The startup seeks a candidate who is an editor-in-chief at a top business magazine like Forbes, BusinessWeek, or Portfolio. All, mind you, based in New York. And yet he or she must live in San Francisco. Oh, and having worked at Yahoo, Google, or eBay is a "big plus." All of this to run a website targeted at "SMB" — advertiser jargon for "small and medium businesses." Most small-business publications fail to draw an audience, precisely because they think of their readers' businesses, contemptuously, as "small."

Too bad. In every other way, these guys are dreaming impossibly big. This job description is curiously similar to one posted in October with the same Gmail address as a contact. The main difference? The newer listing plays up the billionaire backers, and no longer mentions that it is "bankrolled by a respected 50+ year old offline company." A 50-year-old company? Sounds way too old media.

Here's the job listing:

Editor in Chief (San Francisco)

Date: 2008-11-18, 9:15AM PST

Calling all Business Editors

———————————————

Please read the following requirements before replying to this ad:

Looking for a super smart, and bursting with energy senior business editor to head up content for a super-stealth new online company backed and funded by some legendary billionaires. We aren’t raising money, we don’t need VCs, and we are hiring!

IDEAL CANDIDATE

EIC or very senior level editor at a top tier online business site/publication. (Think BusinessWeek, Forbes, Portfolio, etc.) Someone who can build and manage a team, and above all— someone who knows how to create a unique voice and product by combining original content, RSS and other 3rd party feeds, bloggers and user generated submissions into something smart and fast-paced and directed to the owners and managers of SMBs. (If you don’t understand that term, this is not for you.)

NOT INTERESTED IN

People who do not live in San Francisco, Regional newspaper reporters, tech writers, marketing specialists, freelancers who have never managed a team or worked each day in an office. This is nothing against you in any way, but all about the specific focus and needs of this role. We need someone who knows SMB/SME readers and can fashion an innovative new online property for them, and who can work in our downtown SF office building a team.

Sound like you? Good, please read the official description. We are hiring immediately.

To apply, just send your resume and salary requirements to mavensource@gmail.com.

Editor in Chief

Confidential, San Francisco, CA

Well funded early-stage startup is seeking an Editor in Chief to join its senior management team and help launch and grow an exciting new online network for business professionals. This new company, bankrolled by a respected 50+ year old offline company and some very famous board members, will leverage the assets of the parent company, while creating a ground-breaking new online service specifically for business leaders. This is a ground floor of an exciting concept and major new product launch.

The venture is seeking cutting edge start-up veterans to make the vision into a marketable and scalable product quickly and effectively. Team members chosen for this opportunity will be entrepreneurial in nature, visionary, well versed in online trends and technology, and ready to take a concept to product in record time using the many assets of the parent company for content and market advantage. Leadership experience at top online companies like Yahoo!, Google, eBay etc. will also be a big plus.

Editor in Chief

Description:

The Editor in Chief is responsible for managing development, production, voice, and presentation of all online editorial content. The Editor in Chief will create and execute a new vision for presenting relevant business information and advice to readers in a rapidly evolving online environment, making the site a trusted and valued source for the SME business community.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and execute a comprehensive content vision, voice, and style
• Develop and maintain the editorial calendar, working with contributors to maintain freshness of content aligned with long-term vision
• Recruit and manage a team of freelance writers, staff editors, and respected contributors
• Edit all submissions to meet publishing standards
• Generate original content
• Continuously work with production staff on presentation and quality control
• Ensure all responsible parties – design, freelance and others – meet necessary deadline requirements
• Pursue deeper understanding of the information needs of readers and tailor content to fit these needs and interests
• Pursue reader submissions, as appropriate, to complement internally-generated content
• Occasionally attend business networking events as editorial representative of the company

Education, Experience, and Skills Required:

• Bachelor’s degree, preferably in journalism
• Strong background in business publishing and business-focused content highly preferred
• Experience managing a team of writers and freelancers in an online media environment
• 5-7 years relevant work experience, including writing for respected print and online publications, reviewing and editing the work of other writers, and managing an editorial staff and budget.
• Candidate must demonstrate a creative mindset, enthusiasm for online media, and an understanding of business leaders’ issues and information needs

Location: San Francisco
Compensation: DOE
Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
PostingID: 924129721

Instead, Parr links to analyst Jeremy Owyang's compilation of people with social media job titles at "Fortune 5000" (sic) companies. There's no such thing as the "Fortune 5000," but other than that, Owyang's list is real enough. And yet he has only identified 129 jobs among America's largest corporations. That's hardly a new career category — any company that size has many more people writing the product manuals no one reads.

On increasing reach and traffic, Parr says:

Social media allows people to spread their message to hundreds, if not thousands, of friends, followers, and strangers. Some companies can only dream of that kind of reach, while others pay millions in advertising for the same effect.

Companies pay millions for what? For TV ads, and for a reason: TV reaches not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of people. That's orders of magnitude more reach than Twitter, with proven results. The conclusion that mass media advertising is dead and the kids only trust teh tweets now doesn't come from market research. It comes from social media consultants looking for new clients.

Twitter allows a company to respond to customer complaints quickly (I’ve had personal experience with Comcast’s Twitter account).

That's called Twitter Appeasement. Parr has been glad-handed by a customer service rep in Philadelphia cherrypicking menial problems to address. Southwest Airlines does this, too. Comcast has realized that by fawning over a few select users, they can claim to be turning around their bad reputation for customer service. Three of the country's most-read newspapers — USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post — have picked up the tale.

But what fraction of the company's support load do you think Comcast's lone tweeter represents? He sends about 50 "Can I help?" messages a day, and talks to an average of ten of the company's customers. All too often, he ends up routing Twitter users into Comcast's support email, which they should've used in the first place. As customer service, this is terribly inefficient. As cheap PR, it's awesome.

Parr also claims social media jobs increase corporate revenue — again without any stats to back it up. Which new hire do you think would bring in more money: Another salesman or another FriendFeed guy?

Here's a more realistic conclusion: Social media technologies are new IT tools for the same old roles. Parr and his fans desperately want to believe Corporate America will soon create entire new divisions of social media jobs just for them. They'll be their own special-forces arm of the company, with a Chief Social Media Officer reporting directly to the CEO. Any day now!

Yes, big corporations will adopt social media to stay in touch with customers. But they'll do it by giving social media tools to existing parts of the organization: Customer support. Marketing. Public relations. And contrary to Parr's thin-air claims, I'm guessing that in a downturn, the guy who spends all day on Twitter will be first to go.

Hi guys,

Are you or a graphic designer you know is looking for contract work? 23andMe is looking for contractors. (www.23andme.com)

The basic rundown:

We're looking for a super-talented individual or group that can design stuff that is clean, friendly, and smart. (no arbitrary swooshes!) If you're not working through me, then you'll be dealing with non-designers giving you project descriptions—so it helps if you're comfortable working with a fair amount of independence and can bring your own intellect to the table.

-Create stuff that can scale between print and web nicely.
-Ability to make sweet diagrams a plus (think Wired for level of science + accessible).
-Ability to make flash animations a plus
-Ability to edit video also great
-You will probably need to learn a little about our technology along the way. Poorly researched allusions to double-helices will not cut the proverbial mustard.
-Good communicator. We are busy and can be vague (I had this when I was a contractor) so you need to feel comfortable asking questions to get you the info you need.
-Work will target a wide audience from average Joes to researchers.
-Project by project basis, most likely the work will be in marketing materials and not tied to the actual website. So think items like booklets, logos, icons, posters.
-The items being created are small in scale but in content are very complex. you'll have to get a nuanced message across that is both sophisticated and accessible.
-Potential for full-time hire if interested.

Norvig told Technology Review that one way Google tests its search accuracy is to "randomly select specific queries and hire people to say how good our results are. We train them on how to identify spam and other bad sites, and then we record their judgments and track against that."

Sound like your kind of gig? Warning: You must be comfortable in cold weather. As in North Pole cold. Or was that some other secret workshop?

• Are you the person who wrote most of the Facebook or MySpace code?
• Were you the main architect who converted Yahoo! code from a proprietary system to PHP?
• Is your Google badge number smaller than 100?
• Have you delivered a large-scale CMS on Drupal, Django or another popular open source platform?
• Do you agree that CMS would be more appropriately defined as "Community Management System"?

As our core business continues to enjoy phenomenal success, our tangential efforts must equally evolve to capitalize on opportunities before us. Under the "Other" umbrella, Google aims to identify and pursue opportunities where technology can revolutionize traditional and more mature industries.

Big media companies like Viacom, constrained by the limits of copyright law and Google's recalcitrance, are forced to pay companies like Los Gatos-based BayTSP, which specializes in snooping file sharers and protecting copyrights, to slog through YouTube's bloated index searching for infringements. That makes for a solid eight-hour day for BayTSP's "video analysts." Contracts prevent employees from discussing their tedium with friends and family, but they were allowed to open up to a Wall Street Journal reporter in the clip above.

And after all the eyestrain, when enough videos have been flagged — like the 100,000 clips cited in Viacom's Google lawsuit — what reward do employees get? New office furniture. Hooray! Indeed, the job is so ennui-inducing that WSJ reporter Kevin Delaney can't even bring himself to emote once during his office tour.