Like many a geek–and after a decade away–I’m headed to South by Southwest later this week.

To get in the mood for the well-known multimedia festival in Austin, here’s one of the films making its debut this coming weekend.

It’s called “Attack the Block,” and is about a teen gang fighting an alien invasion. Plus, it has the best tag line ever: “Inner City Versus Outer Space.”

Which is just about how I am feeling about SXSW!

In any case, despite my lack of hipster cred, I will be there for a party hosted by WordPress with drinks by The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and All Things Digital on Friday, as well as to interview Flipboard Co-founder and CEO Mike McCue on Saturday in an afternoon session with the subtitle: “Game-Changer or Passing Fad?”

NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes and The Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret will also be at SXSW, so expect plenty of coverage from Texas.

Until then, enjoy this movie trailer, y’all:

Today, All Things Digital made it onto Ad Age’s Digital A-List, which also includes Groupon, Buddy Media and Virgin America.

BoomTown loves Virgin America’s digital stuff (plus the hip food) .

Actually, Ad Age’s Nat Ives was very nice to us too, nailing what we’re about:

“All Things D has become a particular sort of powerhouse in the overheated space devoted to tech news. It’s part of Dow Jones, so it’s got that gravitas. But it’s got the speed and humor of a blog.”

Yes, quick and funny and very heavy–that pretty much sums up ATD.

You can read it all here.

Here’s what’s happening at Myspace, the troubled social networking site owned by News Corp.:

It’s for sale, as has been widely reported, along with that intent being declared recently by top company execs.

It’s hired Allen & Co. to sort out potential buyers and other options, as has also been reported.

It’s hardly begun the process and is pretty much at square one, which means making lists, sorting out inquiries both crazy and valid and lining up its proverbial ducks for Myspace.

What it’s not doing is taking bids via press release, as happened in a decidedly odd fashion last week when MocoSpace, a Boston-based mobile social networking site, issued one.

Titled “MocoSpace Reveals Itself As Interested Party to Potentially Acquire Myspace,” the look-at-me attempt to suck up some attention from the media was riveting and appalling at the same time.

“MocoSpace, the largest entertainment destination on the mobile Internet, is today announcing their interest in acquiring Myspace from News Corp.,” read the press release.

And, of course, in the email from its PR rep: “Their CEO [Justin Siegel] is revealing their interest and is available to chat with you to discuss why.”

While an amusing tactic, All Things Digital declined the generous offer.

Soon enough came another PR entreaty: “Wanted to provide the update that today Newscorp contacted MocoSpace and they are now in conversation.”

Oh, really? So, BoomTown phoned some sources there close to the situation and found them very perplexed at that characterization.

One source laughed at the gumption behind the MocoSpace press release, although added that the company was very much wanting to dispose of Myspace in the best possible way.

“No legitimate offers ignored,” said the source, who said a sale was more likely than bringing in new investors to recapitalize it. “But nothing has happened yet.”

Another source noted that the company had only sent an acknowledgement to MocoSpace, as it did for anyone who expressed any interest.

MocoSpace was kind enough to send me these emails, including one from News Corp. deal exec Jack Kennedy, which was entirely rote and referred Siegel to Allen & Co. “to fill you in w/respect to how the process may develop.”

Added another source: “Nobody at this point that can be considered ‘in conversation.’”

Oops!

Thus, more email spin from MocoSpace PR: “We never said that Newscorp contacted MocoSpace first. After MocoSpace released their statement, Justin Siegel did receive an email from Newscorp.”

And: “It seems that you may have misunderstood my email when I said they were ‘in conversation.’ I simply meant that after MocoSpace made their intention public, Newscorp did contact them–hence ‘in conversation.’

And: “I did not mean to imply that they were in any sort of negotiating conversation–if that is something that you took from the email, it was an assumption, and I am sorry for any confusion in the wording there.”

How ever could I be confused after all this mishegas?

Finally, Siegel weighed in via email, noting in part:

“It’s been brought to my attention that there’s some confusion and frustration….In addition, I’d like to clarify that this was/is not a publicity stunt. We made our interest in MySpace public. The interest it’s generated is surprising. To every person I’ve spoken to directly, I’ve made it clear that I’ve had no direct conversation with either MySpace or Newscorp regarding the sale.”

Like I said, no sale. Yet.

In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news and opinion sites.

As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–who was derided by some when she co-founded the left-leaning site in 2005 with investor and well-known communications exec Kenneth Lerer–will become president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group within AOL.

The deal was signed late this afternoon, and the board of directors of each company and shareholders of the privately held Huffington Post have approved the transaction.

In an exclusive video interview BoomTown conducted earlier today in Dallas, just before Super Bowl XLV, both Armstrong and Huffington were jovial that the whirlwind deal, begun in November, actually worked out so quickly.

Perhaps giddy, they hit upon a common motto:

“One plus one equals 11.”

Get it? One and one next to each other is the number 11!

Let’s move on, shall we?

AOL said it is expected to close in the late-first or early-second quarter of 2011.

Once culminated, it will put Huffington in charge of all AOL content and other properties, including well-known names such as Engadget, Moviefone, MapQuest and TechCrunch.

She said she plans to move to New York from Los Angeles, although she will also maintain her longtime Brentwood home there.

And content for all these sites will be integrated deeply into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.

More to the point, the flashy acquisition–which essentially came together in less than two weeks in January–will become the linchpin of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse.

For AOL, the deal gives it a popular branded site that is very good at generating lots of page views and impressions very efficiently–which is the company’s whole thrust these days.

That means lots more ad inventory to sell and an injection of content talent, giving AOL the scale it desperately needs.

The move also obviously gives AOL a much-needed editorial identity and cohesion, which it doesn’t really have.

In fact, many think AOL needs a rallying point to bring clarity to its hodgepodge of recent acquisitions that all center on the notion that a strong company has yet to emerge in the premium content space.

Here is a mock-up of the front page of AOL tonight (click on it to make it larger):

While it all makes for a riveting narrative by the charming Armstrong, AOL still has not delivered the business turnaround promised after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009.

Wall Street, which has given Armstrong a lot of rope, has become more impatient of late to see results–especially more robust increases in its display advertising business, as its access business dies off–after AOL spun off from Time Warner in 2009.

In its quarterly report last week, AOL reported earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $596 million.

But, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

The bigger picture is that Armstrong’s turnaround is still in progress. Ad revenue was down 29 percent in the last quarter, although that number is worse than it looks. A big chunk of the decline comes from moves AOL has intentionally made that will cut revenue in the short run in return for more profitable sales down the road.

A more representative data set for Armstrong are his display ad sales, which are down 14 percent overall and eight percent in the U.S..

The bad news is that the rest of the Web ad industry is well into rebound mode; the good news is that AOL has trained Wall Street to expect numbers like these. If you’re waiting to see positive sales numbers, Armstrong said during AOL’s earnings call this morning, wait until the second half of this year.

In any case, the move is a good one for the Huffington Post since it will vault it to the next level of growth.

Other companies, such as Yahoo and NBC Universal, had looked at the company as a purchase target, and many expected it to eventually sell out to a larger company.

Sources close to the Huffington Post said that that outcome seemed the most likely, and the recent expansion of the site and its audience made it a good time to do a deal now.

Talks with Yahoo last year went nowhere, sources said, but Armstrong was not as slow to act.

Indeed, the actual deal happened quickly, said Armstrong and Huffington in a video interview with BoomTown earlier today (which you can see here).

The pair started talking in early November of last year at the Quadrangle Conference in New York and continued their discussions through the holidays.

Armstrong made the official offer to Huffington by phone in January, while she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he was snowed in in New York.

Five time multiple to the Huffington Post’s upward of $60 million in expected revenue for the coming year, and nearly 10 times the $31 million for 2010, the offer was accepted quickly.

AOL used cash for $300 million of the purchase and $15 million in stock for the rest.

“The idea of turning a fire hose of traffic onto our content made enormous sense,” said one person close to the situation. “Everything is changing so fast, it seemed like the time was right.”

An IPO was also considered for the Huffington Post, sources said. But since the site only recently moved into profitability–although barely–such an event would have been farther out.

That’s despite the fact that the Huffington Post has seen fast-growing traffic and influence, spurred in part by Huffington’s larger-than-life persona in both the mainstream media and blogosphere.

The wide-ranging site–which has added a number of content areas in recent years beyond its flagship political offering–currently has almost 26 million unique monthly visitors, according to recent stats, moving in close range to established news organizations such as the New York Times.

That kind of success seemed unlikely when the Huffington Post launched on May 9, 2005, positioning itself as as a liberal counterweight to the popular right-leaning Drudge Report.

But the Huffington Post’s heady mix of celebrity bloggers, personality and voice, as well as aggressive curation of links from other sites, quickly caught on.

To fund its efforts, the New York-based online media company has raised $37 million from angel investors such as Lerer–the largest individual shareholder, followed closely by Huffington–and venture firms such as Greycroft Partners, Softbank Capital and Oak Investment Partners.

The growth has not been without controversy around issues such as lack of payments to bloggers who contribute and accusations that the site uses too much content from other Web sources when linking.

And Huffington herself has also been a lightning rod, which has been both positive and negative for the site.

But, there is no question she is one of the Web’s most prominent players, along with writing books, appearing on television frequently and being a fixture at high-profile events in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

That includes a never-ending panoply of parties that feature a potent mix of movie stars, corporate poo-bahs, glad-handing politicians and lots of journalists from all over the media.

In fact, full disclosure, I was at one of those parties this past weekend for actor Colin Firth and others involved in the making of the Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech.” (Apropos of nothing, actor Helena Bonham Carter is as smart as you would expect, but much more delicate.)

As part of the AOL deal, CEO Eric Hippeau–who has been integral to professionalizing the business and will be joining Lerer Ventures–and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman will leave the Huffington Post.

Ironically, Coleman was replaced by Armstrong as head of ad sales at AOL after he took over as CEO. Coleman got a big payout and will now apparently get another.

But the rest of the 200 Huffington Post employees are moving over to AOL with Huffington, who Armstrong hopes will be the company’s ace in the content hole going forward.

There are likely to be changes to come too at AOL, within weeks, especially in its content-side management and site staffs.

AOL provided some quotes in support of the deal from prominent Internet figures who know Huffington well.

“Arianna is one of the preeminent authors and editors of our time, and Tim has a remarkable track record of business success,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “Bringing them together creates tremendous potential for AOL.”

And Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said:

“Editorial vision and leadership are essential in order to transmute our shared cacophony of voices into a valuable dialogue. Arianna’s expertise, empathy, and entrepreneurial enthusiasm forms a kind of alchemy turning mere words and phrases into powerful expressions of humanity.”

Inter-Internet harmony: How sweet!

Here is the official press release, with all the details, but there is also an 8 am ET AOL conference call tomorrow:

AOL AGREES TO ACQUIRE THE HUFFINGTON POST

Acquisition Will Solidify AOL’s Strategy of Creating a Premier Content Network With Local, National and International Reach

Arianna Huffington To Lead Newly Formed The Huffington Post Media Group Which Will Integrate All Huffington Post and AOL Content, Including News, Tech, Women, Local, Multicultural, Entertainment, Video, Community, and More

The New Combined Media Group Will Reach 117 Million Americans and 270 Million Globally

Group Uniquely Positioned To Redefine the Future of Brand Advertising and Marketing For an Engaged and Influential Audience

New York, NY–February 7, 2011–AOL Inc. [NYSE:AOL] announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.

The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age–leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.

The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.

As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

“The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.”

Armstrong continued, “Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company.”

“This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us,” said Huffington. “The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years–though now at light speed–by combining with AOL. Our readers will still be able to come to the Huffington Post at the same URL, and find all the same content they’ve grown to love, plus a lot more–more local, more tech, more entertainment, more finance, and lots more video. We are fusing a legendary and powerful new media brand with a vibrant, innovative news organization, known for its distinctive voice, a highly engaged audience, an expertise in community-building, and a track record for demystifying the news and putting flesh and blood on the data while drawing our audience into the conversation.”

Huffington continued, “By uniting AOL and The Huffington Post, we are creating one of the largest destinations for smart content and community on the Internet. And we intend to keep making it better and better.”

Kenneth Lerer, The Huffington Post’s Co-Founder and Chairman, said, “The Huffington Post team has created a potent brand with the proven track record of knowing how to grow traffic, inform and entertain its readers and build a one-of-a-kind online community. Add that to the powerful scale and resources of AOL and you have the perfect combination for today and the future. Together these two companies will be a premier online content provider. From local citizen reporting through AOL’s Patch, to The Huffington Post’s national reporting on politics, business and culture, consumers will have access to everything they want whenever they want it.”

AOL has agreed to purchase The Huffington Post for $315 million, approximately $300 million of which will be paid in cash funded from cash on hand. The Huffington Post is privately owned by its two cofounders, as well as a group of investors. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of government approvals. The boards of directors of each company and shareholders of The Huffington Post have approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter 2011.

The Huffington Post over-indexes on educated, affluent users, reaching the key decision makers in C-suites around the globe. The Huffington Post speaks to this influential audience via a host of prominent voices on its group blog. Among those who have blogged on The Huffington Post are: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Larry Page, Diane Sawyer, Buzz Aldrin, Nora Ephron, Bill Maher, Madeleine Albright, Robert Redford, Katie Couric, Neil Young, Rahm Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Al Franken, Ari Emanuel, Harry Shearer, Senator John Kerry, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Madonna, Lawrence Summers, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Craig Newmark, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Russell Simmons, Sean Penn, Bill Gates, Norman Lear, Charlie Rose, Elizabeth Warren, Tavis Smiley, Sheryl Sandberg, George Clooney, and former President Bill Clinton. And the audience speaks back, generating four million comments a month***.

The Huffington Post’s affluent, influential audience, that is growing at a rate of 22 percent (December 2009 vs. December 2010)****, when combined with AOL’s massive scale, video offerings and local expertise, will represent an incredibly desirable demographic for a broad range of advertising partners across the board.

And here is Armstrong’s internal memo to the AOL staff:

AOLers,

We are taking another major step in the comeback of AOL. Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet. We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world–The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet.

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader–one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information. Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience. By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable–social, local, video, mobile and tablet.

The Huffington Post is core to our strategy and our 80:80:80 focus–80% of domestic spending is done by women, 80% of commerce happens locally and 80% of considered purchases are driven by influencers. The influencer part of the strategy is important and will be potent.

The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women’s content. In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone. Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people–the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information. Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space.

Arianna Huffington is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Internet space and someone that is even more successful in building communities and relationships in every corner of the globe. The Huffington Post and Arianna have created a company that has partnered with the most successful and well-known leaders in all aspects of society that touch important topics to give consumers direct access to the most influential decision makers and community leaders.

This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more. This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post. Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market:

* Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

* The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet. It grew 22% last year–that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% – and 15x as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

* Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.

* AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

* Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way.

To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group. Within this group will be AOL Media, AOL Local & Mapping, AOL Search and our new friends at The Huffington Post. We will continue operating the towns structure, AOL.com and HuffingtonPost.com.

I’m thrilled to announce that Arianna Huffington will join AOL’s executive team as President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. We have asked Jon Brod to lead the overall operational integration on the AOL side of the combined entities. Jon will lead the local group integration and work closely with David Eun and the teams in AOL Media. We will work quickly with The Huffington Post to create a combined organizational design to coincide with the deal closing. While we wait for the required regulatory reviews to be completed and the transaction to close before implementing the design, we will move very quickly to plan the details of the integration of the two companies. To this end, we will announce the new organizational structure as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we will continue creating great content and products for our consumers within the town structure and stay laser-focused on the aggressive goals we have set for our winter luge. We are on the right track and will continue our weekly operating cadence and town structure to drive successful results against our company goals.

Here’s a special message for all of you we taped to welcome The Huffington Post and Arianna to our AOL Family:

http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2011/02/aol-agrees-buy-huffington-post

And of course we wanted to welcome Arianna to our “You’ve Got” video of the day–check her out on AOL.com.

We will be holding a company all hands meeting to address your questions related to today’s exciting news. We will video conference from our New York office on the 6th Floor at 9:30 AM ET and will be joined by Arianna Huffington and key executives from her organization. We will also be holding a call for our west coast offices at 2:00 PM ET and for our Patch offices at 2:45 PM ET. See below for meeting info (conference rooms will be sent out shortly).

AOL is playing to win…and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet. Let’s go get it done.

–TA

(More full disclosure: As has been previously reported by MediaMemo, All Things Digital had the briefest and most preliminary of discussions with Armstrong about moving to AOL last year, while exploring several other options. All’s well that ended well: We stayed at Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.)

The first extension of the event, it produced some very newsy sessions. We’ll be posting them all.

Today, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse talks about battling the leaders for dominance among wireless carriers.

It’s not easy being No. 3, but Hesse has tried to mind the gap by beefing up Sprint’s customer service and investing in the prepaid sector to attract a wider audience during the economic downturn. Going forward, Sprint looks to its 4G strategy for growth through its ownership stake in WiMax-provider Clearwire.

Here’s the video of the Hesse interview with Walt Mossberg:

Next up: Glenn Lurie, the man who brought the Apple iPhone to AT&T (for better and worse).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101227/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-sprint-nextels-dan-hesse/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101227/when-you-wish-upon-a-week-off-and-yet-here-i-am-at-disney-world/ http://allthingsd.com/20101227/when-you-wish-upon-a-week-off-and-yet-here-i-am-at-disney-world/#comments Mon, 27 Dec 2010 08:41:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39012

To say BoomTown is not a person who likes to hear when I arrive at a vacation spot, “Have a magical day,” is an understatement.

In fact, if I were a Disney character, I would be an unholy mash-up of Cruella de Vil, Grumpy and Scrooge McDuck.

Yet, here I am for the rest of the week–after just barely escaping snow prison in New York–at Disney World in Florida, with the wife and kids and a lot of preternaturally peppy folks from all over the world.

In other words, it’s a small world after all, instead of just a smaller Yahoo via layoffs and exec departures. Or, Pirates of the Caribbean and not Pirates of Silicon Valley.

You get the idea.

(Although since Walt Mossberg and I will be interviewing Disney CEO Robert Iger at D: All Things Digital, our ninth conference in June of next year, it’s kind of work-related.)

In any case, I won’t be posting much–except for putting up the last of the D: Dive Into Mobile full videos–until a week from now.

But, all week, All Things Digital writers will be weighing in on the year past and the one ahead, starting with MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka later today.

When I return, I’ll be setting the stage for the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (my kind of theme park!), where we will be putting on an afternoon of interviews with big names in tech for D@CES.

After that, it’s right into the expected move of Apple iPhone to Verizon and more, since the tech parade–just like the Electrical Parade on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom–never seems to stop.

So, until 2011, have a magical day. And I mean that in the Cruella-ist way.

That’s because, here’s a video of Disney World 3D in Google Earth that is already causing me to freak out:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101227/when-you-wish-upon-a-week-off-and-yet-here-i-am-at-disney-world/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:44:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38810

In one memorable episode of the famous old short films “The Little Rascals,” after not getting invited to a party, the Our Gang little dudes decided to form their own group, comically called “The He-Man Woman-Haters Club.”

In other words: No girls allowed!

While it was wink-wink cute when Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat huffed and puffed about keeping out Darla–which they never ever could do–back in the last century, it’s not quite as adorkable when it comes to the boards of all the major Web 2.0 hotshots these days.

That would be Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare, none of which have any women as directors.

As in zero.

What’s most remarkable is that most of these start-ups are run by what I consider enlightened and open-minded entrepreneurs, mostly young enough to be part of a generation more inclined to value equality and diversity in the workplace.

In addition, each of these companies has a massive base of women consumers, in some cases well over 50 percent of its audience.

Thus, it would seem logical that in casting about for those to help guide these companies, one or two women leaders might slip in.

To be fair, it’s not for lack of trying, but of completion, as was the case with Twitter’s recent addition of three new board members.

They were longtime Silicon Valley exec Peter Currie, Flipboard CEO and co-founder Mike McCue and former DoubleClick leader David Rosenblatt.

All are deeply qualified for the Twitter board, which is obviously prepping for its next stage of growth and maturity.

But in its search, the San Francisco microblogging site did not manage to cast the net quite wide enough.

While sources said at least one prominent online woman exec was considered, there were some legitimate issues with her appointment, and it was not completed.

Still, one might imagine Twitter could have tried harder to find other workable choices.

Currently, the Twitter board is made up of the new trio, as well as Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, CEO Dick Costolo and co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey.

Things are not any better over at Facebook, which has several prominent women execs running the show, most especially its high-profile COO Sheryl Sandberg.

But, inexplicably, though she does attend board meetings, she is not yet a director of Facebook, nor is any other woman.

In fact, here is Sandberg on topic at a recent TED event for women, in an eloquent speech titled “Why We Have So Few Women Leaders”:

Instead, the Facebook board is all men, all the time, composed of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, prominent techie and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Washington Post head Don Graham.

It is no better at three of the most prominent recent Web 2.0 start-ups, which one source attributes to the lack of woman VCs, who are often the first board members after major investment rounds.

At Zynga, the hot social gaming company in San Francisco, it continues, with an all-male board, despite a very heavily female audience for its casual social games.

That would be co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus, COO Owen Van Natta, investor Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, investor Reid Hoffman and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group.

The same is true at woman-targeted–spas, spas and more spas–social buying site Groupon, which has an unusually large board for a start-up and made up of–as per usual–all men.

The list: Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason, Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy, former AT&T President and COO John Walter, New Enterprise Associates’ Harry Weller and Peter Barris, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis, 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried and early investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.

And, much smaller, is Foursquare’s board, which is the trio of co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger.

New investors–Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures’ Bryce Roberts–have observer status and both are, needless to say, dudes.

There is no question it is tough to make sure there is a good balance of qualified women leaders to men in tech–it is an issue we wrestle with every single year for the program of speakers at our own All Things Digital conference, although we are most excellent on this issue on our Web site and conference staff.

But it can be done, especially at public tech companies. Google has two women on its board of nine directors; Yahoo has three of 10; even Oracle has two of a dozen.

But a grand total of zero at the leading companies of Web 2.0 is not just a coincidence.

It’s a shame.

Tomorrow, BoomTown will post a list of great women who would be superb directors for any of these companies, but until then, let’s not follow in Spanky’s steps:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/the-men-and-no-women-of-web-2-0-boards-boomtowns-talking-to-you-twitter-facebook-zynga-groupon-and-foursquare/feed/ 60 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/theres-still-time-to-take-the-atd-survey-who-are-the-10-most-interesting-people-in-tech-in-2010/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/theres-still-time-to-take-the-atd-survey-who-are-the-10-most-interesting-people-in-tech-in-2010/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:05:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38790

Last week, BoomTown posted a survey–titled “Who Are the 10 Most Interesting People in Tech in 2010?”–asking for readers’ choices.

We have gotten a cornucopia of responses so far, but All Things Digital is running the poll one more week.

We’ll publish the winners as part of our year-in-review postings before 2011 dawns and we get a whole new passel of digital characters to kick around.

Thus, here’s a whole bunch of choices below for your selection–pick only one, or add to the list.

Also say why you did so and we’ll publish the top 10 next week (and sorry the survey looks jammed).

If you have done the survey already, you cannot do another:

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/theres-still-time-to-take-the-atd-survey-who-are-the-10-most-interesting-people-in-tech-in-2010/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101216/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-spotifys-daniel-ek/ http://allthingsd.com/20101216/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-spotifys-daniel-ek/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:05:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38664 As promised, All Things Digital will be publishing the full videos of the interviews we did last week at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco.

The first extension of the event, it produced some very newsy sessions. We’ll be posting them all this week and next.

And today, here’s Spotify’s Daniel Ek (pictured here) singing for his supper.

Well, not in the U.S. as yet, where the Swedish CEO and co-founder of the innovative streaming music service has not been able to make good on his promise to strike deals with music labels, which fear the popularity of Spotify could cut back on sales of CDs and digital downloads.

In Europe, the popular service offers unlimited tracks for free, or users can subscribe for an advertising-free version.

Ek talks about all this and more in his interview with MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka.

Here’s the video:

Next up: Flipboard’s Mike McCue (who just joined the Twitter board).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101216/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-spotifys-daniel-ek/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101215/flipboard-caves-to-user-demand-adds-rss-feeds-and-flickr-and-web-previews/ http://allthingsd.com/20101215/flipboard-caves-to-user-demand-adds-rss-feeds-and-flickr-and-web-previews/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:01:05 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=1336 Flipboard, the social content display application for the iPad, is releasing an update tonight that adds users’ No. 1 most-requested feature: RSS feeds.

Flipboard had resisted adding feeds because its mission is to curate content through social channels. However, said co-founder Evan Doll, the company decided Google Reader wouldn’t be too much of a compromise, because it is synched through the cloud and has social sharing features.

Also, now that Flipboard has access to RSS feeds, it will display the full text of many articles when they are shared by a Flipboard user’s contacts on Facebook or Twitter.

(If publishers provide only excerpts in their RSS feeds, that’s all Flipboard users will get. If publishers are part of Flipboard’s Pages program, their stories will be displayed in specially formatted “magazinified” pages no matter where they appear in the app.)

(Full disclosure: All Things Digital is a beta partner in the program.)

Flipboard is also adding Flickr feeds, something that had long been on the company’s list, said Doll. For users who curate their Flickr contacts and favorite pictures, viewing them on Flipboard will be a “personal life magazine,” as Doll put it.

The other big change Flipboard is making is that it will load full Web pages as soon as a user clicks on a story, rather than asking users to take the extra step of clicking a “read on Web” button.

And for good measure, Flipboard will now allow readers to update Facebook and Twitter (as pictured), rather than just consume their content.

Now that Flipboard has caved and added RSS feeds to its app, I asked Doll if it would ever add search to complement social discovery.

“That’s a great question,” he said, before not really answering it.

Flipboard launched last July and has received wide acclaim, including being named Apple’s top iPad app of 2010. However, it has not yet disclosed user numbers.

For more on Flipboard, see our D:Dive Into Mobile interview with CEO Mike McCue (who was also named to Twitter’s board today).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101215/flipboard-caves-to-user-demand-adds-rss-feeds-and-flickr-and-web-previews/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101215/dces-what-happens-to-twitters-dick-costolo-in-vegas-stays-on-atd/ http://allthingsd.com/20101215/dces-what-happens-to-twitters-dick-costolo-in-vegas-stays-on-atd/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:10:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38521

After our successful D: Dive Into Mobile conference last week, the D: All Things Digital train keeps chugging away and is now headed to Las Vegas just after the new year.

There, we will do a second D event at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will take place from January 6 to 9, 2011.

It will, natch, be focused on the consumer electronics arena, and the big trends impacting it.

Unlike our other conferences, the D@CES program is only one afternoon, on Friday, January 7, at the Venetian’s Marcello ballroom, followed by a party at the hotel’s V Bar.

Last year’s tech execs onstage were Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin.

This year, the trio will be: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and Dean Hachamovitch, who heads the Internet Explorer team within the Windows unit at Microsoft.

Costolo (pictured here), a longtime entrepreneur, took over from co-founder Evan Williams earlier this year and is charged with turning the microblogging service into a real-live boy, um, company.

Twitter is making a big push into the mainstream and also wants to be present for all the many devices shown at CES.

BoomTown will be grilling Costolo. Well done, I hope!

Nvidia’s Huang (pictured here) is leading a big change for the company. Although known for its PC graphics chips, Nvidia is shifting an increasing amount of focus to other areas, such as mobile chips with its Tegra line.

Huang will be interviewed by Mobilized’s Ina Fried.

Walt Mossberg will take on Hachamovitch (pictured below), who heads the IE team at Microsoft.

Well known for sporting a different black shirt featuring a different saying made up of the IE logo and letters at every keynote speech, he has been at the software giant since 1990.

We thought bringing his voice was important, since Hachamovitch has been focusing on privacy using the browser, an increasingly key topic in tech.

D@CES is invitation only, but if you want to go, email me at Kara@AllThingsD.com and I will send an invite, as long as supplies last.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101215/dces-what-happens-to-twitters-dick-costolo-in-vegas-stays-on-atd/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101214/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-google-androids-andy-rubin/ http://allthingsd.com/20101214/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-google-androids-andy-rubin/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:10:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38514 As promised, All Things Digital will be publishing the full videos of the interviews we did last week at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco.

The first extension of the event, it produced some very newsy sessions. We’ll be posting them all this week and next.

Here’s the first interview on opening night with Google Android head Andy Rubin (pictured here), conducted by Walt Mossberg and me.

It’s full of new stuff, such as the fact that Android is profitable (exactly how profitable, Rubin declined to say) and that he thought Google’s ubiquity strategy for its smartphone operating system was more akin to that of Linux than Microsoft in computers.

Rubin also commented on Google’s shift from its one-time lofty declaration to change the way mobile devices are sold to its obviously now-cozy relationship with wireless carriers.

And he complimented Apple and its iPhone, Android’s main rival.

As BoomTown said, much to see, including a look at the new Nexus S and a $10,000 Android-based Motorola demo tablet.

Here’s the video:

Next up: Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101214/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-google-androids-andy-rubin/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101213/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-rims-mike-lazaridis/ http://allthingsd.com/20101213/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-rims-mike-lazaridis/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:00:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38470 As promised, All Things Digital will begin publishing the full videos of the interviews we did last week at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco.

The first extension of the event, it produced some very newsy sessions. We’ll be posting them all week and next.

That includes this corker with Research in Motion’s co-CEO and co-founder Mike Lazaridis (pictured here).

In it, he did not quite answer our questions about why RIM’s flagship BlackBerry seems to have missed a step in the highly competitive smartphone wars compared to its new and more innovative rivals, Apple’s iPhone and Google Android.

While he did make a global argument, Lazaridis also seemed to be putting his big bet on the new PlayBook tablet the Canadian company is launching, as well as RIM’s reputation for security and reliability.

Here’s the full video of the interview, which Lazaridis did with Walt Mossberg and me:

Up tomorrow: Google’s Android kingpin, Andy Rubin!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-rims-mike-lazaridis/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20101213/who-are-the-10-most-interesting-people-in-tech-in-2010/ http://allthingsd.com/20101213/who-are-the-10-most-interesting-people-in-tech-in-2010/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:07:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38406

Last week, Barbara Walters did her annual television show “The 10 Most Fascinating People” of the past year.

Among the riveting folks that the veteran ABC interviewer sat down with were the inevitable Betty White and the unbearable cast from “Jersey Shore” explaining “smushing,” which you can watch below.

Also stuffed on the list–although without the requisite chat with Walters–was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, mostly it seemed for starring in the social networking movie not much about his life.

Okay, BoomTown will bite on that one and, so inspired, it seems that it’s time for our own such list at All Things Digital.

Thus, here’s a whole bunch of choices below for your selection–pick one only, or add to the list.

Also say why you did so and we’ll publish the winners in two weeks (and sorry the survey looks jammed, but we’re working on a redesign!):

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/who-are-the-10-most-interesting-people-in-tech-in-2010/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20101210/full-disclosure-about-full-disclosure-in-blogs/ http://allthingsd.com/20101210/full-disclosure-about-full-disclosure-in-blogs/#comments Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:02:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38399

Earlier this week, the Knight Digital Media Center penned a post on the full disclosure policy of All Things Digital.

Titled “Transparency for Journalists: AllThingsD Shows What It Can Look Like,” it’s a very nice review of what we do on the site.

“What I like about these statements is that they aren’t cookie-cutter corpspeak or legalese. They’re human–and even humorous–revelations,” wrote Amy Gahran. “Each writer gets to decide which topics she or he wants to cover, and how. This can get pretty personal, and that’s a good thing. “

We think so too at ATD, which is why you should check in with a whole new bunch of full disclosures we have posted recently, since adding a half-dozen new staffers.

You can click in from our About Us page to read a disclosure penned by each person on the site with editorial responsibilities.

It’s important to us to have them there, as we feel that being transparent and honest to readers is the first step in our commitment to fairness, accuracy and ethical standards.

The Knight story had some good advice at the bottom of its report for crafting a solid disclosure policy:

Publish your key disclosures in one place.

By publishing the ethics statements as static pages, they’re not only easier for readers to find–they’re easier for search engines to index and rank. Transparency is not just about disclosure, but about visibility (which in the online age entails findability). If you dole out disclosures in dribs and drabs, buried within specific articles or posts, you’re less likely to gain the visibility needed to make transparency effective.

Leave what to disclose up to the individual.

The most effective transparency statements are personal, not cookie-cutter. Don’t require journalists to disclose information that they would prefer to keep private. But similarly, don’t prohibit them from sharing whatever personal information or context they wish to offer. Ultimately, these disclosures are about people, not organizations. Editors and managers can supply examples and encourage good judgment–but if a writer really thinks it’s important to let readers know that he votes Republican, vacations in Brazil, volunteers as an abortion clinic escort, loathes cilantro, or has a favorite Beatle, that’s his business.

Make it easy for journalists to update their statements.

Life goes on–which means life circumstances, current concerns, and personal views constantly evolve. New issues always come up, so a journalists’ transparency statement should be a living document that the journalist can modify at will. Make sure your content management system makes this easy. It’s not a good idea to edit this document daily (that could make you look obsessed with what others think), but it should be revisited at least annually or every few months.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101210/full-disclosure-about-full-disclosure-in-blogs/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101208/when-marc-met-mike-andreessen-interviews-ovitz/ http://allthingsd.com/20101208/when-marc-met-mike-andreessen-interviews-ovitz/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:05:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38289

There is no question that legendary entrepreneur Marc Andreessen is a power player in Silicon Valley.

Nor that Michael Ovitz, who used to be the power player in Hollywood, is one of the people who did most to disrupt the way business was done in the entertainment industry, with his bare-knuckle approach at his groundbreaking Creative Artists Agency.

So, if you put them together, as happened recently at the Sand Hill Road offices of the Andreessen Horowitz venture firm, you get what turned out to be a very interesting discussion.

In fact, Andreessen actually interviewed Ovitz in front of a private audience about his life and philosophies.

BoomTown attended the event, which had been off the record until now, when a video of the talk was provided to All Things Digital.

The pair met up awhile ago, as Ovitz developed an interest in Silicon Valley after his glory days as an über-agent and his fateful stint as a top exec at Disney.

Here’s the video of the full interview, in which he talks about all of that. It’s long, at one hour, but–as you’ll find–quite riveting:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101208/when-marc-met-mike-andreessen-interviews-ovitz/feed/ 16 http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/ http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/#comments Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:00:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38204

Tonight, All Things Digital will debut its first extension of the D: All Things Digital conference, with D: Dive Into Mobile.

The original nickname for the event was “mini-d,” since it is shorter than big-D, focused on one key topic and has a more intimate audience.

But the speakers Walt Mossberg and I have assembled are anything but small on the critical topic of mobile–beginning with tonight’s opening session with Google Android kingpin Andy Rubin.

There is a lot to talk, about from monetization of the ever-popular operating system to its rivalry with the Apple iPhone to its relationship with wireless carriers.

D: Dive Into Mobile continues all day Tuesday, with speakers that include: Dan Hesse, President and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google Ad Products Management head Susan Wojcicki; AT&T Emerging Devices President Glenn Lurie; and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

D: Dive Into Mobile is being held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and, as usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

Along with Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

For more information, click here for D: Dive Into Mobile news and more.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101201/emoney-grand-opening/ http://allthingsd.com/20101201/emoney-grand-opening/#comments Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:28:50 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=11 Welcome to the grand opening of eMoney.

I’m Tricia Duryee, one of the latest additions to All Things Digital. You may know me from the three years I spent at mocoNews, where I wrote about the mobile industry, or before that, as a technology reporter at the Seattle Times. Going forward, I will write about e-commerce and gaming, as well as all sorts of financial machinations.

As you might expect, I will be reporting on some of the more traditional companies in the space, such as Amazon, Walmart, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony.

But there will also be strong emphasis on a handful of start-ups that are currently doing their best to upset the status quo. In this bucket, I see three categories emerging: Virtual goods, social-and-group-buying companies and mobile payments.

The dollars are really starting to ring up in these areas, even after such a short period of time. In just three years, Zynga has signed up 320 million registered users, has hired 1,300 employees and is estimated to have $500 million in 2010 revenues with a roughly $5 billion private-market valuation.

Likewise, the two-year-old Groupon is being sought by Google, which BoomTown’s Kara Swisher reports may offer up to $6 billion to get a foothold in the social-buying business and gain a local sales force across the country.

And finally, mobile will be an increasingly hot topic as consumers use their devices for every part of this value chain–from discovering deals to researching recommendations to substituting their wallet for a phone. Among other topics, there’s a flurry of contenders challenging Visa and MasterCard for its merchant fees, which were estimated to have totaled $7 billion in the U.S. over the past year.

Generally, when I think of this coverage area, I see one central theme: How will people make money, and how will consumers pay? Will games be purchased, or will they be ad-supported? Or, will consumers buy one virtual tractor at a time?

The debate reminds me of what Zynga’s CEO and founder, Mark Pincus, said at a recent event, where Kleiner Perkins announced a new fund dedicated to social.

Said Pincus:

“We are massively under-invested across the board in the ‘user-pay economy.’ There’s been this wrong assumption for first-generation Web services that it has to be free with ads. We believe in a model that is supported by users. That’s not just games and virtual goods. There’s a lot of newly created valuable digital goods and services products.”

What will these new services and products be? Will these new models be sustainable? How will they evolve over time? As I look at how it all adds up, I’ll be relying on a lot of you to tell me the important stories that illustrate how we’ve gotten here and where we are going.

And I’ll be wasting no time, as I immediately jump into one of the busiest times of the years–the holiday shopping season!

Online, of course.

[Photo Credit: donebythehandsofabrokenartist]

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