Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

MicroHoo: BoomTown's Favorite Email Haiku Analysis

haiku

BoomTown gets a lot of emails from Web players, big and small, commenting or, more typically, griping on whatever tech topic is hot that day.

And yesterday, after Microsoft (MSFT) abandoned its takeover bid for Yahoo (YHOO), it was like Christmas in July–our mailbox was packed.

But one stood out above all, from a person who shall remain nameless. This person has been around the block so much, he/she could be an Internet beat cop.

Like some Web 2.0 haiku combined with David Mamet-like dialogue, it encapsulates the situation going forward better than I ever could.

(By the way, for those needing a key: YHOO and Y is Yahoo; NWS is News Corp.; FIM is Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corp.; GOOG is Google; MSFT is Microsoft; Jerry is Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.)

Here’s the note:

Big drop in stock Monday (yhoo)
Simultaneous negotiations between y+nws, y+aol, y+goog
NWS+MSFT (nws trying to punt FIM to someone)
MSFT+Facebook

Then:
Y gets deal w/someone and msft comes back with an alternative.
That’s if Jerry survives the onslaught.”

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald