first beta of its Firefox 4 browser. Based on Gecko 2.0 Web platform layout engine, Firefox 4 Beta 1 is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

The first beta of Firefox 4.0 mainly revamps the browser’s looks. Like for Windows users, Tabs have gone on top by default (like Chrome). Mac and Linux users are expected to get this feature as a default in subsequent betas. Another new feature for Windows users is the new orange 'Firefox' button on the top left. Click on it and it takes users to a drop-down filled with the most popular application menu items.

Other new significant features in the Firefox 4.0 beta are:

• Add-Ons Manager: Gives users more space to manage their Add-Ons, Themes and Plugins.
• Enhanced support for emerging Web standards like CSS 3, Canvas and Web Sockets
• HD Video: Watch hardware-accelerated, super-smooth, HD-quality HTML5 video on YouTube using the new WebM format.
• Privacy improvements: The beta fixes flaws in some Web standards that could expose user's browser history.
• Crash Protection: When a plugin crashes or freezes, users will be able to resume browsing by simply refreshing the page.
• Jetpack SDK for new-style lightweight add-ons
• The new Firefox 4.0 beta also promises performance improvement, including new HTML5 parser.

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Recent email exchanges purportedly between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and some customers have attracted a lot of attention – and some criticism – on Twitter, blogs and tech news sites. However, according to Apple public relations, the entire e-mail exchange being attributed to Jobs did not actually take place the way it has been reported.

The series of emails, which were published earlier this week by The Boy Genius Report, had the Apple CEO replying to an annoyed customer about the iPhone 4's widely reported signal problem.

In separate e-mail messages, Jobs supposedly told the customer:

* "No, you are getting all worked up over a few days of rumors. Calm down."
* "You are most likely in an area with very low signal strength."
* "You may be working from bad data. Not your fault. Stay tuned. We are working on it."
* "Retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it." (In the latest version of the BGR report, this last line is attributed to "Tom.")

However, an Apple spokesman has emphatically denied this email exchange ever took place.

Apple has been sued by iPhone customers in at least three complaints related to antenna problems on its newest model.Apple launched the iPhone 4 last week to a huge groundswell of demand. But the launch was also plagued by complaints from some customers about poor call reception on the device when they held it in a certain way.

The problems have been a hot topic on the Internet, but it is unclear how many people have been affected. The issue does not seem to have hurt iPhone sales so far. Apple sold 1.7 million new iPhones in the first three days.

The iPhone 4 represents a complete redesign over the previous model. A band around the rim of the smartphone acts as its antenna.

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Bangalore: Adobe has unveiled Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 software for Windows and Macintosh, the essential digital photography workflow solution that allows photographers to quickly organize, enhance and showcase their images from one application.

Lightroom 3 introduces a completely redesigned performance architecture that better handles growing image libraries and provides an unrivaled raw processing engine with noise reduction and sharpening tools to achieve the highest image quality. The 64-bit capable Lightroom 3 includes new features that optimize workflows and allow images to be shared in creative ways, including support for DSLR video files and tethered shooting on select cameras.

Output options have been enhanced with new capabilities to publish collections on online sharing sites. Flickr users have the ability to synch their accounts to Lightroom with one click, and integration with additional online photo sharing sites can be added via third-party plug-ins.

Customizable print layouts provide more refined control over how photographers present final images, and new watermarking features, with options to modify text, size, location and style, help give professionals and amateurs flexibility for branding images. Lightroom 3 now also includes the ability to export polished slideshows as video files with the option to add audio and title screens.

The estimated street price of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is Rs 16,353 plus taxes for new users and available through Adobe Authorized Resellers.

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