Presidential Campaign Apps Get to Know You Really Well

How well does the next president of the United States know you?

Depends on your apps.

By virtue of what you install on your computer or cellphone, your political preferences can become part of the soup of data that ad networks can mine - in this case on behalf of the presidential hopefuls, who are making their last push for reluctant or undecided voters.

The Facebook apps of the Obama and Romney campaigns inhale a lot of information about you and your friends. Like many apps on Facebook, they gather your Facebook ‘likes' and locations, along with your Facebook friends' ‘likes' and locations. Both can post content on your behalf; the Obama campaign app can even post what political contributions you have made.

Brian Kennish, founder of Disconnect.me, which offers browser plug-ins to stave off the data collection, points out the weirdest feature. The Obama app “initiates an unencrypted client-side request to get your profile,” which means that if you're using a public wireless connection, anyone with access to the network can see you're using the app.

As for the campaigns' mobile apps, both have little pieces of code embedded in them to enable tracking. Both the Obama and Romney mobile apps send user data to a variety of companies, to serve ads and analyze user behavior, according to an analysis of both by PrivacyChoice, a firm based in Santa Cruz.

In its analysis, PrivacyChoice found that both the Obama and Romney apps sent data to ad networks, though the Obama campaign app appeared to send data to more of them. That would allow the incumbent to send ads not just while a would-be voter was using the Obama app, but also potentially when she was playing a game on her cellphone or reading the news.

Jim Brock, the company founder, observed that digital reach of both campaigns showed how much politicians had come to rely on the harvest of personal data. “The idea that government can regulate a bus iness it has become so dependent on is perhaps a fantasy,” he said.

Boston-based Abine, meanwhile, released what it calls a Val-You calculator that seeks to measure how much politicians are willing to pay to advertise to a particular voter. It is based not only on whether you live in a battleground state. It also looks at how much news you consume online and whether you're on Facebook.

Finally, secure.me, a San Francisco-based privacy start-up, compared how political parties collected Facebook data in this country and in Canada and Germany. In those countries, the biggest parties also use Facebook to reach voters, but refrain from grabbing data about their Facebook friends, according to secure.me.

Apple\'s iPad Lineup Gets More Complex

Apple has long promoted the simplicity of its products - the hardware design, the software interface, the names, the packaging. But with the addition of the iPad Mini, its tablet family has become more complex.

When you add up the different models of iPads - broken down by screen size, storage options, cellular data connectivity or Wi-Fi only - there are essentially 14 tablets to choose from in Apple's store. What's more, Apple is still selling the older iPad 2, which could confuse people, because the fourth-generation iPad is simply called “iPad,” making it unclear which one is the newest.

On top of all that, each iPad model has a laundry list of different features - some have 720p video recording, others have 1080p video recording; some include a new Lightning connector, while others have the older dock connector; the iPad 2 doesn't work with Sprint, but the other iPads do.

Decisions, decisions. Having too many didn't work out for Research In Motio n when it offered a wide array of BlackBerrys, some with a keyboard, others with a touch screen, some with a keyboard and touch screen, and so on. Analysts like Shaw Wu of of Sterne Agee had said the product line was too complicated and confused consumers.

But regarding the iPad, Mr. Wu said on Monday that Apple's tablet family was still simpler compared with the perplexing matrix of BlackBerry phones.

“It's really three models - iPad, iPad Mini and iPad 2 with different wireless options and storage capacities,” Mr. Wu said. With RIM, one problem was that the model numbers made all the options tough for customers to understand, like the difference between a BlackBerry Torch 9820, 9810 and 9850, he said.

Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst with Gartner, agreed that the iPad family was simpler, adding that they all run the same software, which keeps things tidy.

“The key is they all run the same apps and are part of the larger ecosystem,” h e said. “No confusion about what will run or won't.” He said Google faced a tougher challenge, because different Android tablets could run different software, depending on which manufacturer made the tablet and which version of the operating system it shipped with.

With all that said, the iPad 2 stuck out to Mr. Wu as potentially confusing, because the name could lead the average consumer to believe it was the newest one. “We'll have to see how long Apple decides to continues to sell it,” he said.

What\'s Next for Tumblr and Instagram

David Karp, the chief executive of Tumblr, and Kevin Systrom, the chief executive of Instagram, gave some hints Monday about where their services were headed or not headed during interviews on the stage of the GigaOm Roadmap conference in San Francisco.

Mr. Systrom, who recently sold his photo-sharing site to Facebook, said he was not too worried about Twitter adding photo filters to its service. Instagram owed some of its success to allowing people to change the look of photos with filters, he said. “Filters are pretty ubiquitous at this point,” he said.

He said he did not expect an Instagram for video anytime soon either from Facebook or an upstart because data speeds were too slow for people to post quickly and download quickly to watch. He also said that unlike still photos, videos took time to edit and were difficult to flick through. “Someone is going to work on it and do it very well,” he conceded, though.

Mr. Systrom said his company was working on ways to mine photos so users could find important or relevant photos quickly. For instance, he said people uploaded 800,000 photos with the hashtag #sandy during the big storm last week. That was about 10 times the number of photos from an event like the Super Bowl. But users would have difficulty finding specific photos because they were a jumble of people drinking wine, trees down on cars or gas stations with gas.

Om Malik, the founder of GigaOm and the interviewer, called it “data dissonance.”

Mr. Karp, who founded the blogging service Tumblr, talked in depth about why his service did not provide a mechanism for commenting on Tumblr sites. He said the absence of such a mechanism was intentional, to prevent nasty comments. He said comments on most sites mad people feel like second-class citizens. “It makes you feel like you have to speak in all caps,” Mr. Karp said.

Instead, the company offers “fan mail,” in which a person sends a r esponse to a Tumblr author with an electronic postcard that the commenter designs. The commenter also designs the stamp and the background and chooses a font. Mr. Karp said that by the time a user spent 40 seconds or a minute doing that, “anything nasty you want to say is diffused.”

He said that no one had really figured out how to conduct meaningful and pleasant conversations online, but that he wanted to try to solve that difficult problem.

Investigating Google Beyond Search - Smartphone Software

My colleague Claire Cain Miller and I wrote an article on Sunday that looked at the experience of Web companies that depend on Google and at times find themselves competing with the search giant - and the potential antitrust issues that arise.

These issues have come up in a wide-ranging investigation of Google by antitrust officials in Europe, Washington and six states. Regulators are scrutinizing the search and search advertising market, but they are also looking at related markets and technologies, where Google's behavior could affect the search business.

Smartphone software is a prime example. The first phone using Google's free Android operating system was sold in October 2008, more than a year after Apple's iPhone, the innovative pioneer. Sales of Android-powered phones started gradually, but then took off and now account for more than two thirds of smartphones sold worldwide.

Android is Google's gateway technology to a lucrative new arena for searc h and mobile advertising. The antitrust concern is that Google could use its free Android software as both a sword and shield to protect its dominance in search and grab an unfair advantage in new mobile services.

Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission has sent subpoenas to Google rivals, cell network operators and handset makers seeking information and documents that relate to “any restriction or limitation placed upon the freedom” of other companies “to remove, replace, insert or modify any Google Products or Services” on smartphones and tablets. That language was in two subpoenas that people representing the recipient companies allowed a reporter to read, on the condition that the companies not be identified.

A lawsuit in Massachusetts points to the issue â€" and how tricky it may be for antitrust regulators.

Skyhook Wireless, a start-up in Boston founded in 2003, was an early innovator in location-based services for use in mobile phones, developin g a technique for combining location data from Wi-Fi hotspots with other sensors to pinpoint a user's location. Two years ago, Skyhook sued Google, saying the search giant had used its control over Android to undermine competition.

In 2010, Skyhook, according to documents in the case, reached agreements with two smartphone makers, Samsung and Motorola Mobility, to use the Skyhook service on their Android phones. But after protests from Google, both smartphone makers terminated their contracts with Skyhook.

The Boston company then filed its suit. It said Google had improperly interfered with Skyhook's agreements with handset makers. The case was not based on antitrust law, but was a contract claim. Yet it raises competition issues, and F.T.C. investigators have reviewed the court documents and talked to Skyhook's chief executive, Ted Morgan.

Google provides its operating system free to handset makers, and they can tailor the open-source software somewhat. Bu t Android phones must conform to a “compatibility” standard determined by Google. In an internal Google e-mail, which became part of the public record in the case, a manager in the Android group noted that it was obvious to phone makers that “we are using compatibility as a club to make them do things we want.”

That was a single e-mail, taken out of context, and not the issue at all, according to Google. In court, Google said that Skyhook was interfering with Google's “contractual rights to collect end-user data,” and that Google had pointed that out to Samsung and Motorola (acquired by Google last year). Google also said there were genuine concerns with how well Android would work with the Skyhook technology plugged into its operating system.

A recent paper presented to investigators, and prepared by Fairsearch, a coalition of Google rivals including Microsoft, Oracle, Nokia and TripAdvisor, called the Skyhook litigation “emblematic” of Google's use of Android to thwart competition.

But in late September, the Massachusetts state court sided with Google. In her ruling, Judith Fabricant, a superior court justice, found that “Google's contract did give it the right to insist that its applications, if loaded at all, be fully operational, including data collection functions.” She concluded that Google had “exercised its contractual right” and done so “for legitimate business purposes.”

Today, Skyhook is a profitable company with 30 employees, said Mr. Morgan, the chief executive. Skyhook licenses its mobile location technology to several major companies including Apple, which is “a huge customer for us,” Mr. Morgan said. Samsung is another licensee, using Skyhook technology on its smartphones powered by a different operating system, Bada, which runs on inexpensive smartphones, mostly sold in Europe.

But Samsung is the giant among smartphone makers in the Android camp. “Samsung sold a l ot of smartphones we should have been on,” Mr. Morgan said. “It definitely hurt us.”

Apple Sells Three Million New iPads, Including Mini, in One Weekend

The iPad Mini costs a bit more than competing tablets of a similar size, but its initial sales appear strong. Apple said on Monday that it sold three million new iPads in the first weekend that the smaller iPad and the fourth-generation iPad went on sale. That matches the number of third-generation iPads that Apple sold after that tablet's first weekend on sale in March.

Apple didn't disclose sales of the iPad Mini separately, but Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, said the company almost sold out of the smaller tablet.

“Customers around the world love the new iPad Mini and fourth generation iPad,” Mr. Cook said in a statement. “We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad Minis. We're working hard to build more quickly to meet the incredible demand.”

In Monday's statement, Apple noted that last weekend's new iPad sales were double the number of Wi-Fi-only third-generation iPads sold on its first weekend in March. That's al most a fair comparison because Apple has yet to release the iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad with a cellular data connection. But this time it's comparing the combined sales of two different types of iPads with sales of one iPad.

Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to specify how many of each iPad was sold because the company typically does not break out sales of specific models in one product line - for instance, it doesn't say how many iPod Touch devices and iPod Nanos it sold when it discusses sales for the iPod product line.

Before the iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad went on sale Friday, Wall Street analysts paid close attention to the iPad Mini, a brand-new size in Apple's family of touch-screen devices. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray predicted that Apple would sell 1.5 million iPad Minis.

After Apple introduced the iPad Mini, Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee, said some investors were disappointed by the iPad Mini's $330 starting price, as some had hoped it would be closer to the prices of Google's and Amazon's tablets, which cost around $200. But Mr. Wu noted that in general, Apple does not try to drive its products down to the lowest price at the risk of sacrificing quality.

Daily Report: A Cold Shoulder for Amazon as Publisher

Amazon.com inspires anxiety just about everywhere, but its publishing arm is getting pushback from all sorts of booksellers, David Streitfeld reports in Monday's New York Times. They are scorning the imprint's most prominent title, Timothy Ferriss's “The 4-Hour Chef.” That book is coming out just before Thanksgiving into a fragmented book-selling landscape that Amazon has done much to create but that eludes its control.

Mr. Ferriss's first book, “The 4-Hour Workweek,” sold nearly a half-million copies in its original print edition, according to Nielsen BookScan. A follow-up devoted to the body did nearly as well. Those books about finding success without trying too hard were a particular hit with young men, who identified with their quasi-scientific entrepreneurial spirit.

Signing Mr. Ferriss was seen as a smart choice by Amazon, which wanted books that would make a splash in both the digital and physical worlds. When the seven-figure deal was announce d in August 2011, Mr. Ferriss, a former nutritional supplements marketer, said this was “a chance to really show what the future of books looks like.”

Now that publication is at hand, that future looks messy and angry. Barnes & Noble, struggling to remain relevant in Amazon's shadow, has been emphatic that it will not carry its competitor's books. Other large physical and digital stores seem to be uninterested or even opposed to the book. Many independent stores feel betrayed by Mr. Ferriss, whom they had championed. They will do nothing to help him if it involves helping a company they feel is hellbent on their destruction.

“At a certain point you have to decide how far you want to nail your own coffin shut,” said Michael Tucker, owner of the Books Inc. chain in San Francisco. “Amazon wants to completely control the entire book trade. You're crazy if you want to play that game with them.”

When Mr. Ferriss signed with Amazon, he celebrated the n ew at the expense of the old. “I don't feel like I'm giving up anything, financially or otherwise,” he said.

He has a somewhat different view these days. “By signing with Amazon, I expected this type of blowback,” he said. “I've been girding my loins.”

It\'s Hollywood by the Bay at a Screening for Silicon Valley Reality Series

“You don't need to sweep me off my feet. You just need to be a good kisser.”

So warns a venture capitalist, Dave McClure, to the young entrepreneurs pitching him in Bravo's new reality series, “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley.” Mr. McClure yanks a laptop away from Ben Way, one of the entrepreneurs, and scans at top speed his presentation for a fitness app that tells you how long you have to live. Unimpressed, Mr. McClure rejects the request for $500,000 from Mr. Way and his sister and partner, Hermione Way. Far from a passionate embrace, their idea doesn't even rate a peck on the cheek.

Silicon Valley itself was inclined to give “Start-Ups” even less love. The industry assailed the show for its unreality long before it was ever a reality. Now, finally, it is here, with the first episode airing Monday night. The official debut was preceded by a party and screening at a San Francisco nightclub Sunday night. Everyone attending seemed to love the show, which made sense since just about everyone attending was a friend of the show or its creators - part of “the extended Zuckerberg media family,” said Randi Zuckerberg, the show's executive producer. (No, her brother Mark was not there.)

For a few hours, Ben, Hermione and the other cast members - #8212; the femme fatale Sarah, the all-American beauty Kim, the wild man Dwight, and David, the gay guy who has had a full body makeover - posed for the media on a red carpet while everyone else noshed. There was lobster agnolotti with an herb ricotta, and sushi served on iPads whose screens showed a marine motif. Other delicacies poured forth. As the show began, fresh popcorn was handed out. It would be nice to be invited to more Zuckerberg family gatherings.

Except for a few slobs among the media, everyone was decked out. Silicon Valley people traditionally pride themselves on looking as if they bought their clothes at Toys “R” Us but this party wa s full of beautiful people. Men wore suits, something unheard-of out here unless it's a funeral. Women wore plunging gowns. “The invitation said ‘geek chic,' ” said Britt Eason, who said she worked in mobile computing. “I was like, what the hell is that?”

“Silicon Valley can clean up well,” Ms. Zuckerberg said. “People don't give us credit. We can turn on the glamour when we want to.”

She gave a brief and effusive speech before the show began. For all the furor over whether Hollywood was painting Silicon Valley in its own image, “the two worlds are not as different as you think,” she said. “They're really just the same town painted in different ways.” She then rattled off some examples, including “one has silicon and one has silicone.”

Ms. Zuckerberg concluded, “If you hate sexy half-naked people, you'll probably be disappointed.”

The Bravo TV audience will make its own decision about whether ”Start-Ups” ranks with reality classics like “The Real Housewives” permutations, but what will the nerds think? Keep in mind that their idea of stirring entertainment is watching for the umpteenth time a YouTube video of Steven P. Jobs doing a MacWorld keynote speech.

There's a subplot in “Start-Ups,” where Hermione and Sarah claw each other. The nerds will likely fast-forward over that part, looking instead for moments that confirm their own importance, like Hermione saying, “Silicon Valley is a 21st century gold rush.” There are few enough of those today, which is perhaps one reason to watch the show.

Critic\'s Notebook: \'Start-Ups: Silicon Valley\' and \'LOLwork\' on Bravo

When word got out about “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley,” the valley started to have conniptions. Among the more clever responses was a tweet by a TechCrunch editor: “Here Comes Silicon Valley Boo Boo.”

Chinese Messaging App Gains Ground Elsewhere

BEIJING - Chinese Internet companies have long struggled to establish their products beyond the country's borders. In 2007 China's dominant search engine, Baidu, announced an ambitious plan to break into the Japanese search engine market; as of last year, the company said it had lost more than $108 million trying.

WeChat, a mobile messaging application created by Tencent Holdings, China's largest Internet company, is aggressively trying to buck the trend and establish itself in the expanding global market for smartphone apps. Based on some analysts' predictions, the company may actually have a shot.

WeChat is most often likened to WhatsApp, a smartphone application popular in the United States that allows users to send text, image or audio messages for free to other subscribers. But WhatsApp's Chinese counterpart is quickly moving beyond simple multimedia instant-messaging. In the last few months, it has announced a steady stream of new features that many say surpass those offered by WhatsApp and Asian competitors like Kakao Talk and LINE.

“I use WeChat for messaging and group chatting, but I've also started getting into its social network,” said Kate Wan, a 29-year-old media professional in Beijing, referring to WeChat “Moments,” a feature that allows users to post pictures and update their online status. “It's become a huge part of my daily life.”

Since the introduction of the application in January 2011, WeChat, known as Weixin in Chinese, has grown at a blistering pace. In September, Pony Ma, Tencent's chief executive, announced that its user base had doubled to 200 million from 100 million in six months.

Tencent is vying to make WeChat the dominant global mobile messaging application. The app is available in eight languages, including Russian, Indonesian, Portuguese and Thai, and there are plans to expand into other languages.

“The Chinese Internet market is so set apart from other countries that we inside the industry refer to it as the Galápagos Island syndrome,” said Kai Lukoff, the editor of TechRice, a China-focused technology blog based in Beijing. “Domestic Internet products are extremely well adapted to the Chinese market, but they are way out of place for global users.”

But industry experts now argue that app retailers like the Apple iTunes Store and Google Play empower developers anywhere to reach consumers everywhere. The openness of these distribution platforms could provide WeChat with a conduit into the international smartphone market, some analysts say.

Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a consulting firm that specializes in China's technology and Internet sectors, said WeChat, with its sophisticated but easy-to-navigate interface and features, had the potential to overcome any lingering doubts in the West over the Made-in-China label.

“Many people are afraid of Chinese products, whether milk, cat food or Internet services,” Mr. Clark said. “But with the App Store, it's hard to even know that WeChat is Chinese - it really levels the playing field.”

According to App Annie, a mobile analytics company based in Beijing, WeChat's outward push is beginning to bear fruit. Based on download data from the first three quarters of 2012, the app is growing fastest in Southeast Asia, but it is making headway elsewhere, including Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

The most promising markets this year include Vietnam, Turkey, Thailand, India and Indonesia, with Russia and Saudi Arabia following closely behind.

While WeChat remains relatively obscure in the United States, where players like WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger dominate the mobile messaging market, analysts say WeChat registered nearly 100,000 new users in the United States in September alone.

“All of my Chinese friends use it here in North Carolina, whether to send group messages or to organize events,” said Zhang Xue, a student at Duke University Law School who is from the city of Harbin in China's northeast. “I downloaded WhatsApp out of curiosity, but it's not nearly as convenient as WeChat.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 5, 2012, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Chinese Messaging App Gains Ground Elsewhere.