Dell is making a big move into the data storage market with a $1.15 billion all-cash deal for 3Par Inc. It comes at an interesting time, as 3Par's growth and share price had recently slowed and it is still losing money. The offer is an 86% premium to 3Par's closing price Friday of $9.65

The move shows Dell has an interest in moving outside the commoditized world of PCs and comsumer electronics and into higher margin data-center products. 3Par specializes in building large storage arrays for corporations and data centers which can be "virtualized," or partitioned so that the system can handle data from many applications at once.

At any rate, it's paying off big for 3Par shareholders this morning with the stock indicating it will trade up nearly 85%.

• Hulu is said to be preparing an IPO that would value the company at more than $2B (New York Times).
• Japan's economy is stuck in its tracks again. And theoretically, that means China is now more powerful (Bloomberg). Bullish on Moo-shu, bearish on Sushi?
• Want a 4.4% mortgage? Good luck, says Fortune.
• China's currency fell to a seven-week low agains the U.S Dollar (Wall Street Journal). Remember all that noise about them strengthening the Chinese currency?
• This is what I want for Christmas: A Ferrari simulator (Physorg.com). Scratch that, I want a real Ferrari.
• Facebook is buying Chai Labs for $10 million (VentureBeat). Here's a fun fact: it was founded by a former Google executive.
• VCs and Super Angles: The War for the Entrepreneur (TechCrunch). Hmm, a bunch of rich arrogant people beating each other to a pulp. Sounds fun.
• Tim Ferriss thinks he has a way for you to read 300% faster (Tim Ferriss blog).

Apparently the Wall Street Journal discovered over the weekend that companies can gather lots of data about you on the Internet.

I suppose this is their play for a Pulitzer Prize -- a groundbreaking story that exposes the evil of Internet data collection. Only one problem: The Internet -- and financial industry -- has been mining your data for over a decade. And unless you hide in a cave with Ted Kaczynski, you're not going to escape it.

In fact, everybody mines your data. Think of the credit-card companies or your bank. Or Google. They know everything. I like to tell my wife that, "Google knows more about me than you do."

The bandwagon story of the day is Google looking into creating a "Facebook competitor" by talking with popular online gaming companies (Wall Street Journal). That's funny, I thought Facebook was a social networking site and not a gaming company. Shows you what I know.

That's also not to mention that Google has already tried to "do" social networking, but looks to be failing miserably with Buzz.

The spin in the Wall Street Journal is that by talking to social gaming companies like Zynga, Google is contemplating creating an alternative to Facebook, where many of the social gaming companies are growing like weeds (e.g. "Scott has acquired a semi-automatic weapon to blow you away in Mafia Wars!").

Nothing to get a bunch of slathering sycophantic tech journos rolling like a new iPhone upgrade. This morning's news focuses on the rollout of the new iPhone and related upgrade and connectivity issues.

Excuse the brevity, but this morning we were delayed this morning by the important professional business of watching the U.S. World Cup victory over Algeria! Here are the links:

• Walt Mossberg: iPhone is "Top of Class." (Wall Street Journal)
• Engadget: iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market.
• If you are shopping for all things Apple, the iPhone 4 is slower than an iPad, says MacRumors.com.
• In non-Apple news, how many people would like to be a fly on the wall for the Obama/McChrystal meeting? (Bloomberg). I would!
• Sales of new homes plunge to lowest level on record (Bloomberg). But seriously, would you expect anything else? The country is awash in empty, new houses.
• Unemployed people are frittering away their free time (Wall Street Journal). This comes from a government study. Better question: is the government studying unemployed people a good use of government-employed people?
• The Fed is likely to do nothing (Wall Street Journal). Possibly for another 10 years.
• Uh-oh. BP's taken the cap off (BusinessWeek). What will they screw up next?
• Scammers were all over the U.S. homebuyer credit, says a watchdog (Reuters).
• Adobe was down on earnings of 28 cents per share, up from 24 cents last year (MarketWatch).
• Facebook CEO says: We're really gigantic (Guardian).
• New meaning to the word, "GOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!" (USA Today).

 

 

Am I the only one perplexed by this Mark Zuckerberg fiasco? I mean, yes, the guy is the founder and CEO of Facebook. But he's mucking things so badly it's probably time for him to get kicked upstairs.

The headlines are blaring this morning about Zuckerberg's disastrous appearance at the Wall Street Journal D8 conference, in which apparently he was sweating like Albert Brooks playing the news anchor in the movie Broadcast News.

Here's a roundup of what's going on with Sweaty Zuck, and other news:

• Liveblog of Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg interviewing Zuckerberg onstage at D8. Best quote: "When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things." Amen, brother!
• MarketWatch comments on Zuck's "Richard Nixon" moment. Please note the tie-in above to Broadcast News, in which the TV producer comments, "He's sweating more than Richard Nixon!"
• Facebook continues to face heat over privacy. As much heat as a Finnish sauna, apparently.
• Top 5 Facebook privacy settings you need to know (HuffPost). Plus, I really hope you don't have anything truly personal in there. 
• BP's turned to the "Giant Shears" (Guardian). Seriously, could a multinational corporation appear any more incompetent?
• Gulf oil could spread to Atlantic Coast (Wired).
• Israeli Parliament members come close to blows over flotilla debate (LA Times)
• And they killed a U.S. Citizen (The Atlantic). Oops. How's that for improving relations?
• Whirlpool recalls 1.7 million dishwashers (Reuters). Apparently they have the ability to whirl flames.
• Stocks give up most gains (CNN). Is that from yesterday, or from 10 years ago?
• Neilsen files for $1.75 billiion IPO (Reuters). Better hurry.
• Hoenig says Fed should raise rates (Reuters). Now that would make things interesting!

I admit, I have become fascinated with Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "Hoodie Video," which was released this week to announce changes to Facebook's privacy settings. I'm sure that this video will be analyzed by cultural anthropologists years from now, as they point to the the peak of arrogance and juvenile behavior in Internet culture.

I have set out the analyze the film in entirety. I believe it is representative of the failure of Facebook's entire marketing and PR program, as well as the general dysfunction in Web media.

I believe it's evident now that Facebook is not yet a grown-up company or ready for IPO, proven by its feeble response to the privacy crsis over the last few weeks. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not fared well in a crisis of leadership indicating the company cannot master even basic principles of public relations and customer satisfaction.

Today, Facebook is finally making some serious changes to its privacy policy, privacy controls, and public-relations approach. But it has taken far too long. And I don't think it helps that in the video, Zuckerberg has personality of a robot reading from a script.

It's Groundhog Day again in the markets! Repeat after me: Euro down, Greece unrest, sovereign debt panic, Angela Merkel, Jean-Claude Trichet. Euro down, Greece unrest, sovereign debt panic, Angela Merkel, Jean-Claude Trichet.Rinse and repeat, as markets collapse. What I'm watching carefully is that despite incredible dollar strength, gold is threatening new highs. It's funny though, not a whole lot of people seem concerned that this is signaling something: a full-blown global currency crisis. Currency crises are the most pernicious of market events, because it means that suddenly you don't know how to value things. That means volatility. More ahead. Moving on to other news:

• It's the CONTAGION! It's spreading! (Bloomberg). It's like a giant, hedge-fund fueled green slime.
• Cut, cut, cut, says Trichet (Bloomberg). Is it just me or does Trichet look a little bit like a deer in the headlights
• Trichet keeps ECB nukes in the silo (Marketwatch). Headline of the day.
• Productivity continues to rise (Wall Street Journal). Of course it is. That's because the five people left with jobs are doing the work of 50 people.
• The FCC wants to regulate the Internets some more (Wall Street Journal). That's because, like, the Internet has grown too fast when it's unregulated, you know?
• Another company joins the HTML5 parade (TechCrunch). For those of you who don't know what that means, it's like, bad for Adobe.
• Another great headline: "Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: 'I'm CEO ... b****!' (Fortune). More confirmation that the billionaire is just a spoiled brat.

Sometimes it's nice to get away a few days, disconnect, and refresh the mind. And then you come back, and find out that Facebook wants to rule the world. I was aware of the Facebook f8 announcements last week, but an impending vacation spared me the need to expend brainpower on it. I did not hop on this Facebook F8 story like all the other slathering Web 2.0 toadies out there. No, we're not like this. This is supposed to be an analytical and skeptical source of information. So I will tell you: Facebook wants to take everything. Watch out or they'll pick your pocket. The heart of these new Facebook initiatives, loosely grouped as the "open graph," is that if you "opt in" to Facebook's new personalization tools, it will be able to track pretty much anything you do on the Web and your information relationships to other Facebook friends  -- and show it to other people. Now, Facebook uses the term "opt-in" loosely. That's because it has automatically opted in its hundreds of millions of users. Facebook apparently knows when and where you want to "opt." Here's what I think about that: Boy, these Facebook people sure are greedy. They want to control everything. And most people who are trying to compete with them are pretty much screwed. Especially media companies and publishers. Many Facebook competitors for sure. If you are a publisher or some sort of niche social network, you should be very, very careful of you you use the new Facebook APIs. Yes, it's true, Facebook's new tools will make it easier for you to "plug in" to social network. You may get more traffic. But guess what -- who owns the data? Facebook. As soon as you hook into Facebook, you will be handing them over the keys to your kingdom. And you know Facebook wants to advertise to your users. It's all about the data. Google is about the data. Facebook is about the data. If you do anything on the Web that entails a service, content, and advertising, it's about the data of your users. That's your gold. And Facebook now wants to hijack all of the data on the entire Web. This is why Google engineers are freaked out about it. Geddit now? So the big question is: Are users going to allow them to do that? Well, they already have. Because Facebook has decided by default that you are opted in. Well, you say, the Web is already like that. Like Scott McNealy famously said, there is no such thing as privacy anymore. But I'm not just talking about privacy. Yes, the privacy freaks are going to have a cow about this. And you should really be concerned about which settings you've checked on Facebook. But I'm not just talking about that. I'm talking about business. Control. Owning things. We are told now, over and over, that Facebook has 400 million users. It's allegedly surpassed Google in total audience (I still have a hard time believing this). So the really already own a lot of stuff. But that's not enough for the Zuck-man. Now not only does he want to own all these users, but he wants access to every single piece of data about where they go, what they like, and how they interact with the Internet. Do you trust them? I don't.

Well, Twittermania has taken full hold in Silicon Valley. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Techmeme, a news aggregation site frequented by technology trade journalists, VCs, and PR people, now dedicates nearly half its front page to Twitter news, including putting direct links to the Twitter company blog above the fold. For example, here are the links today just from Techmeme:

• Twitter will have an official Android App (TechCrunch)
• Sorry Bit.ly, Twitter confirms it will launch its own link shortener (TechCrunch)
• Twitter makes itself more useful (NY Times Bits)
• The details: How Twitter's newfangled revenue model will work (VentureBeat)
• Twitter does 19 billion searches per month, beating Yahoo & Bing (Searchengineland)
• Tweet preservation (Twitter Blog)

Okay, I feel a bit nauseous. The direct links to the Twitter blog put me over the top.