Search Results for: Facebook

Jamming Tripoli: Inside Moammar Gadhafi’s Secret Surveillance Network

Longreads Pick

How Moammar Gadhafi’s regime built a surveillance network called the Electric Army that captured all Internet traffic going in and out of Libya, and how dissidents fought back.

“Gwaider’s favored method, like that of Kevin Mitnick, the famous American hacker he admired, was “social engineering,” which meant tricking the victims into giving up access themselves. In Tawati’s case, all he had to do was send her a Word document infected with a Trojan, which installed malware on her computer when she opened it. At that point he had access to everything, including her Facebook account and her supposedly encrypted Skype conversations, which Gwaider siphoned off with malware that recorded all the audio on her machine. All of it eventually got posted to the Internet in an effort to smear her. The hacker even stole photos showing her without a head scarf—rather embarrassing in Libya’s conservative culture—and regime supporters then posted these to Facebook. Hala Misrati, the TV presenter who previously had broadcast some of her emails, now played audio from a Skype conversation she had with a foreign journalist, trumpeting it as proof of her collusion with outside forces. Tawati was devastated.”

Source: Wired
Published: May 18, 2012
Length: 25 minutes (6,350 words)

What the Facebook founder did to outmaneuver his competitors, and the challenges he faces to keep employees motivated and investors happy after the IPO:

One area Facebook will have to prove itself in is mobile. Earlier this month, it amended its public filings with the SEC to disclose that it doesn’t collect any meaningful revenue from smartphones and tablets, and its failure to do so is dampening per-user revenue. Mobile has flummoxed the company for years. In 2008, Jobs asked Facebook to present its iPhone app at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity himself, Zuckerberg sent a Facebook engineer and a marketing manager to handle it. They did such a poor job in auditions attended by Jobs and other Apple executives that Apple pulled them from the presentation, according to the person, who declined to be named for fear of alienating both companies.

“How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked the Valley.” — Brad Stone, Douglas MacMillan, Businessweek

More #longreads from Stone

How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked the Valley

Longreads Pick

What the Facebook founder did to outmaneuver his competitors, and the challenges he faces to keep employees motivated and investors happy after the IPO:

“One area Facebook will have to prove itself in is mobile. Earlier this month, it amended its public filings with the SEC to disclose that it doesn’t collect any meaningful revenue from smartphones and tablets, and its failure to do so is dampening per-user revenue. Mobile has flummoxed the company for years. In 2008, Jobs asked Facebook to present its iPhone app at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity himself, Zuckerberg sent a Facebook engineer and a marketing manager to handle it. They did such a poor job in auditions attended by Jobs and other Apple executives that Apple pulled them from the presentation, according to the person, who declined to be named for fear of alienating both companies.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: May 17, 2012
Length: 14 minutes (3,737 words)

[Not single-page] Facebook staffers once told Mark Zuckerberg he needed to take “CEO lessons.” How Zuckerberg responded, and what it means for Facebook leading up to its IPO:

‘Basically, there are two ways to build an organization,’ a former Facebook employee explains. ‘You can be really, really good at hiring, or you can be really, really good at firing.’ Zuckerberg has been really good at firing. ‘We made some hires that weren’t the right ones. And we were pretty good at correcting that quickly. Mark deserves the credit for identifying and following through with that.’ In other cases, key personnel who were good fits simply got outgrown by the company. It can be even harder to jettison those kinds of employees, whose contributions have earned them the loyalty of business partners and colleagues. But here too Zuckerberg did not flinch.

“The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man.” — Henry Blodget, New York magazine

See more #longreads from New York magazine

The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man

Longreads Pick

[Not single-page] Facebook staffers once told Mark Zuckerberg he needed to take “CEO lessons.” How Zuckerberg responded, and what it means for Facebook leading up to its IPO:

“‘Basically, there are two ways to build an organization,’ a former Facebook employee explains. ‘You can be really, really good at hiring, or you can be really, really good at firing.’ Zuckerberg has been really good at firing. ‘We made some hires that weren’t the right ones. And we were pretty good at correcting that quickly. Mark deserves the credit for identifying and following through with that.’ In other cases, key personnel who were good fits simply got outgrown by the company. It can be even harder to jettison those kinds of employees, whose contributions have earned them the loyalty of business partners and colleagues. But here too Zuckerberg did not flinch.”

Published: May 7, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,799 words)

The story of a mysterious sports writer, her business partners, and an alleged plot to co-opt an NBA fan’s Facebook page:

Phillips kept up her correspondence with Ben, the 19-year-old college student and creator of the NBA Memes Facebook page. She said he could make up to as much as $1,000 per post as a contributor to her new sports-comedy site. Within 15 minutes, she had another idea: ‘Here’s something I just thought of: Instead of becoming a contributor, would you like to join our team as an editor/creator for the memes section?’

With this proposal, he could make even more money. She spelled out specifics for him: She told him that her ‘initial goal’ for the site would be 2.5 million pageviews per month, which would bring him $38,400 a year. By the fall, they’d have 7.5 million pageviews per month and he’d be making $102,000 per year. Big money for a 19-year-old college student.

“Is an ESPN Columnist Scamming People on the Internet?” — John Koblin, Deadspin

See more #longreads from Deadspin

Is an ESPN Columnist Scamming People on the Internet?

Longreads Pick

The story of a mysterious sports writer, her business partners, and an alleged plot to co-opt an NBA fan’s Facebook page:

“Phillips kept up her correspondence with Ben, the 19-year-old college student and creator of the NBA Memes Facebook page. She said he could make up to as much as $1,000 per post as a contributor to her new sports-comedy site. Within 15 minutes, she had another idea: ‘Here’s something I just thought of: Instead of becoming a contributor, would you like to join our team as an editor/creator for the memes section?’

“With this proposal, he could make even more money. She spelled out specifics for him: She told him that her ‘initial goal’ for the site would be 2.5 million pageviews per month, which would bring him $38,400 a year. By the fall, they’d have 7.5 million pageviews per month and he’d be making $102,000 per year. Big money for a 19-year-old college student.”

Source: Deadspin
Published: May 1, 2012
Length: 21 minutes (5,445 words)

Coming Monday, May 14th:

Bloomberg Businessweek and Longreads present “Behind the Tech Longreads”: A night of storytelling featuring Felix Gillette, Sheelah Kolhatkar, Brad Stone, Ashlee Vance and editor Josh Tyrangiel.

Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, Manhattan, 7 p.m., Free admission

RSVP on our Facebook Page

The complete origins story of the Huffington Post. How Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti first connected, and how they turned the company into a media empire, and now Pulitzer winner: 

In the course of a few hours, Peretti would watch with wonderment as Arianna Huffington eased herself from setting to setting, all the while making the person she was talking with feel like the most interesting and important person in the world, hanging on every word, never shifting her attention to check one of three BlackBerries. ‘I loved being a gatherer,’ Huffington would later say. ‘I don’t really think you can make gathering mistakes.’

Peretti saw this talent through a different prism. ‘Arianna,’ he says, ‘can make weak ties into strong ties.’

“Six Degrees of Aggregation.” — Michael Shapiro, Columbia Journalism Review

See also: “BuzzFeed, the Ad Model for the Facebook Era?”

An explainer on Google’s challenges with privacy, its competition with Facebook and Twitter, and two big questions: Is search no longer central to its mission? And are Google’s recent moves “evil” by its early company standards? 

It’s hard to understand how Google could screw up its core product like that. But there’s a remarkably simple explanation: Search is no longer Google’s core product.

One Googler authorized to speak for the company on background (meaning I could use the information he gave me, but not directly quote or attribute it) told me something that I found shocking. Google isn’t primarily about search anymore. Sure, search is still a core product, but it’s no longer the core product. The core product, he said, is simply Google.

“The Case Against Google.” — Mat Honan, Gizmodo

See also: “Confessions of Google Employee No. 59.” — Douglas Edwards, Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2011