NewTech Tooday

Thursday, 7 April 2016

Mark Zuckerberg’s Speechwriter Left to Head Up Communications at SpaceX

Dex Torricke-Barton

MEDIA

April 6, 2016, 9:00 AM PDT

Dex Torricke-Barton spent the past half-decade writing speeches for two of the tech industry’s most prominent CEOs. Now he’s headed to SpaceX to run communications for a different one.

Torricke-Barton is taking the head communications job at SpaceX, the rocket and aerospace company run by CEO Elon Musk, the one that is trying to put humans on Mars. Torricke-Barton spent the last four years working at Facebook, primarily writing speeches for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but also the company’s other top executives.

He did the same at Google for then-CEO Eric Schmidt before that, and also spent three years working with the United Nations and its secretary-general.

Now Torricke-Barton will run his own comms team, which entails much more than writing speeches — but we assume he’ll probably write a few speeches for Musk along the way, too.

Speech writing is typically viewed as a political skill, but it’s a stark reminder that as the tech industry has increased in reach and relevance, so too have its star executives. In that vein, it’s no surprise that Zuckerberg (and other top execs) would have someone skilled at speech writing to help him prepare remarks for events where other world leaders and policy makers are in the audience.

That will likely be important for Musk and SpaceX. Condensing the grand idea of interplanetary travel into something we regular folks can actually digest and understand will be Torricke-Barton’s new job.

“As someone who grew up devouring science fiction, before making a career telling stories, it was impossible to pass up the chance to tell this one,” he wrote in his blog.

Torricke-Barton left Facebook at the end of March and plans to take up his new post as senior director of communications at SpaceX in May.

Update: Musk may have hired a speechwriter but he doesn’t need one! Musk tweeted in response to this story that while Dex will indeed run comms, Musk’s off-the-cuff style isn’t going to change.

2016: The Year Election Ads Finally Come to the Internet

Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

MEDIA

April 7, 2016, 3:00 AM PDT

Here’s another first for the 2016 election season: It’s the first time political campaigns are going to spend real money on digital ads.

That might seem odd to you, because you’re reading this on the Internet, where you do lots of other things. So you might assume that politicians and their campaigns have been spending money to reach you here for years.

Not so: Up until now, political advertisers have treated the Internet as a novelty. In 2008, digital accounted for a paltry $22 million of the $6.2 billion campaigns spent on advertising.

And two years ago, long after everyone else had started pushing significant dollars to Web ads, politicos hung back, spending significantly more on things like radio and billboards.

Things are different this year, says Nomura analyst Anthony DiClemente, who predicts that campaigns will spend $1 billion on digital advertising.

That’s about 10 percent of the $10.1 billion he thinks they’ll spend overall, with TV getting the bulk of that money, just like it has for a long time. But digital is finally starting to eat into traditional media’s share:

And most of the spending that is moving to digital is going to end up with two companies, Nomura says: Alphabet and Facebook, which will get around $400 million and $350 million in political ads, respectively.

That makes sense, given those two companies’ dominance in digital advertising in every other sector.

Still, it has to smart a bit over at Twitter, which has seen a burst of political activity, led byTwitter savant/wizard Donald Trump. But when you’re as good at Twitter as Trump is, you don’t need to pay.

Yahoo Loses Another SVP, Talent Hunter Sandy Gould, as Compensation Issues Rile Staff

Michael Buckner / Getty Images

Sandy Gould and his cool specs have left the Yahoo building.

MEDIA

March 31, 2016, 1:06 PM PDT

Yahoo is expected to lose yet another major executive, this time Sandy Gould, who is currently SVP of talent acquisition and development at the company. It is not clear where the well-regarded exec is headed, said sources close to the situation (are there any other kind?).

Gould was hired to much acclaim just over three years ago, after a high-profile career at Disney/ABC Television Group, Linden Labs/Second Life and RealNetworks. At Yahoo, he has been a favorite of CEO Marissa Mayer, who put him in charge of recruiting, learning and development efforts, once a big focus of hers.

It’s been touch and go for a lot of high-ranking execs like Gould at Yahoo of late, many of whom are not sure what to do in the midst of all the swirl at the Silicon Valley Internet giant. That includes a proxy fight that could — and probably will — oust the entire current board, as well as a lugubrious sales process to hawk Yahoo’s core business. Also, there’s a spinoff of its stake in China’s Alibaba Group taking place.

Oh yes, let’s not forget ongoing cost-cutting that includes a lot of layoffs. (And did we mention the juice machine was on the fritz? Just kidding, purple people — your green smoothies are safe for now!)

To keep the people Yahoo does want to keep, then, has been a dicey challenge for Mayer, which is why she faced a lot of questions about that in a recent Friday all-hands meeting called FYI.

Besides an awkward question about all the bad press — in which the overmatched PR head urged the staff to “appreciate” how hard Mayer works by giving her a hug — there were several tough queries about compensation, including annual bonuses.

Why? Well, apparently no Section 16 officers (high-ranking execs) got bonuses this year and others got paid out from the low teen percentages for SVPs, about 30 percent for VPs and about 50 percent for regular employees.

The salary and bonus issue has been made even more confusing due to Mayer’s incessant fiddling with comp, most recently via something called the “cohort method.” While not getting into specifics — except that Yahoos hate it — managers tell me they have had a hard time explaining it to employees.

Here’s an easy one though: At the FYI, there was also a question about the freezing of salaries across the board. “If salaries are frozen, and the good people have left, then why should we stay?” asked one person there.

Good question! But all this cutting has to happen and is largely due to poor performance at Yahoo, which is expected to get worse in this quarter. While the company can do some patent sales and other tricks to make it look better, more hard and substantive cuts are the only thing that will really work.

Speaking of tricks, one that Mayer has been employing to hold onto staff is increased stock comp, which means loading up key execs with more shares instead of more cash. Since Mayer arrived in 2011, stock-based compensation has risen from $204 million to $457 million.

Yes, it has doubled. This is a big deal since Yahoo revenue has not increased in that time (it was $4 billion in 2015, down from $4.4 billion in 2014). And $457 million in stock comp represents from 7 percent to 10 percent of the value of Yahoo’s core assets, backing out its stakes in China’s Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. Again, it is a lot.

According to sources, both CRO Lisa Utzschneider and CFO Ken Goldman just got big new stock awards and they are raining down on others, as a way to keep them on board until something happens.

What that will be for Yahoo, given all the moving parts, is anyone’s guess. But one thing for sure is that means few are focusing on what might actually pull the company out of this mess: Making great products.

Which requires great talent, which — of course — brings us back to Sandy Gould, the talent guy who is leaving.

Google’s Alphabet Has a CEO Problem

Tony Fadell, Nest Labs, Code Conference, Tony Fadell, Nest Labs, Code Conference

Asa Mathat

Nest CEO Tony Fadell

MOBILE

The Alphabet companies not named Google make up just 6 percent of the entire tech conglomeration’s workforce, but they account for a growing share of its headaches. Those frustrations are less about the technical hurdles of these lofty moonshots than a concern commonplace with startups: A crisis of leadership.

Google co-founders, now Alphabet honchos, really want to replicate their search engine’s success across a range of industries with operations run like startups. To do that, though, they have to face a dilemma inherent in their structure. That is, they must find execs willing to work within Alphabet’s corporate umbrella, and teams willing to work with their chosen execs.

A trio of developments has emerged in the last two weeks underscoring this tension. First, there was the Bloomberg report that Google is selling Boston Dynamics, its unit that builds dexterous, humanoid robots. Then there was a damning tale of the struggles inside Nest, Alphabet’s connected device company, and its mercurial CEO, Tony Fadell. Finally, the bio-tech trade publication STAT released another damning story on Monday about Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences company, accusing its chief exec of alienating employees and business partners.

With the first two cases, Alphabet’s newfound financial strictness was named as a key factor. Bloomberg cited internal emails from a Google exec voicing concern over the unit’s lack of a short-term revenue plan. Similarly, Fadell pointed to the parent company’s prudence to defend troubles at his own. “The fiscal discipline era has now descended upon everything,” Fadell told The Information.

Former Google search boss joins board of startup that wants to give you a coach with your wearable

Asa Mathat

MOBILE

April 7, 2016, 9:00 AM PDTSHARE:

Wearable fitness trackers have a nagging problem: People buy them, then toss them out. People are generally lazy.

GOQii, a startup based in California and India, believes it has cracked that. And now it has recruited a Silicon Valley big name for guidance as it prepares to enter the U.S.

Amit Singhal, the longtime executive atop Google’s search organization, is joining the board of GOQii, his first role since retiring from Google in February. GOQii builds a fitness tracker, but its main business is in the services alongside. In fact, it gives the tracker away for free — consumers then pay a monthly fee for certified “coaches” that work with them to hit fitness targets (i.e. lose weight, run a marathon). They can use the service with a number of different wearables, like those from Jawbone, Fitbit and Apple.

“Wearables are great but most people don’t know what to do with the data,” CEO Vishal Gondal said. “The problem we are solving is the problem with engagement.”

Like virtually every startup nowadays, GOQii is also using machine learning — advanced data-crunching of the measured activity. But they are also pairing this virtual intelligence with real-life motivation, something that Singhal said made him come on board.

THE NEXT 'STAR WARS' MOVIE TRAILER IS HERE, WITH SPACE VIOLENCE GALORE

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

AT-ATs Storm The Beach

"Incinerating Padawan Ryan", maybe

Hours, hours ago, in a galaxy that is this one, a new Star Wars trailer emerged to the hungry, space-starved masses. Fans still drunk off the successful revival of the franchise in Star Wars: The Force Awakens will have to wait until the end of 2017 to see the next chronological installment in the venerable space opera, but there’s another Star Wars film coming to the theaters this winter.Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set for release this December, and the first teaser trailer was just released online. It centers, as so much of Star Wars does, around a Death Star.

Technically a prequel, Rogue One is set shortly before the events of 1977’sStar Wars: A New Hope, which launched the series on its wildly successful course. Much of A New Hope focuses on escaping and then destroying the Death Star. Rogue One, instead, is about finding out exactly what secret weapon the Galactic Empire is building. Our protagonist is Jyn Erso, a rogue one played by Felicity Jones and recruited by the Rebel Alliance. Here she meets with the roguishly handsome Diego Luna, a rebel pilot rumored to be playing Biggs Darklighter, Luke Skywalker’s childhood friend from Tatooine. They’re briefed by a rebel commander in all white, who appears to be Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma, last seen on screen in Return of the Jedi.

Why all the rogues? Star Wars may be defined by the overarching conflict between the light and dark side of the Force, but that world is only real thanks to the lovable scummy misfits that flesh out the story, from Han Solo to Lando Calrissian to, uhh, Han Solo. (There was also a popular series of novels set in the Star Wars universe called Rogue Squadron, about the X-Wing unit of the same name).

It isn’t all giant doomsday weapons, hotshot pilots, and space planes. TheRogue One trailer features some exciting combat on the ground, with some smaller but still-deadly weapons. Fan favorite AT-AT walkers, first seen in The Empire Strikes Back slogging through the ice of Hoth, here terrorize a tropical beach like it’s Iwo Jima.

There’s also a mysterious admiral in white robes, whose name has not yet been released. And there are Imperial troopers in black armor, perhaps the elite Shadow Stormtroopers seen in novels and comics and videogames but not yet on film.

There are 252 days until Rogue One’s release date, plenty of time for Disney to answer more of our very, very important questions about fictional space war. Watch the trailer below:

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