The Social

For a company that's cutting costs these days, the annual holiday party is an easy target. But there have been fewer cancellations in the tech industry than one might think.

True, eliminating an evening of eggnog and sugar cookies won't help an ailing balance sheet that much; in the current financial downturn, it has a lot to do with appearances, too. "It's the economy, definitely, but it's also a lot of public perception," said Celia Chen, a New York-based event planner who runs the blog Notes on a Party.

"People don't want to seem like they're being gratuitous or over-the-top when their colleagues have lost their jobs. It's more of a responsible way to run your company," she said.

On the other hand, there's a delicate balance between appearing prudent in the face of hard times, and keeping employee morale afloat. Many tech companies are in trouble, but for the most part they are not in meltdown mode like financial services companies or in a continued downward spiral like print media companies. Perhaps because of this, event planners say they haven't seen the same cancel-everything attitude when it comes to tech companies that they've seen in other industries.

"In the financial industry, their budgets are significantly lower than last year. In the tech world it really depends on the company," said Nate Valentine, a partner in the San Francisco events firm Vintage415. "You're seeing companies that are new, emerging companies that are doing events that haven't done events in the past, because they have the budget (now)."

Things are very different in traditional media companies, many of which have acquired tech start-ups and recently expanded their digital divisions--they're hurting, badly. Hearst Publications, which shuttered three magazines, canceled its party. So did Viacom, which is rumored to have layoffs coming before the end of the year. But many smaller media companies and tech start-ups have never had a large-scale holiday party, and probably aren't hiring high-end caterers or renting out big nightclubs for open bars.

The appearances factor comes into play here, too: employees of some smaller companies say they haven't even heard yet about whether the holiday party is on the books or not, indicating that a few executives are still vacillating on how appropriate it would be to throw a company party amid layoffs. "I haven't actually heard either way yet (about a cancellation)," said a representative from one San Francisco-based start-up that recently cut several dozen employees.

"I can't see us not having (a party)," said an employee of one New York-based blog company that also went through a fresh round of layoffs. "It'll suck, but we'll have it, I'm sure."

For larger companies, scaling back a holiday party can be particularly appearances-driven because there's a good chance they've already paid for much of it. "If you're a really big company, you're putting a deposit down on a Christmas party probably in September, if not August, because you have to accommodate a large group and it's been allocated in the budget for the year," Chen said.

There are signs of cost-consciousness everywhere: Valentine said that recently a group of several dozen Google employees in the Bay Area had arranged for an open bar at one of Vintage415's venues without actually booking the club. In New York, news outlet The Daily Beast reported that Google was renting less glitzy venues for its Gotham holiday parties. (Representatives from Google were not immediately available to confirm the report.)

"They'll still find a way to celebrate," Valentine commented. "It's just a different way to celebrate."

Viacom, for example, canceled its companywide party as well as parties for big divisions like MTV Networks and Paramount. "All employees across the country are getting two extra vacation days in exchange," company spokesman Jeremy Zweig told CNET News.

One member of Viacom's MTV Networks said that he speculates individual divisions of companies may come up with their own smaller celebration plans. "I'm sure we'll have drinks somewhere, at some point," said the Viacom employee, "even if it's just my team."

But a bigger complication arises when it comes to companies that have traditionally invited clients, media, or analysts to holiday parties. Canceling a party to which non-employees, particularly non-employees with an indirect stake in the company, are invited, could skew perceptions about that company's health. Both Google and Facebook, for example, have already sent out the invitations to their holiday media parties, fairly low-key affairs at company headquarters where handfuls of bloggers and journalists show up to schmooze with executives.

That said, the image issues work in the other direction, too. Chen said that a new-media company might want to think twice before throwing a big holiday party where one of the goals is to get loyal advertisers nice and tipsy. "Advertisers, I think they want to know that the companies they're advertising in are fiscally responsible," she speculated. "I think advertising is taking a hit in its own light, so I think the general feeling is that we have to be respectful of what's happening with so many people being laid off. And people really admire companies that are trying to do the right thing."

In the end, it's a tough executive decision. Unlike, say, the financial services industry, there really is no clear-cut answer in the tech sector to the question of whether a holiday party should stay on, scale back, or get the ax altogether. But event planners agree: it's never a good idea to throw a party just to act like things are all right.

"It's very difficult to celebrate with your senior executives when you have to look your staff in the face and say, 'We just had to let half of you go,'" Chen said.

Citysearch is still ahead, butupstart rival Yelp is catching up. Good thing Citysearch has brought in some much-needed new social features.

(Credit: Compete.com)

Citysearch, the online business directory owned by Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, has gotten a full makeover. It's available now at beta.citysearch.com--there's a more streamlined and Ajax-y interface, but a few important features have been tweaked as well. According to company representatives, this is about a year and a half in the making.

First of all, instead of focusing on a select number of metro areas, Citysearch has expanded to a whopping 75,000 towns and neighborhoods, meaning that you can narrow down your focus to New York's East Village or Los Angeles' Culver City. Additionally, there's Facebook Connect integration, meaning that you can see what your Facebook friends have recommended or reviewed on Citysearch. Also on the social side of things, reviewing businesses on Citysearch is easier and more up-front. Previously, there had been more attention on editorial reviews as opposed to user reviews.

And Facebook approves, apparently. "At Facebook, we've found that remarkable things happen when you get trust, user control and identity right--people share more information, and become more open and connected," Facebook communications czar Elliot Schrage said in a joint release. "Citysearch's innovative new site shows how Facebook Connect can help information flow faster through a site while creating a filter for users to engage with localized content through the lens of their friends, family and colleagues."

That's a big deal for Citysearch: fast-growing start-up Yelp has started to gain some market share in the "user-generated reviews" department. According to traffic firm Compete.com, Yelp is still smaller but catching up. (Citysearch, for that matter, syndicates some of its content to big portals like AOL.)

Finally, Citysearch has launched a mobile site compatible with a number of different browsers and handsets--yes, including Apple's iPhone.

(Credit: Howcast Media)

Facebook, Google, and the Google-owned YouTube are among the sponsors for the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, an event taking place at New York's Columbia Law School from December 3-5.

Along with other collaborators--which include the U.S. Department of State, MTV, Access 360 Media, and start-up Howcast--the event hopes to "find (the) best ways to use digital media to promote freedom and justice, and counter violence, extremism, and oppression."

The companies have amassed 17 leaders of different activist groups and hope to bring them together to come up with a common set of principles and strategies, inspired by a movement against a Colombian extremist group that was formed and organized on Facebook.

"Aided by social-networking technologies, the organization inspired 12 million people in 190 cities around the world to take to the streets in protest against the FARC, an extremist group that has been terrorizing Colombia for more than 40 years," an announcement of the summit read. "The magnitude of the marches illustrated once and for all that the FARC lacked a strong support base. Within days of the protests, the FARC witnessed massive desertions from their ranks."

Speakers at next month's summit include Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz, actress and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg, and State Department Undersecretary James K. Glassman.

The State Department has already partnered with YouTube for its "Democracy Challenge," a moviemaking competition in conjunction with several film schools. And in the wake of the 2008 presidential election, Facebook has been stepping up its activism and outreach efforts; earlier this fall, it sponsored the ServiceNation summit.

The Social Gaming Network, a company best known for its Facebook Platform apps, has launched a new iPhone app that uses the handset as...a gaming controller.

Called "iFun," the app is a takeoff on the Social Gaming Network's existing sports apps: iGolf, iBowl, iBaseball, and the like. But instead of playing on your iPhone, you use your iPhone or iPod Touch much like the "Wiimote" device for Nintendo's Wii console. (Both gadgets use accelerometer technologies.) It connects via Wi-Fi or cellular network to your PC. You can then play against friends--remotely, and in real time.

Currently, iFun is restricted to a golf game but will soon expand--as well as to other devices with accelerometers in them, like the Android-powered G1. It also uses Facebook Connect for authentication.

Social Gaming Network CEO Shervin Pishevar told CNET News that the company is currently "lining up advertisers" and is interested in turning iFun into a platform for external developers to create their own games. The Social Gaming Network raised a $15 million investment round last spring, followed by more funding from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' venture firm.

And--wait for it--here's the recession angle. Playing the free iFun game on an iPod Touch is "significantly cheaper than buying a Wii for Christmas," Pishevar said.

Facebook has launched another way for members to sift through the noise when it comes to the thousands of developer-created applications on its platform: a "verified app" badge.

It's sort of like the "verified merchant" status that PayPal awards: it's designed to signify that the application has met standards that deem it "respectful, transparent, and meet the guiding principles for trustworthiness," according to a statement from Facebook. Interested developers can apply for the verification process--a $375 fee--and if approved, will receive the virtual badge within a few weeks.

The "verified" badge will appear on an approved application's "About" page, as well as next to its listing in the application directory.

Plus, Facebook says that starting early next year there will be visibility benefits: access to more communication tools, and more prominent placement in members' activity feeds.

Some other social networks' developer platforms, like that of business network LinkedIn, require all apps to go through a verification process before they even go live. Facebook's platform, on the other hand, is open--though it has been known to be quick to pull down apps with potential security violations or intellectual property issues.

Trendy men's newsletter Thrillist has already shown its penchant for giving the middle finger to all things recession-related, whether it be chartering party planes or throwing '90s-dot-com bubble-theme parties (granted, both of those stunts preceded the Wall Street meltdown by a few months). But the New York-based start-up may be savvier than its big-pimpin' image would have you think.

The latest move from the company is a monthly compendium called Thrillist Invites, which is a listing of stuff you can do for free, if you sign up and RSVP. The first Thrillist Invites list will be for its New York subscribers--you have to already be subscribed to the Thrillist New York newsletter to be ushered into Invites--but versions for other cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, are on the way.

"The concept is that these parties are events that typically, Thrillist readers wouldn't have access to: 100 percent free, open bar, great entertainment," co-founder Ben Lerer told CNET News. The invites will range from restaurant openings and wine tastings to nightclub parties and clothing sample sales.

It's sort of similar to MyOpenBar, a weekly listing of regional establishments that offer free or heavily discounted drinking opportunities, but Lerer said it will have a more exclusive, first-come, first-served focus than the "unlimited Pabst Blue Ribbon" offers that often fill up MyOpenBar's ranks.

Lerer added that launching Thrillist Invites wasn't recession-induced, even though belt-tightening readers may be looking for cheap entertainment, and venues may be looking for people to fill their spaces in a time when they might be booking fewer holiday parties.

"It originally stemmed from the fact that we surveyed our audience earlier this year and asked, 'What do you guys want more of?'" Lerer explained. "Something like 80 (percent) to 90 percent of our audience said they wanted more events coverage."

Earlier this month, Thrillist expanded its Web site to offer more content, putting it further into the niche of "lifestyle publication" rather than "daily newsletter," and Lerer said that with a bigger focus on events, the site may expand further--like into Cobrasnake-ish party photo coverage.

Thrillist will also throw more of its own events, a move that some other food-and-bar culture companies, including the San Francisco-based Yelp, have taken in order to fortify a loyal following and give their users an "insider" status. Plenty of liquor brands advertise on Thrillist already, which Lerer said has made it easy for them to nail down booze sponsors.

And Lerer said Thrillist, which is fully advertising-supported and plans to stay that way, is financially sound. Granted, he didn't start from ground zero: he's the progeny of former AOL executive and Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer, and fellow ex-AOLer Bob Pittman's Pilot Group investment firm has taken a big stake in the start-up. Another Pilot Group-backed newsletter brand, DailyCandy, sold to Comcast earlier this year for about $125 million.

"Obviously, we get asked this question 50 times a day," Ben Lerer said when asked about a recession strategy. "We are doing really good...even if things slow down in the advertising community, in the online ad space, and even if we're growing less quickly because of some recession."

NEW YORK--Solar panels clusters in New Mexico, wind farms dotting the Great Plains? That's all very nice. But that railroad tunnel in Baltimore is important, too.

On a gray and rainy Thursday, I went to Time Inc.'s midtown Manhattan headquarters for what was supposed to be a panel about the company's flagship magazine's annual "Person of the Year" honor. But amid consistently grave economic news, not to mention the fact that everyone in attendance seemed to agree that President-elect Barack Obama eclipses any other options for the award, the conversation was less about a magazine headline and more about the future of the country.

After a hefty fall season of digital-media and Web conferences, I was surprised to witness that outside the culture of think-big tech pundits, "the future" is a lot more mundane.

"This is what President Obama's going to face," said panelist Elizabeth Edwards, Center for American Progress senior fellow and wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards. The road out of the economic crisis is "not a refund check" encouraging more consumption, "not more houses with more flat-screen TVs...(but) bridges that work and schools that inspire students."

The panelist lineup was impressive: in addition to Edwards, there was NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams; Mad Men actor John Slattery; personal-finance talking head Suze Orman; Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers; and congressional Rep. Artur Davis (D-Alabama). None of them were the sorts of people whom I'd seen onstage in the past two months of tech industry events, from the Web 2.0 Expo in New York to the Future of Web Apps in London to last week's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco (which featured Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and former Vice President Al Gore, among others).

To be sure, the Techmeme set talks a whole lot about recession and recovery these days. Al Gore has urged us to move beyond "the gee-whiz stuff." Back in April, Tim O'Reilly expressed mild disgust at the fact that some of the U.S.' best and sharpest minds were busy building new ways to throw virtual hamburgers at each other on Facebook.

The problem is that some of these digital thought leaders' "real-world solutions" are still painted with that wide-eyed, change-the-world Valley sparkle. There is a distinct soldier-on, innovation-won't stop attitude, even as dozens of tech companies slice off a fifth, a quarter, a third of their workforces. Tech innovation will change the world in big ways, but it will change the world in small and unglamorous ways, too, and we're not hearing a whole lot of that.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, Gore suggested that in ten years we can build a "unified national smart grid" of sustainable electricity, a plan that would create thousands of jobs but which critics say might not even work. Paul Otellini excitedly showed off an Intel prototype of a camera-like gadget that could do language translations in seconds. Other panels at the same conference were all about consumer solar equipment retail, home DNA tests, and $100,000 electric sports cars.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams

(Credit: NBC)

There was none of that on Thursday at Time Inc.'s headquarters. Williams suggested that perhaps President Obama's priorities should, FDR-style, putting people to work repairing a national infrastructure that's in bad disrepair. "Would it be that bad if we had a big jobs program?" Williams posed.

He asked why New York's LaGuardia Airport is in disrepair, why some of the city's infrastructure hasn't been touched since the days of controversial public works czar Robert Moses, and why it was possible that a bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last year. He asked why the U.S.' only high-speed train line, Amtrak's Acela Express, has to slow to 25 miles per hour to get through a tunnel outside Baltimore that dates back to the 1930s.

If people were put to work repairing it, Williams said, "you could get to Washington 20 minutes earlier."

The nifty smart-camera gadget that Otellini showed off at the Web 2.0 Summit might as well have been a flying car on The Jetsons in comparison.

On the same day that he published a detailed missive about his dire predictions for the online ad market, Gawker Media overlord Nick Denton made public his decision to shut down Valleywag, the blog network's Silicon Valley gossip title. Valleywag was launched early in 2006.

Valleywag editor Owen Thomas will have his job folded into a column on the Gawker.com flagship title, a gossip blog focused primarily on the New York media industry. Denton explained in an e-mail to CNET News that Thomas will remain full-time and that the Valleywag brand (as well as Valleywag.com) will stay alive.

Presumably, this means that Thomas' posts will be syndicated to Valleywag.com even though their chief destination will now be Gawker.com.

A recession seems like a great time to be running a gossip blog about the tech business, given all the juicy photos of sad, laid-off employees and rumors of badly-behaved CEOs mismanaging their companies that inevitably fly around. But the reason for Valleywag's shutdown was Denton's notoriously doom-and-gloom vision of the future--Internet ad spending will decline a full 40 percent, he predicts--and Valleywag was one of the company's less lucrative titles.

"Valleywag's traffic isn't enough to pay for two writers, even with Ketel One ads on every page," wrote Valleywag senior writer Paul Boutin, who will not stay full-time at Gawker Media.

It was a tough sell for advertisers, given its niche audience, and many tech companies would be hesitant to advertise on a publication dedicated to ridiculing tech companies. And then there was the fact that you just can't turn the average Valley exec or VC into a Perez Hilton-style celebrity. The likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk simply don't add up to Britney Spears-like followings.

Reactions in the tech community will probably be mixed. Valleywag is mean, to be sure, but it can also be hilarious, and writers Thomas and Boutin were tech-press regulars long before their Gawker gigs.

Denton's handling of Gawker has been frugal, continually consolidating resources toward the blogs that were pulling in traffic and ad dollars and not hesitating to shut down the underperformers. In April, Gawker Media sold off three of its smallest blogs, and Denton has now announced that another, Consumerist, is on the block.

Early in October, Denton orchestrated a personnel shuffling that saw 14 percent of the company's editorial staff laid off but new hires made at some of the most successful titles like gadget blog Gizmodo and feminist chronicle Jezebel.

Also on Wednesday, AllThingsD's Peter Kafka reporter that Gawker Media managing editor Noah Robischon was leaving for Fast Company.

This post was expanded at 11:51 a.m. PT on Thursday.

The MySpace Primetime video app.

(Credit: MySpace)

Now you can put a TV on your MySpace profile--sort of.

The News Corp.-owned social network has built a new widget for its developer platform called "Primetime," a video player that syndicates much of the professionally created content available on its MySpaceTV media hub. Included in that roster is video from Hulu (a joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal), Warner Bros., Sony, and other MySpace content partners as well as the social network's original video content.

It's also searchable, and provides another outlet for MySpace's video ads. Since it's a developer platform app, it's not embeddable elsewhere, but MySpace is a partner in the OpenSocial project and therefore could probably syndicate the widget outside its own site without too much tweaking.

MySpace is now encouraging users to embed Primetime on their profiles. It's only available to members in the U.S., probably because of licensing issues. But the U.S. is MySpace's biggest market, where 76 million of its 122 million visitors come from.

"The Primetime application highlights how professional video content is being voraciously consumed across the MySpace ecosystem, not just within MySpaceTV," Jason Kirk, vice president of video and entertainment for MySpace, said in a release Wednesday.

Producer/Editor Shaun Cvar and about a dozen other laid off CurrentTV employees gathered at a watering hole next door to Current's offices for drinks after being laid off.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

There have been layoffs at Current Media, the cable network co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

A statement from Current put the number of layoffs at about 60 positions, with 30 more to be refilled, the company said in a statement. That's less of a hard hit than the 20 percent cuts that a source close to Current hinted to CNET News on Tuesday. The statement read: "Approximately 60 positions have been eliminated in the company's three U.S. offices, and approximately 30 new positions created," the statement read. "Many of those whose positions were eliminated have been placed in the new positions. Current will have approximately 410 employees (after these staffing adjustments)."

The source also said additional layoffs would be coming in January, which a Current representative denied.

Current had announced less than a day ago that it had partnered with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to bring its network to Canada. Current's plans for an initial public offering are on hold, employees have told CNET News. The company filed for an IPO in January.

Approached outside the company's San Francisco headquarters, one laid-off Current employee said that she hadn't seen it coming.

"Not only was this uncalled for, but there was continuous deliberation during the last two or three months," the former employee said. "Every meeting we've had with the VP of our department has been a lot of 'Don't worry, your positions are secure.' And that has been repeated for the last two to three months."

Changes in programming format are on the way too. Current's focus on indie and amateur producers was a bold experiment, one that left some critics scratching their heads when the channel debuted in 2005.

VC^2 production assistant Parisa Vahdatinia, her layoff packet labeled "Top Secret," and her (former) office plant were at the nearest bars, Pete's Tavern, just hours after being laid off by media company CurrentTV.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

"As part of the impending transition at Current TV, one source says the company is going to drop its shorter (user-generated content) videos in favor of the more traditional 30-minute programs that have long dominated television programming across all channels," David Weir, an analyst at CNET News sister site BNET, reported on Monday night.

The statement from Current hinted at this change as well. "These changes result from the development of a new, innovative programming strategy built around eight cross-platform channels, including news, comedy, music, and technology, slated to premiere in the first quarter of 2009," the statement detailed. "Current's new programming strategy expands upon its pioneering use of viewer-created content to include additional opportunities for participation, creating a far more viewer-influenced network, and further unifies the company's online and TV platforms by having each Web channel paired with a companion TV show."

Current, which consists of the Current TV network and Current.com, had just gone through a high-profile marketing effort in conjunction with the 2008 presidential election, for which it partnered with trendy social-media brands Digg and Twitter.

Company representatives told CNET News last week that it had been a big success, and Gore himself later gave a speech at the Web 2.0 Summit in which he touched upon how he hopes Current will solve some of the problems plaguing the television news industry.

At least one Current employee, associate producer Andrew Schneider, has Twittered his departure. The company "just laid me off with a ton of my colleagues," Schneider wrote.

Schneider's LinekdIn profile says that he worked in VC2, the "Viewer Created" or user-generated content division of Current. A source told CNET News that the VC2 division was hit particularly hard by the layoffs.

The company statement said the layoffs were a preventative measure: "These changes enable Current Media to reduce its cost structure, thereby assuring that it will be comfortably profitable in 2009, regardless (of) the depth and length of the recession."

Laid off producer/editor Holly Gibson, in pink, talks with co-workers outside their offices after the San Francisco media company laid off 60 people Tuesday.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

Last update at 8:02 p.m. PT. CNET News' James Martin contributed to this article.