Amazon Will Do Everything It Takes To Kill California's New Sales Tax Law (AMZN)

Amazon is backing a referendum to overturn California's sales tax law, the New York Times reports. 

Here's what's going on: states -- deep in the hole these days -- want e-tailers, and in particular Amazon, to collect sales tax on their affiliates. Amazon and others say, correctly, that they don't have to if they don't have a presence in the state. This debate has been going on for a while but has new urgency given the budgetary troubles of most states.

Affiliate marketing is one of the big ways Amazon generates incremental sales, so it's a big deal for them.

Recently California demanded the sales tax from Amazon. In response, Amazon shut off its affiliates. California then said, in essence, too bad, you still owe us all the sales tax from before you shut them off. And then Amazon gave them the one-finger salute.

So here we are.

Now Amazon is fighting back with the tools it has, a referendum to change the law in California.

A couple things are worth noting here.

• Amazon is in the right here. The law and constitutional jurisprudence say it doesn't have to collect sales tax in states where it doesn't have nexus.

• Amazon supports a federal-level solution which is backed by 40 states called the Streamlined Sales Tax Initiative.

• Efforts to make Amazon pay tax are backed by huge bricks-and-mortar competitors like Wal-Mart, so it's not like the big bad corporations are all on one side.

• And finally, anyone who messes with Jeff Bezos is in for a big fight.

JEFF BEZOS: Here's Why He Won →

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See Also:

• Amazon's Android Appstore Is A "Disaster," Says A Developer
• Wal-Mart Is Backing A Group Trying To Force Amazon To Pay More Taxes
• Here's Why Amazon's New Pet Store Isn't Insane

Amazon Will Do Everything It Takes To Kill California's New Sales Tax Law (AMZN)

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What It Takes To Build An Online Community

In late May, Joel Spolsky, co-founder/CEO of our portfolio company Stack Exchange, wrote a great post called Modern Community Building.

Stack (as I like to call the company) is building out a large network of highly engaged communities (57 as of right now) all focused on knowledge sharing.

Joel described the basic problem:

There are an awful lot of technology companies, founded by programmers, who think they are building communities on the Internet, but they’re really just building software and wondering why the community doesn’t magically show up.

Joel points out an important truth. Online communities require both software and people. Sometimes the software part is the easier part. Curating communities is hard work and requires people to do it. It is an inherently social behavior. Joel describes the role of the "online community organizer":

This job will be sort of like being a community organizer at a non-profit. It combines elements of marketing, PR, and sales, but it’s really something different. I don’t expect that there are a lot of people out there who already know how to do this well, so I’m going to train them, personally. Not that I know how to do this, but we’ll learn together. Every workday is going to start with a huddle at 9 am and a plan for the day’s activities and an intensive six hours of work. Every workday is going to end with an hour of learning... reading Kawasaki and Godin and Ries and Trout, talking with invited experts, meeting with members of the community about what worked and what didn’t worked. Everyone who joins the program (and survives for a year) will come out with an almost supernatural ability to take a dead, lifeless site on the internet and make it into the hottest bar in town. That’s a skill worth learning for the 21st century.

Many of our companies need both community managers and community organizers. And I agree with Joel that this is a new job type that not many people have a ton of experience in. But as Joel says, those who develop these skills will be in high demand in the coming years.

If you are interested in joining Stack's community evangelist team, you can apply here. If you'd like to see all the open community manager positions in our portfolio, and there are a bunch of them all around the world, you can see them here.

Modern community building isn't easy but if there is one thing the Internet has taught me over the past 15 years, large engaged communities are incredible powerful things, both commercially and socially. Building them is important and ultimately very valuable work.

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See Also:

• Globalization (Continued)
• Founder Labs (Continued)

What It Takes To Build An Online Community

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Facebook Takes A Passive-Aggressive Slap At Google+ (GOOG)

Facebook has blocked a Google Chrome extension called Facebook Friends Exporter that saves loads of time by importing your Facebook contacts into Google+.

There are a few ways to interpret the move -- Facebook could feel threatened by a new social network designed by a hugely successful tech giant, or it could simply be a noble effort playing watchdog by protecting its users' information.

There are obviously lots of parallels between Facebook and Google+. We'll see which one is actually a threat to the other.

Don't Miss: Our Top To Bottom Tour Of Google+

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See Also:

• 10 Ways Google+ Just Copied Facebook
• "It's Like Facebook With No People"
• Here's Our Top To Bottom Tour Of Google's Answer To Facebook

Facebook Takes A Passive-Aggressive Slap At Google+ (GOOG)

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Creepy iPhone Glitch Takes Secret Photos Of Users, Some Say

Some iPhone 4 users are reporting that their Apple smartphones appear to be taking pictures of them without their knowledge, then displaying these mysteriously snapped photos during FaceTime calls.

Continue reading at HuffPo >

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See Also:

• Here's Why Google Is Right To Seize Control Over Android
• One-Third Of Teens Plan To Buy An iPhone Soon
• iPad 2 Sales Pegged At ~2.5 Million Units For March

Creepy iPhone Glitch Takes Secret Photos Of Users, Some Say

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