Image via Wikipedia

The chairman of India’s Satyam Computer Services (SAY, news, msgs) resigned this morning after he admitted to inflating revenue and profit for a number of quarters. Shares of the stock tanked 71%, to $2.70, on the news. After India’s Sensex 30 Index closed, the stock fell an additional 20%. The Sensex fell 7.3% in trading today. ADR shares of Satyam (which is Sanskrit for “truth”) have not opened in the U.S. for trading. Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju, who founded the fourth-biggest software company in India, said he is “now prepared to subject (himself) to the laws of the land and face consequences” in a letter to the company’s board. Source: MSN Market Dispatch

Satyam Computers, India’s fourth largest computer software company is looking at major layoffs amongst employee demoralization after news has hit that upwards of 4500 employees could be laid off.

The story centers around the idea that the owners of the company, management, went on a capital intensive buy in companies that were also partly owned by said same board members. Seeking Alpha states:

SAY shares sold off 55% on the news due to deep concerns: depletion of Satyam cash ($1.0 billion or $2.95 per ADS as of September) to acquire entities that are ~35%-owned by the Chairman’s immediate family – without a shareholder vote; abrupt entry into an unrelated, capital intensive business during a challenging time (Maytas Infra shares have dropped 47% in 2008); implicit lack of growth opportunities within the IT services business; and negative financial implications, i.e., near-term EPS dilution and longer-term P/E erosion. After the close, in deference to shareholder feedback, Satyam reversed its decision. Source: Seeking Alpha

The idea of purchasing out properties and entities that were semi-owned by the board of Satyam has caused a major slump in the price per share, along with the latest formal review has employees wondering what is going to happen next. While Satyam management says that the 4500 (in total) employees to be laid off are the bottom 5% of the company, with some on Performance Improvement Plans, the real issue is the corporate governance problem that has crashed the stock, and put at risk many people’s jobs.

The blow back has hit other Indian IT Outsourcing stocks, and completely cleaned out the cash that Satyam has on hand. This will make weathering the downturn (not expected to turn around until at least Midyear 2009) much harder for the company. Right now it is also looking like a target, as they have also been put on hold by World Bank and ineligible to work for them until 2016 (at end of contract in 2007). In all the Indian IT services are in for a rough year, as this will send equal ripples through the community that have been seen every time there is another case of corporate management doing unusual deals.

Tags: Satyam, india, outsource, layoffs, fired, hired, interesting

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The major Twitter Hack that hit all sorts of people from Obama to Fox News has been tracked back to Digital Gangster according to Techcrunch. Mike Arrington thinks that there are going to be arrests over this one, but that remains to be seen. So often while there might be an arrest, it usually ends up with probation and little else, maybe a small fine.

MySpace has a new personality in “Doctor Meg”, she personally goes to teen profiles and pings on them for talking about drugs, sex, and violence. Her goal is to let the kids know that posting stuff like this could be dangerous to them personally, or professionally once they decide they want to go get a job. Kinda creepy, but if it works, then great.

Comcast launched and started their new network management program today, have to wait and see how this works out for everyone, not just the heavy bandwidth consumers. I would be very interested in hearing what experience people have with systems like YouTube, Blip TV, or podcast systems as they try to upload very large files to them.

Live Journal lays off 20 of 28 staff according to Gawker. Does this mean that live journal is soon to be doomed, or is there just no major money in very large blog networks. Systems like Blogger and Live spaces come to mind, but this might also mean that people need to go back and take a look at what is going to happen to free wiki sites like Wet Paint and Samapa. They are advertising driven hoping that people will click on web ads, as the market for those deteriorates, how survivable those companies are comes directly into question with the advertising supported revenue that they need to stay alive.

Journalspace a local Seattle startup found itself on the bad side of backup tapes and wiped drives that have put them out of business according to their web site. There is major speculation that a disgruntled employee might behind it, but there is no standing proof or other news of this, have to wait and see. But in the mean time, Journalspace is out of business and selling their domain.

Police in the UK have been given hacking powers to investigate computers that are on the internet. How this will be done should be interesting as they will need a way into those computers to do their poking around. Germany has had the ability to install Trojans on people’s computers for investigative services for a while, now the UK goes in the same direction. If there was ever a time for Porn Mode and Cache erasure so that it cannot be recovered, the time is now. This includes the OS, Browsers, e-mail, and document systems unless the file is explicitly saved.

There are tons of things going on other than MacWorld; someone has to stay on top of all this stuff.

Image via CrunchBase

Layoffs are hard to work through, but adding uncertainty with rumors (even if the Microsoft one is not true, or the IBM one is not true) what this does is lead people who can leave to leave first. No sense in being fired, uncertainty in the future of your job is going to make people leave anyways. There are some reports that when you cut 10% of your work force, the company will actually lose more than the 10%, on order of 15 to 20 percent of the work force in total will take a hike. Often those that go are the best and brightest, leaving the companies struggling to maintain some form of continuity in their operations.

IBM is a huge employer and a layoff there will send shudders through the IT Industry as a whole, meaning other companies are going to also get involved in rumor mills, or actual layoffs as 2009 progresses. This is not going to be a good year for employees anywhere. The good part is that many of the startups have already pruned, and might be able to pick up extraordinarily talented people to help them with their products at low wage scales if there is room to hire.

This also means that come the end of 2009, going into 2010 all the potential that these employees represent could mean that there will be a resurgence in startups with some excellent ideas, and the time to devote to them. 2010 could be an excellent year for startups if the Angel and VC funds can start funding, or if what people are making off state unemployment insurance can pay the bills while the startup is getting going.

2010 could be an excellent year for some awesome new ideas to hit the internet. In the mean time, casual games, IPhone Applications, and other pay to download software might also be a good thing to be moving towards right now.

No book is ever a solo effort, and there are always things you learn from writing a book. Therefore, here is a big shout out (right from the book) to:

This book is dedicated to everyone who has helped me find my own blogging voice, to ITToolbox, to Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Read Write Web, ProBlogger, Chris Pirillo, Layer8, Locutus, and many others that I have met in person or read on line. This book is also dedicated to my family, Tammy, Tony, Ralph, Nancy, Alice, Phillip, Jack, Mike, Grace, Ben, Deanne, Phil, Steve (Pope), and everyone else who helps build the social fabric that we all live in.

You would think that there would be more to it, but when doing case studies I also learned some very important lessons here. When looking at people who are leading the way, or dropping off the face of the map.

1. Don’t ever do an interview when doing case studies – work from the public record, I did six interviews for this book, only two showed up in the final version of the book. The public record is more indicative of what the world thinks about the people involved. The public record when documented properly works to reveal more about the person than an interview ever could, and gives people a chance to go back to those records and form their own opinion. Case studies are about opinion, those the author makes, and those the reader makes. The opinions and the conversation around them makes or breaks a case study. Interviews are subject to spin control, even when the public record shows something different.

2. It is called social media for a reason, we form cliques, groups, friends, and alliances, those groups will support each other and generally allow new members into the group. In the end though, it all boils down to the clique, digging through the public record the good, the bad, and the ugly then seeing where it is tempered allows one to choose how to craft the case study.

3. Sometimes it is best if you do not publish everything, some things in the public record are very grim, you can simply point the reader off to them rather than living in the dirt.

4. The blogosphere is both better than we are individually and worst than we are individually. We do things on line that we do not do in public, that means we do not do the good we can do, and we do not do the bad we can do. That tempers us as a society, and as privacy becomes less and less, the image you have against societal norms becomes more important than anything else out there. The public record shows this, confirms it, and often brings people back from the edge of the razor they were playing with.

Most of this book showed up as individual articles on Techwag, and everyone had a chance to chime in or let me know what they think about the article. Nothing was better than getting a thumbs up on Robert Scoble’s section, or getting comments back that ended up with positive change on some of the entries in the book.

In all I hope you enjoy this free preview, as always, comments are welcome.

Boom and Bust in the Blogosphere

Image via CrunchBase

Currently there are a number of Seattle companies building out IPhone apps, Techflash has been compiling a list:

Worth checking out, reports of many micrsofties hitting the same meeting. Looks like it could be fun, or at least worthwhile to check out.

Tags: Iphone, seattle, developers, Microsoft, applications, iphone apps

Image via CrunchBase

So some might be wondering why a bookstore when there are ebook readers, and digital downloads, and a host of other ways of getting your book fix. Have you ever tried to read a comic book or a graphic novel on a kindle? Bookstores are dying out, people are changing their readership to the internet, but that does not mean that bookstores are dying, it means they need to change to meet the needs of what people expect today. That means social networking, access, and payment via mobile devices, that means more information about the product than you have time to type or copy from some other page. It means that the market for tired old mainstream books is dying, but independent publishers and a host of other graphic based or comic book based books are still doing well, if not better than everything else is. Following what is happening with Amazon and eBay, along with the way that the business models work, means that the business is doing just fine, when you get out of the mainstream.

This is what makes the internet, especially this incarnation of the internet so very interesting; mainstream is dying into a million smaller subcultures. There is nothing wrong with catering to the Goth subculture or the Punk subculture because I tap millions of them worldwide. Smaller publishers like Zenescope and the wholesalers that carry them like Haven have a huge market worldwide, but not so big a market in my local neighborhood. If you want to cater to nothing but romance novels, then a romance novel site makes sense, you tap a greater market than you can on your own. If you want to survive, you think globally, act globally, and integrate your systems globally.

You attach to social systems on a global basis; you use social networking on a global basis, and then have some fun with it. If someone is getting ready for Sakuracon or Kumoricon and wants to know more about Goth Lolita/Alice in Wonderland then you can provide that information, and the books/pictures, or information that goes along with it. Your local actions reach globally, which makes this entire process much more fun for people who think in global terms.

While it might be difficult to get a startup going in two weeks over the holidays, it can be done, but there is still a lot left to do. Mostly getting the word out on a global basis, purchasing some advertising, getting people to talk about the store and why the store exists at all. Even in this modern digital age, there is still room for books, the question is where is your market place?

Image via Wikipedia

Over the last seven months, I have done about a dozen interviews and published only two of them. The reason for that is that the interviewee wants to have final editorial control over the entry, which is just not going to happen anymore. Not everything is great, not everything is light and bright, and no matter how you spin it, if it is a hunk of junk, and I call it that, then that is my opinion, and that is what I will write. If I do not get the issue, or my assumptions are wrong and you can show me where I am wrong, I am ok with fixing it. However, editorial control rests with me, if I still hate it after talking to you and seeing the product, I still hate it. No amount of arm wrestling will get me to change my mind.