News Panel with Liz Gannes and Jon Ferrara #284

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Today on This Week in Startups, the News Roundtable Panel returned for an end-of-summer-news-roundup. Panelists Liz Gannes and Jon Ferrara joined Jason in discussing Marissa Mayer, Apple vs. Samsung, President Obama on Reddit and more.

1:00 Welcome everyone to an end-of-the-summer TWiST News Roundup with panelists Liz Gannes of AllThingsD and Jon Ferrara, the CEO of Nimble.
3:00 Thank you to Squarespace for supporting the show! Everyone thank @Squarespace!
5:30 First story: Marissa Mayer has been at the helm of Yahoo for about two months now. How do you rate her progress?
6:15 Liz: I think she needs people to hold off from rating her for as long as possible.
8:30 Jason: I give her an A, I’m a fan and I’m rooting for her.
9:30 Kirin: Does it matter that Yahoo stock has taken a bit of a beating?
9:45 Jon: I think you can learn a lot from talking to team members. I recently spoke to a senior product manager at Yahoo who said they used to be embarrassed to say they worked there, but are now really happy that Marissa is on board.
11:45 Jon also gives Marissa an A.
12:00 Liz: I give her a C, you really have to earn an A.
12:45 Discussion of the possible companies that Yahoo might acquire, via Liz and Kara's article for AllThingsD.
15:15 Jon: I worry about Flipboard and Zite having their data access cut off.
20:00 Jon: What are the top products at Yahoo right now?
21:15 Jason: Why don’t they just make Flickr free?
22:30 What about Path, any chance Dave Morin will sell?
25:45 Liz, do you think Pinterest is really an acquisition possibility for Yahoo?
26:15 Thank you to GoToMeeting for supporting the show! Everyone thank them @GoToMeeting!
29:30 Other companies on Liz and Kara’s list were Bump, Pulse and Foodspotting.
30:15 Next story: The Apple/Samsung patent trial came to a conclusion last week with the jury finding in favor of Apple. Is this the end of the war? Will Samsung stop copying Apple products?
35:30 Is spending billions of dollars on patents really what shareholders want to see a company doing?
39:30 Next story: President Obama did an AMA on Reddit this week and, despite only answering about 10 questions, nearly shut the site down with traffic. Who is the winner here, Obama or Reddit?
42:00 Jon: As much as his conversation may have been scripted, I think it’s relevant that the leader of the free world is social.
44:30 News has not improved for Facebook stock, which hit a new low today at $18/share. Where is this headed?
46:45 Liz: My husband started working at Facebook so I can’t talk about it anymore.
50:00 How much more money does Peter Thiel stand to make off of his Facebook investment?
51:45 Next story: There are two new Apple products scheduled to be released this fall: the next generation iPhone and an iPad mini.
53:45 How will the iPad mini change the market?
56:30 Jon: I’m an Apple fanboy, but the text is a little bit small for me to read.
1:00:45 Last story: Dalton Caldwell’s App.net has met its funding goal to build an alternative Facebook or Twitter social network. Does this stand a chance of succeeding?
1:03:30 Liz: Have you ever bought a Google ad against one of your competitors?
1:05:30 Is “giving up control” of your company just a euphemism for “we quit”?
1:09:15 Liz: I’m running the next D conference, Dive into Mobile, in New York in October that is all about mobile.
1:11:30 Jon, thanks for joining us. If people email info@nimble.com and use the code TWiST, they’ll get 90 days free.
1:12:00 Great job, Kirin, thank you for reading the news.
1:14:15 We’ll see you next time, thanks for watching everyone!

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Keep up with the latest from our sister company, LAUNCH:

• Google's Fiber "Proof of Concept" is Anything But
• Good to Great to Excellent: A Roadmap
• Building a Better Techmeme
• LAUNCH Looking for an Awesome Full Stack Engineer/Developer

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Kirin: @kirinkalia
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