February 2011

Internet start-ups across Silicon Valley are struggling to compete for talent amid the investment frenzy gripping Facebook, Twitter and Zynga, with many smaller companies beefing up pay and recruiting and wading into the private-company share market to keep pace with their larger rivals.

Online real-estate brokerage Redfin Corp. is feeling the fallout. The 200-person company, which is based in Seattle and has offices in San Francisco, typically hires new engineers fresh out of college, relying on competitive compensation and the allure of working at a profitable start-up. Redfin said it has recently been up against salary-and-bonus offers of $100,000 to $150,000 a year for new college grads from social-gaming start-up Zynga, among others—far above the $80,000 or so a year Redfin would normally offer. "Zynga and others have introduced such great financial incentives that it's hard to win candidates anymore," said Glenn Kelman, Redfin's chief executive. He added that he has since increased Redfin's compensation offers to recent college grads—though that hasn't prevented it from losing some potential recruits to competitors at the center of the Web boom that attract deep-pocketed investors.

When Benghazi fell into the hands of the opposition a week ago, Saleh Zayani grabbed two sound mixers and a microphone and headed to the radio transmission building. His friends were too afraid to join him, so Zayani went with an armed guard, plugged in his equipment and began to speak. "This is free Libya, and Tripoli is our capital," he proclaimed at 2 p.m. on Feb. 21. Radio Free Libya has been broadcasting uninterrupted every day since.

Zayani found his voice in the same place he had worked, stifled and fearful, for two decades as a sound engineer, transmitting the messages of Moammar Gaddafi's regime. Slowly others joined him, and now a group of 20 that includes engineers, revolutionaries and broadcasters keeps the station operating. The work never stops, and the message - which reaches Tripoli and beyond, as far west as Zawiyah - is as important as the forces being sent to Tripoli to support the uprising there, Zayani said. He weeps when he talks about what drives him. "It was the blood. I saw them killing the people. I saw people I knew that were killed," he said, dropping his face in his hands. At least 220 people were slain in the battle with Gaddafi forces for control of the town, doctors here say.

Google's move last week to lower the search rankings of websites that the company said offer little useful information appears to be having a dramatic impact, according to firms that study search-engine data.

Many websites that previously ranked highly in searches for certain keywords on Google dropped sharply following the change in the company's search algorithms, the firms found. Some of the sites that were hurt defended the quality of their content, arguing that they had been unfairly lumped with bad actors on the Internet. Meanwhile, some well-known social-networking, retail and news sites emerged as apparent winners, rising in Google's rankings. Google has said the change was aimed, among other things, at sites with what it calls "low quality" content: just enough information to appear in search results and lure users to pages loaded with advertisements. It estimated that the new algorithms would affect about 12% of U.S.-based search queries and would expand to non-U.S. queries in the near future.

A stopgap measure that would fund the government until March 18 slashes broadband subsidies at the Agriculture Department.

The short-term Continuing Resolution, designed to avert a government shutdown, finds over $4 billion in cuts by slashing $1.24 billion from government programs and $2.7 billion in earmarks. That includes $29 million in broadband loan subsidies administered by the Agriculture Department, which were "duplicative of several other federal programs," according to GOP description of the plan. "The Agriculture Inspector General has uncovered abuses and inconsistencies in the program as well as a lack of focus on the rural communities it is intended to serve," it said. The provision is unlikely to meet pushback as President Obama had included this cut in his 2011 budget request. The stopgap measure aims to evade the controversies of the House spending passed last week, which axed funds for top Democratic priorities. The stopgap measure gives the Senate and House time to negotiate a deal funding the government at reduced levels further into the year. Senate Democrats have shown signs of support.