Keep in touch via Facebook, this is critical to your future success. And we’re public now, so can you click on an ad or two when you’re there?

– Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, speaking at Harvard Business School’s “Class Day” event Wednesday

That’s an easy one: Kayak.com.

The travel search company, which has been putting off its plans to go public for more than a year and a half, is now getting ready to pull the trigger, according to sources.

The Norwalk, Conn.-based company is by default one of the prime candidates to go public because it has already filed its paperwork and has been dutifully updating its financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission every quarter.

A Kayak spokesperson declined to comment, but the timing is good for a number of reasons.

Not only has Facebook priced at the high end of its range, which makes investors a bit more hungry for tech stocks, but other travel companies have been warmly received by the markets over the past few months.

In December, TripAdvisor spun off from Expedia to become an independently held public company. Since then, the company’s stock has soared, trading at $41 a share, up from $27 a share. Expedia is also trading higher, up 50 percent to $41.10 a share.

Kayak could begin its roadshow as soon as Monday and may be seeking as much as $150 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to CNBC. In its original documents, it said it would raise a minimum of $50 million, which served more as a placeholder than what it was intending on raising.

As recently as last week, it updated its filing to report its first quarter earnings, announcing that it earned $4.1 million on $73.3 million. In the year-ago period, it recorded a lost of $6.9 million on revenues of $52.7 million.

Last month, Kara Swisher reported that Schultz and Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy were suddenly stepping down from the Groupon board.

Schultz’s departure was effective immediately, while Efrusy will not be standing for reelection at the company’s annual meeting in June.

In the interview on CNBC, Schultz said, “I only committed to one year. It just so happens that my exit was timed with the problem they had last quarter, and no one should read anything into that.”

When asked whether the company has enough adult supervision, he added: “I have confidence in the board and Andrew, and that’s all I have to say at this time.”

Groupon’s stock has continued a downward spiral after it revised its fourth-quarter results to account for higher than expected returns during the holiday period. Today, the stock is down 1.3 percent, or 13 cents, to trade at $9.94 a share.

At that price, it is worth half as much as at the time of its initial public offering.

On the same day that Schultz and Efrusy announced their departures, Groupon said it planned to appoint both Daniel Henry, CFO of American Express, and Deloitte Vice Chairman Robert Bass. Henry joins immediately, in Schultz’s place.

Activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point just got an unlikely and powerful ally in his proxy fight against Yahoo: Berkshire Hathaway’s famed Warren Buffett.

In a wide-ranging interview on CNBC this morning, when asked about the controversy, Buffett said about the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s excuse that the addition of a false computer science degree to Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s bio was an “inadvertent error”:

“It doesn’t sound like an inadvertent error … If I thought as a director, if I thought that an officer had consistently misstated some fact to me, I think I’d probably do something about it,” said the legendary investor, in part, who also noted he did not know all the facts.

Still, said Buffett: “If you can’t trust the people you’re working with, you’ve got a problem.”

Ziiiiing, because if the sage of Omaha thinks it’s bad, it has moved to worse.

And, indeed it has — earlier today, Loeb lobbed a legal demand for information about Thompson’s hiring and more.

Yahoo’s board is conducting an investigation into the matter, led by independent director Fred Amoroso.

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• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

Oh, you surely already saw the Winklevii — the famous twin godlets who did not invent Facebook — on CNBC yesterday, but we had to also shove it up to maintain our 100 percent we’ll-post-whatever-those-goofs-do record.

Next chapter: They are VCs. Everybody laugh. Now, please move along.

Here’s the video, and also our much more favorite one about the social networking loser pair, from “The Simpsons” (thanks for the reminder, BostonInno):

I was a big Clinton and Gore supporter in the 90s … I turned 40 last year and so I figured it was time to make the switch.

– Marc Andreessen, on CNBC, talking about his support for Mitt Romney

What’s so confusing, though, is that Salesforce is still growing like crazy and adding new employees at a relatively fast pace. Faster than ever before, in fact, and yet it still doesn’t need the new building? Apparently, Salesforce can satisfy its office-space needs by sticking with the traditional leases upon which it has relied so far. As Salesforce chief messaging officer Bruce Francis told Reuters: “We are growing now faster than we were growing at the time when we originally made the decision to build the campus. We are going to need space faster than we could build it.”

But the decision is going to add another log on the fire for Salesforce’s critics, who have argued that its shares are too expensive, and that its CEO, Marc Benioff, has no discipline when it comes to controlling expenses.

And they are growing at an alarming clip: Salesforce’s combined annual operating expenses grew 46 percent year over year to $1.8 billion in 2011, or about 80 percent of sales; up from $1.2 billion, or about 74 percent of sales, in 2010. That’s notably faster that the growth in annual sales, which grew 37 percent from $1.7 billion to $2.3 billion. And let’s not forget that Salesforce finished the year with a $35 million operating loss, versus a $97 million operating profit in 2010.

Salesforce defenders would say that deferred billings are really where you look for indications of growth in a cloud-computing company, and that’s fair: Future billings say more about the uptake of a subscription product like Salesforce.com’s primary cloud-based customer-relations management software than revenue that’s already been booked. And to that point, deferred revenue grew 48 percent, or ever so slightly faster than expenses.

Still, none of that helps explain why Salesforce management felt it was: A) justified in spending $278 million on 14 acres of real estate, and going to the expense of hiring architects and contractors; and B) why it no longer thinks it needs it. The purchase felt like a rash decision then, and backing away from the project feels just as rash now.

Anyhow, the news comes on the heels of Salesforce reporting quarterly results that blew by the expectations of analysts and undid much of the negative buzz that emerged in the quarter before that. Benioff made his regular appearance on CNBC’s “Mad Money” with Jim Cramer to talk about it. Cramer is apparently still liking the taste of the Salesforce Kool-Aid. In his remarks, Benioff discloses that Salesforce just closed a big deal with Hewlett-Packard, along with some other monstrously large transactions with other companies. What neither one of them bothers to talk about is the growth in expenses.

(Image courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger)

According to several sources close to the situation, the Facebook board has been meeting early this afternoon at its Silicon Valley HQ to give the go-ahead to a massive initial public offering.

Facebook is expected to file regulatory documents as early as tomorrow morning for what will certainly be one of the most-watched IPOs in tech in recent years.

Sources also noted the filing could happen after markets closed tomorrow, too.

While sources said the filing time could still change even later this week, that seems unlikely, especially given the furor over every detail — including entirely meaningless ones — about the much hyped Facebook offering.

But it’s finally here and will be much scrutinized.

As I previously reported, the offering is expected to be below an overblown valuation number of $100 billion that has been widely reported and the amount being raised is also less than the $10 billion being bandied about.

I would tell you those numbers if I knew, but the offering has been locked down tight by Facebook — much different than blabbier recent IPOs from Internet companies. (Heeelllloooo, Groupon!)

That’s because Facebook management has been determined to conduct an IPO with as little drama as possible and is seeking to minimize a bubble atmosphere around the event.

(I might start liveblogging the IPO countdown right now, just to ramp up the noise and send CNBC into a frenzy.)

The board of Facebook is chaired by co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been the most insistent about conducting the IPO with more deliberation and care.

One notable difference, for certain, has been Zuckerberg’s patience in growing the business before taking Facebook public. Still, it is important to remember that its history has actually been very short in time — the start-up was launched as thefacebook.com from his dorm room at Harvard University in early 2004.

If you are counting, that is only eight years ago.

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So why did Omega take a position in RIM, when other investment advisory firms are fleeing the company? Brookside Capital Investors, Janus Capital Management and Greystone Managed Investments, for example, have all unloaded their shares in recent months.

In an interview with CNBC this week, Cooperman explained his rationale. Short answer: Omega’s position in RIM is quite small — less than 1 percent of the firm’s total portfolio. And RIM could rise again when it finally gets its new QNX operating system. It’s still got a hell of a user base.

“We think the new operating system is constructive,” Cooperman told CNBC. “RIM has over 70 million users. … There is tremendous intellectual property and the possibility they could resurrect themselves and go on a better track. We took a speculative position.”

In other words, RIM may well be a value purchase right now. So why not make a small bet?

“Hopefully we’ll develop greater conviction after they come out with results in December,” said Cooperman. “We’re hoping they’ve seen the worst.”

That represents a drop in value of nearly 10 percent from the start of the year, but it has been an up-and-down-and-up-again ride. During the year, the shares have traded as high as $160 and as low as $109. In a word, it’s a volatile stock. The reason is that investors can’t seem to settle on what Salesforce is, and how to value it. The stock was killed yesterday — especially in after-hours trading, when it fell by as much as 10 percent — on disappointing quarterly results. And, frankly, management isn’t helping to clear up the picture one bit. More on that in a minute.

There was good news and bad news, but confusion appeared to reign over the minds of Salesforce investors, who couldn’t seem to get their heads around what’s going on with the company, and so assumed the picture must be bad. Because if it was good, it would clearly be unambiguously good, right? Today, they’re shaking it off: Credit Suisse lowered its price target on Salesforce from $140 to $135, but maintained a “Buy” rating. Deutsche Bank also maintained a Buy rating, and raised its target to $205, from $200. “Buy on the weakness,” argues RBC Capital Markets.

The Salesforce story is tricky. Revenue is growing, forward guidance is up; yet billings growth is slowing and cash flow from operations was down. As Brian Schwartz of ThinkEquity put it:

Salesforce reported mixed Q3 results as revenue, EPS, cash flow beat Consensus while billings growth of 29 percent missed both Consensus and our prediction for accelerating growth. The good news is that FY13 revenue guidance and Q4 billings guidance are well-above Consensus, which suggests strong business momentum, in our view, and should reverse a two-quarter slide of decelerating billings growth. However, billings grew slower than revenue for the second consecutive quarter and Q4′s guidance assumes this trend could continue for at least another quarter, with tougher comparisons ahead.

So, what is a Salesforce investor to think?

CEO Marc Benioff took to CNBC after yesterday’s results, appearing, as he often does, on Jim Cramer’s investor-tainment show “Mad Money.” Cramer — who has been known to admit on the air that, where Salesforce is concerned, he’s “drinking the Kool-Aid and likes how it tastes” — did his best to pepper Benioff with reasonable questions, which Benioff tended to dodge. Kicking into “master salesman” mode, he stuck to his well-worn argument that Salesforce is a company that has to spend money to keep growing. “We’re trying to aggregate market share and revenue, and we’re totally focused on top-line growth,” he told Cramer. “If we were a company focused only on earnings, we wouldn’t be growing as much as we are.” That, he said, would be “the wrong thing to do in our life cycle.”

Benioff also managed to lob a little grenade at his former boss, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle. Cramer mentioned the September kerfuffle, during which Benioff was pulled from giving a speech at an Oracle customer event in San Francisco. Benioff instead crowed about winning videogame concern Electronic Arts as a new Salesforce.com customer, replacing Oracle.

So, then, how should investors evaluate Salesforce’s prospects going forward, using, say, a once-reliable metric like the number of customers, Cramer asks. That’s no longer a good indication, Benioff says. After all those acquisitions that Salesforce has made in the last year — Heroku, Radian6 and Manymoon — Salesforce’s base of customers is vastly different. Instead, he says to rely on the company’s guidance.

And that guidance is pretty good. Salesforce expects to bring in $3 billion in sales next year. Impressive, for sure. But with that sales growth comes growth in operational expenses, and a lot of effort and muscle are being put behind products with uncertain prospects — like Chatter, which Benioff routinely portrays as strategically important, but which has many competitors, including Yammer and Jive Software, to name but two.

Trust the guidance, Benioff says. Okay, but that’s another way of saying “trust me.” If that makes you feel a little uncertain, you’re probably not alone. The video clip of Benioff’s 10-minute TV appearance is below:

Buffett made the disclosure in an interview, which at this moment is still underway, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Why IBM? “They treat their stock with reverence,” which he says is unusual.

The shares are also on a nice steady climb. IBM ended 2010 at $146.76 and closed Friday at $187.38, good enough for a rise of nearly 28 percent this year.

Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F disclosure statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is due later today. But from my glance at this Yahoo Finance list of IBM’s biggest shareholders, it looks like it will eclipse the investment firm State Street as Big Blue’s biggest institutional shareholder.

IBM shares are going up in premarket trading. As of about 8:40 am ET, the shares were heading up by more than $2, or about 1.1 percent, to $189.46.

Here’s the video:

At a very first glance, some of the new rules imposed by the feds might seem like they require the new company to offer up programming to any online player that wants to pay up.

And technically, they do. But the new rules have plenty of conditions and limits. So the bottom line is you’re not much more likely to get access to “30 Rock” via YouTube, or CNBC via iTunes, then you were before.

The new FCC and DOJ rules do give, say, Google the ability to buy access to some of NBC U shows or channels. But it would require Comcast’s competitors to do the same thing, first.

That is: Unless the people who are reluctant to put their stuff online because they don’t want to upset Comcast go ahead and put their stuff online, Comcast doesn’t have to, either. So it’s theoretically possible, but not probable.

And if it happens, it will happen haltingly. If Viacom sells someone online access to its MTV lineup of reality shows, that might require Comcast to offer up its reality show lineup on Bravo. But it wouldn’t entitle an online outlet to the police procedurals on USA.

The government also gives the option to, say, Netflix, to set up shop as another cable operator, and buy access to all of NBC Universal’s programming. But it would have to buy all of it–just like Time Warner Cable and Cablevision do when they make a carriage deal for NBC U’s shows.

And again, Comcast wouldn’t have to do that unless its peers did. Which means that if Netflix really wanted to set up shop as a direct competitor of the cable guys, it can do so. But it would have to operate exactly like the cable guys, just like the satellite guys did when they entered the market a couple of decades ago.

So if Netflix, or Apple or whoever really wants to offer a full suite of cable programming, at cable prices, it could. But that would be very, very expensive: Analyst Rich Greenfield estimates that the bill for NBC U’s programming alone would run a new entrant $1 billion a year.

Just as, or even more, important, is that those kind of bundled, take-it-or-leave-it deals are exactly the kind of thing that the cord-cutting crowd complains about.

They don’t want to have to pay for USA and Bravo and Syfy and MSNBC–they want to pick and choose channels, or shows. And pay a lot less.

“I don’t think cord-cutting was a major focus” of negotiations, Comcast EVP David Cohen said during a press conference this afternoon. And that may be true!

But the net result reads very much as if Comcast wanted to make sure the government didn’t force it to break its business model. And if that was the case, it got what it wanted.

Asked recently by CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo if HP’s got something in the pipeline that will “blow away” the iPad, Bradley replied, “You and I will talk about that on the 9th.” Which would seem to suggest that we’ll be seeing the long-rumored PalmPad– or Veer or Gyst, or whatever the hell HP is calling it–or at least hearing about it, come February.

Of course, there will likely be other hardware showcased as well. The invitation’s “Think big. Think small. Think beyond.” tagline says as much, and Bradley reiterated that during his CNBC interview. “We are focused on the tablet market and we’re focused on enabling it with webOS,” he said. “But we think of the tablet as one piece of a broader ecosystem, one piece of the connected experience we’re going to create…. As we think about webOS and how it enables everything from smartphones to tablets to PCs to potentially other large-screen devices, we see an enormous opportunity, both for ourselves and for our customers, to get the best Web experience, the best content experience, that they can.”

A heavy-handed sales pitch for webOS, I know, but note the range of devices Bradley conjurs up here and his implication that they are on the way. As I wrote in April of last year:

In Palm’s webOS, H-P has an elegant consumer level OS that it controls, something the company–a longtime Windows shop–hasn’t really had before. And with it, it can begin untethering itself from Microsoft and differentiate its brand in a market in which most devices not sold by Apple are all running some variant of Windows. Remember, webOS is scalable. And while Palm lacked the means to scale it, H-P does not. It’s one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and once it brings its engineering acumen and marketing heft to bear on the OS, my guess is we’ll see it evolve into a much larger platform that extends beyond smartphones to tablets, ultraportables and other connected devices. And H-P, for the first time in its history, will be firmly in control of both its hardware and software.

Here’s Bradley’s CNBC interview in full.

In a brief appearance on CNBC, Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America president and COO, discussed three burning issues facing the Japanese game maker:

• Nintendo’s 3-D ambitions (given warnings that children under the age of 6 shouldn’t be viewers).
• Falling revenues for the past couple of years.
• The threat of Microsoft’s very popular Kinect gaming accessory.

Fils-Aime explained that although retail sales have been on the decline since 2008, the business is cyclical: “There’s a lot of systems sold early on, and then later on it is driven by software–2008, 2009 and 2010 were fantastic software years, and that’s where the profit is made.”

In two weeks, Nintendo plans to show off the 3DS at a media event in New York City to demonstrate portable 3-D games that don’t require special glasses. However, it has warned that children under the age of 6 should not view the images because they could have an adverse effect on eyesight development.

How can it be a success when Nintendo’s core demographic can’t use it?

“I have to correct you on that,” Fils-Aime told CNBC host Julia Boorstin. “For Nintendo, the age segment is all consumers from 6 to 96. The fact that the younger consumers are not to view 3-D images is not a big deal for us, and you can manipulate the device to only have 2-D visuals shown, so it will cater to all consumers. The 2-D screen is dramatically better than our current DS.”

With the release of the Microsoft Kinect, which has now sold close to eight million devices, was it a mistake that Nintendo did not release a new version of Wii last year?

“We had the new version of the Wii, and it was red, and it did phenomenally well on a global basis as we celebrated Mario’s 25th anniversary. We give credit to Microsoft and what it has done for the industry. What’s good for them is good for all of us.”

In all, Nintendo said it has sold 47 million DS handheld devices since 2004, and 34 million Wiis in the U.S.

But how does Nintendo compete in an age of the iPad and competition from free Facebook games, like FarmVille?

Fils-Aime: “You win with great content. We have franchises, like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. All of this motivates people to buy the software, and what they are looking for is the in-depth, great experience.”

Here’s Fils-Aime’s CNBC interview at the Consumer Electronics Show:

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is certainly in the midst of a media bonanza.

Aside from all the heat over its recent investment whatever with Goldman Sachs, the young entrepreneur has been touted on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and been selected Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Oh, yes, and that movie–”The Social Network”–which you just know is going to win some Oscars on February 27.

Now CNBC has just aired a documentary on the huge social networking site, titled–appropriately–“The Facebook Obsession.”

There is no new interview with Zuckerberg, and it’s essentially the same story about the Silicon Valley wunderkind, told yet again. But all the old video clips and photos collected all together on another television show are nice.

Also, I always enjoy the Winklevii spouting off hambone arguments about why they are owed more than $65 million for Zuckerberg’s kneecapping of them back at Harvard University.

And, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-me appearance, I also make a showing, apparently as the grumpy one.

But I did not see it, as CNBC did not deign to post the entire report online, as “60 Minutes” so kindly did.

CNBC did do a preview and provide some clips, which are embedded below, as well the the much funnier Jon Stewart take on it all on “The Daily Show,” titled “The Anti-Social Network”:

Another reputation smeared in the Hewlett-Packard/Oracle slag-fest. Turns out Joe Nocera (pictured here)–the New York Times (NYT) business columnist who penned that scathing piece on former SAP chief and incoming Hewlett-Packard (HP) CEO Léo Apotheker for his involvement in a lawsuit over intellectual property theft between SAP (SAP) and Oracle (ORCL)–has a conflict of interest.

Nocera’s fiancée, Dawn Schneider, is director of communications for Boies, Schiller & Flexner, the law firm that just so happens to represent Oracle in its very same suit against SAP.

Here’s the editor’s note the Times just appended to Nocera’s story.

In the Talking Business column in Business Day on Saturday, Joe Nocera wrote about a lawsuit by Oracle against a division of SAP, claiming theft of intellectual property. Mr. Nocera learned after the column was published  that Oracle was represented by the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, where his fiancée works as director of communications. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Mr. Nocera would not have written about the case if he had known of the law firm’s involvement.

Odd to learn that Nocera, the Times’ star business columnist, was unaware that his own fiancée was a flack for the law firm repping Oracle in the suit (see screenshot above, with Boies named as counsel) that provided so much of the subject matter for his column.

But it seems he was not, up to today, when he made a CNBC appearance on the subject.

It’s not clear when Nocera found out about his conflict of interest. His column on the Oracle-HP spat, however, has been the talk of Silicon Valley over the last several days, including a smack back at it by incoming HP Chairman Ray Lane in a letter to the Times’ editor.

Here’s a video of Nocera talking about his HP column on CNBC:

[Nocera photo credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times]

The company, in a blog post, promised “a new world of apps available for TV,” including NBC’s CNBC Real-Time, an application that will allow Google TV users to track stocks and access news alongside business-news channel CNBC’s live broadcasts. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. (GE).

Google also said Amazon Video on Demand will give Google TV viewers instant access to more than 75,000 movies and TV shows for a fee, and video-streaming service Netflix Inc. (NFLX) also will be available.

Google TV, announced in May but not yet available, includes software that allows people to access the Internet and search for Web videos on their television screens, as well as search live TV listings. It is styled as platform for content companies and other partners to develop TV apps, just as Google’s Android and Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone have spawned marketplaces for cellphone apps.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Clearly, Nokia’s struggles in the top end of the market continue, and its failure to develop a compelling offering there are weighing on it more heavily than ever in these days following the debut of iPhone 4 and various Droids. That said, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo insists Nokia (NOK) has reasons to be optimistic, with the new Nokia N8 scheduled to debut later this the year. “We are approaching the end of this painful product transition at the high end of our product portfolio,” he said during a conference call with analysts today. “The N8 will mark the beginning of our renewal. As we go forward I believe we will regain high-end leadership in our industry.”

But really, what did you expect him to say? Given recent media reports claiming Nokia’s board has begun searching for his successor, this may well be Kallasvuo’s last chance to, in his words, “kick-start Nokia’s fightback” against Android and the iPhone.

Indeed, in an interview with CNBC today, Kallasvuo called for an end to rumors about his tenuous future at the company. “There has been a lot of speculation on my position, on myself, during the last couple of weeks,” he said. “That speculation is detrimental. It’s not good for Nokia and must be brought to an end one way or another.”

And at this point, which way it will be brought to an end is an open question. Said Kallasvuo, “I’m not in a position here and now to really shed any more light on the topic. I really must just concentrate now on the task at hand.”

Steve Burke is about to take on a very big job: Combining GE’s (GE) NBC Universal with Comcast’s programming assets to create a television colossus. Good thing he has spent a lifetime in TV preparing for it.

But even without those responsibilities, Burke has plenty on his plate. As COO of the country’s biggest cable company, he helps steer Comcast (CMCSA) through tricky waters: Net neutrality, feisty file-sharers, sleeping tech guys, etc.

In certain circles–perhaps one you’re in sitting right now–the central question Burke and Comcast have to answer is: How are you going to survive the attempts of Google/Apple/everyone on the Web to turn you into an irrelevant dumb-pipe provider?

But the flip side of this question is just as valid: How can anyone really dislodge the company that controls the pipe that makes TV?

Liveblog

Kara starts off with the basics: Why do you want to buy NBC?

Burke: We’ve always believed that content and distribution go better together. We’ve had distribution, we’ve been trying to get content for a while. Tried to get Disney (DIS), came close to buying Universal when Vivendi owned the whole thing.

8:16 am: Kara–but lots of companies have tried marrying content and distribution. That doesn’t always work.

8:16 am: Burke–It has for News Corp. (NWS). But in our case, we already have the ability to put up 70,000 hours of content for video on demand. But we don’t have all the content we’d like. We don’t have day-and-date movies. We’d like all prime-time programming on VOD, etc. The thing that slows that down is the natural negotiations that you have to go through when you don’t own the content.

8:18 am: Kara–You’re also worried about becoming a dumb pipe, without control, right?

8:18 am: Burke: I like to think of it as opportunities. Look at DreamWorks (DWA)–they are worried about declining DVD sales, and they’d like to be able to do electronic sell-through. We’re in a position to help craft that evolution.

8:19 am: Kara–Are you sure consumers really want to watch this stuff on TVs, as opposed to iPads, etc?

8:20 am: Burke–We’re all for choice, anytime, anywhere. We believe consumers want that, too, and “it’s frustratingly slow” to get that to happen. “But I think that’s the world we’re all crashing into,” and “you can’t stop it anyway.”

8:21 am: What’s going with Hulu, which you’re going to own a piece of?

8:21 am: Burke–Whether it’s Hulu or Fancast, which we own all of, “people want their shows on the Internet. And they’re going to get their shows on the Internet.” Not sure if it’s going to be ad-supported or a paid model. “I know–I’ve read”–that Hulu is going to try a paid model.

8:22 am: We also support the TV-everywhere concept (spearheaded by Time Warner–get what you want on the Web, as long as you pay for a cable subscription).

8:23 am: Kara–you’re going to be running NBC, right?

8:23 am: When the deal closes, Jeff Zucker will run the entity. But he’ll report to me.

8:24 am: By the way, content and distribution don’t naturally work together. You have to make them work together. You have to do things that sometimes aren’t immediately advantageous for both sides.

8:24 am: Kara–Let’s talk about your individual businesses, as well as Steve Jobs’s expressed lack of interest in getting into TV. So cable is most important to you, right?

8:25 am: Burke–Cable provides the majority of NBCU’s cash flow. They’re the best part of the media landscape right now. Majority of cash at most entertainment companies comes from cable right now, and even more so at NBCU. But we also think there’s upside with Universal studio and NBC broadcast.

8:26 am: Okay, but give me an honest assessment of broadcast. What did you think of the Conan deal? Did they call you?

8:27 am: Burke–as the deal closes, it’s not our company. We can’t manage anything. To a degree, we’re watching things in the same way you are. There’s clearly a separation that exists. Because of regulators [natch].

8:27 am: Anyway, broadcast TV has been challenged for some time. But right now it looks to be on the upswing. Ads are coming back. retrans consent, where broadcasters will get money from cable operators, is coming. But broadly, if you look at TV, including cable, the overall television business is making as much money as ever.

8:29 am: Kara–do you still need broadcast networks anymore, anyway?

8:29 am: Burke–for big events, you can’t get a bigger audience. And that’s very attractive. We’re not naive. We know the business is “very challenged.” But in the next few years, there can be a real upside. We can invest in the business. If you’re in the network TV business, you have to spend the money to be competitive: on pilots, on encouraging creative people to work, etc. Note that NBC spent a lot more on pilots for this fall than they did a year ago. “If you’re in it, you have to be in it to invest and win. You can’t cut your way to success in broadcast TV.” [Which was Zucker's strategy last year. So what does that mean?]

8:31 am: Burke moves on to the Universal movie studio. It can move the existing library to different platforms, help it migrate from DVD to electronic sell-through, etc.

8:32 am: Will Burke have to do a lot of cost-cutting? When we bought AT&T (T), we did. But in this case, it’s not about costs. There’s very little overlap. It’s more of a case of trying to put everything together.

8:33 am: Kara: So will you sell anything off after the deal goes through?

Burke: No. We want the cable systems, but the other stuff has value, too. And all of the parts can work together.

8:34 am: Kara–How do you look at competitors like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG). What do you think of Google TV?

8:34 am: Our real competitors are the satellite companies and telcos. Right now. The real challenge is delivering all that data. You need infrastructure–pipe–for that. That’s how you deliver tonnage. And it’s going to be that way for a long time. The Web can deliver video, but not the same tonnage, in the same way. There are a lot of companies that want to get to the TV set. And I think all of them can be complementary. But people who subscribe to us want ESPN, CNBC, etc.

8:36 am: Kara–But why do need bundles and tiers, anyway?

8:36 am: Burke: The programmers we work with want full distribution. And you pay $50, $60, and you get 200 channels. And the ecosystem works very well for the programmers, and it works well for us.

8:36 am: Kara–and for customers?

8:37 am: Burke–TV in the U.S. is better than anywhere in the world. It’s natural to say you only want to pay for two channels. And we could technically do that, and we could offer a less expensive bundle. But I think the business model has evolved to be what it is right now, and it’s been successful for both sides of the equation.

8:37 am: But again, people are picking and choosing what they want on the Web. And some of them seem to be turning off cable as well. Aren’t you worried about that?

8:38 am: Burke: We worry all the time. But the fact of the matter is, it’s counterintuitive. I have five kids. And they all consume media different ways. But quarter after quarter, year after year, cable subs go up. It has never gone down. There’s no evidence that people are giving up their cable. If people want ESPN or CNBC, they’re going to subscribe. In the future, you’ll have more stuff on more devices. But at the end of the day, it’s in the programmers’ interest to get affiliate fees for their stuff.

8:40 am: Kara–But don’t you think people want a la carte?

8:40 am: Burke–I’d like to buy the first section of the Wall Street Journal, and not the rest of the paper [followed by Kara fumbling with some math].

8:40 am: In any case, you’ve got much more choice now than you had 10 years ago. It’ll be the same thing in the next 10 years.

8:41 am: Kara–which devices are important to you beyond TV?

8:41 am: Burke–The iPad, of course. We just showed off that new iPad app/TV controller that will replace the crummy search and navigation that exists on the set-top box now.

8:43 am: Kara–Is 3-D coming to the home?

8:43 am: Burke–Yep. This won’t be like HD sets, where they started off very expensive and came down relatively slowly. We’ll get a point pretty quickly where if you’re buying a nice TV set, it will have 3-D. Now there are a lot of places where 3-D doesn’t enhance the experience. And they need to figure it out. For instance, you don’t 3-D when you have overhead shots at at a football game. So we need to figure out what percent of stuff you watch will have 3-D. But it’s coming.

8:44 am: Kara–Jobs talked about collapsing windows, but windows don’t really seem to ever collapse.

8:45 am: Burke–Right. They are narrowing, but only slightly. You want to have windows, but make sure they have a purpose. For instance, I think the best place to have a movie for the general public is the movie theater. I think that’s going to be the same for a long time.

8:46 am: Kara–But what if you don’t want to go the theater?

8:46 am: Burke–I don’t know. I think there’s a real benefit to having it in theaters opening weekend. But 90 days out, I’m not sure. It probably doesn’t have to be windowed for 90 days; you should be able to get it on VOD, etc.

8:47 am: Kara–One more time: What’s the most important device, either real or overhyped?

8:47 am: Burke–The iPad. I bring it everywhere I go. It’s so elegant. And so early in its life cycle. But I’m looking forward to other tablets, too. The big picture is that all this stuff will enhance the value of great content. That’s the bet we made with NBC, that it can get to more people, over more devices, and get more valuable that way. People are always worried about technology draining value from media, but each new wave of technology has been additive.

Q&A:

Q: Do you think your pipe business will become separate from rest of your business and become commoditized?

Burke: For starters, we’re already separating programming from video (which includes TV, high-speed, etc.

Q: What about the theory that big mergers, like the ones you’re doing, are products of hubris more than business savvy?

Burke: I know that theory. We’ve done a lot of deals. “Every single time we’ve done a deal, Wall Street has said, ‘Why are you doing that?’” But we have a view that content and distribution work together if properly managed. And that a company that gets bigger can do cool things with technology, if you do it right. “But we’re totally aware that there are a lot of people saying–’Why don’t you stay where you are?’ We think we’re getting a fairly priced deal for NBCU.”

Q: Do you think there will be a market for set-top boxes that consumers buy on their own, with features they want?

Burke: Complicated question. Each MSO is a conglomeration of different technologies. We’d love it if people bought their own set-top boxes. We’d save a ton of money. But the different technologies involved make that difficult.

Q: What’s your mobile strategy?

Burke: We’ve invested in Clearwire. We’re rolling out WiMax. We’re big believers in Wi-Fi. The iPad makes you want Wi-Fi meshing in cities, and we’re working on that. But the traditional cellphone business, as a fourth product to complement TV, landline and Web, doesn’t make sense for us.

Q: You guys have been good about chasing after malware, botnets, etc. What can you do to get others to emulate you?

Burke: The Internet business is crucial for us. It’s a growth driver. So we have to provide really reliable, really fast Internet service. And we believe in open internet. But you have to deal with congestion and protect copyrights and prevent malware and spam, and we invest a lot in that. It’s a very tricky balancing act, to make sure that the highway is really fast, but also controlled.

Q: I run Hillcrest, and Hulu blocked my service. Will you do something different when you own NBC?

Burke: “It’s not time for me to answer that question.”

Kara: “Really?”

Burke: “Really.”

Q: Your customers hate you. What are doing about that?

Burke: We’re working on customer service, spending a lot of money on it. If you don’t take care of your customers, they’re going to go somewhere else. The physical networks are getting more sophisticated. But we want to improve them.

Q: Apologies, missed the question here.

Burke is explaining that TV software platform is “balkanized” compared with the Web, where it’s much easier to get stuff to work together.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

Unlike the “30 Rock” stab at social networking, the “South Park” guys don’t mess around with pretend names like “YouFace”–Stan, Kyle and pals are most definitely on Facebook in this one. Though for whatever reason, they do replace CNBC’s Jim Cramer of “Mad Money” with Cartman in this clip.

Over the weekend, Vice Minister Miao Wei of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, that “[Google] never informed the ministry that it was planning to withdraw from China, [nor has it] filed reports over alleged Internet regulation and cyberattacks to the ministry or requests for negotiations.”

Odd to hear, considering Google’s rather definitive Jan. 12 announcement that it will stop censoring its Chinese search site and may withdraw from the country altogether. More so given the comments of another MIIT minister just a day earlier. On Friday, Li Yizhong told reporters attending the National People’s Congress that the ministry is in talks with Google about its plans to operate an unfiltered search engine in China.

Sources close to the situation confirm that this is the case: Google (GOOG) has been in private talks with Beijing, though not formally. Of course, though nearly two months have passed since Google first said it would stop censoring search results in China, queries to Google.cn continue to return censored results.

As I noted here a month ago, “we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results” is about as definitive a statement as they come. Is Google going to follow through or not? Why all the mystery and dawdling?

Could it be that Google is now backing off its initial threat? Because, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz suggested last week, that threat seems increasingly empty the longer this thing drags out. “It looked to me like it was more of a statement than an action,” she told CNBC. “If they wanted to pull out, they should have pulled out.”

Reached for comment, Google offered none beyond this now typical refrain: “Thanks for reaching out, but as you might suspect, we will not be commenting on any discussions with the Chinese Government.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Chinese Scientists Recalibrate Google’s Evil Scale
• Chinese Schools Tied to Attacks on Google? Where’d You Read That, Mad Magazine?
• World War WAN: Google Hack Traced to Schools in China
• Nearly a Month After Debut, Google’s “New” Approach to China Still a Lot Like the Old One
• Google CEO: Ask Not What Google Can Do for China–Ask What China Can Do for Google
• China on “Google Farce”: Our Internet Is Open
• China to Google: No Worries, We Were Planning to Clone Those Android Phones Anyway
• U.S. State Department to Complain to China About Google Hack. Not That China’s Going to Listen.
• Microsoft: “Don’t Be Evil” Is Google’s Motto, Not Ours
• What’s the Chinese Word for Bing? Google Threatens to Leave China.

Earlier this week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was all over the place talking up the company on the occasion of its 15th birthday.

Here’s a video of a longish interview she did with CBNC, embedded below, where she cracks wise a lot, but says little.

My favorite part: When the interviewer oddly asks if Yahoo (YHOO) is a trinket and Bartz pipes up that it is a bracelet!

Thankfully, we have the critical jewelry issue around Yahoo settled.

Bartz also gets a good one off about Facebook’s lack of revenue compared with Yahoo, after being asked why Yahoo was not as hot as the social networking phenom.

“Remind me, what’s their revenue?” she asked.

Bartz’s week also included a lunch with a group of reporters at its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ–pretty much Lady BoomTown and a dozen dudes–Tuesday, at which she talked about a range of things, offered Sprinkles cupcakes and broke no substantive news.

She did give good quote though.

Bartz, for example, said she didn’t “wish antitrust on anybody,” when asked about Google (GOOG) and its issues with regulators in Europe.

She also noted, talking about the search giant’s recent conviction in Italy and its potential impact: “The [European Union] concerns me.”

But when talking about Google’s threat to leave China over censorship issues, Bartz was less kind. “It looked to me like it was more of a statement than an action,” she said. “If they wanted to pull out, they should have pulled out.”

Perhaps the most controversial remark was when she seemed to compare herself with Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, pointing out that his innovative turnaround of the iconic Silicon Valley computer company took a lot of time after he returned in 1996.

“He knew the DNA better than anyone and it took him four years,” she declared, noting her tenure was just over a year.

Perhaps her most important quote was related to losing search market share and seeing Facebook’s user growth close in on Yahoo.

Bartz said the real point at Yahoo was more “the fight to get ad dollars around relevant users.”

As in, from a jewelry point of view: Finding a diamond in the rough.

Here’s the video of the CNBC interview with Bartz:

“As a company deeply involved in the digitization of education and business information, we were as interested as anyone in the launch of the new device, although we were never part of the launch event and never in a position to confirm details about the device ahead of time,” Steven Weiss, VP of Corporate Communications for The McGraw-Hill Companies said in a statement given to Digital Daily.

“On Tuesday afternoon Mr. McGraw appeared on CNBC in a wide ranging interview to discuss our earnings announcement and growth projections for 2010. His speculative comments about Apple’s pending launch, which he shared earlier in the day in a call with investors, were simply intended to suggest that if the new device were to use iPhone applications, many of our education products would be compatible with the technology and could be made easily available on it.”

Concluding, Weiss wrote, “Unfortunately, it seems that many mistakenly interpreted his comments as being more specific to yesterday’s announcement. It is also important to note that only the products of trade publishers were featured in the launch event. Our digital education programs are not in that category and were never part of those negotiations.”

It would seem, then, that contrary to other reports making the rounds, McGraw-Hill was not abruptly excised from Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs’s presentation yesterday after Terry McGraw’s disclosure on CNBC. And indeed, multiple sources close to the situation say that the CEO was not given a demo of the iPad before its launch and that McGraw-Hill (MHP) was never intended to be part of iPad launch event in San Francisco.

In retrospect, all McGraw really did on CNBC was to recycle and recast some comments made during the company’s Tuesday morning earnings conference call. Reading over those remarks, it seems plausible that he was simply excitedly regurgitating the same collection of rumor and speculation we all were during the run-up to the launch event.
 
“In the near future, you will undoubtedly see a McGraw-Hill e-book for the college market running on an Apple tablet,” McGraw said during the company’s earnings call. “All our titles on CourseSmart, the industry e-book consortium, are already available to students on an iPhone operating system. That’s because CourseSmart developed an iPhone application last summer with support from Apple. The goal was to have core educational content available on the iPhone operating system, which also makes it possible for e-books to run on new Apple devices using that system.”
 
Continuing, McGraw said, “Consider then the Apple tablet computer, which will be introduced shortly. There is a lot of secrecy about the introduction, but many expect that the Apple device will use the iPhone operating system. If that’s the case, we are confident that our CourseSmart e-books should run well right out of the box on any Apple Tablet. Stay tuned.”

Similar to what he told CNBC, right? Thing is, McGraw spoke with quite a bit more certainty during that interview. He said:

“Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable.”

Those remarks don’t seem entirely speculative to me. Still, what was McGraw saying that we hadn’t already heard before? Maybe he reads the rumor sites too.

BoomTown captured some bits and pieces of tasty video as I attended the Apple rollout of its newest device, the iPad, yesterday.

There are shots of the action in San Francisco outside and inside the launch hall and demo area (with key clips of CEO Steve Jobs during the event) showing off the hardware and software.

And, in a series of interviews, I mocked New York Times (NYT) tech legend John Markoff, got mocked by Apple (AAPL) PR gurus Katie Cotton and Steve Dowling, got gallant treatment from Gizmodo’s Brian Lam, got shut down by New York Times tech dude Brad Stone and got CNBC’s Jim Goldman–whom I did not ask for a date–to call the iPad “an XL version of the iPod touch.”

Or is it a Thneed–the innovative thing that everybody needs–from Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax”?

Time will tell, but here’s the video to enjoy, plus one of the terrific “Everybody Needs a Thneed” song:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100128/scenes-from-the-apple-ipad-day-is-it-a-thneed-or-an-ipod-xl/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100126/qotd-244/ http://allthingsd.com/20100126/qotd-244/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:30:31 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=33535 Apple’s mythical tablet exists. It’s based on the iPhone operating system. It will function as an e-reader–among other things. And it will indeed be uncrated at a special event tomorrow morning in San Francisco. This according to McGraw-Hill (MHP) CEO Terry McGraw, who confirmed the device to CNBC today in another masterful Apple (AAPL) PR leak.

“They’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one,” McGraw said. “We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now is we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.”

Below, video of the exchange. Tablet talk starts at 2:50:

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