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November 1st, 2007 at 3:59 pm

A tipster has leaked us these screen shots of how Marc Andreessen and company plan to integrate Google’s OpenSocial platform into Ning. Make sure you’re sitting down. We’ve got a ninja.

Notice the Flixster app installed on this profile, part of the Ask a Ninja socia network by Ning:

Here’s a DubPages profile with an iLike app installed. Check out the “activity stream,” very similar to Facebook’s news feed:

Source:Valleywag

A source tells us Facebook will launch SocialAds next Tuesday, November 6 at a swanky little event hall called “Loft Eleven.” The event goes “all afternoon,” so until we hear otherwise, we’re presuming it will be a five-hour forced march through the land of social-network ads, starting at noon. The loft features a 360-degree view of lovely Midtown Manhattan, exposed brick walls, smokers’ terrace and “beautifully arched entrances,” according to the proprietors. OMG! Good thing those arched entrances are beautifully arched. ‘Cause just plain “arched”? Lame. OK, so here’s what the place looks like.

Looks cozy, no? Better be. If Facebook intends to keep all of Madison Avenue locked up for the entire afternoon, as I’ve been told, they better bring the key to the liquor cabinet, too.

Loft Eleven is usually rented for wedding receptions and so the same rules apply. Clink! Clink! Clink! Pucker up, Zuck, here comes big daddy Ballmer! Yes, you have to dance the first dance with him!

See, it’s still a 360 view of a New York, cause that building 5 feet from the window? It’s in New York. OK? Shut up; eat your food; buy ads.

Enough with the soft lighting. This one’s for the engineers.

Source:Valleywag

Omid and Bita Kordestani Affairs of the heart are never easy for outsiders to understand. But when they stray into the office, they, alas, become everyone’s business. Which is why we asked, a while back, which Googler had put his marriage at risk over an affair with a coworker. As commenter notelling correctly guessed after we ran a blind item, it’s Omid Kordestani, Google’s top sales executive. Kordestani’s no mere sales guy, however. For one, he’s worth $2.2 billion, thanks to his Google shares. And inside the Googleplex, he’s referred to as the company’s “business founder,” responsible for the fabulously successful money machine that is AdWords. With his stunningly beautiful and intelligent wife, Bita, shown above to the left, Kordestani might seem to have it all. But all was not enough.

Kordestani’s new love, as is widely known within Google, is Gisel Hiscock, a New York-based finance director for the company.

Before you commenters say it, allow me: Yes, her last name is singularly unfortunate. But since Hiscock joined Google in 2003, before its lucrative IPO, it’s unlikely that she’s after Kordestani for his money. One imagines she might be more interested in obtaining a new surname.

But back to business. One tipster describes Hiscock’s role as “sales finance,” a group that now reports to Google’s CFO, not Kordestani. Hiscock, however, has been at Google since 2003, and at one point sales finance reported to Kordestani. It’s not clear when the affair began, but it’s possible that Hiscock was Kordestani’s employee at the time. And Kordestani, given his importance to the company, holds unspoken authority within Google that reaches beyond his direct line of command.

Even then, Google’s published code of conduct is silent on the propriety of romantic relationships between employees, even when there’s a reporting relationship. So it’s possible Kordestani and Hiscock did absolutely nothing against the rules. Except for this part:

One way to consider whether a given action, relationship, gift, etc. constitutes a conflict of interest is to imagine you are at a company meeting. Could you justify your actions in front of your peers?

Imagine if Kordestani were ever called on to explain his relationship with Hiscock? CEO Eric Schmidt, Google’s adulterer supervision, might be all too understanding. But the rest of Google?