Ycombinator forums user hownottowrite pointed out this week that Apple listed six new software engineer positions specifically for its iOS Map Display team last week. The job description of the positions reads as follows:

The iOS Map Display team is looking for a proactive and hardworking software engineer to join our team. Our team is responsible for displaying map content for the Maps application on iOS. It is used by millions of customers and it’s the best mapping program on any mobile platform. Our team is also responsible for map display via MapKit, the iOS framework that displays maps used by countless applications on the App Store.

Best mapping program on any mobile platform? That clearly isn’t the case.

When iOS 6 was released for download on older iPhones on Wednesday, the deficiencies of the Map app quickly became apparent. Pictures and reports of deformed roadways and missing, moved, or misnamed roads, building, and towns can now be found all over the web. Boy Genius Report points users to The Amazing iOS 6 Maps Tumblr blog, where a wide selection of the new Maps app’s failures can be seen.

It seems clear from Apple’s desperation to get some new Maps engineers on-staff that the company won’t be crawling back to Google anytime soon. iPhone users will have to endure until Apple can make a maps app that “just works.”

Luckily for iPhone users, Google hasn’t abandoned them. Google is working hard to have an Apple App Store stand-alone version of Google Maps available before Christmas.

(via BGR)

“I am excited to be a part of the continued evolution of Xbox from a gaming console to the hub of every household’s entertainment experience,” said Tellem. “The Xbox is already a consumer favorite, and we now have a tremendous opportunity to transform it into the center of all things entertainment – from games, music and fitness to news, sports, live events, television series and movies – so consumers have one destination for all their entertainment needs. I look forward to building a studio team that embraces the challenges of creating true interactive content that the Xbox platform supports and to work with talent to create content that will change the way entertainment content is experienced and delivered.”

Tellem served as president of CBS Entertainment for 12 years, from 1998 to 2010. During that time, she was responsible for choosing the TV lineup for CBS.

Microsoft has been transforming the Xbox into a home entertainment platform for years. At this year’s E3, the company announced its SmartGlass technology, which will sync content over multiple devices, displaying extra content for a TV show on a tablet or smartphone, for instance. Even Nintendo’s new console, the Wii U, will include software to facilitate the viewing of on-demand television programming.

It is also not surprising that Microsoft will begin to develop its own television content. Technology companies have begun to fill in the gap traditional television industry players are leaving when it comes to the web. Yahoo this year premiered a post-apocalyptic web series called Electric City. New episodes of a series Fox cancelled, Arrested Development, will debut exclusively on Netflix’s streaming service next year. Independent production companies, such as Machinima and Geek & Sundry, are also beginning to provide regularly scheduled programming via YouTube.

“John is a talented and proven executive who brings a successful track record of leading and operating consumer- and business-focused telecommunications and technology companies,” said René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. “As T-Mobile moves forward with its strategic initiatives to improve its market position, including expanding its network coverage and initiating LTE service, John has obviously the right skillset to lead the business into the future.”

Legere is a former CEO of Global Crossing, a former worldwide networking services telecom company. He has also in the past served as CEO of Asia Global Crossing, and senior vice president of EMEA and Asia-Pacific operations at Dell.

“I am thrilled to join T-Mobile and lead the Company at such a pivotal time,” said Legere. “T-Mobile is taking a number of significant steps to revitalize the business and I look forward to leading our team and partners to accelerate these efforts to become a force in our industry.”

Both T-Mobile and Sprint are positioning themselves as low-cost alternatives to Verizon and AT&T. Both T-Mobile and Sprint now offer unlimited data plans, in contrast to the more expensive “shared” plans that AT&T and Verizon rolled out this year. Also, T-Mobile has just begun trying to convince Apple fans to buy T-Mobile is in the process of implementing its 4G LTE data network. It will be that last of the major U.S. carriers to have 4G LTE.

Yes, hiring. While Yahoo is shedding employees left and right, Google has announced that this will be its biggest hiring year in company history. That could help innovation too. Increasing the number of people who can take advantage of 20% time is in some sense increasing 20% time as a whole. 

Last year, Google added over 4,500 employees, mostly in engineering and sales. That was the second most in company history, behind 2007 when they added over 6,000 people. Now, they are looking to outdo both years. 

"We’re looking for top talent—across the board and around the globe—and we’ll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science: like building a web-based operating system from scratch, instantly searching an index of more than 100 million gigabytes and even developing cars that drive themselves," says Google SVP Engineering and Research, Alan Eustace. "There’s something at Google for everyone—from geo, to enterprise, to video—with most of the work done in small teams, effectively working as start-ups. (The average number of software engineers on a project at Google is 3.5.) That’s why the vast majority of our people stay with us, building their careers and taking on new challenges within the company."

"I joined Google more than eight years ago—when we had barely 500 employees and still used Outlook for email and AIM for chat—and while there have been many changes, Google is still the same entrepreneurial company it was when I started, encouraging Googlers to take on big ideas and high-risk, high-reward opportunities," adds Eustace.

Google just made two new acquisitions in SayNow and fflick. Earlier this month, Google acquired eBook Technologies. They’ve also got a Groupon clone on the way already (after failing to acquire that company), and they’ve announced some upcoming managerial changes.  It’s only 25 days into January, and Google is certainly not sitting still. 

If you think things have cooled down at Google, while the company has lost some engineers to Facebook, you’re going to be in for quite a ride as the year progresses, it seems.

For more than a month, Alexa Robinson – Pizza Hut’s former summer "Twintern" who was hired as an intern to keep up with Pizza Hut fans through @pizzahut on Twitter – has been working without a job title. After extending a full-time job offer to Alexa, Pizza Hut turned to its Twitter fan base for creative suggestions for her new title. Now, thanks to the help of the loyal followers of @pizzahut, Alexa is finally ready to order her new business cards.

"As the new Tweetologist, I want to thank everyone who I have met through Twitter," said Alexa. "It was a lot of fun to see our fans and followers think outside the box, and I can’t wait to display my new title on my business card, loud and proud."

Original Article: Pizza and social media seem to have a relationship destined for headlines lately. You’ve probably read about the Domino’s YouTube video fiasco. Now on a more positive note, it’s Pizza Hut and Twitter.

Pizza Hut is looking to hire an intern specifically for Twittering. This is news because – how many mainstream companies have you heard of hiring someone specifically for Twittering – not even social media in general – just Twittering.

Stephanie Clifford at the New York Times describes the purpose of the "Twintern" (intern using Twitter…I don’t claim responsibility for the term) job:

To attend advertising shoots, product meetings and other corporate events. “They’ll be our social media journalist, chronicling in 140 characters or less what’s going on at Pizza Hut,” said Bob Kraut, the vice president for marketing communications at the company. The Twintern must also play social-media defense, monitoring Twitter for any mentions of the brand and alerting superiors whenever anything negative about the Hut is being said.

There is a full description on Yum’s (Pizza Hut’s parent company) site. According to that, the twinternship allows for many hands-on opportunities like:

- Collect and share insights and experiences while working for Pizza Hut through social and interactive media:  Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, New and emerging media

- Assist with execution of national PR programs

It is unclear whether or not Yum has similar intentions for brands like Long John Silver’s, A&W, Taco Bell, etc. The fact that pizza is commonly ordered online (and the Domino’s incident no doubt) probably plays a direct role in why Pizza Hut is doing this.

"The major pizza chains now do 20% to 30% of their business online, but they want that figure to climb a lot higher, to 50%," says Emily Bryson York with AdAge. "Getting there will take some doing, but the journey offers lessons for other marketers also seeking to build their business online: Know your customers, make it easy and offer incentives."

Very true. Twitter can prove to be a remarkable tool for online reputation management. And as we’ve discussed at WebProNews repeatedly, there are tons of opportunities for marketers. Though keeping on the ethical side of online marketing is likely to be in the best interest of your business and your online reputation.

The custom company profile displays content that company’s can easily tailor and update, and the content dynamically adapts to the viewers, based on their industry, job function, location, and seniority. This is good for targeting.

 "Customers can target multiple groups with differing content, and refresh the content periodically (up to 12 times a year), says LinkedIn’s Prasad Gune. "The product offering also provides ways to drive users to the company profile. Companies can also receive monthly usage reports indicating ‘demographic’ information on visitors to the profile."

Here’s an example of what a custom company profile could look like:

The custom profile creates increased visibility for a company’s employment brand. A second tab appears on the company page for "careers," a Career Center module takes prominence, and it links to the company’s custom content on the Career Tab.

Company’s can include items like recruitment messaging that appeals to prospects on a personal level, employee spotlights, a polling feature, video clips, who to get in touch with, and links to the career site to help a candidate take action.

According to the WSJ, Yahoo could be close to choosing a CEO that’s a safe bet, rather than a gamble.

Among candidates still under consideration is Carol Bartz, the former chief executive officer of Autodesk Inc., a publicly traded company that builds design software used in engineering. She’s “on the list,” said a person familiar with the matter…[and] would indicate that Yahoo is looking for a steady hand who has run a public company over someone with Internet and online advertising experience.

As the search continues, I can’t help compare it to the annual football coaching shuffle, which happens this time of year. Will the AD/manager pick someone on the rise? Someone with proven experience? Or, pick the offense coordinator in-situ–which rarely gets anyone excited.

What type of CEO do you think Yahoo needs right now?

PS. Carol Bartz should be grateful she wasn’t fire just for interviewing!

Comments

If you’re a startup founder about to hire an executive (particularly if you’re using an executive recruiter), you should really take 15 minutes out of your busy day and read Zoli’s article. You’ll thank me (though you should thank him).

I’m going to lead with a comment I put on Zoli’s blog:

A startup should not hire Seth Godin for its VP of Marketing. It should hire the next Seth Godin.

Before I go on, if you don’t know who Seth Godin is, feel free to replace with someone else you know who is really successful.

Here’s why you shouldn’t hire Seth:

1. Though past success is often a predictor of future success, it assumes similar circumstances. If you’re hiring some hot-shot executive from Oracel to be your VP of Sales and that executive sold $300MM (or managed people that did), that does not mean they’re going to be able to make a single sale for your startup. Or even find people that are going to sell for you. They may just not have it in them.

2. Even if they would be successful at a startup (because their prior success was a startup too), if they’ve been that successful, they’re not going to be particularly hungry and aggressive. Yes, there’s a certain floor of passion that some successful people are going to have (they’re constitutionally incapable of working 40 hour weeks), but the fire is not going to be the same. They don’t have a point to prove. They’ve already proven it. This is somewhat paradoxical. If they’re really as successful and good as they look on paper, they’re probably not going to be hungry.

3. Startups are an arbitrage game on many levels — particularly recruiting. Any chump can pay $250,000 a year plus options and go hire a VP of Marketing with a pedigree. Show me a startup that can recruit world-class people at below fair market value (at least temporarily) and I’ll show you a startup that has their head on straight. In the world of startup recruiting, you’re playing a passion arbitrage game.

4. Beware the resource needs of executives from big firms. Though they may be great at turning a $20MM marketing budget into $2 billion, it doen’t matter much if you don’t have $20MM. They be a world-class player, but you may not have what they need to succeed.

Summary: Use your passion and instincts to help find the next Seth Godin, and then help them kick-butt.C

Comments

As just about everyone knows by now, Microsoft’s $240 million put Facebook’s value at $15 billion.  This drew varying levels of admiration and outrage from onlookers, but most relevant to this article is the fact that the price of Facebook’s stock options should rise as a result, making them considerably less of an enticement to any prospective employees.

Don’t expect the company to release details on the matter – corporations generally don’t discuss stock options.  Still, Facebook is trying to downplay any negative effect.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “Facebook board member Jim Breyer says that while ‘the valuation on stock options will absolutely rise’ at the company, others — such as Microsoft, Google Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. — were able to hire talent even ‘after they had public valuations in the billions.’”

But if one of the biggest financial incentives to work for Facebook has been taken away, hiring people will become a lot harder.  Unemployed jobseekers might once again fixate on the Googleplex, and Googlers who are already within its walls will be especially hard to budge.

Oh, well.  In terms of companies to draw from, at least there’s always Yahoo.

“That’s an average of about 35 people showing up for their first day of work each business day during the past three months,” computed CNET’s Elinor Mills.  And that’s despite earlier assurances that Google would stop bringing so many people onboard.

So should investors be uneasy?  Probably not.  The story of Google’s hiring binge is less important than that of its fantastic third-quarter earnings; such successes give the company license to do more or less whatever it sees fit.  Still, Eric Schmidt tried to assure onlookers that excessive hiring won’t be a problem in the future.

“The number you’re seeing is essentially an overhang from hiring that had been agreed to many months earlier,” Schmidt said, according to MarketWatch.  “I don’t know that that will be repeated.  Going forward we’re paying a lot of attention to the head count.”

In the meantime, have pity on Google’s many employees.  Sure, they get to have free food, dogs at work, and all other sorts of incredible benefits.  But as they interact with each other, I’ll bet a lot of embarrassing what’s-your-name-again situations come up.