CHRIS PALADINO, a Microsoft employee who was hired in 2006, didn’t worry too much about his job when the economy began to sour last fall. The company employs nearly 90,000 people.

“I thought Microsoft was so stable, it wouldn’t be touched,” he said. Now, as one of the 1,400 employees who received layoff notices in January, Mr. Paladino is worried — about making the mortgage payments on his home.

Mr. Paladino gathered user feedback for the Xbox games division of Microsoft. This month he started his own consulting company, Promethium Marketing, with two colleagues who were also laid off.

But, “I would never have chosen to leave Microsoft,” he said. “I had a great job. I worked with a great team.”

Leaving the company has not always been so traumatic. Microsoft has a long history of making employees part-owners of the company, by granting them stock and stock options.

From executive to secretary, many employees received thousands of stock options. Microsoft’s stock price rose from about $2.50 a share in 1992 to almost $60 in 1999, and roughly 10,000 of those employees became millionaires.

When employees left the company in those days, it was overwhelmingly by their own choice. They were off to a new adventure, starting a business or a charity, or just planning to have fun, said Rob Horwitz, the chief executive of Directions on Microsoft, an information technology analyst firm that has been tracking the company for 17 years.

Notable alumni from that time rebuilt the Professional Bowlers Association; created the charity Room to Read, which builds schools in poor countries; and founded the Cranium game company (which was sold to Hasbro).

Other Microsoft alumni started venture capital firms or followed more personal dreams, creating enterprises like the Cameron Catering Company of Seattle, which focuses on green events, or the Casa Cupula, a bed-and-breakfast for gay travelers in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. One alumnus built his own airplane and another rode along with Russian cosmonauts on a space mission. The sky was literally the limit.

The economy has changed all that. With Microsoft’s stock price now below $20 a share, any stock options granted in the last 10 years have little to no value, and the outright stock grants have lost value.

So rather than leaving on their own terms for a new adventure, some recently separated employees are now looking for any professional job they can get. (Microsoft declined to comment for this article.)

Read More…

A New Crop of Job Hunters, With Microsoft Résumés – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — The White House said more than 64,000 people watched President Obama answer questions on Thursday in the first live Internet video chat by an American president. But in declaring itself “Open for Questions,” on the economy, the White House learned it must be careful what it wishes for.

More than 100,000 questions were submitted, with the idea that Mr. Obama would answer those that were most popular. But after 3.6 million votes were cast, one of the top questions turned out to be a query on whether legalizing marijuana might stimulate the economy by allowing the government to regulate and tax the drug.

“I don’t know what this says about the online audience,” Mr. Obama said, drawing a laugh from an audience gathered in the East Room, which included teachers, nurses and small-business people. “The answer is no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow the economy.”

The marijuana question later took up a good chunk of the daily White House press briefing, where Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, suggested that advocates for legalizing marijuana had mounted a drive to rack up votes for the question.

Those advocates included Norml, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which urged supporters to “let the president know that millions of American voters believe that the time has come to tax and regulate marijuana.”

But however the marijuana query rose to the top of the White House list, it provided one of the livelier moments in the mostly staid 70-minute event.

Mr. Obama did make a sliver of news, disclosing that he intended to announce in the next couple of days what kind of help his administration would give the auto industry. A senior White House official said no decision had yet been made; Mr. Gibbs hinted that the announcement would most likely occur on Monday.

“We will provide them some help,” Mr. Obama said, as he has in the past, while also talking tough, as he has done previously, by insisting that the auto makers would have to make “drastic changes” to restructure the way they do business.

Full article…

Obama Makes History in Live Internet Video Chat – NYTimes.com.

Last year, Leo Laporte became a Twitter quitter.

The host of one of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcasts was none too excited that of all the names in the world, the burgeoning message service had picked one that hit piercingly close to home. The online broadcasting network that Laporte owns and runs out of his house in Petaluma is called TWiT.tv, after his company’s flagship show, “This Week in Tech.”

The rise of Twitter has long been a favorite topic of conversation on TWiT, and with an audience of around 150,000, Laporte found himself in a strange pickle: The more he talked about Twitter on his show, the more followers he accrued — and the more publicity he gave his brand rival.

“I thought, jeez, I’m building value in this company that is ultimately vying for my trademark,” he said recently via phone. “So I left.”

But in spite of his absence, Laporte still became the most-followed user on the service, beating out front-runners like then-Sen. Barack Obama for the top spot, with more than 30,000 followers. Walking away from a megaphone that big just didn’t seem like good business. So he came back.

“They kind of have you,” said Laporte, who now has more than 100,000 followers on the service. “The same way that Facebook has you: because you have to go where the community is.”

Still, being in thrall to Twitter hasn’t stopped Laporte from joining a conversation that’s taking hold on the service’s fringes. As this group of Web subversives sees it, the once-tiny Twitter has grown like a magic beanstalk into a full-fledged communications medium — taking its place alongside Web pages, e-mail and maybe even television. And though the 30-person, San Francisco start-up is not exactly General Electric, digital trust-busters believe the same rules apply: One company shouldn’t have a monopoly…

…on an entire medium — even if it invented it.

“Those of us who are participating are pumping value into this closed system and trusting that Twitter will do the right thing with it,” said Laporte, referring to the tweets users pour into Twitter’s databases every day by the million.

People love the convenience and reach of social media systems like Twitter, he said.  “But what they ignore is that there’s a dark side to all of that, which is that these companies have a huge amount of control over what’s going on.”

Dave Winer, a Berkeley-based entrepreneur and Web innovator, sounded a similar note on a recent podcast posted to his Scripting News blog.

“It’s a very dangerous network because it’s all centralized,” he said, “not only on a technological level, where it goes through one set of servers — but it also goes through one set of business interests that’s anything but transparent.”

Danger may sound a bit overzealous for a Web service that barely existed two years ago, but for a media landscape in the middle of a profound shift, two years can be the span between eras.

Twitter is becoming a major source for news, commerce and free expression and, as with a free press itself, defenders don’t want a few profit-motivated individuals making all the decisions about how it should evolve.

Like Facebook and YouTube before it, Twitter is now transitioning from a freely available, much-loved Web service to a well-funded business venture looking to cash in on the audience and cachet it built in its freewheeling early days.

A few weeks ago, Twitter created a page of several dozen suggested users to help newcomers decide whom to follow. If you weren’t sure how to proceed, you can follow CNN, Lance Armstrong or Britney Spears. Being recommended by Twitter, it was quickly discovered, translated into tens or hundreds of thousands of new followers, and anointed accounts have since shot to the top of the Twitter hierarchy. The giant, instant audiences Twitter bestowed on these select users are thought to be so valuable that Web businessman Jason Calacanis offered Twitter $250,000 for a two-year ride on the list.

As visibility and influence gets funneled upward to the companies, celebrities and politicians that already have plenty of both, Twitter risks inviting a comparison to the overinflated economy — it’s creating a bubble at the top, and potentially alienating regular users who labored to build their audiences over months or years.

Well-known tech figures like Laporte and Winer don’t exactly represent the voiceless online rabble, but neither are they the types of guys you want leading a charge against you.

Winer recently wrote a post called “Why it’s time to break out of Twitter,” where he said of the service’s management, “we need to get that power out of their hands.” Laporte told me, “I’m more interested in seeing if we can go beyond Twitter — a more open system would be a better system.”

Complete article @

There’s Twitter the company, and twitter the medium | Technology | Los Angeles Times.

(CNN) — Their paths crossed on YouTube on an August night last year.

Jeremy and Christy Nueman used YouTube to find their adopted baby, Caleb.

Amanda, a college student seven months pregnant, scrolled past a YouTube video of a young California couple seeking adoption.

The couple, Jeremy and Christy Nueman, wanted to adopt a baby after struggling with infertility for five years. But instead of relying solely on newspaper ads or bulletin board fliers to increase their chances of connecting with a birth mother, they created a short YouTube video to show who they are.

Upon watching the video online, Amanda immediately connected with a snapshot of the Nuemans’ adorable miniature pinscher named Penny. She giggled when she saw video of Jeremy Nueman dancing happily in his kitchen, which reminded her of her own father.

She played the video over and over again.

“The video was comforting, and I could relate to them” said Amanda, who picked the Nuemans to become the adoptive parents of her baby boy out of hundreds of profiles she viewed online and through adoption agencies. Amanda chose to keep her last name anonymous for privacy reasons. “It’s so hard when you are just reading a letter to figure out what are these people like.”

With a high demand for domestic infants, adoption experts say the wait for a baby can be months or years. To gain a competitive edge, a growing number of adoption-minded couples are using Web sites like YouTube and Facebook to sell themselves as parents. Going online is cheaper, faster and reaches a wider audience than using just on print advertisements and word of mouth, they say.

Some wannabe parents are uploading YouTube videos featuring a hodgepodge of photos, home tours and interviews. Others are writing on blogs and personal Web sites to give birth mothers a glimpse of their adoption journey. To help spread the word, prospective parents also are utilizing social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook in the hope that their friends may know of a potential birth mom.

“Today’s teens and young adults looking for adoptive parents are more tech savvy than before,” says Jeff Siler, who owns ParentGallery.com, a free site created in 2007 where couples wanting to adopt can post pictures and video online. “Even before teens talk to an adoption agency, they may already be trying to Google for an answer online.”

Social media like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are also gaining traction among private adoption agencies. Bethany Christian Services, one of the nation’s largest adoption agencies, which completed more than 730 domestic infant adoptions last year, advises its couples — including the Nuemans — to create a YouTube video. Video & More on CNN:

Adoption seekers using YouTube, Facebook to find birth moms – CNN.com.