When we asked a Facebook spokesman about the meeting we got the same boilerplate as every other organization.

We have an open culture and it should come as no surprise that we're providing a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest.

In an e-mailed statement to Computerworld, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said, "We had a productive discussion where comments were made and questions were asked and answered."

Noyes declined, however, to say if the social networking giant made any decisions about changing its contentious privacy policies or if the meeting was simply to allow employees to ask questions about the brouhaha that has arisen over them.

The notion of an open culture as the PR trope from Facebook just seems silly at this point. The company will not issue any substantial comments about a meeting that was called in response to the poor reception to its recent changes. These included objections to what some have seen as underhanded changes and poor communication.

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Web Trends

MySpace's Former Owner: Facebook Will Win - for Now

Brett Brewer, who co-founded InterMix Media - the company that developed MySpace - and turned a tidy profit when that company and MySpace were sold to NewsCorp for $580 million, says MySpace's ongoing battle for social network supremacy with Facebook won't last much longer. In his opinion, Facebook has already won - but it won't remain a winner for long.

See also: MySpace: User Engagement Up, Unique Users Flat

25 Random Things Meme Is a Boon for Facebook

According to the latest data from Compete, the '25 Random Things About Me' meme has not only given us access to a plethora of random facts about people we barely know, but this digital fad has also been good for Facebook. According to the latest data from Compete, four times more people than usual visited the 'Notes' section on Facebook in January. Compete estimates that close to 20 million users used 'Notes' in January, while only about 4 million used it in October 2008.

Comcast Property Sees 92% Success Rate With New OpenID Method

The most-watched geek event of the week may have been the OpenID UX (User Experience) Summit, hosted at the Facebook headquaters. The most discussed moment of the day will surely be the presentation by Comcast's Plaxo team.

Plaxo and Google have collaborated on an OpenID method that may represent the solution to OpenID's biggest problems: it's too unknown, it's too complicated and it's too arduous. Today at the User Experience Summit, Plaxo announced that early tests of its new OpenID login system had a 92% success rate - unheard of in the industry. OpenID's usability problems appear closer than ever to being solved for good.

A-Team Update: Series A Funding Growth Is Strong

We first reported on VC Series A deals in the web-tech sector in October 2008, following the financial meltdown, and we updated our coverage in November, reporting some improvement. Now it is time for the good news from December and January. The amount invested by VCs in Series A deals for web-tech ventures went up from $19.1 million in November to $28.8 million in December, and up another notch to $30.3 million in January. Looking very good.

Craig Newmark's Keynote Unlocks the Secrets to Building a Community

In an era where user generated content is changing our entire culture, rare is the company that can successfully harness the collective creativeness of its community, cultivate loyalty, make money consistently, and continue to flourish. Enter Craigslist. Listed as the tenth top site in America on Alexa and with close to 50 million unique visitors a month according to Compete, Craigslist is one of the few companies that appears to have worked it out. This week at the User Generated Conference in San Jose, CA, founder Craig Newmark gave us an insight into what has and what hasn't worked for the privately held company.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

A Word from Our Sponsors

We'd like to thank ReadWriteWeb's sponsors, without whom we couldn't bring you all these stories every week!

• Mashery is the leading provider of API management services.
• Socialtext brings you 5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration Success
• Crowd Science gives you detailed visitor demographics.
• Discover the Semantic Web, at a Dow Jones Webinar.
• Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
• TaxACT lets you file your taxes online.
• Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 allows you to create interactive social media experiences.
• WildApricot is Membership Management Software.
• DEMO09 is the launchpad for emerging technology.
• MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
• VisualCV lets you stand out from the crowd when job-hunting.
• Eurekster is a custom social search portal.
• SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

Jobwire

Obama Names Former Bush Aide to Review US Cybersecurity Efforts

Former Bush administration official Melissa Hathaway has been named by President Obama to lead a 60-day review of the government's cybersecurity efforts. Hathaway was named acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for the National Security Council as well as the Homeland Security Council. While with the Bush administration she was "credited with helping to develop a multibillion-dollar classified initiative aimed at better securing federal systems and critical-infrastructure networks against online threats".

SUBSCRIBE TO READWRITEWEB'S JOBWIRE FOR THE LATEST NEWS ON JOB HIRES IN TECH

Web Products

richrelevance: Is its Adaptive Recommender System the Next Generation?

Last week we looked at Baynote, a recommendations company that focuses on real-time community behavior instead of personalization. This week we looked at a company that takes a broader approach: richrelevance uses personalization extensively, plus the wisdom of the crowds when relevant. richrelevance claims that its approach is "adaptive AI" and that customers such as Sears and KMart are using its technology. We spoke to richrelevance founder and CEO David Selinger (ex-Amazon), to find out more about the product and what makes it different to Baynote and others.

See other posts in ReadWriteWeb's special series on Recommendation Engines

Amazon's Kindle Gets an Update, But Doesn't Wow

This week Amazon announced a new version of its highly successful Kindle eBook reader. The new Kindle now features 2GB of memory, and a new 5-way controller for easier navigation. Amazon has also upgraded the screen, which can now show sixteen shades of gray instead of just four, and the battery, which now lasts about 25% longer. The old retro look of the Kindle 1 has given away to a far sleeker, more high-tech looking device, but nothing about the new Kindle is really more than an minor evolutionary step forward. Even the price ($359) has stayed the same.

Beyond Latitude: 4 Innovative Location-Based Apps

Google's new geo-aware mobile application Latitude which lets you share your location with friends may have received all the hype, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best or the most innovative app out there. We've recently come across some smaller, lesser-known services that could give Google a run for their money - that is, if anyone knew they existed.

New Tweetdeck Out, Here's What It Includes

Popular Twitter desktop app Tweetdeck released a new version this week and we're pretty excited about what's been added. If you've never used Tweetdeck, it's the most powerful application available for sending and receiving Twitter messages. In the new version there is language translation, StockTwits integration, forwarding by email, switching to one column view and extensive support for conversation topics by hashtag. It's quite an impressive upgrade for an already very feature-rich application.

The iPhone Becomes a Web Server

When those Apple advertisements tout "there's an app for just about anything," they aren't kidding. The latest example? A new iPhone application which just debuted in Japan's App Store transforms the handheld into a full-blown web server. Called "ServersMan@iPhone", the application allows your iPhone to appear just like any other web server on the internet.

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Enterprise

Kashflow vs Sage: SaaS Battles in the Tornado

If you sell SaaS, security is the big concern you have to deal with. Get past that one and you'll draw serious attention from potential customers. Stumble on the issue and you're in deep doo-doo. That is ever truer when money is involved. Who wants a leak in their accounting data? When a big vendor slips up with security, David is given a clear shot at Goliath. And when a market is in the "tornado" growth phase, vendors do what it takes to highlight their competitors' weaknesses. This is the story behind the emerging battle between two UK accounting vendors, Kashflow and Sage.

Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.

SEE MORE ENTERPRISE COVERAGE IN OUR ENTERPRISE CHANNEL

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

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Skip to info about... Socialtext: Enterprise 2.0 Adobe: Flash media server Dow Jones: Semantic Web webinar Mashery: API management services TaxACT: online tax filing Rackspace: cloud computing experts DEMO09: launchpad for innovative products Crowd Science: demographic data Wild Apricot: membership management Eurekster: custom topic portals Our Hosts and Blogging Software: Media Temple and SixApart

Semantic Web Weminar by Dow Jones

Dow Jones is hosting a webinar about the Semantic Web, on Thursday, February 12, 2009. Dow Jones notes that "these days it's critical for organizations to consume, digest, and share news and information. The Semantic Web is no longer ahead of its time and is rapidly changing how organizations keep up with information overload." This webinar is Part I of a series and in it you will learn how Semantic Web Technologies enable you to re-use valuable information to save costs, facilitate easier collaboration and sharing of critical information across your business, and increase search relevancy and surface the most valuable information needed to remain competitive

You can register for the Semantic Web webinar by clicking here.

Socialtext

Socialtext provides an enterprise wiki platform for organizations who want to accelerate knowledge sharing, foster collaboration, or build online communities.

Socialtext is currently offering a free white paper entitled 5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration. It explains how collaboration solutions (a.k.a. Enterprise 2.0) can "dramatically reduce enterprise cycle times and costs. These results may be critical to survival in difficult economic times, and the right collaboration solution is the easiest, most cost effective way to achieve them."

Download Socialtext's free whitepaper at http://socialtext.com.

Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we've struggled to get in the past. It's important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

You can sign up to get demographic data by clicking here.

Mashery

Mashery is a platform for web services, allowing companies to manage their APIs using Mashery's expertise. In the Business of APIs conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery has helped customers such as WhitePages.com, Thumbplay, Compete.com, and Calais. Check out the white paper Five steps to scaling your business development using web services to discover how you can use APIs for your business.

You can find out more about APIs and their business use at www.mashery.com.

TaxACT

TaxACT is an efficient way to file your taxes online, in either desktop or web-based versions. It offers two ways to enter data: the interview format, or the forms-based entry method. TaxACT also provides its users a highly reliable and robust alerts system to prevent costly mistakes generally caused by omissions or missed opportunities to maximize deductions. Regardless of the TaxACT version, all forms are IRS and State approved. The software was developed by professional accountants and CPAs.

You can see a tour of TaxACT online by clicking here.

Rackspace

Rackspace is one of the world's largest hosting providers, but it's also competing in the cloud computing arena. In October Rackspace announced two major acquisitions: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while JungleDisk is one of our favorite online backup services. JungleDisk used to rely on Amazon's S3 storage solution, but it now also supports Rackspace's cloud storage solution. At the same time, Rackspace also announced a new suite of services, Rackspace Cloud Hosting, which combines a hosting platform (CloudSites) with a cloud storage solution (CloudFS), and, in the long run, a tight integration with Slicehost's services.

Click here to explore Rackspace's hosting and cloud computing solutions.

Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5

Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 offers powerful streaming with a flexible environment for creating and delivering rich, interactive, multiway social media experiences to a broad audience. You'll find a superior video experience, with new features such as Dynamic Streaming, DVR functionality, HTTP delivery support, and H.264 enhancements.

Check out the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3.5 to add interactivity and media streaming to your social media applications.

DEMO09

DEMO09 is on March 1-3, 2009, at Desert Springs. With more than 20,000 technologies reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 19 years, DEMO remains one of the best places to launch your new product. The show is made up of 70 six-minute presentations in two days and you'll see a lot of innovative products unveiled for the first time. In the past four years, DEMO companies have raised well over $2.5 billion dollars in the months/years following their debut at DEMO.

You can register for DEMO09 here.

Wild Apricot

WildApricot enables clubs, associations and communities to automate and streamline administrative tasks, using their online membership management software.

The company has an active and well written blog, focusing on issues and trends in web technologies that help your organization achieve more with less. Example posts include Show, Don't Tell: Google Earth Outreach for Nonprofits and How to Learn More About Your Website Audience.

Wild Apricot gets lots of love in the social media; book sales pro Ann Kingman, for example, says she has "been very happy with Wild Apricot in the past few months we've been using it. Great customer support."

See for yourself what Wild Apricot can do at http://wildapricot.com.

Eurekster

Eurekster is developer of the swicki that we use on RWW, a custom social search portal on the topic of your choice (in our case web tech), powered by the community.

People build swickis on all kinds of topics, some people build a lot of them. Alex Holmes, for example, builds really nice looking swickis on topics like the 2008 Election, Ocean Animals and Home Buying.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

ReadWriteWeb is hosted by Media Temple and is published using SixApart's MovableType.

If you've ever wondered what RWW looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the MovableType publishing interface - that's it on the left. We recently upgraded to MT 4.23, which is the latest version. We got onto this release as soon as it was available - in fact our contacts at Six Apart emailed the actual code to us before it was up on their website. That's customer service for you!

The companies above pay our rents or mortgages and we appreciate it. We hope you'll stop by their sites and see what they've got to offer.

Have you got a smart company that could use some more visits by the sophisticated readers of a blog like ReadWriteWeb? Drop us a line and let's talk.

Thanks to all our sponsors and our readers for your support!

When movies came to the online world, I always had hopes of rekindling that magic virtually, but more often than not, I wound up checking out the wrong video. Now, a new service proposes to change that, by bringing the video clerks back into the mix. Meet Clerk Dogs.

Users enter their favorite movie titles and receive a selection of recommended movies. But if users want to get more specific, they can opt to use the "mash it" feature. Mash it allows the user to work with a sliding scale of movie attributes like violence, character depth, suspense, offbeat, and action.

This allows users to select movies that are similar to original selection, but not exactly the same. Maybe they're looking for something with less violence, more character development, and a little bit offbeat. Clerk Dogs starts providing recommendations.

Where do the clerks come in? According to Clerk Dogs, "former clerks, who understand why customers like movies, have analyzed all the characteristics of movies to create a database that is much richer and deeper than the collaborative filtering engines." The underlying data for Clerk Dogs is provided by the Muze database.

Does Clerk Dogs have a chance? It might. The founder knows a thing or two about movies and movie database services. Clerk Dogs is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Stuart Skorman, who also founded Reel.com, a movie site from the dotcom era - which always seemed to be running neck and neck with IMDB - that was acquired by Hollywood Entertainment in the late 90s.

Does it work? It has potential. I spent a few minutes testing the system and came away with some incredibly interesting recommendations. Some that, like the tapes the video clerks used to plop in front of me, I'd be willing to try.

Of course, if I want to see them, I'll have to go to Netflix or some other service to rent them. There's no rental service at Clerk Dogs. That's a bit of an extra step. But if it's a step that means I'll get a movie that I actually like, I'd be willing to do that.

Clerk Dogs is currently in beta. As such, its selections are constrained to crime and suspense genres, with other genres being added in the coming months. To test drive the selection process for yourself, visit Clerk Dogs and start testing it against some of your favorite movies.

Townsend was CEO of Avis, an auto rental company, who took on the much bigger Hertz with the "We try harder" proposition, a classic story for scrappy number two players beating up on the gorilla. The book is full of timeless wisdom, but the relevant bit here is the way he allowed all his managers to speak to the press without any prepared script. His simple point was, if you were a journalist, who would you want to talk to when a big story breaks? Hertz's PR department or the guys actually running the business at Avis? That's right. Back in 1970, this guy was saying, "loosen up, forget about command and control, let front line managers make the call."

He was radical on other fronts. His book was organized alphabetically, for example. Under P for Personnel Department his pithy advice (I am going from memory here) was, "fire them, people manage people." But that's another story.

His advice on PR is even more critical today. The Internet makes command and control models pretty obsolete. Sure, some data has to be controlled. The financial results for a public company need to be issued in a certain way to comply with SEC regulations. But that's about it. Whether you use a newswire service or your blog, the key is lighten up on the process and get into the flow. That flow may be a blog, or Twitter, or Facebook or any of the above and more. The general point is simply about availability and transparency.

If you really have a great story to tell, that will get even the most jaded journalist interested.

Public relations needs to evolve from gatekeeper and process manager to coach, helping the front line managers work effectively with media and the market. That assumes that their clients are enlightened enough to give them that mandate.