By IAN SHERR And MATT JARZEMSKY

Apple Inc. invited reporters to an iPhone-related event Oct. 4, setting the stage for the widely anticipated launch of its latest smartphone.

On Tuesday, Apple sent reporters an email with the message, “Let’s talk iPhone,” inviting them to an event at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. Apple has traditionally held an event in the early fall to update iPod products, as well as its iTunes digital music jukebox software.

Apple shares recently were up $2.14 at $405.31.

“The company will likely announce a redesigned iPhone 5 with a larger screen and thinner form-factor for $199/$299, and may drop the iPhone 4 to $99, possibly with slightly upgraded components and a new name, iPhone 4S,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a note Tuesday.

He added that the invitation’s phrase of “Let’s talk iPhone” may “refer to new speech-based features for the iPhone.”

Mr. Munster, who rates Apple at outperform with a $607 price target, estimates sales of 25 million iPhones in the December quarter. He noted that demand from Verizon Wireless subscribers could be strong because iPhone 4 had been available on other carriers for more than six months when the carrier got it in February.

The event next week follows what analysts say has been a blowout quarter for Apple’s iPhone 4. The device, which was released in June 2010, has been a hit with consumers despite initial customer complaints that the device’s antenna was prone to malfunctioning when held a certain way.

Overall, the iPhone has helped to drive Apple’s revenue and profit growth to record levels and has become the best-selling smartphone in the world.

Despite its high ranking, however, the iPhone’s sales pale in comparison to the mountain of devices sold around the world that are powered by Google Inc.’s Android operating system. The software, which powers phones made by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., HTC Corp. and Dell Inc., is used by 43% of U.S. smartphone subscribers, according to the latest surveys by Nielsen. The iPhone, by comparison, represents 28%.

Still, analysts expect the new iPhone will likely follow a similar path of success as its predecessor, drawing enthusiastic customers to its stores on its release day.

“We believe a refreshed iPhone 5 will boast enough physical improvements to drive another strong adoption cycle,” UBS analyst Maynard Um wrote in a note shortly after the invitation was sent. He added that demand for the phone had likely built up because Apple took 16 months to refresh the line rather than the typical 12 months.

Mr. Um has a buy rating on Apple shares and a $510 price target. While Apple’s next-generation iPhone is expected to be a success with customers, the device’s arrival comes at an unusual time for the company. Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and leader, stepped down on Aug. 24 after a prolonged medical leave for an undisclosed illness.

Mr. Jobs, a pancreatic cancer survivor, was succeeded by Tim Cook, then the company’s chief operating officer. Mr. Cook is widely respected among his peers in the industry and employees who report to him. Several Apple employees say the company has not changed since Mr. Cook took the helm, and that the enthusiasm among employees remains strong.

The event also comes as interest in the company’s iPod continues to wane.

Released in 2001, the digital music player became a centerpiece of Apple’s renaissance, powering the company’s surge last decade. Recently, however, its sales have been falling. Apple said iPod unit sales fell by a fifth in its third quarter when compared with the same time a year ago.

Apple’s invitation suggests that the iPod will take a back seat to the iPhone at the event, underscoring a shift in customer’s interest of Apple’s products.

By YUKARI IWATANI KANE And NICK WINGFIELD

There are few chief executives who are as closely identified with a company as Steve Jobs has been with Apple Inc. Now that he is stepping down as chief executive— although he will be chairman—it will largely be up to his deputies to make sure that the company continues to stay ahead of the competition with trend-setting products and services that impress consumers.

Since Mr. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after being ousted in 1985 from the company he founded, he has brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy, revived its Macintosh computer business and played an unusually important role in the introduction of ground-breaking products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

As CEO, he provided a charismatic persona and sharp instinct for knowing what consumers want. But his bench is considered a strong management team that has largely stayed out of the limelight until now.

His successor, Tim Cook, 50 years old, is the chief operating officer to whom he handed the reins of the company three times – once in 2004 when Mr. Jobs was recuperating from pancreatic cancer surgery, once in early 2009 when he took a six month medical leave of absence for a liver transplant and again in early 2011 for another unexplained medical leave.

Mr. Cook isn’t the showman that Mr. Jobs was, but people who know him call him an “operational genius” who was responsible for crafting Apple’s current supply chain system and helping to transform the company into one of the most efficient electronics manufacturers today.

The Alabama native, who majored in industrial engineering at Auburn University (he is a big Tigers football fan) and earned a master’s in business administration at Duke University, was being groomed to become a top executive at Compaq Computer Corp. when Mr. Jobs recruited him in 1998.

“Tim was the ultimate decision maker,” said Greg Petsch, who was Mr. Cook’s boss at Compaq as the head of global manufacturing. Mr. Petsch remembers him as being tough, but calm unlike Mr. Jobs, who is known for his fiery temper. “You can be a tough manager, and never have to raise your voices just by defining the requirements upfront. [Tim] was very specific in terms of his expectations,” he said.

At Apple, he oversaw the manufacturing of its computers for several years before he was given responsibility for the company’s world-wide sales and its Macintosh computer division. He became chief operating officer in 2005.

People, who know him at Apple, say he is polite but persistent and unyielding in his demands. They also say that he can absorb a huge amount of data and quickly pinpoint any problems.

In addition to Mr. Cook, Apple’s recent innovations have also been helped by deputies including Jonathan Ive, an Apple senior vice president who oversees the company’s industrial-design team. Described by one person who knows him as “sharing a brain with Steve,” Mr. Ive and his group has been responsible for coming up with the physical look and feel of products that has helped set Apple apart from competitors.

Scott Forstall, who leads the team responsible for the iPhone’s operating system and other software, Eddie Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet services who is regarded as an all-purpose fixer, and Philip Schiller, who runs world-wide marketing are also important figures, who have been part of Mr. Jobs’s inner circle for many years.

Over the last few years, Mr. Jobs has appeared to endorse his leadership team by sharing the stage with many of them at company media events.

But longtime Apple watchers, who have witnessed how the company unraveled after Mr. Jobs left the company in 1985, worry that the company could eventually be lost again without Mr. Jobs’s dominant personality and killer instinct.

Retention of the current bench may also be difficult since Apple’s stock price has surged in recent years, allowing executives to make fortunes from stock options during their careers at the company and giving them less incentive to remain.

Ron Johnson, senior vice president of Apple retail who was the mastermind behind the success of Apple stores, for example, is leaving in November to take the helm of J.C. Penney Co. Mac software engineering chief Bertrand Serlet left in March.

If most of them do stay, some people believe that the team is fully capable of managing Apple, particularly now that the company’s biggest growth is behind it and it is entering a new phase of having to sustain its business momentum.

By CHIP CUMMINS

Research In Motion Ltd. said it will cut 2,000 jobs, almost 11% of its work force, the latest move in a make-or-break scramble to resuscitate its products and keep the company that essentially invented the smartphone from becoming an also-ran.

The BlackBerry maker has struggled to stanch its shrinking share of North American smartphone sales in the face of an onslaught led by Apple Inc.’s iPhone and products run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system. The company’s long-time co-chiefs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, have promised to revamp their own devices.

But investors have dumped the stock amid profit warnings, product delays, executive departures and dwindling confidence in the two leaders’ willingness to embrace big, strategic change.

RIM shares have lost more than half their value so far this year. Last month, the company warned it would shed jobs as part of a wider cost-cutting effort as executives promised to navigate the Canadian company through a “transition” towards more competitive products.

But Monday’s job cuts were deeper than expected. Nokia Corp., facing a similar erosion of market share, cut or transferred about 7,000 staff in April. While Nokia is a much bigger company than RIM, the cuts at the Finnish device maker represented just 5% of its global work force.

It’s also the first significant culling of staff at RIM in its short, super-charged history. In 2002, the company—then just 2,000-employees strong—laid off 200, marking its biggest retrenchment until now people.

In recent years, RIM has added thousands of workers to keep up with demand for its BlackBerry phone. It more than doubled the size of its work force over the last four years. After the cuts announced Monday, RIM’s work force will be about 17,000, the company said.

RIM also disclosed a series of senior executive changes, including the retirement of Chief Operating Officer Don Morrison, who had previously been on medical leave. The shifts didn’t appear to satisfy shareholders, many of whom have called for a more wholesale overhaul.

RIM shares fell 4.4% to $26.67 at 4 p.m. Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. It now has a stock market value of $13.9 billion. By comparison, Apple’s market cap has swelled to $369 billion.

Robert McWhirter, head of Toronto money management firm Selective Asset Management Inc., sold the remainder of his 58,000 RIM shares about three weeks ago. He said he worries that RIM, which has always put a premium on the engineering that goes into its devices, will struggle to compete in a market now driven largely by the availability of applications for such devices.

RIM faces “significant challenges,” he said.

The company has bought itself some time with its restructuring efforts. It has promised a line of next-generation BlackBerrys in coming months and years that executives say will compete better with iPhones and other, newer competitors.

Sales of BlackBerrys are still growing quickly in many overseas markets, and the company has little debt and a hefty cash hoard. It had nearly $20 billion in sales in its latest fiscal year.

“RIM has a good strategy” for its turnaround, said Royal Bank of Canada analyst Mike Abramsky, who has a neutral rating on the stock. But the question remains, he said, “can they execute on it?”

The stakes in the turnaround effort go beyond the company’s tidy, corporate campus in Waterloo, Ontario, a few hours’ drive from Toronto. Canada’s economy is dominated by mining and energy companies, and RIM has long stood out as the country’s most important technology firm—one of the few Canadian corporations with a globally recognized brand.

It has also become an incubator for an eco-system of smaller companies that have created a high-tech corridor around Waterloo and its university that many liken to Canada’s version of Silicon Valley. Amid RIM’s recent troubles, the community has rallied around Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie.

“It’s not the end of the road by any stretch of the imagination,” said Ian Klugman, president and chief executive of Communitech, a non-profit support network for tech start-ups in the region. “It’s a new road for RIM,” he said.

Ian McLean, chief executive of the Greater Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, said Monday he recently bought about 10,000 Canadian dollars ($10,500) worth of RIM stock for his children’s education fund.

Still, many Canadians have seen parallels between RIM’s current woes and the meteoric rise and fall last decade of another Canadian tech giant: Nortel Networks Corp., which declared bankruptcy in 2009 after failing to find a merger partner to weather the global financial crisis.

RIM placated some disgruntled shareholders earlier this month, promising to review a structure that allows Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie to serve as co-chairmen and co-CEOs. Investors and analysts have criticized the arrangement for discouraging an independent board from pushing back enough on strategic decisions.

Neither executive was available for comment Monday.

One small, activist firm succeeded in getting a vote on the structure on the July 12 meeting’s agenda, but pulled it after RIM agreed to review the structure.

At RIM’s annual meeting earlier this month, Mr. Lazaridis said the company was taken off guard by a smartphone “arms race” that exploded in North America with the debut of the iPhone in 2007.

RIM was slow to realize the threat and upgrade products that could capture new consumers while holding onto RIM’s security-minded corporate client base.

During the last two years, RIM made several steps to right the ship, buying up companies to provide a new operating system, browser, and design shop. RIM now says it plans to launch its first phones and tablets using the new operating system, QNX, by early next year.

RIM launched its PlayBook tablet to mixed reviews earlier this year. RIM has acknowledged it didn’t do a good job marketing the product, and has promised more user-friendly versions of the tablet in the future.

RIM said Monday the size of the workforce reduction was in line with preliminary estimates it factored into earnings guidance provided last month. Details about the cost of the job cuts and other operating expense reductions will be disclosed in the company’s second-quarter results, expected on Sept. 15, the company said. RBC estimated the cost of the restructuring at about $200 million to $250 million.

The company said Monday one of its three chief operating officers, Mr. Morrison, will be leaving. Mr. Morrison has been on medical leave since mid June.

RIM had previously maintained his medical leave was temporary and that he would return to the company. The company said it will farm out his responsibilities to existing executives. Thorsten Heins is taking on the expanded role of COO for product and sales, consolidating responsibility for all product engineering, including hardware and software. Jim Rowan will take on the expanded role of COO for operations.

Amid the turmoil at RIM, several senior executives have abandoned ship. The company’s top marketing executive left the company just weeks before the launch of the PlayBook, and several other senior marketing executives have left RIM since.

It’s been likened to the Industrial Revolution in terms of its potential to change lives. But just what is cloud computing and how can companies turn it to their advantage?

By MICHELLE PRICE

The world of information technology is stuffed with bewildering acronyms and new-fangled fads, but cloud computing is one technology phenomenon not to be dismissed.

Likened by some technophiles to the Industrial Revolution, cloud computing is already transforming the world around us and it promises to shape our future world too. Despite its growing importance, however, many companies are struggling to pin down exactly how this technological miracle can truly benefit their balance sheets.

The practice of cloud computing is something with which consumers all over the world are already relatively familiar, even if the term itself leaves the lay technophobe scratching their head. Sending an email using a third-party Web-based email service provider, such as Google Mail, for example, is a basic form of cloud computing.

In this example, a user accesses a Web-based application maintained by a third-party via his or her Internet connection and browser. The email application itself and all the data it stores exists not on the user’s own computer but is delivered as a service via “the cloud” of the Internet. “Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in how IT infrastructure and software are delivered and consumed,” says Christian Klezl, vice president and cloud leader, for International Business Machines Corp. in Northeast Europe.

This shift is most pronounced when viewed within the context of corporate IT. Companies have traditionally purchased or developed software application products and maintained that software themselves. Most large companies, for example, operate and maintain their own corporate email systems.

The cloud-computing model represents the “natural evolution” from this proprietary approach to software provision, says Mr. Klezl, by enabling IT products to be consumed as services. These services are provided by a third party over the Internet and can be consumed on-demand and on a pay-as-you-go basis.

“Cloud computing is built on the concept that you have a distributed spectrum of users who can source data or services from a centralized pool of resources, at any time in any place, when they need it,” he says.

Power provision is a commonly used analogy. Most homes and companies do not build and run their own onsite power generation but instead source electricity from the grid when they need it. This model allows consumers and companies with varying power requirements to scale their power consumption up and down at their convenience, and to pay only for what they use.

Simon Wardley, a researcher at CSC’s Leading Edge Forum, a global research and advisory program for CIOs
Cloud-computing advocates envisage the IT phenomenon in the same terms: “With cloud computing we’re seeing a shift from an IT product-led world into an IT service or utility world,” says Simon Wardley, a researcher at CSC’s Leading Edge Forum, a global research and advisory program for chief information officers.

The building blocks of cloud computing have existed for nearly a decade, but the IT model has only gained major traction in recent years as its enabling technologies, such as broadband, have developed, and as business processes and attitudes have matured.

Together, these developments have conspired to promote cloud computing as a major force in the global IT market, from NATO to manufacturing giants such as Siemens AG. By 2015 some 50% of Global 1000 enterprises are expected to use cloud computing for their top 10 revenue-generating processes, according to Gartner Inc.

For such institutions, cloud services offer many benefits, not the least of which is cheaper IT. “Cloud gives you economies of scale and allows companies to establish a closer link between what they use and what they pay,” says Mr. Wardley.

By allowing companies to mobilize IT resources quickly, cloud computing also improves business agility. “From an institutional standpoint, the benefits of cloud computing are concrete,” says Alan Goldstein, chief information officer for BNY Mellon Asset Management. “You’re able to more rapidly deploy infrastructure and applications and to scale-up horizontally. That ability to be able to rapidly provision is really meaningful in terms of expediting speed to market.”

Because cloud-computing is a Web-enabled phenomenon, the model also allows companies to access their IT services and the data stored in it from anywhere in the world. “The key for us is to be able to run our business and access our business data anywhere in the world,” says Dominic Shine, chief information officer for Reed Exhibitions, a conference company that uses around 10 different types of cloud-based services.

But while improved cost-efficiency and greater business agility are attractive, what really excites cloud enthusiasts are the macro-economic possibilities.

Many cloud evangelists believe that the phenomenon enables companies to boost overall productivity by allowing them to satisfy what Mr. Wardley describes as the “long tail” of unmet demand for IT resources found within most firms. This has led some experts to liken cloud computing to the Industrial Revolution.

Far-fetched though this may sound, research published by the London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research in December seems partly to reinforce this view. It predicts that the increased productivity, job creation, business development and competitive advantage brought about by cloud computing will generate an additional €763 billion ($1.04 trillion) in economic value and will create some 2.4 million jobs in Europe during the next five years.

But not everyone will benefit equally. Cloud-computing—like the Internet it is enabled by—is a disruptive technology. By making IT cheap and accessible, cloud services threaten to lower the barriers to entry in a number of industries and in some instances may undermine the prevailing operating model.

“One of the unique things about cloud computing is that it’s a very democratic technology,” says George Hu, executive vice president for platform and marketing at Salesforce.com, the 10-year old enterprise cloud-computing company that is widely regarded as a poster-child of the phenomenon. “It’s the first technology that can service companies of all sizes.”

Reed Exhibitions’ Mr. Shine agrees: “Years ago, if you were a small company, you had access to a small number of vendors because that’s all you could afford. But today, small companies can access the powerful IT of their larger rivals. If I were setting up a start-up, I would run the whole thing from the cloud.”

Barriers are also set to be pulled down in the consumer world where cloud computing promises to make software increasingly accessible and easy to use. Take Google Inc., another icon of the cloud-computing age. In December, the IT services giant launched a prototype laptop that requires no software to be installed whatsoever: All applications and data are stored and delivered by Google via the Internet.

The Google prototype provides a glimpse of a future in which users are not required to pay up-front for software, or negotiate painful software installations, upgrades and anti-virus programs. Instead, all applications and data will be stored in the cloud, which consumers will be able to access from any location.

Mobile technologies are rapidly making this a reality. The emergence of the super-functional smartphone and tablets, such as the iPhone and iPad, are bringing cloud-based applications, such as the hyper-successful social networking application Facebook and the micro-blogging application Twitter, onto mobile devices—along with a wide range of other applications. By moving onto mobile devices, applications guarantee their own ubiquity and relevance.

In time, more and more cloud-led IT services will follow suit, including business applications, says Mr. Hu. “The Facebook model is now the new model for the future: Why can’t business applications be like Facebook? That is, inherently social, in the cloud, and accessed more and more through mobile devices.”

Cloud computing is still an evolving IT model, however, and some IT chiefs believe it will take time for all companies, particularly highly regulated industries such as financial services, to embrace it.

“The cloud will be important in people’s IT strategy: The prize is pretty considerable,” says Michael Fahy, global head of IT infrastructure at investment bank Nomura. “But the commercial model is not yet sufficiently developed to operate on the scale we want to operate on, and there are still questions around data security.”

The European Union shares these concerns; last year it recommended the creation of standards and a regulatory framework for cloud computing. But this is unlikely to impede the technology’s advance, believes Mr. Wardley: “Do you have a choice when it comes to the advance of cloud computing? Not really.”

With Concern About Hackers, Tools for Remembering So Many Codes; No More Pet Names or 123456 .

By STU WOO

For all its benefits, the Internet can be a hassle when it comes to remembering passwords for email, banking, social networking and shopping.

Many people use just a single password across the Web. That’s a bad idea, say online-security experts.

“Having the same password for everything is like having the same key for your house, your car, your gym locker, your office,” says Michael Barrett, chief information-security officer for online-payments service PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc.

Mr. Barrett has different passwords for his email and Facebook accounts—and that’s just for starters. He has a third password for financial websites he uses, such as for banks and credit cards, and a fourth for major shopping sites such as Amazon.com. He created a fifth password for websites he visits infrequently or doesn’t trust, such as blogs and an online store that sells gardening tools.

A spate of recent attacks underscores how hackers are spending more time trying to crack into big databases to obtain passwords, security officials say. In April, for instance, hackers obtained passwords and other information of 77 million users in Sony Corp.’s PlayStation Network, while Google Inc. said this month that hackers broke into its email system and gained passwords of U.S. government officials.

So-called brute force attacks, by which hackers try to guess individual passwords, also appear to be on the rise, Mr. Barrett says.

PayPal says two out of three people use just one or two passwords across all sites, with Web users averaging 25 online accounts. A 2009 survey in the U.K. by security-software company PC Tools found men to be particularly bad offenders, with 47% using just one password, compared with 26% of women.

Another PC Tools survey last year showed that 28% of young Australians from 18 to 38 years old had passwords that were easily guessed, such as a name of a loved one or pet, which criminals can easily find on Facebook or other public sites. Other passwords can be easily guessed, too. Hackers last year posted a list of the most popular passwords of Gawker Media users, including “password,” “123456,” “qwerty,” “letmein” and “baseball.”

“If your password is on that list, please change it,” says Brandon Sterne, security manager at Mozilla Corp., which makes the Firefox browser and other software. Hackers “will take the first 100 passwords on the list and go through the entire user base” of a website to crack a few accounts, he says.

People typically start changing online passwords after they’ve been hacked, says Dave Cole, general manager of PC Tools. However, “after a relatively short time, all but the most paranoid users regress to previous behaviors prior to the security breach,” he says. He and other security experts recommend people change or rotate passwords a few times a year.

To come up with a strong password, some security officials recommend taking a memorable phrase and using the first letter of each word. For example, “to be or not to be, that is the question,” becomes “tbontbtitq.” Others mash an unlikely pair of words together. The longer the password—at least eight characters, experts say—the safer it is.

Once people figure out a phrase for their password, they can make it more complex by replacing letters with special characters or numbers. They can also capitalize, say, the second character of every password for added security. Hence “tbontbtitq” becomes “tB0ntbtitq.”

No matter how good a password is, it is unsafe to use just one. Mr. Barrett recommends following his lead and having strong ones for four different kinds of sites—email, social networks, financial institutions and e-commerce sites—and a fifth for infrequently visited or untrustworthy sites.

Even the strongest passwords, however, are useless if criminals install so-called malware on computers that allow them to track a person’s keystrokes. Security experts say people can avoid this by keeping their antivirus and antispyware software updated and by avoiding downloading files from unknown websites and email senders.

Some security experts recommend slightly modifying passwords within each category of site. Companies such as Microsoft Corp. offer free password-strength checkers, but users shouldn’t rely on them wholly because such strength tests don’t gauge whether a password contains easily found personal information, such as a birthday or a pet’s name.

It’s especially important to have a separate password for an email account, says Mozilla’s Mr. Sterne. Many sites have “Forgot my password” buttons that, when clicked, initiate a password-recovery process by email. Hackers who break into an email account can then intercept those emails and take control of each account registered using that address.

Some websites, such as Google and Facebook, now let people register a phone number along with their account. If a person forgets his passwords, the sites reset the passwords by calling or sending a text message to that person.

Mr. Barrett says people should be able to remember four or five good passwords. If not, they can write them down on a piece of paper and stick it in their wallet, and then throw the cheat sheet away once all the passwords are memorized.

People who still struggle to remember them all can use a password manager. Several, such as LastPass, are free. LastPass prompts users to create a master password and then generates and stores random passwords for different sites. Some security experts warn against using managers that store passwords remotely, but LastPass Chief Executive Joe Siegrist says hackers can’t access the passwords because all data is encrypted.

The worst thing that people can do after creating their different passwords: Put it on a sticky note by their monitor. “That defeats the entire purpose,” says Mr. Sterne.

Heather O’Neill, a 27-year-old tech-company employee in San Francisco, had her Google email account broken into earlier this year. She says she used the same password for several sites, and that it was a weak one.

“I can’t have one password for everything,” she says. “Everything is going to be different.”

By JOE LIGHT

LinkedIn Corp.’s splashy initial public offering of stock earlier this month underscored the company’s status as a major professional network. But several start-ups are banking that the future of career networking is actually on Facebook Inc.

These start-ups point to Facebook’s much broader user base: With 500 million users, Facebook is five times larger than LinkedIn.

But changing users’ mindsets might be a challenge. Some Facebook users are loathe to mix their personal and professional networks, fearing some private information might damage their work reputation.

Recruiters, meanwhile, say that LinkedIn has already established itself as the most robust source for job-candidate information.

This month, BranchOut Inc., which makes a professional-networking Facebook application, said it raised $18 million in venture capital, bringing its total to $24 million. On the day of LinkedIn’s IPO, Jibe Inc., which lets people use Facebook connections to bolster job applications, announced that it had raised $6 million.

Since January, BranchOut has gained more than 500,000 active users, Chief Executive Rick Marini said. The app helps users find Facebook friends at companies where they want to work.

Jibe CEO Joe Essenfeld said that its 200,000 active users have landed hundreds of jobs by sending applications through its service.

Mr. Essenfeld added that 26 large employers, including Amazon.com Inc. and MTV Networks, as well as 20 small businesses, accept résumés sent through the application, which lets users import connections from both Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Most people do not want to mix their professional lives with their personal lives,” said a LinkedIn spokesman, Hani Durzy, in an email.

Even though the apps are gaining in popularity among Facebook users, right now LinkedIn is still the go-to site for recruiters trying to find suitable candidates, said Debra Feldman, a job-search consultant.

“They’re using it over and above any other résumé databases, including their own,” she said. That means that if someone isn’t looking for a job but wants to field offers from headhunters, he needs a LinkedIn profile, she said.

Other job-related Facebook apps have been slow to catch on. Talentag, which lets users earn job-related “badges” and recommendations from Facebook users, had a strong debut last August, but its average number of monthly users has dwindled to 189 after peaking at 1,502, according to AppData, a market-research group.

Talentag couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Friday.

How the smartest companies are letting employees use their personal gadgets to do their jobs.

By ROGER CHENG

For lots of workers, the company BlackBerry just doesn’t cut it anymore.

As people pack increasingly sophisticated smartphones in their personal life, they’re clamoring to use those gadgets in the workplace as well. And many of their bosses are loosening up. They’re ditching the traditional BlackBerry-or-nothing policy and allowing a wider range of mobile devices, including tablets such as the iPad.

This arrangement can bring benefits for both sides. Businesses don’t have to buy as many phones for employees. Employees, meanwhile, don’t have to carry two devices around, and people who didn’t get a company phone before can have one now.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls, too. Few smartphones offer the security features that the BlackBerry is known for. IT departments also struggle with supporting business programs on newer mobile operating systems such as Google Inc.’s Android. What’s more, allowing personal phones raises a tough question: How much control does a company have over the device? What happens, for instance, when somebody leaves the company—and their phone is loaded with sensitive business documents?

The companies that have seen the most success are giving their employees the most freedom—but are also seeking a higher level of accountability. They’re asking that workers take responsibility for keeping the device safe by managing passwords and complex security functions, as well as shouldering part of the cost.

“Companies that are being successful are moving away from dictatorial approach to a shared-responsibility model,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst for research firm Gartner Inc.

Here’s a look at some of the smartest strategies that companies are using to maintain the balance.

Locking and Deleting
Most companies start with a very basic line of defense: insisting that workers use the password feature found in every smartphone. The password prevents other users from accessing any of the phone’s basic functions, forcing most run-of-the-mill thieves to erase the device to make it usable. That’s critical, because employees will often store emails and attachments with corporate data or information about future projects on their phones.

But passwords aren’t foolproof, and a technically savvy crook could break through the defense. So, what should companies do for an extra layer of protection?

Kimberly-Clark Corp. has a hard-line solution: If a phone is lost or stolen, or an employee leaves, the company erases the device remotely.

The company began allowing employees to use their personal smartphones to access their corporate email accounts in December. Since the change in policy, roughly 300 employees have connected their personal smartphones to their work email accounts, according to Ramon Baez, chief information officer for the company.

“Since these are small devices and are easily misplaced or stolen, it is vital for a company to have the ability to wipe company-sensitive information,” says Mr. Baez. The company will wipe a device as soon as it is reported lost, or if the user reaches the maximum number of attempts with an incorrect password.

Of course, a remote erasing also deletes any personal information on the phone, such as contact numbers and family photos. But the threat of losing all that may help make people more vigilant about keeping track of the phone.

Still, the practice isn’t foolproof, because a phone needs to be connected to a cellular network to be wiped. Mr. Baez is working on a “self destruct” option that would automatically erase a phone in case it’s lost and disconnected for an extended period of time.

And the practice doesn’t work everywhere. In China and South Korea, employers by law aren’t allowed to erase the personal data on their workers’ phones, according to Mr. Baez. So, he doesn’t allow employees in those countries to use personal devices in the workplace.

Walling Off Data
Sometimes it’s not enough to erase data after a phone is out of a worker’s hands. Companies in a range of industries—such as medicine or finance—have to do a lot more to protect sensitive data while employees are still using the devices. Medical companies, for instance, have to follow rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that protect customer data. In some cases, that means having patients’ information on a regular personal cellphone isn’t permitted.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. uses software from Good Technology Inc. to carve out a part of an employee’s device strictly for corporate use. Guru Vasudeva, chief technology officer of Nationwide, calls the portion a “secure container” within the phone that houses access to corporate email, address book and calendar. Work emails and attachments can be viewed in the container, but can’t be moved or downloaded into the phone itself. If the phone is lost or if the person leaves the company, Nationwide can wipe that portion of the device, leaving the personal information intact.

Beyond the typical password found on a cellphone, the container has its own password, and the data inside are encrypted, says Mr. Vasudeva.

“We looked for a technical solution with the flexibility to allow what [the employees] want, but at the same time meet all regulatory and technical requirements,” says Mr. Vasudeva.

Dealing With Variety
Beyond security, there are lots of technical headaches with workers using their own devices on the job. For one, compatibility. With a wide variety of devices using different operating systems, it takes lots of time and resources to build and test a different version of the same application for every single one.

For the time being, most companies are trying to avoid those headaches by keeping things simple. Workers who use their own smartphones generally can get access only to the company email network—not any other work software. The more complicated stuff, such as apps that provide access to company software and databases, is generally limited to the widely used BlackBerry platform.

J.D. King
.Kimberly-Clark is looking to partners such as AT&T Inc. to help it create a mobile-enterprise-application platform. This relatively new technology allows a company to create one app and have it run on all devices. For instance, a company could create an app that accesses customer-relationship-management software in the corporate database and have it distributed to all sales personnel, regardless of their phones. By using the technology, the company “gains the ability to effectively manage the cost of supporting many different devices,” Mr. Baez says.

A Virtual Solution
Some companies are working on other ways to give workers access to more than company email. They’re using a technique called virtualization to let workers tap into a much wider range of software. Companies put software, from providers such as Citrix Systems Inc., on the workers’ portable gadgets. The employees can then use that software to access their entire desktop on the device—and use the same programs on the road that they use in the office.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, for instance, is testing these kinds of systems for use with tablets such as the iPad. Placing virtualization software on employees’ personal tablets is less expensive than outfitting them with company-purchased laptops, says Jay Crotts, the company’s vice president of IT services.

Virtualization provides an answer to a basic question, he says: “How can you increase productivity and allow more ubiquitous access?”

New Ways to Pay
Not all of the problems with smartphones are technical. There’s also the matter of cost. Smartphone bills can be steep for regular users—and most people want the company to kick in if they’re using the phone for work too.

Companies that have embraced personal devices have also found ways to reimburse employees for their phone use. Mr. Dulaney, the Gartner analyst, says one common solution is to use a telecom expense-management program, which allocates some expenses to the company and some to the worker.

In some cases, companies pay for the whole data portion of the bill. Some companies go further and cover the whole thing. The situations vary, and depend on the type of employee and the type of company involved. For instance, a factory worker who’s on call might get compensated for voice but not data, while an executive might get fully covered for the phone.

Nationwide gives employees who would otherwise have a company BlackBerry a stipend equal to what their BlackBerry bills would have been, which ranges from $70 to $100 a month. The worker has to cover the difference. Employees who would not have gotten a BlackBerry are responsible for their whole bill, since for them the access to the corporate data is voluntary and considered a perk.

“We think it’s a fair deal,” says Mr. Vasudeva.

By MARY PILON
Mutual-fund company T. Rowe Price Group Inc. has invested in Facebook Inc., according to recently released filings, underscoring traditional investment vehicles’ growing interest in hot technology companies.

T. Rowe invested a total of $190.5 million in the social-networking giant, paying $25 a share for stock it distributed across nearly 20 funds, according to the filings. It isn’t immediately clear what value that puts on Facebook.

The Baltimore-based mutual-fund company also disclosed an investment of $71.8 million in Zynga Inc. and a total stake of about $35.4 million in Angie’s List.

T. Rowe has been more aggressive than most of its mutual-fund peers in building exposure to young technology companies. The investments carry extra risk, because the shares aren’t yet publicly traded and can be illiquid. Meanwhile, a rush of interest in the companies has pumped up the companies’ valuations, even as they disclose little or no financial data.

T. Rowe Price has invested millions in Facebook, underscoring traditional investment vehicles’ growing interest in hot technology companies. Mary Pilon joins digits to discuss.
The investments, however, are a drop in the bucket for T. Rowe, which is trying to manage that risk by keeping the investments to a small percentage of each fund’s holdings. None of the funds has even a full percent of its holdings tied up in Facebook, for example. T. Rowe had $482 billion in assets under management as of the end of 2010.

Investors have been scrambling for a stake in Facebook, which is just seven years old and doesn’t publicly report its financial results. In January, Facebook was valued at $50 billion in a deal that raised $1.5 billion from investors such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, as well as some of Goldman’s non-U.S. clients.T. Rowe has long taken aim at new companies. Its New Horizons Fund, which doesn’t currently have a stake in Facebook but has invested in companies like Twitter Inc. and Angie’s List, is the third-oldest fund at the firm. Born in 1960, the fund is known for making longer-term investments in companies at their early stages, including early investments in Starbucks Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Other T. Rowe funds were early investors in Google Inc. The fund has had a return of 34.67% in the 2010 calendar year, according to Morningstar Inc.

Recent trades on markets that allow investors to buy and sell shares in private companies have put a market value of around $75 billion on the company.

The Facebook investment complements other tech holdings at the firm, including a 2009 stake in Twitter and an investment in Groupon Inc. made late last year. In 2007, T. Rowe made an initial investment in Ning and in 2010 invested in YouKu.com.

Among the T. Rowe funds now invested in Facebook are the Science & Technology Fund, New America Growth Fund, Media & Telecommunications Fund, as well as broader funds including the Balanced Fund, Global Stock Fund and the Blue Chip Growth Fund. T. Rowe’s funds now have a total investment of $86.8 million in Groupon, $66.6 million in Twitter and $114.7 million in YouKu.com, according to the filings.

T. Rowe declined to comment on how the Facebook shares were purchased. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment.

Geoffrey Fowler contributed to this article.

Corrections & Amplifications

An earlier version of this online article incorrectly said T. Rowe Price invested $55.4 million in Facebook and $22 million in Angie’s List. The firm invested $190.5 million and $35.4 million, respectively, in the two companies.

For ‘B-to-B’ Companies, Finding Facebook ‘Friends’ Can Be a Struggle

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Bill.com Inc., a provider of bill-payment services, is trying to market itself on Facebook. But even though the venture-backed company has more than 10,000 clients, it has so far managed to secure only 67 “friends” on the social-networking site.

These days, even small “business-to-business” concerns like Bill.com are experimenting with social media, perceiving the popular online hangouts as low-cost, easy-to-use venues for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. But unlike their consumer-focused counterparts—retailers that sell smartphones, jeans, games and other personal products—so-called B-to-B businesses seem to be having a harder time connecting with their target audience.

Facebook “is so consumer dominated that it takes time to find a voice that cuts through what’s already out there,” says René Lacerte, founder and chief executive of Bill.com, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif.

Bill.com’s René Lacerte is trying to market B-to-B via social media.
.A survey released last month of 230 B-to-B companies shows that 24% are using Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and others for marketing, and another 36% plan to try them in the coming year. “It’s certainly something that has taken off in the last six months,” says Michael Greene, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., which conducted the study.

In general, he says B-to-Bs tend to be slower to adopt new marketing technologies than business-to-consumer companies. But now that they’re catching up, it appears that many are having a tough time gaining followers. “B-2-B isn’t sexy,” says Mr. Greene. “It doesn’t have that same immediate attraction that consumer brands do.”

Bill.com so far has only about half the number of Facebook “friends” as the average user, and far fewer than many of its consumer-focused counterparts. For example, LegalZoom.com Inc., a small business that helps consumers file legal documents such as wills and divorce papers, has more than 10,000 Facebook friends.

Making fans of other businesses, as opposed to consumers (or actual friends), may seem counterintuitive to social networking. So B-to-Bs typically look to interact with workers who make buying decisions on behalf of the companies they target. Many attempt to acquire contacts by providing links to their social-media profiles from their websites and marketing materials.

“B-to-B buyers are people, which means they are on Facebook,” says Tim McLaughlin, president of Siteworx Inc., a small Web-strategy and design company based in Reston, Va., that is on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. “You need to be where they are.”

Some B-to-B owners say social networking is actually ideal for their demographic since it can take months for their kind of buyers to commit to a purchase. The products and services they sell tend to cost significant amounts and often several people are involved in the decision-making process.

For example, Eloqua Ltd., a marketing-software company in Vienna, Va., charges between $15,000 and $800,000 a year for its technology. Regularly posting status updates about industry trends and related topics to its Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Corp. profiles helps it stay “top of mind” among clients, says Joe Payne, chief executive. “There’s no question what we do in the social world generates leads because it drives people to our website,” he says. “We can see where they’re coming from.”

Sharing information or advice on social-networking sites is also a way for B-to-Bs to show off their expertise, says John Lopez-Ona, president of Six Sigma Qualtec Inc., a business-consulting firm in Princeton, N.J., that uses Twitter and has its own blog. “It’s about building relationships,” he says.

B-to-Bs are also running special marketing campaigns on social-networking sites, such as contests that give away prizes to winners. OnTimeSupplies.com, an online office-supply retailer, launched an initiative earlier this month in which it promises to donate 25 cents to a breast-cancer charity every time someone posts an update on Facebook or Twitter mentioning it. “We’ve always depended a lot on word of mouth… whether it’s people trading stories in the cafeteria or on Facebook,” says Miles Young, chief executive and co-founder of the Atlanta firm.

Some small B-to-Bs say they prefer to market themselves on networking sites specifically designed for businesses and professionals such as LinkedIn.com.

“You have to pick the right tools, and sometimes the tools are dictated by the kind of company you are and the kind of prospects and clients you have,” says Kathy Scheessele, a partner at Mastering Business Development Inc., a Charlotte, N.C., business-consulting firm that recently started using LinkedIn.

“The type of people we’re trying to engage with are at a certain level. They’re not the typical kind of person who’s going to be twittering or have a Facebook page,” Ms. Scheessele says.

Like many other types of companies, small B-2-Bs are also using social media to find out what’s being said about them online, as well as gather competitive intelligence and keep up with industry trends. “The big advantage of social media is listening,” says Eric Bradlow, a professor at The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

But he adds that once a business creates a profile on a social-networking site, it needs to use it on a regular basis to avoid stoking the rumor mill. “People build up expectations around communication,” says Mr. Bradlow. “When expectations are violated, people will infer stuff that may not be true.”

By NICK WINGFIELD And JULIA ANGWIN
A new version of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer to be released Tuesday will be the first major Web browser to include a do-not-track tool that helps people keep their online habits from being monitored.

Microsoft’s decision to include the tool in Internet Explorer 9 means Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are the only big providers of browsers that haven’t yet declared their support for a do-no-track system in their products. In January, Mozilla Corp. said it would include a do-not-track feature in an upcoming version of its Firefox browser. Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser.

The moves by Microsoft and Mozilla reflect an unusually fast adoption of an idea—the do-not-track system—that was first officially proposed by the Federal Trade Commission only three months ago. It highlights the pressure the industry faces to provide people with a way to control how they are tracked and targeted online, as lawmakers and regulators threaten to rein in the practice.

Microsoft is also including a feature in Internet Explorer 9 called “tracking protection lists,” which will let people prevent specific Web-tracking companies from snooping on their browsing habits.

Microsoft shelved a similar feature several years ago when it was working on a prior version of its browser, under intense pressure from online advertisers and publishers, who feared the features would deprive them of necessary data to sell lucrative targeted advertising.

Those compromises by Microsoft were first reported in The Wall Street Journal last year as part of the investigative series, “What They Know,” which has examined the online information-gathering industry.

In an interview, Dean Hachamovitch, head of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team, said Microsoft is emphasizing privacy more in its browser than before because popular awareness of online-privacy risks has risen sharply. He credited the Journal’s “What They Know” series for helping to drive the change.

“I think the landscape has changed dramatically between 2008 and 2011,” Mr. Hachamovitch said. “It just did not have visibility before.”

It still isn’t clear how effective the privacy protection tools in Microsoft’s browser will be. The do-not-track feature automatically sends out a message to websites and others requesting that the user’s data not be tracked.

But the system will only work if tracking companies agree to respect visitors’ requests. So far, no companies have publicly agreed to participate in the system.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents the online advertising industry, says its members do not know how to respond to a do-not-track request, known as a header.

“There is no context to a do-not-track header, no common definitions, no standard operating procedures for how the thousands or even millions of entities that receive the header might detect or react to such a signal,” said Mike Zaneis, general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Google spokesman Chris Gaither said the company, which offers the Chrome Web browser and is also a major player in online advertising, “will continue to be involved closely” in discussions about do-not-track.

In the meantime, he said Google offers an add-on program for Chrome that users can download called “Keep My Opt-Outs” that will let users request that their data not be used for targeted advertising.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment on whether it will support a do-not-track tool in its Web browser, Safari.

Users of Internet Explorer 9 will immediately be able to block some snooping of their online habits through the browser’s tracking protection list feature—provided they can figure out how to work it.

To activate it, users are directed from the browser’s Safety menu to a Web page that currently contains 17 different lists, put together by others, that compile tracking companies. The do-not-track feature is automatically enabled once a user selects a tracking list.