MediaFile

The social network is spreading its wings in Seattle, taking advantage of relatively cheap office space and a pool of talented engineers in Microsoft and Amazon’s home town.

The view from Facebook's new Seattle space

According to a blog post today, Mark Zuckerberg’s unstoppable web phenomenon is moving into 27,000 square feet of space in a 20-story block in downtown Seattle. That’s double the size of their current rented offices overlooking Pike Place Market and Seattle’s harbor.

Seattle is Facebook’s biggest engineering office outside its home in Palo Alto, California, with more than 60 engineers. Zuckerberg said when he visited in June that the city was a great place for hiring, with so many software and mobile superstars working for local firms like Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile and a host of smaller firms.

Facebook’s Seattle crew already led the tie-up with Skype — now a part of Microsoft — and is busy on more video calling, iPad and iOS projects.

“This new office will give us room to keep growing as we hire the best engineers in Seattle,” said Ari Steinberg, the head of Facebook’s operation in the city. Back in August 2010, when he set up the office, there were only three local employees.

One of Major League Baseball’s top executives may not think Apple’s iTunes app store is particularly user friendly, but he’s not about to offer advice to the hottest technology executive on the planet.
    
Robert Bowman, the head of MLB Advanced Media, the league’s Internet and digital business, loves apps. He wants his sport’s games and other content to be on every wireless device out there and think apps will begin to shape how websites are designed. 
    
“We actually think it’s going to invade the website. We think people like apps,” he said at the Reuters Global Media Summit. “They’re easy to understand. They’re compartmentalized. It’s a quick way to get information.”
    
That said, the Apple and Google app stores leave a lot to be desired, Bowman said.
    
“The app stores are not well laid out. The app stores are very hard to figure out. Even Apple … they do a great job, but they’re hard to understand. The Android app store is very hard to understand, so it’s hard for people to find the content.”
 
But, when asked what he would do to improve Apple’s app store, Bowman demurred.
    
“I don’t think I’m going to get very far giving Steve Jobs advice,” he said of Apple’s renowned CEO. “He’s done pretty damn well not listening to me for the first 57 years of his life and so I’m just going to continue to let him not listen to me.”
    
Bowman acknowledged that the Android app store leaves him “a little bit more frustrated.”
    
However, the baseball executive is not alone is finding the app stores frustrating.
    
Despite charging $14.99 a pop, baseball has sold nearly 600,000 apps this year between the Apple and Android platforms, he said.
    
Bowman also dismissed questions about the future of set-top boxes or big TVs, saying both are not going anywhere.
    
“I don’t think there’s any history of media dying,” he said. “I still listen to radio in my car.
 
“The big TVs aren’t going to go anywhere. It’s like the automobile,” Bowman added. “We’re a country that likes big TVs. 

(Reuters photo)

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has two words that reassure him that his professional social network is not threatened by Facebook: Keg stands.

Weiner took a moment to explain the ever-popular college tradition of imbibing beer directly from the tap of a keg while being suspended upside-down by drinking mates during his talk at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

“While many of us in college probably were at parties having a good time, doing things like keg stands, or being exposed to keg stands, I don’t know that many of us would look forward to having a prospective employer have access to picture of those events,” Weiner said.

CNN is hiring! And not just for the 9:00 pm time slot (for those of you who wear suspenders). The network just carpet-bombed Reuters employees’ in-boxes with a subject line that almost got the missive sent to the spam filter: “NEW OPPORTUNITY!”  A media company on a hiring binge is a very good thing indeed. More from the email:

Join the fastest growing global newsgathering organization! CNN Wires is expanding and we have the headcount to prove it!!

HIRING NEEDS for Newsdesk Editors, Editor/Copy Editor, and Supervising Editor!!!

Apple’s stock has historically fluctuated widely in the days before and after three major annual events: the January Macworld showcase for fans, the mid-year Worldwide Developers’ Conference, and its September media/entertainment event.

Its share movements, however, have been relatively muted in the run-up to this year’s September extravaganza with many Apple-watchers initially expecting a no-show from CEO Steve Jobs, who had been out most of the year on medical leave for a liver transplant. Here’s a look at how Apple’s share price has fared in relation to major press events held by the company since 2007.

Key to events is below:

1 – January 9, 2007 (Macworld) – Announces (but does not launch) first iPhone

With all the cyberscare stories about North Korea making headlines these days, the last place you might expect to see job losses is among information security workers.

However, a survey by UK recruiters Barclay Simpson says the number of IT security professionals looking for work has risen 17 percent so far this year, even as the number of new positions has fallen by 57 percent.

"The market has been swollen by candidates whose contracts have come to an end and permanent staff who have been made redundant and are making themselves available for both permanent and contract work," the report finds. 

Found on Romenesko on Wednesday: The Dallas Observer reports that AH Belo Corp paid out manager bonuses at the same time that the newspaper publisher said it would get rid of 500 employees. An accident of timing, especially as other U.S. newspaper publishers cut bonuses?  Here’s AH Belo Executive Vice President and Dallas Morning News chief Jim Moroney, quoted in an interview with the Observer:

Did you think the timing — announcing layoffs and handing out bonuses — was, to put it mildly, bad?

Yeah. Obviously, the bonus thing gets put into to the sequence based on approval by the board and getting it into the payroll cycle, and once you decide to make announcements, you don’t want to sit on that either. I would say it was unfortunate coincidence. If you could have control over all these things better and see father into the future, yeah, you could have tried to separate them. But I don’t think the fundamental question would change: They’d still say, ‘Should they have been paid?’ and ‘Why were they paid?’ even if we’d waited two weeks.

Employees of embattled wireless service Sprint had yet another reason to complain on Monday after the company, which has been losing customers for years, announced 8,000 job cuts.

However, even after they’ve been booted out in the cold, these workers will likely still be reminded of their previous job by the sight of their old boss Dan Hesse, when he moonlights as lead actor in Sprint’s sepia-toned TV commercials on top of his day job as CEO of a struggling wireless company. 
    While Hesse’s dual lead man/CEO role may be saving the company some money, a few experts have wondered whether the commercials are doing more harm than good to Sprint, which has been roundly criticized for its marketing message. 
    Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the company has continued to report steep customer losses since the ads started to run soon after Hesse took on the job just over a year ago.

(Photo: Still shot of Dan Hesse in Sprint ad)

The world’s largest software firm is cutting 5,000 jobs as it faces the worst economic crisis in its 34-year history. 

No further cuts are planned, but with no end to the recession in sight, how long can it be before Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has to chop more of Microsoft’s remaining 93,000 or so workers? 

Here are some of Ballmer’s comments from a conference call with analysts:

“We think we have taken the right degree of action in terms of reducing the cost base.” “We are taking out somewhere between 5 percent and 15 percent of the cost line… which we think, in this environment relative to the reset in the economy, is probably the right level.” “Our model is not for a quick rebound (in PC sales).” “If the economy stays down and then builds slowly, we are probably at about the expense base… You can’t tell. The economy could also get a whole lot worse.”

(Photo: Reuters)

As the U.S. Labor Department reported a 6.7 percent unemployment rate for November and the largest number of job cuts since 1974, the media and telecom industries are definitely not immune.

As Viacom said it planned to lay off 850 people, or 7 percent of its workforce, NBC revealed layoffs of 500 employees including several longtime news correspondents, according to the New York Times.

RealNetworks also announced 130 layoffs, reducing its headcount by 7.5 percent. AT&T, which is trying its hand at competing against cable providers with its own TV service, on Thursday announced layoffs of 12,000, or 4 percent of its workforce, as the company struggles with declining traditional telephone sales and customers switching to wireless.