Bill Campbell

Columbia J-School and Stanford Eng Nab $30M Joint Gift for Media Innovation From Helen Gurley Brown

Kara Swisher in Media on January 30 at 10:00 am PT

Legendary former Cosmo Editor hands over a huge gift to spur new media on both coasts.

Russia's DST Out of Twitter Funding Race, With Kleiner Poised to Take the Deal

Kara Swisher in News on December 6, 2010 at 11:24 am PT

According to sources close to the situation, the aggressive Russian investment outfit DST Global is out of the running to fund Twitter. Instead, the prize is almost certainly going to Kleiner Perkins, the legendary Silicon Valley venture firm of Web 1.0 that has been making a big push of late into the Web 2.0 market. The valuation for the new round–which sources said is well above $150 million–will be from $3.5 billion to $4 billion. There also might be smaller investors in the new round, which could be completed next week.

Here's a Better Name for RockMelt: The FaceBrowser (Plus BoomTown's Two-Dude Video)

Kara Swisher in News on November 8, 2010 at 9:08 am PT

At the end of this video interview with BoomTown about RockMelt–a new social browser that debuted in beta last night–the two founders politely tried to gloss over my calling it a “Facebook browser.” Except, um, it is. Sure, there are Twitter and other news apps present. And I even like the mantra for RockMelt, which “re-imagines the browser around friends, feeds, and sharing.” But that would be–for the most part right now–friends on Facebook, feeds from Facebook and sharing with Facebook.

SEC Won't Let Steve Be

John Paczkowski in News on July 8, 2009 at 9:09 am PT

What happened between Apple’s January 5 disclosure of Steve Jobs’s “hormonal imbalance” and the company’s January 14 announcement that the CEO would be taking a six-month leave of absence? That’s the focus of an ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission probe into Steve Jobs’s health, an investigation that seems to, well, be going nowhere.

SEC Won’t Let Steve Be

John Paczkowski in News on July 8, 2009 at 9:09 am PT

What happened between Apple’s January 5 disclosure of Steve Jobs’s “hormonal imbalance” and the company’s January 14 announcement that the CEO would be taking a six-month leave of absence? That’s the focus of an ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission probe into Steve Jobs’s health, an investigation that seems to, well, be going nowhere.

Google Outside Counsel Clearly Well-Prepared for FTC Fight Over Apple Board Seat–See This Internal Doc

John Paczkowski in News on May 6, 2009 at 10:46 am PT

If the Federal Trade Commission takes issue with Google and Apple’s interlocking boards, Google will be well prepared. Last October, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati–the company’s outside law firm–gave a presentation on this very issue. Ironic, yeah? Click through to read the document in its entirety.

Time to Give Up That Apple Board Seat, Eric

John Paczkowski in News on May 5, 2009 at 3:55 am PT

He had a good run of it, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s stint as an Apple director may be coming to an end. Now that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether the close ties between Apple’s and Google’s boards of directors violate antitrust laws, Schmidt’s seat on the former’s board, which he has held since August 2006, seems more trouble than its worth.