The innovative social travel site Gogobot is unveiling its Apple iPhone app today, which will give users of the service the ability to post from a location immediately and also to see where friends have been.

In an interview with me last week, co-founder and CEO Travis Katz said that the move is an important one for the Silicon Valley start-up, since on-the-go trip recommendations using smartphones have become increasingly important to travelers.

“You live away from your laptop most of your time, and especially on trips,” he said. “But you also want to preserve those experiences.”

The new travel app, which is now only available on the Apple iPhone, populates to Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio, a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations. You can also send postcards from the app — a la Instagram — to your collections.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Katz said Gogobot would eventually build on other mobile platforms, such as Google Android.

The social travel start-up, Gogobot, has launched an eye-catching new feature to its site.

Called Trip Portfolio, Gogobot is likening the offering (which you can see in the image above) to a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations on the fly.

Get it? A travel site and on the fly!

But it seems to be more a way to make sharing pages look a lot like a Web version of Flipboard, the innovative social reading app for the Apple iPad.

“We think this gives people a better way to share the narrative and concept of their trip, rather than just through slideshows,” said Gogobot co-founder and CEO Travis Katz.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Pooh-Bah Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Here’s the official press release from Gogobot about Trip Portfolio:

Gogobot Launches Scrapbooking for the Digital Age

Unique new feature transforms capturing and sharing your vacation via the social graph

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2011 — Gogobot, the fast-growing social travel site that is revolutionizing the way people plan trips by offering users personalized travel recommendations via their social networks, launched today a new and unique feature, the Trip Portfolio. The first of its kind, the Trip Portfolio allows Gogobot users to create beautiful, stylized digital scrapbooks to capture and share all aspects of their travels with friends and families.

“Our travels are important to us, creating memories that are deeply personal and rich with emotion. Until today, however, people have been limited to sharing these memories through online photo albums where the images are preserved, but the context and narrative that gives them meaning is lost. Today, Gogobot takes the world beyond the photo album, launching a revolutionary digital scrapbook that allows users to curate and share all aspects of their travels, packaged into a super user-friendly interactive, crisp and clean design,” said Travis Katz, Gogobot co-founder and CEO.

Called “Collections,” the new feature allows users to share their adventures in a format rich with color and context; an enhanced scrapbook for the digital age. Users can share their photos, reviews and other details about the places they stayed, dined, and traveled from the Gogobot site. The collections also allow users to seamlessly integrate their activities from other social media sites — including their check-ins on Facebook and Foursquare — and professional photos from Gogobot. All of these elements are pages about each place, allowing friends to learn more about the places you visited, see on a map where you were when you caught that sunset, or even make a reservation at the hotel where you stayed. These elements are presented in a clean and elegant format with an interactive map that allows users to share vacations with their social networks in a streamlined, beautifully packaged layout, while making it easy for friends to use this information to plan their own trips.

“Why waste time uploading dozens of untagged, uncaptioned photos? Now you can share all your favorite places and memorable moments in rich detail in half the time. Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio lets you show off the most memorable moments from your trip and helps friends plan their next trip, too,” said Katz.

Closing another chapter on one of the Internet’s most iconic properties, Myspace has been sold to to Specific Media, an advertising network, for $35 million.

Sources close to the situation said the deal is being completed today, although it has not been officially signed. Myspace’s owner, News Corp., will hold on to a very small stake of less than five percent.

[UPDATE: It's official; see the press release and memo to Myspace employees from outgoing CEO Mike Jones below.]

AllThingsD broke news of Specific’s interest in Myspace yesterday.

The price is well below the $100 million that News Corp. had been hoping for, and a chasm away from Myspace’s one-time billion valuation.

The deal includes a halving of Myspace’s staff of 400, as well as other cost cuts. It’s likely Jones and other top staff will remain only for an interim period.

News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 million in 2005, and made that back via a lucrative advertising deal with Google when the social networking site was flying high.

But that was another time — the media giant has been trying to sell the site before the end of its fiscal year, which falls on Thursday, in order to get it off the books.

There were several other bidders in the process, including separate efforts by the two co-founders of Myspace, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson.

More recently, the preferred acquirer was a group that included Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, but it fell apart over a number of issues.

This week, it came down to Specific and also a private equity firm, Golden Gate Capital.

According to a report yesterday in The Wall Street Journal:

Founded in 1999 by Tim Vanderhook and his brothers Chris and Russell, Specific Media helps marketers buy digital ads across the Web, online video, mobile and even the TV. The Irvine, Calif., company got its start brokering ad space for websites and quickly moved into the fast-growing business of collecting and using Web browsing, demographic, geographic and other profile information about consumers to target ads. The company now ranks among the largest online advertising networks in the country, reaching 170.9 million unique U.S. visitors in May, or about 79% of the U.S. Internet users, according to comScore Inc.

A Myspace deal would give the company access to data about Myspace users to be used for ad targeting. It also would transform the firm into a media company with its own ad space to sell instead of simply an online ad technology firm that brokers ad space on behalf of other websites.

Specific Media’s executive team includes knowledge of the inner-workings at Myspace, with two executives who previously worked at Fox Audience Network, News Corp.’s online advertising unit that sold ads for Myspace.

Specific Media has raised more than $110 million in funding, closing a $100 million round of financing from private-equity firm Francisco Partners in 2007. Since then, the company has acquired a couple of digital advertising companies, including online video company Broadband Enterprises and an Amsterdam ad technology company.

Here is the official press release and the memo to Myspace staff from Jones:

From: Mike Jones
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 11:26 AM
To: Myspace All
Subject: IMPORTANT COMPANY NEWS
Importance: High

Myspacers,

Today, we are announcing that Myspace will be acquired by Specific Media, one of the world’s leading online media and advertising platforms. Over the next few days you will be hearing from the team at Specific, including their CEO, Tim Vanderhook, regarding their exciting plans for Myspace and how it fits in with the overall vision of their company.

In conjunction with the deal, we are conducting a series of restructuring initiatives, including a significant reduction in our workforce. I will assist Specific with the transition over the next two months before departing my role as Myspace CEO.

I wanted to take a minute to thank you all for the incredible experience it has been to lead this company and to work closely with all of you over the past several years. While I regret we won’t be working together at Myspace any longer, I am very proud of the work we have done here and believe we have performed with excellence — even under extremely difficult circumstances.

My time here at Myspace represents the most engaging and challenging time of my professional career. I have found our team to be comprised of the best people I have come across in our industry.

You can read the press release below. Once again, thank you for all of your hard work and dedication.

Thanks,

-M

SPECIFIC MEDIA ACQUIRES MYSPACE FROM NEWS CORPORATION

Los Angeles, Calif. — June 29, 2011 — Specific Media, a digital media company, today announced it has acquired Myspace from News Corporation. As part of the agreement, News Corporation will take a minority equity stake in Specific Media. Additional terms of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed.

“Myspace is a recognized leader that has pioneered the social media space. The company has transformed the ways in which audiences discover, consume and engage with content online,” said Tim Vanderhook, Specific Media CEO. “There are many synergies between our companies as we are both focused on enhancing digital media experiences by fueling connections with relevance and interest. We look forward to combining our platforms to drive the next generation of digital innovation.”

Specific Media is an innovative global interactive media company that enables advertisers to connect with consumers in meaningful, impactful and relevant ways. Founded in 1999 by brothers Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook, Specific Media is currently headquartered in Irvine, CA and operates offices around the world.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

It was just supposed to be a three-hour tour, um, quick sale process!

But, like a storm-tossed ship looking for any safe harbor, the Myspace sale is still chugging along, with a deal that continues to be tossed around amongst low-paying and new lesser known buyers who are now in the $20 million to $30 million range, said sources close to the situation.

The price, said others, could go as high as $35 million, but it’s far cry from the $100 million that News Corp. had been aiming for.

As part of the deal, sources said the News Corp. unit will be making significant cuts in staff and costs — up to 50 percent or more — all contingent on the purchaser. The staff cuts are, obviously, directly related to the transaction and the winning bidder.

The media giant might also retain a small minority stake.

The two names — Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital — that are now in the forefront for an acquisition deal that News Corp. hopes to complete by Thursday, its fiscal year end, have not been among the acquirers mentioned previously in the myriad of reports about the deal.

Specific Media — a large, if lesser known, advertising network — seems to be in the lead, said sources. It has been around for a half-decade and has been funded by Francisco Partners.

Golden Gate Capital is a private equity firm with $9 billion under management, which has mostly specialized in turning around companies. It has never invested in a consumer Internet company.

Both companies, sources said, will focus Myspace on music, although it is not clear which rights the site has with music labels will transfer to a new owner.

Until last week, the preferred deal for Myspace centered on an investor group that included Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and in which News Corp. (which also owns this Web site) would retain a large minority ownership stake.

But sources said there were some transactional and legal complexities that made it less attractive and News Corp. opened up the deal talks with others again last week.

Golden Capital and Specific Media emerged most aggressively, although there still remain other interested parties, sources close to the situation said, among them another investor group that includes Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson, one its other co-founder Chris DeWolfe is part of and also interest from the Criterion Capital Partners, which bought AOL’s Bebo social networking site on the cheap a year ago.

But it’s now come down to time constraints and an agreement that can be reached before the end of this month, which is also the end of the media giant’s fiscal year.

In other words, let’s get Myspace off the books for 2012!

How it came to this will likely be the focus of many a business school case. After a spectacular start, Myspace has fallen on hard times both in terms of traffic and advertising revenues.

That’s why the music-focused social networking site has not sat exactly in the catbird’s seat in terms of negotiating leverage.

While there were some rumors last week that News Corp. would close Myspace down, the sale to a small player and the layoffs are the likely outcome.

While that’s cold comfort to its employees, it’s about the best Myspace can hope for right now.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

When the selling of Myspace winds down in the next week or so, it’ll probably attract a spate of comments about what a failure the whole social networking enterprise turned out to be.

And — especially when you recall what a Web phenom the social networking site was before it got blown out of the water by Facebook — it was.

That is, unless you think of the mob of former execs who have worked at the company over time, many of whom have moved on to some more golden opportunities after leaving the News Corp.-owned property.

That includes, most recently and notably, former sales head Michael Barrett, who is about to score big as CEO of AdMeld, which is reportedly in the process of selling to Google for $400 million.

Also a big winner: Former Myspace CEO Owen Van Natta, who was fired from that job in one of its many putsches and who quickly rebounded to a top job at online gaming powerhouse Zynga.

So, while it is one of the more overused memes of Silicon Valley, the “mafia” analogy — which has been applied to fertile entrepreneurial breeding grounds such as PayPal, before its acquisition by eBay — is useful when thinking about Myspace.

It is also a good thing to keep in mind about any tech company that goes off the rails: There might still be a silver lining, even if the start-up never sees the light of day again.

As proof, herein is a list I created after pinging a bunch of former Myspace folks:

Jason Oberfest: Former SVP of business development. Now, VP Ngmoco, which was sold to Japanese gaming giant DeNA for $400 million last year.

Dmitry Shapiro: Former CTO, Myspace Music. Now, at Facebook competitor Altly.

Adam Bain: While at Fox Interactive Media, he ran the ad platform for Myspace. Now, head of sales at Twitter.

Jeff Berman: Former president of sales and marketing. Now, GM of the NFL’s digital media unit.

Jason Hirschhorn: Former co-president and chief product officer. Now, on MGM board, angel investor, and there are rumors of him working on a curation start-up.

Amit Kapur: Former COO. Now, CEO, Gravity, an information filtering service start-up.

Chris DeWolfe: Co-founder and former CEO. Now, CEO, MindJolt, an online gaming roll-up.

Ross Levinsohn: Former president of FIM, he was integral to buying Myspace. Now, EVP of Americas unit, Yahoo.

Mike Lang: Former News Corp. strategy exec also involved in Myspace purchase. Now, CEO, Miramax.

Aber Whitcomb: Former CTO. Now CTO, MindJolt.

Jim Heckman: Former chief strategy officer of FIM. Now, CEO of 5to1, recently sold to Yahoo for $25 million.

Dani Dudeck: Former communications head. Now, PR head at Zynga.

Travis Katz: SVP of international. Now, CEO of Gogobot, a social travel start-up.

Richard Rosenblatt: Former CEO of Intermix Media and Chairman of Myspace, he sold it to News Corp. Now, CEO of Demand Media.

Angela Courtin: Former SVP of marketing. Now, EVP at Aegis Media.

These folks should be on the call list of whoever ends up buying Myspace. Last week, I wrote that an investor group, including Activision head Bobby Kotick, is now in the lead for the deal.

As an update, according to sources, Kotick has gotten clearance from Activision’s major shareholder Vivendi to do the Myspace transaction as a passive personal investment.

According to sources close to the situation, News Corp. is down to one possible investing group in its quest to make lemonade out of the lemon that its Myspace social entertainment hub has become.

In the lastest of many scenarios considered, several sources said its owner, News Corp., will continue to own about 20 percent of Myspace. The main bidder is a dark horse bidding group, which includes Activision Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick as one of the potential investors.

The deal, cautioned sources, is not final and could easily fall apart.

Interestingly, if such a deal is struck, he would apparently be involved as an individual and not for the giant gaming company, and would play no management role in the company.

Kotick would presumably need permission from Activision for such a high-profile investment, even if he played a smaller role.

Kotick’s possible involvement has not been mentioned in previous reports.

Sources said the other possible bidders — including music video service Vevo, a group including Myspace founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe, an internal effort by current CEO Mike Jones, several private equity firms and even myYearbook — mentioned in past reports have not worked out for various reasons.

Vevo had seemed the likeliest winner, but its bid appears to have foundered for now, due to the complex nature of its music label ownership.

It is not clear what the price will be for Myspace, which was once the leading social networking site before the world dis-Liked it for Facebook.

One thing is certain: It is nowhere near the $100 million that News Corp. reportedly sought.

The site — even after an overhaul to focus on entertainment — has recently been losing money and traffic, although it is still a large destination on the Web.

News Corp. declined comment, as did Kotick.

Earlier this week, the online game industry got a jolt of attention after Myspace co-founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe doubled down his investments in the game space. After purchasing MindJolt in early 2010, DeWolfe acquired two more companies this week: SGN, a developer and publisher of social mobile games; and Hallpass Media, a popular free online game network.

Given all the scuttlebutt, here’s the official list of the top 10 online game properties ranked by unique visitors in March, according to comScore.

In first place is Spil Games, the Netherlands-based company that has localized its games around the world. It continues to dominate the charts, attracting nearly 50 million unique visitors last month to its various girl-, teen- and family-focused properties. In second place is GSN Games, a company owned by DIRECTV and Sony Pictures Entertainment, and in third and fourth places, respectively, are well-known players like Electronic Arts and WildTangent.

But Hi5, the former social network that is trying desperately hard to remake itself into a game destination by luring over popular games from Facebook is a surprise at sixth place.

In fact, this marks the company’s debut appearance.

Hi5 put out the list today to make the assertion that the transformation has been a success. Well, sort of. Truthfully, this marks the first time comScore categorized the company as a game network instead of a social network. Still, with 21.7 million unique visitors, it leap-frogged other well-known properties, such as Nickelodeon, Yahoo and MSN.

Here’s the chart:

Photo credit: Wallyg

In an interview, Chris DeWolfe, the former CEO of Myspace who purchased MindJolt early last year, told eMoney it’s about the advertiser.

“The idea is that people should be able to play their games everywhere they want and whenever they want,” DeWolfe said. “With 25 to 30 million unique users, there’s critical mass of users there. We can go to ad agencies and to top media buyers and integrate their brands into our games.”

MindJolt has acquired SGN, a developer and publisher of social mobile games, and Hallpass Media, a popular free online game network.

“We’ve been profitable since day one,” DeWolfe said. “We have a really strong core competency in ad sales. We added the AdJolt platform nine months ago, which we provided to publishers. That bumped revenues by a significant percentage, which made us more profitable.”

He said the acquisitions were paid for through a combination of capital raised from Austin Ventures, some equity and cash from profits. He declined to discuss how much capital had been raised.

While MindJolt has been primarily focused on ad-supported content, it also sees opportunities in selling virtual goods.

“We are big on virtual goods as a revenue stream moving forward, but we didn’t have social games that lent themselves to virtual goods [before the acquisition of Hallpass],” said DeWolfe. “Ninety percent of revenues before came from advertising, but we expect it be 50-50 in the next 18 months.”

When it comes to competing against other powerhouses, such as Electronic Arts and Zynga, DeWolfe said they still have a long way to go.

“We aren’t trying to puff ourselves up and say we are competing with Electronic Arts right now, given their girth and experience and revenue streams. Zynga is a monster, too,” he said. “We are just doing something a little different and focusing equally on all three platforms, and tying them together [in a way] that makes sense.”

Given that this marks DeWolfe’s third acquisition in the space, including his original purchase of MindJolt, is there more coming?

“We have a team of M&A people who are looking at deals. We want to digest these, but to the degree we can buy something and put them under one of our three platforms, we would do that tomorrow,” he said. “We wouldn’t do any major acquisitions in the near future, but smaller ones could be viable in the next month or so.”

So, does a small acquisition rule out Myspace, which also happens to have been put on the market right now by its owner News Corp.? (News Corp. also owns this website.)

“We aren’t willing to talk about any specific acquisition targets at this time,” DeWolfe said. “We’ll see what happens. We are all reading about [the sale of Myspace] like everyone else.”

As part of a roll-up strategy, MindJolt is trying to build a one-stop shop for publishing games across mobile, social and the Web.

In an interview tonight, DeWolfe said Hallpass is great at building games for the Web, and SGN is one of the most well-known brands in mobile gaming with two apps that reached No. 1 in the Apple App Store and another four or five that reached the top 10.

In total, MindJolt is doubling its headcount to 80 employees, and will have offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Buenos Aires.

“We are a profitable company with 25 million unique users that is turning into a publisher and developer with a lot of strength on the Web, meaning specific domains outside of Facebook, Android and iOS,” said DeWolfe. [The rest of the interview can be found here.]

Terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed.

Hallpass, which has raised only $2 million, is known for developing casual games.

The better-known Palo Alto, Calif.-based SGN specializes in mobile and social games; a majority of traffic and revenue for MindJolt has been coming from social networking sites such as Facebook.

It has raised just over $17 million from Felicis Ventures, Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Bezos Expeditions and others.

MindJolt says it is one of only a few multi-platform game developers.

“This three-pillar approach enables MindJolt to deliver our games wherever people choose to play, and differentiates our service from others in this space,” said DeWolfe.

Indeed, the competition is increasing in the online gaming space.

In March, for example, Electronic Arts made a similar announcement, saying that it can help bring third-party content across three sectors–the traditional games business, mobile and social. It is doing so with its acquisitions of Playfish and Chillingo.

And, in many ways, DeWolfe will be competing against his former employer, News Corp., which he left under tense circumstances in 2009, a few years after it acquired Myspace. (News Corp. owns this website.)

Earlier this year, News Corp. acquired games publisher Making Fun, which is a game studio that plans to bring social games to the Web and mobile.

And, of course, the powerhouse is Zynga, a much better-funded rival, poised for an IPO.

SGN’s popular mobile games include Mini Tycoon Casino, F.A.S.T. and Skies of Glory. Hallpass Media has more than four million gamers on its network and will contribute nearly 1,500 games to the MindJolt platform.

MindJolt has raised $22 million, funded in part by Austin Ventures.

Last week, BoomTown sat down with former Myspace exec Travis Katz to talk about the private beta launch of his new start-up, Gogobot.

No, it’s not a robot from Google–it’s a social travel site, which uses friends to enhance the travel-planning experience.

The name means nothing really except that it sounded energetic and adventurous to Katz, with a bit of tech mixed in.

While in a bit of a stealth mode, Gogobot has been a bit of an open secret in Silicon Valley.

Katz and CTO Ori Zaltzman–most recently the chief architect of Yahoo BOSS–started the company earlier this year with a small team.

It garnered $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Gogobot rides on top of social networking behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter.

Said Gogogot in its press release:

“Unlike other travel sites, Gogobot connects users with friends and people like them for travel advice and links the advice they give in real-time with maps, pictures, pricing and descriptions.”

Essentially, it feels like Facebook for trips, but with really good images.

Currently, Gogobot links users to hotels and other information, but eventually its business plan is to complete reservations and garner lead generation revenues.

We’ll see how it goes, but the online travel business, despite being huge among consumers, certainly could use some updating and organization–and some innovation.

Here’s the video interview I did last week with Katz–who ran international operations for Myspace–talking about where Gogobot is traveling to:

And here are a pair of screenshots for the service (click on the images to make them larger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101116/gogobot-ceo-travis-katz-talks-about-beta-launch-of-social-travel-site/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101026/exclusive-yahoo-courts-former-news-corp-digital-exec-ross-levinsohn-as-u-s-head/ http://allthingsd.com/20101026/exclusive-yahoo-courts-former-news-corp-digital-exec-ross-levinsohn-as-u-s-head/#comments Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:11:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36229

He’s baaaaaack.

Former Fox Interactive Media President Ross Levinsohn, that is, who is the top candidate to replace Hilary Schneider as Yahoo’s North American head, according to several sources close to the situation.

While the deal is not completely struck, sources said Levinsohn is very close to taking the job.

Sources added, if he does, he is likely to remain living in Los Angeles, where he has long been located. Yahoo has a large facility in Santa Monica.

The move is a bold one for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who desperately needs to bring in major Internet talent to the company to shore up her worrisome inexperience in the space.

Yahoo has been rocked by management turmoil–especially in the media and advertising unit–and also troubling weakness in revenue growth and innovative spark.

Levinsohn, one of the more colorful of Web personalities, certainly has a spark.

Levinsohn is currently an investor at Fuse Capital, which funds digital media and communications start-ups.

But sources said he has been itching to get back at a big company with scale in the digital media business and has been interested in Yahoo for some months.

At Yahoo, presumably, he will have purview over what Schneider did (and perhaps more), including the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s powerful media properties and its large advertising sales force in the U.S..

It’s likely Yahoo will hire a major ad sales exec to work under Levinsohn, and sources said the company has been in contact with several prominent execs to fill the slot left open with the March departure of Joanne Bradford to Demand Media.

Besides Schneider, also among the recent departures in the unit Levinsohn would run: VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro, who went to Disney, and U.S. Audience head David Ko, who moved to social gaming phenom Zynga.

Until now, Levinsohn is best known for his stint running digital operations for News Corp.’s then FIM unit.

It was at FIM that he rose to prominence after he bought MySpace, the social networking site that was once the hottest property on the Web.

At the time, Levinsohn and other execs also struck a gigantically lucrative advertising search deal with Google that garnered MySpace huge revenues.

After leaving News Corp. after repeated clashes with MySpace Co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, he partnered with former AOL CEO Jon Miller in another investment company, Velocity Capital.

Ironically, both Miller and Levinsohn were the top choice of billionaire shareholder activist Carl Icahn as the execs he wanted to run Yahoo when he was agitating for change there a few years back in the midst of the failed takeover attempt by Microsoft.

When reached today, Miller–who now is the Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.–declined to comment on his former associate’s job prospects.

But he said: “If Yahoo is so lucky to get Ross, it would be great, because he is one of few people who understands all media.”

Indeed, although Levinsohn is better known as a dealmaker and media exec than as a sales expert, although he did manage digital advertising properties at FIM.

Previous to FIM, Levinsohn ran Fox Sports Interactive Media. He has also worked at the AltaVista Network, an early search pioneer, CBS Sportsline and Time Warner’s pay cable giant HBO. In addition, according to his bio at Fuse.

He also worked at Saatchi and Saatchi and in sports management and marketing with ProServ and Lapin and Rose Communications.

Yahoo declined to comment about the possible appointment of Levinsohn.

(And let’s hope Yahoo–especially the hip-shooting Bartz–doesn’t announce his arrival by also unfairly kicking former execs in the media and advertising unit in the teeth, as has been cloddishly done already too many times.)

BoomTown has also contacted Levinsohn via email and phone and has not heard back from the typically voluble exec.

But you can enjoy his stylings here, in a video interview I did with him in 2007:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101026/exclusive-yahoo-courts-former-news-corp-digital-exec-ross-levinsohn-as-u-s-head/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20100723/can-chris-dewolfes-mindjolt-find-the-next-great-videogame-developers/ http://allthingsd.com/20100723/can-chris-dewolfes-mindjolt-find-the-next-great-videogame-developers/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:09:07 +0000 Nick Wingfield http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=27498 As a co-founder of MySpace, Chris DeWolfe helped undiscovered musicians harness social networking on the Internet to find fans. Now he’s trying to do the same thing for undiscovered videogame developers.

After leaving MySpace last April, DeWolfe has resurfaced as the CEO of MindJolt Inc., a San Francisco-based company that he acquired several months ago with the backing of Austin Ventures for an undisclosed sum. MindJolt helps small game makers – such as one- or two-person programming shops – with tools to promote themselves to consumers on social networking sites.

That leaves the game makers more time to focus on the creative challenges of making games, while MindJolt operates key features like the “leaderboards” that allow players to show off high game scores and the virtual currency system used by players to buy in-game items like fancy uniforms and powerful weapons.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100723/can-chris-dewolfes-mindjolt-find-the-next-great-videogame-developers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100421/exclusive-rhapsody-selects-former-myspace-product-exec-as-independent-board-member-for-spin-off/ http://allthingsd.com/20100421/exclusive-rhapsody-selects-former-myspace-product-exec-as-independent-board-member-for-spin-off/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:34:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27367 Tom Andrus, former MySpace product head, has been selected to be the single independent board member of the newly independent Rhapsody digital music service.

Andrus (pictured here) joins a pair of directors from each of Rhapsody’s large shareholders: Bob Kimball and Mike Lunsford from RealNetworks (RNWK) and Wade Davis and Van Toffler from Viacom (VIA).

Andrus–who mostly worked at MySpace under the tenure of co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe and President and co-founder Tom Anderson–left the troubled social networking site last year.

He had been doing some consulting for Rhapsody and had considered working there too. After deciding against it, since he lives in the Los Angeles area, he said he was asked to join the board.

“I liked what I saw,” said Andrus in an interview with BoomTown. “Rhapsody is really ready to blossom and poised for some real growth.”

The Seattle-based Rhapsody spun off from RealNetworks earlier this month and has plunged into efforts to expand its offerings and become profitable.

These include a price cut for its subscription to $9.99 from $15 and aggressive mobile efforts, such as a Wi-Fi app for Google (GOOG) Android smartphones.

RealNetworks owned 51 percent of the Rhapsody, and Viacom’s MTV Networks the remainder. Restructuring gave both companies a 47.5 percent share. The rest is
allocated to the employee pool and outside investors, including Universal Music Group.

Jon Irwin is president.

For a new company, Rhapsody is one of the oldest in the music space, founded in 2001 by Listen.com.

Listen.com was bought by RealNetworks in 2003, and Rhapsody became its flagship brand as a music service offering.

But Rhapsody quickly lost ground to savvier competitors like Apple (AAPL) and its innovative iTunes service.

Rhapsody, along with Best Buy’s (BBY) Napster, has sold music via monthly subscription, as opposed to Apple’s (AAPL) a la carte download offering.

But Rhapsody has not been able to gain much traction, despite years of effort.

RealNetworks and Viacom’s MTV created a joint venture in 2007 to try to goose it, which did not work either, before the recent formation of the privately held independent company.

Currently, hotter services, such as Spotify, are getting more attention, but Andrus said Rhapsody can compete.

“The company has been through the storm and is ready to win,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100421/exclusive-rhapsody-selects-former-myspace-product-exec-as-independent-board-member-for-spin-off/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100420/like-boomtown-said-partovi-brothers-finally-leave-myspace/ http://allthingsd.com/20100420/like-boomtown-said-partovi-brothers-finally-leave-myspace/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:22:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27307

Well-known tech entrepreneurs and twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi (pictured here, right to left) are leaving MySpace, in a high-profile departure for the struggling social networking company.

Internal memos were sent around to staff this afternoon about the executive change, said sources, which you can see below.

“Hey everybody, it’s been super tough staying quiet about this news at the request of our execs,” said Hadi Partovi, in an internal memo obtained by BoomTown. “I know some of you are very surprised about this, and I want to apologize for not having had the option to brief you personally in advance.”

Hadi was SVP of Technology at the News Corp. (NWS) unit, while Ali was SVP of Business Development. Hadi will leave MySpace entirely, while Ali will have a special adviser role, said the memo from MySpace Co-President Michael Jones.

In a blog post in March titled, “MySpace Musical Chairs: Will the Partovis Stay or Will They Go Now?,” I wrote:

“In all likelihood, said sources, the Partovis will remain at MySpace for the next several months, although they are likely to move eventually to more senior advisory or special-project roles there in order to pursue longtime outside investing and entrepreneurial interests.”

Now that has come to pass.

The fate of the well-known tech wunderkinds has been one of the more interesting guessing games of late at MySpace.

MySpace managers have been keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially related to such well-known innovators.

The Partovis arrived in the midst of turbulent change at MySpace last August, just after its original CEO and co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, was suddenly tossed out and replaced by CEO Owen Van Natta, as well as COO Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

As part of its new strategy to become an entertainment hub, the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace bought the Partovis’ social music start-up, iLike, in a deal engineered by Van Natta.

After it closed, Hadi was mostly working in MySpace’s Seattle office, and Ali was mostly based in San Francisco.

(See this funny welcome video Ali Partovi did at the time.)

But Van Natta suddenly got the boot in January after clashing with News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller, as well as Hirschhorn and Jones, sending MySpace into yet another storm.

Hirschhorn and Jones were then named co-presidents.

While several sources said the Partovis are not unhappy with the pair or with the new MySpace mediacentric strategy, the brothers sold their company with the idea of working with Van Natta.

“That firing reset things,” said one source close to the situation in March.

Nonetheless, there was some progress with iLike, including integration of MySpace Music with Google (GOOG) and a MySpace Events offering.

In addition, the pair have wide-ranging interests outside the company, including an active investment portfolio in such start-ups as Facebook, Dropbox, Opower, BlueKai and Flixster.

They have already scored big with investments in Tellme, which was sold to Microsoft (MSFT); Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon (AMZN); and IronPort, now owned by Cisco (CSCO).

And though iLike was not the success they had hoped for, their entrepreneurial record is strong. Ali Partovi sold LinkExchange to Microsoft, and Hadi Partovi, who also worked at Microsoft, co-founded Tellme.

Now, it seems, the Partovis are moving on to the next challenge.

Here are the internal memos from Hadi Partovi to iLike staff and from MySpace’s Jones:

From: Hadi Partovi
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Fwd: Organizational Update (re Ali + Hadi)
To: staff
Cc: Ali Partovi

Hey everybody, it’s been super tough staying quiet about this news at the request of our execs. I know some of you are very surprised about this, and I want to apologize for not having had the option to brief you personally in advance.

I also want to call out looking backwards that we’ve all done a heck of a lot in just the last 6 months to help improve the MySpace business and to integrate iLike technology. Just a short list is below.

- iLike integrated MySpace Music into Google search (iLike provided the team, technology, and Google deal)
- iLike team+technology helped implement MySpace Events, launched with multi-million-dollar sponsorship commitments
- all iLike.com traffic has been merged into MySpace’s overall Comscore metrics
- iLike’s products have been featured in a TV ad by Apple, and will be in an upcoming TV ad by another major tech company
- iLike’s promotional engine has been used multiple times in coordination with MSM to promote new albums or new artists
- MSM videos have been integrated into iLike.com and iLike on Facebook
- iLike’s artist-stats are integrated into the MySpace artist dashboard
- iLike.com drives search engine traffic to MySpace artist pages
- iLike team implemented the imeem traffic redirection and data backend of imeem playlist integration
- iLike team provided backend metadata + recommendation engine for MySpace music search and song-similarities

Most importantly, thanks to our work, MySpace is the #1 provider of music on Facebook, music on Google, and Concerts on iPhone. Regardless of any challenges that MySpace needs to overcome, that is a great legacy that I know we’re all proud of.

I’m personally very sad that I won’t be working with any of you–the amazing team we built at iLike is perhaps our greatest accomplishment.

I’ll send an email to the Seattle folks to organize a proper going-away celebration :)

hadi

From: Mike Jones
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:52 PM
Subject: Organizational Update
To: XXX
Cc: Jason Hirschhorn

Hi everyone,

Effective on Friday, MySpace SVP of Technology Hadi Partovi is leaving to pursue other opportunities. In addition to continuing his work as an advisor and angel investor to various startups, he will be following his passion for education by working directly with technology focused non-profits. Hadi leaves as a valued friend to the company, and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

Ali Partovi will be stepping down as SVP of Business Development, but will continue working with MySpace as a strategic advisor working on special projects. He will also be taking time to invest in and advise startups.

Hadi and Ali were instrumental in integrating iLike’s best in class technology into the MySpace brand. Last week’s successful Events launch was a direct result of that collaboration. Other noteworthy product integrations include last year’s Google Music Search integration and the Local Concerts App, which is currently the most downloaded concerts app for the iPhone and was featured in one of Apple’s latest iPhone TV spots.

Please join us in thanking Ali and Hadi for their contributions to MySpace.

-Jason & Mike

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100420/like-boomtown-said-partovi-brothers-finally-leave-myspace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100311/myspace-musical-chairs-will-the-partovis-stay-or-will-they-go-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20100311/myspace-musical-chairs-will-the-partovis-stay-or-will-they-go-now/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:11:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25497

While there have surely been a lot of departures of talent at MySpace over the last year, including two major shifts in top management, one of the more interesting guessing games of late concerning the social networking company has been over the fate of well-known tech wunderkinds Hadi and Ali Partovi.

According to many sources inside and outside the company, that’s just the discussion the pair of serial entrepreneurs has been having with its newest leaders, as well as with News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller.

(News Corp. owns MySpace, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

In all likelihood, said sources, the Partovis will remain at MySpace for the next several months, although they are likely to move eventually to more senior advisory or special-project roles there in order to pursue longtime outside investing and entrepreneurial interests.

“They’re definitely staying for now,” said one source. “But it’s the ‘how’ is what’s being worked out.”

There are many shifting scenarios as the sides hash it out, said sources, but MySpace execs are keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially with such high-profile innovators.

Still, in an interview with BoomTown at MySpace’s Beverly Hills, Calif., HQ earlier this week (you can see part of that chat in the video below), Co-President Jason Hirschhorn said that there are likely to be a lot more departures at the company, as well as arrivals.

“It’s normal in a situation like this,” said Hirschhorn, quite correctly, given the wringer MySpace has gone through over the last year.

The Partovis arrived in the midst of turbulent change at MySpace, after its original CEO and co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, was suddenly tossed out and replaced by CEO Owen Van Natta, as well as COO Michael Jones and Chief Product Officer Hirschhorn.

As part of its new strategy to become an entertainment hub, MySpace bought the Partovis’ struggling social music start-up, iLike, last summer in a deal engineered by Van Natta.

After it closed, Hadi (pictured left) became an SVP of technology, mostly working in MySpace’s Seattle office, and Ali (pictured right) became its SVP of business development, mostly based in San Francisco.

But Van Natta suddenly got the boot in January, after clashing with Miller, as well as Hirschhorn and Jones, sending MySpace into yet another storm.

Hirschhorn and Jones were then named co-presidents.

While several sources said the Partovis are not unhappy with the pair or with the new MySpace media-centric strategy, the brothers sold the company with the idea of working with Van Natta.

“That firing reset things,” said one source close to the situation.

In addition, the pair have wide-ranging interests outside the company, including an active investment portfolio in such start-ups as Facebook, Dropbox, Opower, BlueKai and Flixster.

They have also already scored big with investments in Tellme, which was sold to Microsoft (MSFT); Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon (AMZN); and IronPort, now owned by Cisco (CSCO).

And though iLike was not the success they had hoped for, their entrepreneurial record is strong. Ali Partovi sold LinkExchange to Microsoft, and Hadi Partovi, who also worked at Microsoft, co-founded Tellme.

That said, with talent-retention packages in place for both Partovis, and good will between them and the new leaders, the sides are trying to come up with a workable arrangement.

MySpace declined to comment, but The Clash sure will (as well as Jones and Hirschhorn, below):

[T-shirt photo courtesy of Zazzle.com]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100311/myspace-musical-chairs-will-the-partovis-stay-or-will-they-go-now/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100309/video-new-myspace-co-presidents-hirschhorn-and-jones-talk-about-the-past-troubled-present-work-in-progress-and-future-revival/ http://allthingsd.com/20100309/video-new-myspace-co-presidents-hirschhorn-and-jones-talk-about-the-past-troubled-present-work-in-progress-and-future-revival/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:24:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25263

On Monday, as part of a press hello-there MySpace is doing this week, BoomTown traveled to Los Angeles for the day to finally check in with the new management at the turmoil-plagued company.

That would be new Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Michael Jones, who are now ferreting away on a slow rollout of a plan to turn MySpace into a socially-charged entertainment hub.

They took over the Beverly Hills-based social networking site immediately after News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller suddenly fired CEO Owen Van Natta last month.

The pair reported to Van Natta and, according to pretty much everyone you speak to, were very much at odds with him.

Perhaps that was inevitable due to the awkward way the trio was hired at the same time last April, as part of a grand plan of overhaul.

Their arrival followed the defenestration of co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, who was blamed for the declining prospects of MySpace in recent years after a red-hot start.

While former Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) exec Van Natta was selected as the experienced one in charge, Hirschhorn ran product and Jones was charged with getting the trains to run on time at MySpace–when they ran right at all, that is.

That all ended when Miller and Van Natta clashed over control of MySpace, which has about 100 million monthly visitors and just above $350 million in annual revenue.

And faster than you can say Rupe, former AOL (AOL) exec and serial entrepreneur Jones, and Hirschhorn–who is a well-known media exec with stops at Sling Media and Viacom (VIA)–got the nod.

What’s that famous Shakespeare quote? Uneasy lies the head that wears a MySpace crown? Or, in this case, two heads and two crowns!

How deliciously ripe with plot.

And so much to cover: From the corporate intrigue to how News Corp. looks at the troubled property to competition like Facebook to what to do about declining traffic, engagement and advertising revenue to rampant sale or spinoff rumors.

And most of all, and what gets unfortunately lost in all this mess–what the heck they are doing to innovate the actual product and make it into an entertainment hub.

Thus, here’s a video interview I did with Hirschhorn and Jones–at their joint desk, like some digital Oscar Madison and Felix Unger–where we talk about all this and more, including whether or not Hirschhorn is a kvetcher or not.

(He is, but I am worse!)

I also posted a tour of MySpace, in which the pair talk about their plans for the revival of the service, with the help of some visual aids.

Until then, enjoy, and no kvetching over the length:

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100309/video-new-myspace-co-presidents-hirschhorn-and-jones-talk-about-the-past-troubled-present-work-in-progress-and-future-revival/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/ http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:33:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24330

Last week, someone who has been at MySpace for a while told me what it’s like working inside the social networking company, which has gone from supernova to also-ran in the course of a few years.

Reflecting on the downward spiral, which MySpace owner News Corp. (NWS) has been trying to slow over the last year, and how hard it has been to do a turnaround of any kind, the exec could not shake the idea that it could still be revived.

“MySpace is kind of a hot mess,” said the exec, referring to its still-large audience and well-known brand. “It’s both impossible to save and hard to give up on.”

Unfortunately for all those involved, that mess got even messier yesterday after the ousting of CEO Owen Van Natta by News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller.

While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as infighting among top execs finally came to a head today.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Escalating tensions over strategy going forward had grown untenable between Miller and Van Natta, as well as among and between Van Natta and his top two execs, COO Mike Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

(Pictured from left to right above are Van Natta, Jones and Hirschhorn.)

Sources said relations had gotten so bad that Hirschhorn had told Van Natta recently that he was planning to resign by June.

It was a threat that moved well beyond well-known gripes the former media exec had aired to many outside the company over the last year about how MySpace was in much worse shape MySpace than he thought, and that reflects weariness from the weekly commute between his home in New York and the company’s Los Angeles HQ.

And after a recent blog post that claimed Hirschhorn was the one leaving, relations became even frostier, sources said.

The relationship between Miller and Van Natta had also become badly frayed, several sources noted, mostly over the pace of change and the level of control Van Natta had over MySpace.

“There were serious disagreements and something had to give,” said one person close to the situation.

After firing Van Natta in an afternoon meeting yesterday in what several people described as a “termination without cause,” Miller (pictured here with Van Natta behind him) appointed Jones and Hirschhorn co-presidents of MySpace.

It was a dramatic shift from only nine months ago.

With the backing of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, Miller hired Van Natta last April, after jettisoning co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe.

But despite his CEO title, the former Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) exec didn’t get to select the two top executives beneath him.

Both Jones and Hirschhorn were hired by Miller directly–also with Murdoch’s involvement and approval.

The idea at the time of assembling this troika was that three heads are better than one, especially in dealing with the technological, administrative and business hairball that MySpace had become over the years.

As it turned out, three heads came with three brains and three different ideas of what MySpace needed to do to fix itself.

While the work to clean up the company, make cuts and attract new talent proceeded, it seems as if not enough progress was made on the what-next part of the equation, as various strategies were considered.

That led to an increasing number of clashes as pressure began to mount to do something, even as rival Facebook’s growth skyrocketed.

While Van Natta and the others distilled the idea of making MySpace the place where consumers and artists store and keep track of their entertainment content online, using a series of “super tools” to move them all over the Web, the lack of concrete changes even began to irk Murdoch.

In News Corp.’s earnings call last week, in fact, Murdoch said about MySpace, despite recent encouraging signs of stabilization: “It’s not yet where we want it.”

Uh-oh, that might have been a clue to watch for big changes!

In addition, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted, News Corp. disclosed that MySpace and the rest of its digital portfolio were coming up short on their end of a $900 million, three-year search deal with Google (GOOG), meaning that News Corp. would receive around $100 million less than originally anticipated.

This was due to changes made to the site’s design, which cut down on some page views that the old site created to show higher traffic.

And, said sources, any new search deal with Google or, perhaps, Microsoft (MSFT) is not expected to be stellar.

“MySpace will get paid what it is worth,” said the source about search fees. “But the days of big payouts are over.”

The real problem, of course, is that MySpace’s audience has been going elsewhere, particularly Facebook, and will continue to do so until a bold new direction is set.

Many in the industry do not think that is even possible and that News Corp. shouldn’t even own MySpace anymore.

There is also a good argument that the company should have, and could have, sold the asset several years ago, either to Yahoo (YHOO) during its takeover fight with Microsoft or to another bidder when the company was riding high.

Now, News Corp.–which is dealing with many other vexing digital issues, including a pitched battle over paid content–is stuck trying to fix a distressed asset that became that way by allowing the old regime to run it in a less than rigorous manner.

And despite all the Band-Aids applied so far, reviving MySpace will take a lot of more arduous work from Jones and Hirschhorn, neither of whom has helmed as big an organization, despite recent layoffs.

In addition, the co-presidents must get along well, and power-sharing arrangements are always tricky to pull off.

So, until Miller, Jones and Hirschhorn figure it out–or not!–and, in honor of MySpace’s music meme, here is Cobra Starship’s “Hot Mess” video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100121/boomtown-heads-to-sundance-film-festival-in-the-fifth-annual-meet-the-geeks-pilgrimage/ http://allthingsd.com/20100121/boomtown-heads-to-sundance-film-festival-in-the-fifth-annual-meet-the-geeks-pilgrimage/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:19:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23327

Today, BoomTown is loading the wife and kids, along with mom, into our tricked-out All Things Digital Winnebago and heading to Park City, Utah, for the 26th Sundance Film Festival.

Now, what I know about independent filmmaking could fit neatly into a thimble, with room to spare.

But what has brought me back there for five years running is the chance to introduce those auteurs gathered on the frozen tundra to a slice of what’s to come from the digital world–for Sundance’s terrific New Frontier on Main series.

Increasingly, that matters a lot to those who make movies, especially those associated with smaller film efforts that might never see the light of a theater projector.

Thus, the tech sessions at Sundance are packed to the gills, with huge crowds turned away, because Hollywood knows what’s coming, and it has increasingly less control over it.

Imagine, for example, what the Apple (AAPL) tablet will mean to media giants in relation to entertainment distribution. And exactly how might you tell a story on a smartphone? Or not!

They can’t say they were not warned.

Last year, I interviewed a trio panelists: Chad Hurley, co-founder and CEO of the Google (GOOG) video service YouTube; Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, the premium online video service and joint venture among News Corp. (NWS), Disney (DIS) and GE’s (GE) NBC Universal; and Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix (NFLX), the largest online DVD rental service, which has been moving into an ever wider range of movie distribution on the Web.

This year, my panel–which takes place Friday at noon and runs 90 minutes–is titled: “Spotlight on Social Media: Successful Strategies for Storytellers.”

Here’s the description:

“Today’s social media sites have the potential to bring content creators closer to audiences than ever before–creating new marketing opportunities for independents. But what more can be achieved? Can we create meaningful experiences through our profiles pages, or is it all just self-promotional clutter? Are the popular sites we use today the end of the line, or just a peek into the future?”

In other words: Will Twitter’s 140-character influence murder all creativity? Or just bruise it a little bit?

The subjects of my prying interview questions on this important issue include Robert Tercek, president of digital media for OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network; filmmaker Ondi Timoner; Chris Gebhardt, head of Participant Media’s TakePart social media platform; David Eun, head of film partnerships for YouTube; MySpace’s Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn; and Matt Jacobson, Facebook’s market development dude.

Whatever that means, since the hot Silicon Valley social networking site has done little in the way of storytelling as yet and much more in the way of pokes!

But, as ever, I shall strive to drag answers about innovation and more out of the lot of them.

Video to come, of course!

So, until I get there and thaw out the Flip digital video camera, here is my longish video from last year with the panelists, as well as cameos from my kids and once-indie film star and now TV hit queen Jane Lynch.

And below that, my 2008 Sundance video featuring Lynch and MySpace co-founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe.

[ See post to watch video ]

And if you want to know even more about Sundance, there is a new app on the iPhone for the festival. It costs $4.99, with the proceeds benefiting the not-for-profit Sundance Institute.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100121/boomtown-heads-to-sundance-film-festival-in-the-fifth-annual-meet-the-geeks-pilgrimage/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091009/myspace-gets-a-new-sales-boss-mtv-vet-nada-stirratt/ http://allthingsd.com/20091009/myspace-gets-a-new-sales-boss-mtv-vet-nada-stirratt/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:35:35 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=11961

Employees at MySpace have been waiting to find out who their new ad sales boss will be, as All Things Digital reported earlier this week.

And here she is: Nada Stirratt, who until today was running digital sales for Viacom’s (VIA) MTV Networks. (You can read her goodbye memo to MTV colleagues below.)

It looks as if MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta is assembling a team of MTV veterans at his company, which he’s in the process of overhauling.

In addition to Stirratt, MySpace has brought former digital guru Jason Hirschhorn over as chief product officer. And Courtney Holt, who runs MySpace Music, had run digital music for MTV before Chris DeWolfe, Van Natta’s predecessor, brought him on board last year. Viacom hasn’t named a replacement for Stirratt.

Next week could be Stirratt’s debut in front of the entire advertising sales staff of MySpace, who are set to gather at a new seaside resort about 20 miles south of Los Angeles to get a first glimpse of the fresh direction the company is preparing to take under its new management.

The struggling social networking site, HQed in Beverly Hills, has been trying to reboot its image, spur innovation in its product and most of all, pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, has seen explosive growth.

In late August, MySpace sales and marketing head Jeff Berman left the company as MySpace hired MediaLink, a New York- and Los Angeles-based media consultancy, to help get its ad sales business back on track.

That effort has been led by MediaLink President Wenda Millard, who is well known in the ad industry and was longtime leader of the ad sales force at Yahoo (YHOO).

Getting an experienced top ad exec in place will round out a recent spate of new hiring by MySpace, including a new CTO, Alex Maghen, who moved over from its MySpace Music joint venture, and a new CFO, Mark Rosenbaum.

This has been part of Van Natta’s wholesale flushing out of most of the top execs who worked under DeWolfe.

Now, with a new team of execs, the News Corp. (NWS) property is putting the finishing touches on a master plan, which will include a new redesign of its hopelessly messy interface and doubling down on a product strategy that will center on, said one source, “what we own,” namely, music and entertainment.

Music is the obvious key leverage point, the still-bright spot of MySpace, followed by adding big entertainment categories like movies, television, gaming, video and other pop culture arenas.

Once the rejiggered product is in place, it will be up to Stirratt to sell it to advertisers.

Until we see how she does in that key job, here’s her missive to MTVers:

From: Stirratt, Nada
To: MTVN Digital Advertising
Sent: Fri Oct 09 16:34:51 2009
Subject: Thank You for Everything

Hi Everybody–

It is with mixed emotions that I write to inform you that I will be leaving MTV Networks. I have accepted the job of Chief Revenue Officer at MySpace and will be starting there later in the month.

The past 3+ years have been such a wonderful experience and I thank you for the extraordinary work you all have done to make MTVNetworks Digital stand for a best-in-class sales organization unlike any other in the business. Truly. We rocked the industry with our innovation, ideas, relationships and results. And we had a ridiculous amount of fun along the way. So thank you for everything. And a special heartfelt thanks to my leadership team of Kevin, Brad, Jason and Heather: I have learned so much from each of you and will cherish your friendship.

Xo ?Nada

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091009/myspace-gets-a-new-sales-boss-mtv-vet-nada-stirratt/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091007/myspace-poised-to-hire-new-ad-sales-head-as-it-preps-music-and-entertainment-centric-strategy-and-redesign/ http://allthingsd.com/20091007/myspace-poised-to-hire-new-ad-sales-head-as-it-preps-music-and-entertainment-centric-strategy-and-redesign/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:57:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=19170

In a week, the entire advertising sales staff of MySpace will gather at a swanky new seaside resort about 20 miles south of Los Angeles to get a first glimpse of the fresh direction the company is preparing to take under its new management.

The beleaguered social networking site has been in the midst of an effort to reinvigorate its image, spur innovation in its product and–most of all–pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival Facebook has seen explosive growth.

Now, with a new team of execs, the News Corp. (NWS) property is putting the finishing touches on a master plan, which will include a new redesign of its hopelessly messy interface and doubling down on a product strategy that will center on, said one source, “what we own”–namely, music and entertainment.

On the agenda, aptly enough, for the 150 ad sales employees, who will gather at Terranea in Palos Verdes, is Ben Sherwood, author of “The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life,” and founder of a Web site of the same name that describes itself as “the place for surviving and thriving.”

Also coming to the meeting will be several bands that have successfully leveraged MySpace as a platform, to talk about their experiences and to play for the crowd.

And, perhaps most importantly, the group might also get to meet its new boss by then, as several sources close to the situation said that MySpace has settled on an exec to fill the key job of running its ad business.

While it is unclear if the deal is completely done, sources said MySpace management will announce the pick this week.

Sources added that MySpace has been particularly interested in one exec from Viacom (VIA) and another from Microsoft (MSFT).

While the sources would not name the Viacom exec, several pointed to Keith Lorizio, Microsoft VP of U.S. sales, as someone MySpace has been targeting.

In late August, MySpace sales and marketing head Jeff Berman left the company as MySpace hired MediaLink, a New York- and Los Angeles-based media consultancy, to help get its ad sales business back on track.

That effort has been led by MediaLink President Wenda Millard, who is well known in the ad industry and was longtime leader of the ad sales force at Yahoo (YHOO).

Getting an experienced top ad exec in place will round out a recent spate of new hiring by MySpace, including a new CTO, Alex Maghen, who moved over from its MySpace Music joint venture, and a new CFO, Mark Rosenbaum.

This has been part of a wholesale flushing out of most of the top execs who worked under co-founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe by new CEO Owen Van Natta.

Van Natta, along with COO Michael Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn, have been squirreled away since late April, working at cleaning up the company by replacing management, restructuring its various units and cutting costs, including massive layoffs.

They have also been trying to come up with a plan to differentiate MySpace from Facebook, a good strategy since it is now well-nigh impossible for the Beverly Hills-based MySpace to catch up with the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook’s galloping growth.

While the whole new offering will not be rolled out prominently until at least the first quarter of next year, said several sources, some changes will begin sooner, including a gradual redesign of the site.

Under the new plan, said several sources, the main idea will be to shift the focus to engagement over sheer audience numbers. While MySpace is still huge, with about 70 million monthly U.S. visitors, increasing how much time they spend on the site is the goal.

“It’s not like numbers are not important, but the better metric for MySpace will be how involved users are,” said one person close to the situation. “MySpace needs to win on minutes.”

And, rather than the wider and more scattershot approach of past years, the new direction being stressed is more scalable and focused.

“It is not about getting everyone and their mothers on MySpace,” said a source, “but about being a better site to those here.”

That will include stressing “ownership” of online categories, which for MySpace are music and entertainment, with the hope that advertisers will be attracted to more engaged users.

Unlike Facebook, which is often described as a utility platform for communications between friends, sources said MySpace will be aimed more at being a platform for communities of interest.

That includes using tools from other companies, such as MySpace’s recent two-way synch with Twitter, the hot microblogging service, to link those communities.

Presumably, the company’s August purchase of iLike, the social music start-up, is also part of that plan.

“Instead of the ability to just connect friend to friend in a single social graph, this will be about connecting a person to their communities of passion and interest and to others like them anywhere,” said one source.

Music is the obvious key leverage point, the still-bright spot of MySpace, followed by adding big entertainment categories like movies, television, gaming, video and other pop culture arenas.

(BoomTown request: Become the HQ for “Gossip Girl” addicts, um, fans, and I am so there.)

“MySpace should represent pop culture online to customers and advertisers,” said one source. “The core strength has always been music and that is where the site will really excel, because it binds customers to the service.”

The even heavier music focus on the main juggernaut site, noted several sources, does create an odd situation with MySpace Music, the separate joint venture the site has with music labels to create a massive music community.

While sources do not think News Corp. will attempt to suck MySpace Music back into the main site, due to the complex partnership issues, the idea is to make them even more deeply integrated and to sell them to advertisers as one powerful marketing message.

In any case, several sources noted that one of the most successful parts of the new plan has been to convince News Corp. leaders that MySpace does not have to beat Facebook to be successful.

Sooner than later, of course, MySpace has to do just that.

Will it work? Who knows, but said one source close to the situation quite correctly:

“There is no silver bullet for MySpace–it just has to climb back step by step.”

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091007/myspace-poised-to-hire-new-ad-sales-head-as-it-preps-music-and-entertainment-centric-strategy-and-redesign/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20090624/boomtowns-top-10-list-of-fact-challenged-revelations-that-should-be-in-the-facebook-tell-all-book/ http://allthingsd.com/20090624/boomtowns-top-10-list-of-fact-challenged-revelations-that-should-be-in-the-facebook-tell-all-book/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:34:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14955

How much is BoomTown and everyone else in Silicon Valley trying to nab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s likely-to-be-entirely-made-up-but-who-cares tale of dirty doings at Facebook?

Muchety-much! So much so that I called all my book industry contacts–hey, I am a published author, ya know!–even though I have not actually completed reading a book since the Internet started and gave me permanent attention deficit disorder.

But, so far I have come up peanuts in grabbing an early copy of Mezrich’s tome, “The Accidental Billionaires,” which is set to come out July 14.

Facebook is not pleased, of course, and will likely be challenging Mezrich’s work as specious dreck. But the drama around the book should be interesting, to say the least.

More so, since this week also came news that actors Michael Cera and Shia LaBeouf are being considered to play founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and that David Fincher, the director of the lugubrious Brad Pitt snoozer, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” is “attached” to the movie version.

Even better: “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin will pen it and actor Kevin Spacey will produce the Columbia Pictures film, which will be called “The Social Network.”

Well, Hollywood sure came up with an original title!

It certainly does not signal the juiciness of the proposal for the book–which did manage to leak out last year–with a lot of tale tales in it that seem to have pretty much tracked on its oddly purple subtitle of “The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.”

The cover–which you can see on the book’s Facebook page (the delicious gall of Mezrich!)–features a spilled martini glass and a red bra flung nearby.

Martinis? Red bras? Sex? Facebook? Really?

Obviously, Mezrich has not actually met Zuckerberg, who is a very nice geekish young man, but who has approximately the sex appeal of a rack of Facebook servers.

Powerful yes! Spockish? Yes! Sexy? Um, no, no, no.

I will not even begin to parse the red bra thing, although I am attributing the martinis to stylish former COO (and now MySpace CEO) Owen Van Natta.

But, apparently, the sex part seems to have to do with Zuckerberg starting the company with others while an undergrad at Harvard University, as a scheme to meet some ladies.

I would say there are easier ways to attract the womenfolk–not that I could give tips or anything–but whatever!

Thus, since I cannot get my mitts on the book (yet!), here’s my list of 10 completely made-up, utterly fabricated, just-call-me-Jayson-Blair things that should be in the book.

10.) Facebook was actually going to be called OnlyPrettyLadyFacebook, but cooler heads prevailed.

9.) The Wall? A clever plot by Zuckerberg to build his online service on a fascist construct, touting his hegemony over all he surveyed.

Wait, that actually happened, and now some Russians are even investors.

Long live the Zuckrepublic of Palo Alto!

8.) Reason for stealing, oops, borrowing, oops again, completely separately developing an exact replica of ConnectU social network at Harvard:

The Olympically muscle-headed Winklevoss twins used to beat up the brainy Zuckerberg on his way back to the dorm, prompting a “Revenge of the Nerds” plot line.

7.) Facebook’s Beacon advertising? All Randi Zuckerberg’s idea, so she could find out what she was getting for her birthday from her billionaire-on-paper brother.

6.) Zuckerberg’s famous flip-flops were made in China under dubious working conditions. Wait, that’s true too.

5.) The 20-something Zuckerberg is actually 93 years old, a real-life version of Benjamin Button, which would explain the social awkwardness and staring-into-space-sometimes thing.

4.) The no-breast-feeding-pictures controversy pretty much proves no one is interested in bras or, more precisely, what goes in them at Facebook.

3.) COO Sheryl Sandberg is a cyborg sent to Facebook from Google for purposes of infiltration. She and her crafty sidekick, Elliott Schrage, will become self-aware in 2012 and hunt down Zuckerberg in a thrilling chase that will also become a movie.

2.) The sex, drugs and rock-and-roll stuff actually all took place at MySpace, which really pisses off certifiably dashing co-Founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson because, once again, Zuckerberg stole their mojo!

1.) This work of fiction, oops, “fact”-ion, oops again, nonfiction, is probably not going to sell many copies because it will mysteriously be uploaded in its entirety by a widget that will distribute it free to Facebook’s 200 million plus users while simultaneously SuperDuperPoking Mezrich, by throwing real sheep at him.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Ben.

(By the way, here is an extra for you: The $15 billion valuation for Facebook, along with all the other Web 2.0 ones? Totally true. Just ask any VC.)

And, in case anyone was wondering what the real Facebook looks like, here is a recent video tour I did of its new HQ in Palo Alto, Calif.:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090624/boomtowns-top-10-list-of-fact-challenged-revelations-that-should-be-in-the-facebook-tell-all-book/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20090622/another-top-exec-gone-from-fim-as-it-readies-a-name-and-structure-change/ http://allthingsd.com/20090622/another-top-exec-gone-from-fim-as-it-readies-a-name-and-structure-change/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:00:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14816

Mike Angus, EVP and General Counsel of Fox Interactive Media, is departing that job for another in New Corp. (NWS), as new digital head Jon Miller continues to reshape the division.

Last week, BoomTown reported that FIM CFO Ed McKenna was leaving his post and also the company, part of many changes taking place related to News Corp.’s digital properties. (News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

It’s all part of a major rejiggering of FIM, which came into being almost four years ago, although not an elimination of the unit, as has been reported.

More likely, it will include a name change–perhaps to the Digital Media Group–as well as a much streamlined organization that gives more autonomy to FIM’s Web, online advertising and publishing technology units.

The largest of those Internet sites in FIM is, of course, MySpace.

Since Miller arrived in the early spring, he has focused on fixing the troubled, but still huge, social-networking site.

He quickly replaced its co-founder and CEO, Chris DeWolfe, with new managers.

Those execs, led by former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta, have done massive layoffs at MySpace recently and are now beginning a major overhaul of its product, which needs to innovate after a fall-off of growth and engagement.

“In a lot of ways, FIM has become an artificial construct and a lot of the infrastructure it has created should be out in the individual businesses,” said one person close to the situation. “So, since it is not really an operating unit, it will be taken down to the minimal size to make it work.”

That apparently means it does not need a separate CFO or even a general counsel.

Currently, there are about 100 FIM-only employees, mostly in human resources, accounting and legal. Some of those will likely be farmed out to the units they primarily service or be let go if those units decide they do not need the staff.

The original idea of FIM was to create a unit to house most of News Corp.’s standalone digital units, including MySpace and IGN videogame and entertainment sites, and to have common financial, legal and even ad sales execs to serve them.

The concept is that they all had tech, legal, policy and synergistic reasons for being together.

Said a News Corp. press release from July 2005, which announced both the Angus and McKenna hires:

“News Corporation today announced the formation of Fox Interactive Media (FIM), a new unit that will leverage the strength of Fox’s distinctive entertainment, news and sports brands across the Internet to offer a richer online experience to its millions of users.”

That construct, said many people I interviewed inside and outside News Corp., was built to accommodate a much larger unit, with additional large acquisitions after the MySpace one.

Those never happened, although News Corp. was in many such talks with giants such as Yahoo (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and Microsoft (MSFT) about trading assets.

“Over time, FIM became more like a shadow government,” said one person familiar with the situation. “Now, it makes sense for the properties to govern themselves, with a lot less meddling and let them rise and fall on their own.”

Many News Corp. sources point to the success of premium video service Hulu, which is run as a joint venture with GE (GE) unit NBC Universal, as being managed relatively autonomously by experienced Internet execs with less corporate involvement.

The result has been a popular and fast-growing site, which has gotten kudos for its innovative consumer offering (although it is still working on finding a highly lucrative business model).

Does that mean that some units, such as MySpace, could even be spun out again?

Doubtful for now, said several sources, but still a possibility.

In any case, the idea of a corporate layer over corporate units within a larger corporation does seem less than fleet in the faster-moving Web 2.0 world.

As to the new name of the unit, besides the chief digital officer title, Miller also was given the title of chairman and CEO of the newly created News Digital Media group.

Therefore, several sources said that the units could be under a simpler and lighter Digital Media Group umbrella.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090622/another-top-exec-gone-from-fim-as-it-readies-a-name-and-structure-change/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090617/myspace-after-the-layoffs-heres-whats-what-and-whats-next/ http://allthingsd.com/20090617/myspace-after-the-layoffs-heres-whats-what-and-whats-next/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:30:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14631

Now what?

The party-all-night social-networking site that has been MySpace so far got a massive morning-after shock yesterday when 30 percent of its workforce–or 420 employees–was laid off.

And today, MySpace, which is still 1,000-strong, and its leaders have to face the cold, harsh light of day in the aftermath of the restructuring and get busy quickly figuring out a way to reinvigorate a brand that has suffered after a stunning rocket of a start many years ago.

That’s especially true since a report also just came out by market research outfit comScore (SCOR) showing that Facebook has surpassed MySpace in the key U.S. market as the top social-networking site.

So, based on many sources I have spoken to over the last week, here’s a rundown of the next steps MySpace will likely be taking and who’ll be making them.

MORE LAYOFFS?

“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said new CEO Owen Van Natta in a statement about the layoffs.

What he did not say was that cost-cutting via layoffs is almost always the first move in a turnaround.

These cuts have actually been long in coming, but it’s promising that they finally happened so quickly after Van Natta–along with COO Michael Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn–were brought in by News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller to replace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe.

(News Corp. owns MySpace, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

“The layoffs were a total reset,” said one source, who noted that unless MySpace’s advertising business falls off a cliff, which it is unlikely to do in the short term, more cuts in the U.S. will not be needed for now. That might not be true internationally, where MySpace has not performed as strongly.

At this point, MySpace is now about the same size as chief rival Facebook’s staff, which has been growing much more quickly (you can see my video tour of its new Silicon Valley HQ here).

Except for not making the move to new offices in Los Angeles, the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace is also not going to be closing offices elsewhere, as has been reported, most especially its San Francisco one.

In fact, Van Natta is traveling to visit all of them, his memo said, over the next several days.

LEADERSHIP

Despite the large number of layoffs and the departure of DeWolfe, most expect there to be very little change in the top ranks of MySpace leadership for the time being.

While Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing, has been rumored to be on the bubble, multiple sources said he would be staying in his job.

He’ll continue to be aided by Angela Courtin, SVP of marketing, who is well-regarded.

The same is true of the other major question mark, co-founder Tom Anderson (pictured here), who has held the president title at the company and was in charge of its products.

Anderson does not have a new title yet and will no longer be in a key operational role, but many sources said his historical knowledge and his tight relationship with the MySpace community make it important that he remain at the company.

“Tom is clearly in touch with what has made MySpace special,” said one source. “And it is important that he remain to keep the culture alive.”

Also staying for now is Tom Andrus, who has been SVP of product management under Anderson and is now reporting to Hirschhorn. While initially upset by being supplanted so quickly by new execs, most sources told me that he is a solid and well-liked exec.

The same is said of Jason Oberfest, SVP of business development, who is also staying. So too, CTO Aber Whitcomb, whom many thought would be leaving.

The only major exec departure I could confirm was Fox Interactive Media CFO Ed McKenna, who was in charge of MySpace too. Sources said will be leaving the company as his function gets consolidated into higher corporate units at News Corp.

PRODUCT REHAUL

Lastly, most noted that MySpace cannot cut its way back to health, which is why sources said its execs are now beginning to engage in a major overhaul of the product itself.

While leadership had considered bringing in a separate new skunkworks-type team to do that, it has been decided that the current staff–helped by some outside consultants–will be doing a top-to-bottom redo of MySpace.

MySpace could use it. As you can see from the charts below from a poll that we did for the seventh D: All Things Digital conference recently–and where Walt Mossberg and I interviewed Van Natta and Miller onstage (see the highlights video below)–it has a lot to fix, including reengaging users, improving technology and differentiating itself from Facebook.

And, in fact, carving itself out as a different product than Facebook is one major aim because the offerings–while both are social networks–are quite different in approach. Facebook has evolved into more of a utility, while MySpace has made better inroads as an entertainment hub.

Whatever changes are made, most sources note that MySpace needs to try to remain true to its original frisky and fun start-up core, while innovating a next-generation product and continuing to goose its advertising business.

That also includes starting up renegotiations with Google (GOOG) about its search-advertising partnership, talks that are just getting started now (more on that soon).

Most of all, said one person, pointing to the long and painfully public struggle at Yahoo (YHOO), leadership has to stop the focus on MySpace being broken as soon as possible.

“MySpace needed to be shaken up, but it is still a very powerful brand and has huge traffic,” said the source. “Its management has to project a sense inside and outside that it is not only fixable, but also can lead again.”

As with Yahoo, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and many others before it, that’s no easy task for MySpace, starting today.

In any case, here’s the highlights video of the Miller/Van Natta interview at D7:

And here are three not-so-upbeat poll charts about MySpace and how users think about it (click on them to make them larger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090617/myspace-after-the-layoffs-heres-whats-what-and-whats-next/feed/ 4