Peter Kafka

News Byte

Harvey Geller, Universal Music Group’s Top Lawyer, Is Out

Peter Kafka in Media on May 16 at 11:17 am PT

Harvey Geller, Universal Music Group’s longtime lawyer, left the company earlier this week. A person familiar with Universal said Geller was now headed for another job but didn’t have other details. His name will be familiar to many digital-media companies, since he often led fierce and sustained battles against them on behalf of the world’s biggest music label.

News Byte

Cannes Ad Conference Roars for Twitter’s Jack Dorsey

Peter Kafka in Media on May 15 at 7:02 am PT

The Cannes Lions, the people who put on a giant advertising trade show every year in France, have named Twitter’s Jack Dorsey as their “Media Person of The Year.” The honorific comes as Twitter has begun ramping up its ad-selling efforts. For context: Previous winners include Google’s Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

News Byte

“Cross-Device” Ad Tracker Drawbridge Rounds Up $6.5 Million From Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins

Peter Kafka in Media on May 10 at 9:30 am PT

Drawbridge, an ad tech start-up founded by AdMob engineer Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, has raised $6.5 million from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer. Drawbridge says it can help marketers target potential customers by tracking them as they move around from device to device — like from a laptop to an iPhone. Sivaramakrishnan put in six months at Google after it acquired AdMob, before starting her own company.

News Byte

Washington Post Finishes Digg Deal

Peter Kafka in Media on May 10 at 4:00 am PT

The Washington Post has closed its deal to acquire some of Digg’s technology staff, who will go to work for SocialCode, a Washington Post subsdiary that helps marketers buy ads on Facebook and Twitter. AllThingsD had previously reported that the Digg hires would work alongside the team that built the paper’s Social Reader; that team works for WaPo Labs, a different subsidiary.