Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, told employees on Monday that the company has granted him a medical leave of absence but said that he would continue as chief executive and remain involved in major strategic decisions.
“At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health,” Mr Jobs said.
Tim Cook, chief operating officer, will be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations during Mr Jobs’ absence.
Facebook and Twitter have removed accounts run by computer hackers who have made revenge attacks against services perceived to have abandoned WikiLeaks in recent days.
The online campaign, known as Operation Payback, has been using the social networking sites, as well as other chat rooms, to co-ordinate its computer assaults.
I am struggling to believe in Groupon, which Google is reported to be considering buying for $5.3bn, making it the company’s largest acquisition. Despite Groupon having some social media trappings, and being profitable, it feels oddly old-fashioned.
Groupon amasses groups of users to take part in mass one-off discounting programmes by retailers – hence the name. In the US, where coupon-clipping is still popular, despite the power of Wal-Mart’s “every day low prices”, it grown very rapidly.
Google seems to be interested in Groupon to boost its local advertising and e-commerce business, the reason it almost bought Yelp a year ago.
But while Yelp clearly fitted with Google’s mission to organise the world’s information, Groupon feels more like a way for bricks-and-mortar retailers to compete with the Amazons of the world.
Mary Meeker, the “queen of the web” and the best-known investment bank analyst in the technology and media world, has picked an interesting moment to become a venture capitalist.
Ms Meeker, who survived the bursting of the 1990s dotcom bubble without getting caught up in the research scandal of the time, has become a venerable figure in the tech world. She is capitalising on that by leaving Morgan Stanley to join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner.
Chris Dixon, an angel investor, tweeted in response that “Wall Street sell-side research is dead”, and it never regained its influence after the dotcom meltdown. A few analysts have made their name since – in particular Meredith Whitney – but most of the action has been on the buy-side.
Having been blocked in Vietnam for a year, Facebook is trying to “friend” the weary Vietnamese government in an attempt to gain better access to one of the world’s fastest-growing online markets. It is advertising for a Hanoi-based “policy and growth manager” who will “lead the company’s interactions with policymakers and will be responsible for ensuring the site’s accessibility.”
The company has no plans to open an office in Vietnam but said that it wanted to hire a contractor to evangalise, or as Facebook puts it, “go round and explain the benefits of Facebook.”The social networking company has already recruited similar envoys in a number of countries where it faced difficulties expanding, including Brazil, India and Russia.
Vibrant Media, an in-text advertising company which has grown from a $500,000 investment in 2000 to $100m revenues last year, is hiring a new chief financial officer in preparation for a possible initial public offering, writes FT Media Editor Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.
Jeff Babka is coming in from Sophos, an Oxford-based IT security company that had begun work on an IPO filing before its $830m sale to Apax Partners.
After eight years writing his Personal Technology column in the FT’s Business Life section, Paul Taylor has signed off with a look back at the dramatic changes over that time.
Paul is launching a new section on FT.com later this month called The Connected Business, including reviews on technology for the workplace. After the jump, his last word on the rise and rise of smartphones.
This is a guest post by FT Media Editor Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
Not much has been heard of Beyond Oblivion since the FT pulled back the veil on its ambitious vision of tackling piracy by asking devices manufacturers and broadband providers to pay for music consumed over their products and services.
At the time, we reported that Adam Kidron, a serial entrepreneur, had been backed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Allen & Co. According to the Beyond Oblivion site the start-up is still aiming for an October 10 launch (sorry, “insurrection”), but we wait to hear which music rights holders, smartphone and laptop manufacturers or internet service providers are on board.
Today’s proxy filing by News Corp pulls the veil back a little further on Beyond Oblivion’s financing, however.
Facebook seems to be everywhere these days: it reached half a billion users in July, its value is soaring and the inevitable film is coming out in October.
While the site has become synonymous with social networking in the US and Europe, the story is very different in Brazil, where Google’s Orkut is king of the hill. But as Brazilians become more globally connected, Facebook is making inroads into Latin America’s largest economy.
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