Here’s the trailer for Hulu’s latest original content offering about a very unusual matchmaker.

That’s irksome “Paul, the Male Matchmaker,” a 10-episode spoof series from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Studio 2.0, which will debut on the premium video service on Feb. 13.

Get it? The day before Valentine’s Day.

It’s got the same tone as Lisa Kudrow’s successful (and now on cable television’s Showtime) “Web Therapy,” with lots of well-known guest stars.

I kind of like it from the teaser here, but we’ll see:

I love talking points as much as the next person, but there’s a striking similarity between recent statements by Yahoo’s co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang and its new CEO Scott Thompson, who was just hired after a stint running eBay’s PayPal unit.

It seems from the pair that the exploitation of Yahoo’s troves of data might take center stage from the “premier digital media company” moniker that the Silicon Valley Internet giant has been using of late.

Premier consumer data mining and usage company just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? (And it’s also usually called Google!)

Here’s Yang from an interview with Walt Mossberg at our AsiaD conference in Hong Kong this past October (this is a liveblog with quotes and paraphrasing of quotes).

Q: As you look at what Yahoo could be, what are the one or two key areas that it could go after to truly transform itself?

Jerry: We’re really focused on trying to “turn Yahoo inside out.” We do a huge amount of services internally: Data, content, personalization. Lots of other people on the Web around the world could use that.

And, from my liveblogging, here’s Thompson last week on his aspirations, which were much less focused on Yahoo’s longtime — and, ahem, bill-paying — advertising business (which the new leader keeps saying he knows nothing about) than on exploiting its consumer data businesses (which he certainly does know about from running the online payments giant).

The data these Internet businesses create, the ability to use analytical technology to build a better businesses for your customers. … I feel certain that wealth of data is going to be exploitable for next generation products, next generation experiences. … My instinct says down in that data we’re going to be able to find ways to compete and innovate that the world hasn’t seen yet.

Data it is, then!

Superior writers, videographers and other content makers want to work with their own kind and for their own kind.

– Nick Denton, in his memo to staff on the Gawker empire in 2012

According to sources close to the situation, Dow Jones is losing its top online editor.

Kevin Delaney, managing editor of The Journal Online — or WSJ.com, as it is better known — is taking a job at the Atlantic Media Company, sources said.

The move is a blow to the Journal’s online efforts, as Delaney, who got the top job in late 2009, is a well-regarded journalist and editor.

(He is certainly an AllThingsD.com fave of those at the Dow Jones mother ship, but he still did not call me back to comment! Thanks a lot, Kevin!)

It has not yet been determined who will succeed him at WSJ.com, sources said. Delaney is not leaving immediately.

Delaney joined the media giant in 1992, was a prominent tech reporter in Silicon Valley, and was also deputy managing editor at WSJ.com.

It’s not clear what Delaney’s new position will be at the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Media, which is best known for its flagship Atlantic Monthly magazine and also the National Journal.

But sources said his role will be part of a new content initiative the company is undertaking.

The well-known Atlantic has recently transformed itself from a coffee-table, big-think analog offering, which still is published, to focusing more on its online content site.

That includes its sassy Atlantic Wire, which is edited by former Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder. Two stories today, for example, are titled “Where the ‘Crybaby’ Gingrich Meme Came From” and “Cain Promises ‘Unconventional’ Endorsement, Jokes Ensue.”

That’s not your intellectually snotty uncle’s Atlantic!

I am looking forward to seeing what Delaney is up to soon.

(Full disclosure: News Corp.-owned Dow Jones owns AllThingsD.com — but that does not get our calls returned any quicker!)

This morning, Yahoo said it had hired PayPal President Scott Thompson as its newest victim, oops, CEO.

(You can read my interview with him too, here.)

AllThingsD.com had reported the pending development last night — which is how we roll here.

Now we will roll into the conference call on the matter, and are hoping that the head of the lucrative eBay payments unit will make an appearance, given that he does not start until next week.

One piece of advice I will extend Thompson: I would refrain from cursing, as previous Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz did on her first outing. (She was fired in September, although not precisely for the cussing she so enjoyed partaking in.)

Here we go!

7:02 am: It’s on, with Thompson present.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock begins, and he is “very excited, very excited.”

I’d be very excited if Thompson talked and not Roy, who has been to this particular Yahoo CEO rodeo a few too many times before.

Bostock is making promises that this time it’s going to be different. Really!

He also notes that the company will continue its “strategic review” — but who knows what that means now.

And he thanks Tim Morse, the interim CEO who is moving back to the CFO job. (Agreed — nice work, Tim!)

7:06 am: Scott Thompson is on and is “just thrilled” to be the new Yahoo CEO.

I like his accent, which seems like he might be from Boston. He does look and sound like Cliff Clavin, the mailman guy at the Beantown bar from the television classic “Cheers.”

Except, given he has been the darkest of dark horses in this CEO race, nobody knew Thompson’s name.

Thompson is saying all the right stuff, about wanting to increase shareholder value and such.

He sounds so hopeful! Urgency! Thoughtfulness! A bright new morning at Yahoo!

I have been to this rodeo before too, but I am still hoping this time it’ll work.

Scott, if you let me down, I might cry, because you sound so nice.

7:09 am Q&A time already.

Congrats from the Wall Street analyst peanut gallery.

Then, it’s right into a question for Bostock, about the progress of the Asian assets deal.

Also, is Thompson too much of a technologist and not a media dude?

Bostock wants to talk about only Scott, but notes that there will be “no slowdown and no delay” in the Asian process. And Thompson will be all onboard when he comes on board, folks.

Bostock sounds tired, but starts to talk about how a “great customer experience” is the key to the advertising business. He notes that Thompson knows how to do this, hence he’ll be fantastic.

“I have every expectation he’ll be out there calling on advertisers,” says Bostock. I would hope so, given that is where Yahoo makes most of its lettuce.

Bostock is saying Yahoo has been “treading water” and now needs to swim fast. Treading water? I wonder who the top honcho at Yahoo has been while the company has been listlessly dangling its legs in the drink?

Roy — that’s who!

7:15 am: Another analyst asks about margins.

Thompson is not having any of it! He is polite when asking for time to get on the job to make proper statements.

But he does focus on the need to build “great, innovative” products. True, but Yahoo has been incredibly unable to do this of late.

Thompson gives no specifics, though. My big idea: I would steal the self-driving car from Google.

7:17 am: A question about what the core of Yahoo is, and about what lessons Thompson is bringing from his experience at PayPal.

Well, he has not met the team — literally. Yahoo’s board consulted almost no one in the top ranks of execs on this appointment.

But Thompson “suspects” there is talent there. Given the recent attrition, he’ll need a big Inspector Clouseau magnifying glass to find it!

From eBay’s PayPal, he says that the key was balancing the customer experience with network effect and, well, blah, blah, blah Internet-speak.

I am still thinking shoplifting the self-driving car is the bestest idea.

7:20 am: A question about Yahoo’s display business versus Google.

Thompson notes it is too early for him to say — though he had better say soon! — but notes that data is key. He is a well-known by-the-numbers guy, and that is clearly where we are going at Yahoo, now that he is the big dog.

Thus:

“The data these Internet businesses create, the ability to use analytical technology to build a better businesses for your customers … I feel certain that wealth of data is going to be exploitable for next generation products, next generation experiences … My instinct says down in that data we’re going to be able to find ways to compete and innovate that the world hasn’t seen yet.”

I am really liking this accent, which is almost lulling. And so polite! Sources tell me that being “collaborative” was a big goal in this hiring.

7:22 am: A question about the identity of Yahoo, and whether it should be public or private.

Thompson harps on the need for innovation, and hopes it will be the future.

“I would not be here if I didn’t think it was possible,” says Thompson.

Bostock takes the public/private question. Yahoo will be public, he declares! Mostly, because it would be too pricey to take private.

“It’s a moot point,” he says.

7:25 am: More questions about what Yahoo is.

Thompson declines to run off the rails on this dicey one, but he says he believes that Yahoo has great assets.

It does. It’s just that it has been crashed many times — by the people who just hired him — right into a wall.

Just sayin’ — a self-driving car would have done a better job.

7:27 am: A brain-drain question, and more on Asia and on mobile.

Bostock butts in again. He said that Thompson will not be distracted by that, and will concentrate on the core business. Hush up, Roy.

Thompson says that he looks forward to meeting the peeps of Yahoo. (’Cuz he has not, as yet!)

He also loves mobile — which Yahoo has largely borked.

7:32 am: A content strategy question. Early days, so Thompson is still keeping his yap shut.

In this, he’s like the anti-Bartz. Is this good? It’s certainly different.

He says again that, “I can’t wait to meet” everyone at Yahoo. Vice versa, because this dude came from left field.

Thompson promises that he will be a “sponge.”

He closes by noting that he is “genuinely excited,” and says he believes in Yahoo.

Indeed, when it comes to Yahoo, you definitely gotta have faith.

It’s not clear if Netflix’s recent series of snafus are Amazon’s gain or not. But in a just-released report by ForeSee, one went up and one went down.

It’s an easy guess which was which.

In the well-known customer satisfaction survey of the Top 40 online retailers during the holiday season — which ForeSee has been conducting twice a year for the last seven years — Amazon rose to its highest spot ever, while Netflix’s score dropped significantly.

Amazon got an 88 out of 100, up two points, while Netflix dropped seven points to 79. The survey noted that “Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices.”

Ooops.

(Netflix fared better with customers in another poll last week, conducted by Citigroup. As Peter Kafka noted: “They’re less happy than they used to be. But they don’t seem to be going anywhere.”)

But in the ForeSee survey, Netflix moved from being a consumer darling to just another face in the crowd. It garnered the average score, which is also 79, a number that has risen from 74 since 2005.

But Netflix was not the only online retailer hit. Also down: Gap.com (down 6 percent to 73), and Overstock.com (down 5 percent to 72).

But on the up: TigerDirect.com (up 8 percent to 79) and J.C. Penney (up 6 percent to 83).

In general, ForeSee concluded that consumers are starting to get the hang of this e-commerce thing, and have become less price-sensitive, too.

And here’s a pretty chart explaining it all (click on the image to make it larger):

According to the expected year-end box-office data figures compiled by Hollywood.com, the industry raked in $10.1 billion for 2011 in North America.

While that seems like a nice haul, it’s 4.5 percent less than in 2010. While not enough to result a major downturn in limo-riding and Botox, the results are likely to cause entertainment moguls some worry, since they are accompanied by continuing trends, including another year of lower attendance.

And given that the revenue was unusually bolstered by more higher-priced 3-D movie-ticket prices — Hollywood released several dozen 3-D films in 2011, double the previous year’s amount — the latest numbers are even more disappointing.

While some holiday movies did well — namely “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” which has taken in about $70 million domestically since its opening less than two weeks ago — it pales in comparison to such digital hits as Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 videogame, which pulled in $400 million in one day from the much-desired youth market.

It surpassed $1 billion in sales in 16 days, eclipsing the box office of the blockbuster movie “Avatar,” which took 17 days to gross seven figures.

Does that mean that the continued competition for the leisure time of pretty much everyone between digital and analog has gotten worse — an epic battle of the movie industry versus game players, tablets and smartphones?

Or is it because so many movies made in 2011 turned out to be just awful? (If you saw “New Year’s Eve,” you’ll know exactly what I mean.)

One thing is clear: No one is going to pay for poor-quality content, no matter the screen size.

More number-crunching to come, as the industry debates the issue into 2012 (coincidentally, the title of a movie I happened to like, as you can see below!), and at the upcoming D: Dive Into Media at the end of the month, down near Los Angeles, in the belly of the Web-smacked beast.

Until then, let’s hope it does not come to this next year:

In a deal that was struck some time ago and is close to fruition, BermanBraun is prepping three major Web properties for AOL that will focus on pets, men and, interestingly, the weather.

After I inquired, AOL confirmed that the Hollywood production company — headed by former Yahoo and ABC exec Lloyd Braun and former Paramount exec Gail Berman — will debut the trio of sites around March. The new sites will use rich features and a slick design to attract premium advertisers.

The pair will jointly sell the advertising, but the sites themselves will be operated by BermanBraun in cooperation with AOL’s media unit, the Huffington Post Media Group. The deal was struck in late 2010, before AOL bought the Huffington Post for $300 million in January of this year.

While AOL has partnered with many outside sites, this will be the most prominent one since that acquisition.

Since then, much of the new content development on AOL has been aimed at drastically increasing the number of sites with that brand. There have been more than two dozen of those since March.

In this case, the Huffington Post Media Group, run by Arianna Huffington, has typically either created new topic sites or relaunched old AOL ones.

This week, for example, the company rejiggered AOL TV as HuffPost TV, as well as announcing El Huffington Post, an international Spanish-language version of the Huffington Post that will debut in early 2012, in partnership with El País.

The BermanBraun effort, though, is more independent and large-scale. It will feature extensive video and heavy use of imagery. Huffington Post will be involved in editorial selection, and has been working closely with the firm on incorporating social elements.

“It’s been a very dynamic and collaborative partnership — we’ve worked together on everything from design to picking the editors,” said Roy Sekoff, founding editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, about the arrangement. “BermanBraun brings a distinctive approach to their sites, and we’ve helped infuse that with our focus on real-time, social, and building community.”

Sekoff declined to give more details, such as the names of the sites. (They won’t be HuffPost Pets, HuffPost Weather and HuffPost Dudes, though!)

Pets could be a strong category if done in a new way, especially if designed with new tablet devices in mind. And weather, to my mind, is a sleeper category if reimagined freshly.

BermanBraun — which also develops television shows and movies — has a lot of experience in the online content arena. It has previously created Web sites for Microsoft’s MSN unit, including the high-profile celebrity site Wonderwall.

It will be interesting to see how the collaboration turns out. In the meantime, here’s my favorite weather song — Lena Horne rules! — to enjoy until the three sites launch:

South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics has hired former AOL and Google exec David Eun to lead a new push to create more media offerings, the company said.

In a press release, the maker of a wide range of devices — from televisions to tablets to smartphones and more — said Eun would serve as executive vice president of its media-related units.

About Eun’s role, Samsung said: “He will play a key role in developing a global media strategy and driving new business opportunities to take advantage of Samsung’s growing number of digital televisions and displays, mobile phones, tablets and other connected devices.”

It’s not clear what that means, but presumably it could spell more investments and acquisitions in digital media, and even in the social space.

The move is part of a larger reorganization at Samsung Electronics, which it also announced has divided into two parts, digital media and communications and device solutions.

Samsung’s deepening of its media efforts — it has previously launched various smaller content initiatives — is an interesting one, especially in light of the fast-changing market it now competes in, in which partners like Apple and Google have also become intense rivals.

Google bought Motorola recently and has been increasing its media offerings, as has Apple. Samsung and Apple are also engaged in a series of global legal battles over devices.

In turn, companies like Amazon — which recently released the Kindle Fire tablet — have upped their efforts in the consumer electronics area.

In addition, Japan’s Sony — which already owns a major Hollywood studio — now owns all its handset business and has recently added tablets to its lineup.

Eun is an interesting choice, having been part of Google’s earliest efforts to move beyond its core search business into media, such as its acquisition of YouTube.

He left his most recent job at AOL, where he had headed its content unit, earlier this year. Eun has also previously worked at both Time Warner and NBC.

Here’s the official press release about his hiring:

Samsung Electronics Appoints David Eun as Executive Vice President

Eun to Enhance Samsung’s Global Media and Content Efforts

SEOUL, Korea — December 14, 2011 –Samsung Electronics Co., the technology leader and innovator in consumer electronics and telecommunications, proudly announces the appointment of David Eun as Executive Vice President.

Eun joins Samsung after an accomplished career in media and content. He was most recently President of AOL Media and Studios, where he oversaw AOL’s efforts to become a leading provider of premium content, spanning over 100 different websites and production studios in NY and LA. Before that, he formed a global Content Partnerships group at Google with oversight for media strategy, partnerships and strategic alliances spanning over 30 different Google products including Google Books, Maps and YouTube. He also has a deep knowledge of traditional media businesses from working at Time Warner and NBC.

He will play a key role in developing a global media strategy and driving new business opportunities to take advantage of Samsung’s growing number of digital televisions and displays, mobile phones, tablets and other connected devices.

“Samsung Electronics has an unparalleled footprint across multiple devices and platforms that provides a unique experience to consumers around the world. The competition for prominence in the living room has already begun, and Samsung Electronics is ideally situated to extend beyond that to connect the entire home and the lives of consumers,” stated Eun. “I’m looking forward to joining the impressive leadership already in place and to building a new presence in media for Samsung Electronics.”

Eun received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was a Teaching Fellow for the Harvard Negotiation Project, and an A.B., magna cum laude in Government, from Harvard College. He was selected “Digital Power Player of the Year” by the Hollywood Reporter in 2010, is an Advisory Board Member for the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and sits on the Board of the Television Academy of the Arts and Sciences Foundation.

At least it should be, based on the $35 million that investors just plowed into Outbrain, the content recommendation engine that works with AllThingsD and lots of other publishers. Index Ventures led the round, joining existing investors Carmel and Lightspeed; the New York-based company has raised $64 million to date.

Outbrain makes money helping funnel traffic from one publisher’s site to another. It gets paid whenever someone clicks on its sponsored listings (those are the ones labeled “From the Web” at the end of this story), and gives the originating publisher 60 percent of the revenue. Publishers (again, like AllThingsD) also benefit, because Outbrain provides recommendations for other stories that will keep readers on the original site.

Like most of the Web, this is a business that’s supposed to work at scale, and Outbrain says it has that now, generating 200 million clicks a month. Earlier this year, Outbrain bought former rival Sphere from AOL.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/The Bezz)

Airbnb, the San Francisco online vacation rentals start-up, said it has hired a key former Yahoo lawyer, Belinda Johnson, as its new general counsel.

The legal issues at Airbnb are both interesting and challenging, all around the new arena of global sharing or, as the company calls it, “collaborative consumption.”

Johnson is one of several recent major hires by Airbnb, which has been adding more seasoned execs to its team of late. Other recent key Airbnb hires include Monroe Labouisse as head of trust and safety and customer service, and Vivek Wagle as head of content.

Johnson left Yahoo several months ago as its deputy general counsel, after a long tenure there working on a wide variety of issues.

Among other things, she oversaw legal strategy for Yahoo’s global products, and worked on deals like its search and advertising alliance with Microsoft. Johnson came to Yahoo from its Web 1.0 acquisition of Broadcast.com, where she had served as general counsel.

She attended both college and law school at the University of Texas.

Ahead of the dinner, Anderson stopped by my office to let me have a peek at his 10 predictions, and we talked them over a bit. All 10 are below, along with some comments from Anderson that emerged from our conversation.

Before diving into the predictions, Anderson tells me there is a grand theme that unifies them all: “Integrating everything.”

What does that mean? “It means a whole lot of stuff that needs to be integrated. We don’t need anything new at all. There’s so much work that needs to be done with the existing tool sets. Steve Jobs didn’t really invent anything at all. But he was great at integrating things into a product. There’s a lot more of that work to do. We have to do it in the phone world and the TV world and the health care world. We have lots of devices and lots of chips and lots of operating systems and lots of content. The bigger question is, how do human beings use it all efficiently?”

As an example, he cites the collaboration between Nuance, the speech software company, and IBM, bringing the Watson computer of “Jeopardy” fame into the area of health care. “For the first time, the idea of evidence-based medicine won’t just be in a magazine article,” Anderson says. “A doctor will be able to pick up his phone and describe four symptoms, and find out what the likely diagnosis is, what the indications are. It’s fantastic.”

So here are those 10 predictions, with additional comments from Anderson:

1. TV becomes the new center of gravity in the tech universe. All the other devices find their niches in the TV galaxy. Microsoft’s attempt to integrate Kinect into TV is a strong if qualified success. Smart phone-TV integration software becomes a new category. Pad-TV integration becomes common.

“Apple will hustle to launch the next version of Apple TV, and it will be a roaring success and be seen as Tim Cook’s first great product success. But what it really will be is Steve’s last product.”

2. 2012 will see tectonic shifts in phone markets. “Nokia will fail to come back, which is pretty clear to everyone except the people in Finland.” Samsung, Anderson says, will retain its spot as the new global leader in mobile phones by volume, and will keep this crown despite the debut of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, Anderson says, Google will lose control over the Android operating system, mainly because unlicensed versions of Android will multiply in type and in installed base, especially in Asian countries. “It’s already a balkanized environment. Now Google loses control of the technology entirely. China is already running an unlicensed version of Android, and I think there will be more of that.”

Finally, the smartphone will finally emerge as the dominant category of wireless phone. “Why would you have anything else? And why would sellers of content and services want you to?” he says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a rich country or a poor country. This stuff is cheap.”

3. Clouds are for consumers, and for start-ups. Even as a large number of big companies move pilot projects onto external clouds, it will become clear that the real trend is for enterprise to stay away from clouds in all key areas, for reasons of both security and reliability.

“The cloud guys hate this because they want to sell to enterprises,” Anderson says. “But the security issues are becoming really intense. If you’re a CIO, it’s a terrible environment, and you’re a target, for sure, especially if you’re a company with a lot of intellectual property. I’m not implying that things like SAAS (software as a service) aren’t a big trend. But no one is going to put their valuable IP on the cloud.”

4. Security splits the tech world in two, finally getting attention from CEOs. Companies with real IP start to realize they have to “go big or go home” with their security response, and their spending on protecting their “crown jewels” rises dramatically.

5. Siri stuns the world. Siri, on Apple’s iPhone 4S, has sounded the arrival of Internet personal assistants, and the world will spend this year marveling at what Siri and its rivals can and cannot do — and what they can learn to do.

“I think we’ll see a bunch of these things,” Anderson says. “Siri will get much better. It will learn how you learn. We’ve never seen people have long-term relationships with machines before, but it will be a long-term relationship, and she will remember everything, but make good use of it. She will know you learn better by seeing than hearing, or that it takes three times to tell you something. All those things that you have to program today should be learnable. None of that has been done yet. That creates a real friendship. And I think we’re going to start seeing personal assistants not just for everyday life, but for professions like medicine or car repair. Instead of just having Siri be everything, there will be many Siris for different contexts.”

6. We enter the amazing world of Dave and HAL, as voice recognition comes of age. From hospital to car, mobile to home, Kinect to Siri, exercise to play, work to entertainment, remote control to direct action, from Microsoft to Apple, from Tellme to Nuance — the time has come for computers and humans to talk to each other. With lots of funny stories, big bloopers and amazing breakthroughs, humanity at the end of 2012 will be talking to machines in a normal voice, and it will not seem unusual, nor be the cause of unending frustration.

“The voice-recognition part is almost trivial,” Anderson says. “The important part is context-sensitive understanding. It used to be that all the researchers at Carnegie Mellon used to think that all you needed was more computing horsepower to do better at voice. It turned out that was wrong. It was right for a little while, but the real problem is context. And so, if you can build up that database where you can search it contextually for what to expect, that is where you get all the mileage.”

7. E-readers prosper, but pads continue to dominate what Anderson calls the “carry-along” market. Pads and tablets will come down in price and get closer to prices of e-readers. Meanwhile, Anderson says, Amazon’s Fire will move upmarket and evolve into a full-fledged tablet.

“If you look at the specs on the Fire, it’s a tablet, but it’s hobbled,” Anderson says. “So I think that this is part of the whole strategy: Come in and sell at a low price, and then later unveil a more complete tablet. Apple will stay ahead, though. A lot of people are asking me if Amazon will catch Apple, and the answer is no. The way it’s configured right now, there’s no way the Fire will catch up with the iPad.”

8. The consumption world explodes. Get ready for new devices, new content, new bundles, new connection techniques, new distribution channels, new aggregators, new tablets, new phones, new players, new self-published authors, new garage bands, new consumption models riding on social networks. There is nothing but high energy in the content consumer market. People are now ready to spend subscription money, and the publisher response will be huge. “It’s going to be a huge melee of stuff,” Anderson says. “We’ll invent more stuff to consume, and it will be very hard to figure out who the players are from week to week, and how they’re doing. They may not even know themselves.”

9. Governments and corporations focus on intellectual property as though it were their most prized asset. It is. This new global understanding leads to a reevaluation regarding giving critical IP away for nothing versus protecting it. The age of what Anderson calls “IP naïveté” is over, and the question of proper IP valuation is here.

What is IP naïveté? “When Jeff Immelt stood on the steps of the White House the day after he was named jobs czar, and handed the plans for GE’s most important jet-engine project to Hu Jintao in order to get the permission to be allowed to bid on maybe selling engines to China — that’s IP naïveté,” Anderson says. “Thinking that’s not going to come back and show up for sale in Houston from some Chinese company in about six months is IP naïveté.”

During 2012, he says, companies and countries will start valuing their intellectual property not for its replacement value, but for figures that are magnitudes larger. State-sponsored IP theft will shift from being considered a nuisance and more along the lines of an act of aggression.

10. Amazon gets it all. Between outdoing Wal-Mart online, to beating the booksellers and delivering groceries, and making new inroads in video streaming, Amazon will prove that one company can indeed have it all. Strong Kindle and Fire sales will only be icing on the cake.

Experts Give the New Xbox Raves for Control, Creativity
(Dec. 6 2001)
Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Microsoft sold more than 960,000 consoles last week, with a majority flying off the shelves within a single 24-hour period.

Nintendo also said the Wii had the biggest Black Friday ever, selling more than 500,000 units on the day after Thanksgiving.

At one point during the shopping madness, a shopper pepper sprayed a crowd at a Wal-Mart to get her mitts on an Xbox (although reports now say police are investigating the incident to determine the cause of the attack).

Sony declined to release sales figures for the PlayStation 3 last week, but it is likely benefiting from a recent $50 price cut.

Such strong sales are mind-blowing.

People are lining up for — and in some cases fighting over — hardware that is five to six years old. It’s difficult to imagine any other consumer hardware that could attract that kind of demand after such a long period of time.

All three are nearing the end of their life cycles. The Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 are both five years old, and the Xbox 360 is a year older.

Nintendo announced that it will release a new console, the Wii U, later next year. Microsoft and Sony have not said anything official, but they are both expected to follow with competing launches in the same time frame.

It has long been a pattern for all three rivals to release new hardware at the same time. A European PlayStation executive recently hinted that Sony’s plan was to continue that trend because it was “undesirable” to be significantly later than the competition, according to IndustryGamers.com.

Despite the odds, there are at least three reasons why sales continue to do well.

The lineup of games is as strong as it has ever been for the consoles; all three have tried sprucing up the hardware with accessories and adding downloadable content; and, finally, consumers don’t have a choice — the only alternative is to wait another year.

First, the games: This year, publishers waited until now to release some of the hottest titles of 2011; hardcore gamers in particular will have their choice of any number of blockbuster hits.

Activision’s Call of Duty game is already a runaway success, grossing $775 million in the first five days it was available, to shatter all entertainment records.

Also in the hardcore genre is Electronic Art’s Battlefield 3, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, PlayStation’s Uncharted 3 and Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City, which are all going head to head this holiday season.

But the consoles don’t just serve the hardcore genre anymore.

Last year, both Sony and Microsoft released motion-controlled gaming systems to rival the Wii’s technology, which has always been considered more family friendly and easy to use.

This holiday season, Sony and Microsoft are offering the most games ever for the Move and Kinect, respectively. Microsoft will have 75 new Kinect games available for the Xbox this holiday, four times last year’s number. Sony said the PlayStation Move is expected to launch 26 titles.

In addition to being used to play games, the consoles are turning into entertainment systems for the living room.

It started with the ability to use the Internet-connected boxes to stream Netflix to TV screens. Now the consoles are turning into media hubs, playing video, music and other content that is readily available over the Internet.

Microsoft and Sony have made entertainment a particular focus between their respective online networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.

Microsoft will make a huge push on Dec. 6, when it rolls out a free update to Xbox Live. Users will be able to conduct a Bing search to find games, music and video across several providers. To make it even more family friendly, the Xbox Live user interface will be controlled with voice commands, rather than by the game controller.

By the end of the year, Microsoft expects that nearly 40 TV and entertainment providers — including Comcast, Netflix, Hulu, ESPN and HBO GO — will be available on its system.

All of these reasons added up could keep the pedal on the gas for what in any other segment would be considered ancient technology.

In an interview, John Koller, director of marketing for Sony’s PlayStation, argued that there’s a lot left in the current generation of consoles.

As an example, he said its predecessor, the PlayStation 2, is 12 years old, but continues to be used in homes around the U.S. as a game player and DVD player. Similarly, the PlayStation 3 substitutes as a Blu-ray player.

Overall, the PlayStation 2 ended up reaching nearly half of all U.S. households.

If that can be used as a guide, then the PlayStation 3 still has a very long way to go. In fact, the goal may be unattainable if new hardware is coming around the corner.

To date, Sony has sold 18.7 million PlayStation 3’s in the U.S. That makes up just a fraction — less than 17 percent — of the 112.6 million households, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau figures.

“We are nowhere near where we could be,” Koller admits.

Next year, the true testament will be how the hardware sells as we get closer to the release of Nintendo Wii U and consoles.

The Singapore-based media group, which publishes 18 newspapers here, seeks unspecified damages from Yahoo Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd. for the alleged copyright infringements, as well as a legal injunction to prevent further infringements, according to a writ filed last week to the city-state’s High Court.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In recent weeks, Apple has been looking to recruit senior-level executives with backgrounds in Web-based software, according to people familiar with the matter. It has approached at least one prominent Internet entrepreneur since at least earlier this year about a possible position, according to these people, who say the details of the possible job were unclear. The company has also discussed its needs with recruiters, one of the people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Well-known tech entrepreneur Peter Pham will be joining the Los Angeles-based start-ups lab that was just launched by former Myspace CEO Mike Jones.

Pham, who was recently helming the high-profile and controversial Color photo-sharing start-up in Silicon Valley, will be moving south again to join Jones at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based “technology studio,” called Science.

As Liz Gannes reported last week, the goal — with $10 million in funding and private equity partners at the ready for more — is to “incubate ideas in-house, invest in other people’s start-ups, advise Silicon Valley companies on breaking into Hollywood, and maybe even look into reworking later-stage Internet companies like Yahoo.”

Pham and Jones will aim at three verticals: The intersection of content and commerce, social systems, and mobile and location.

That’s an area that Pham knows well, with stints at both BillShrink and Photobucket (also a former News Corp. property, as was MySpace), as well as active angel investing.

In an interview yesterday, Pham said he hopes to bridge the Silicon Valley-L.A. delta more, since there is an increasing amount of promising tech taking place there, too.

“There is a lot going on in L.A., and a lot of tech talent that still sometimes get less attention up in Silicon Valley,” said Pham. “I hope to be part of bringing the communities a little closer together.”

In addition, he said that the focus of Science would not necessarily be on online entertainment start-ups, as might be expected, given the proximity to Hollywood.

“We really want to shine a light on the innovation taking place in Los Angeles beyond the obvious,” said Pham.

It’s a good idea, given how navel-gazing Northern California geeks can be.

Also in the L.A. start-up scene of late is a new accelerator called Start Engine, which debuted recently with a focus on mentorship on 120 start-ups per year.

You can see Pham featured in this video that Gannes did about Color:

And here’s the official press release about Pham joining Science:

Peter Pham press release.FINAL11-21-11

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111121/former-color-co-founder-peter-pham-heads-to-former-myspace-ceos-l-a-tech-studio/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111115/digital-marketing-start-up-thismoment-raises-7-3-million-from-sierra-ventures/ http://allthingsd.com/20111115/digital-marketing-start-up-thismoment-raises-7-3-million-from-sierra-ventures/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:30:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=144127

Thismoment, the San Francisco-based digital marketing platform provider, said it has raised $7.3 million in its first institutional venture round from Sierra Ventures.

Before this funding, the company raised $4.25 million since 2008, when it was founded as a content-sharing Web site.

The company, which serves brands and agencies with its Distributed Engagement Channel platform, said it is aimed at “managing content, conversation and creative assets across earned, owned and paid media channels.” That means marketing “initiatives across Facebook, YouTube, brand sites, rich media ad units, mobile devices, tablets and digital outdoor placements,” as well as a platform to manage these social marketing campaigns.

Sierra’s Mark Fernandes will join the board. Other investors include private equity firm Fenway Partners, as well as well-known digital execs Shelby Bonnie, Jason Hirschhorn and Mika Salmi.

Thismoment said it will use the new funds to expand operations in the U.S. and also add them internationally.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111115/digital-marketing-start-up-thismoment-raises-7-3-million-from-sierra-ventures/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111114/exclusive-disney-acquires-hipster-mommy-blog-platform-babble-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/exclusive-disney-acquires-hipster-mommy-blog-platform-babble-media/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:45:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=143631

Disney, which has been busy reorganizing its interactive group, is buying Babble Media, a New York-based parenting platform that features several hundred mom bloggers.

The entertainment giant declined to provide the purchase price for the New York-based start-up, which was founded by aiming at urban hipster parents and has garnered more than $6 million in funding since it was spun off from Nerve Media several years ago.

Babble’s venture investors include Greycroft Partners, Village Ventures and iNovia Capital.

Co-founders Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman and the rest of the 40-person Babble staff will join the Disney Interactive Media Group unit as part of its Moms and Family portfolio, Disney said in its official press release (see below).

Disney described Babble as the “premier blogging platform for a new generation of connected parents.” To me, that roughly translates into Brooklyn-living, Bugaboo-pushing, organic arugula-eating, yoga-calm moms and sensitive New Age dads.

But don’t take my word for it — today’s front page features on Babble include “15 Vegan Recipes for Thanksgiving” and “Is It Selfish to Have One Child?” (Yum and kinda!)

The next obvious stop for its audience, after the kids get a little bigger: Gwyneth Paltrow’s fabulously twee and irksomely addictive GOOP.

But Brooke Chaffin, who is SVP of Moms and Family in the Disney Interactive Media Group, said in an interview that the highly interactive content site with a definite “sophisticated” editorial voice has become mainstream, and is actually where the whole category is going.

“Babble is sharing the experience and stories on a daily basis through the parents lens,” she said. “And it brings in a blog network that is so important to this audience, because it’s by, for and about parents, and that’s far more important for them than experts.”

There will be that, too, said Chaffin, who noted the site has grown 100 percent year over year. It is now up to four million unique monthly visitors.

Disney plans to add its more evergreen family-focused content to Babble, to give it more heft to compete with other similar parenting sites, such as Johnson & Johnson-owned BabyCenter, NBC’s iVillage, Parents.com and CafeMom.

Interestingly, Disney had taken a gander at buying CafeMom a while back.

Chaffin, who came to Disney earlier this year after a stint at Auditude and a long time at Yahoo, said Babble has carved out a unique niche in combining content with social — the current gold ring for a lot of publishers.

“What Babble is doing is best of breed … it is just a different approach to blogging,” she said. “It felt like we at Disney are about storytelling and Babble does an amazing job doing just that.”

Added Jimmy Pitaro, co-President of Disney Interactive Media Group: “Disney has a long legacy of storytelling, and no mom-blog platform empowers storytelling better or more powerfully than Babble. Babble is a strategic complement to our Moms and Family portfolio of sites, which together make up a business that is critical to Disney Interactive’s mission of delivering world-class products and content and growing engagement among our guests.”

In other words: Mainstream and hipster!

Here’s the Disney official press release:

THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY ACQUIRES LEADING ONLINE PARENTING PLATFORM BABBLE MEDIA, INC.

Burbank, California — November 14, 2011 — The Walt Disney Company, through its wholly owned subsidiary Disney Online, has acquired Babble Media, Inc., a leading online parenting platform featuring more than 200 influential mom bloggers. The acquisition of Babble further strengthens the position of Disney Interactive Media Group’s Moms and Family portfolio as a leading online resource for moms and families.

Disney Interactive’s Moms and Family portfolio is a trusted resource for parents today, giving them the online tools and information they need and the ability to share their experiences. Through the acquisition of Babble, Disney Interactive’s Moms and Family business gains a blogging platform that elevates the first-person stories of parenthood.

Since its inception in 2006, Babble has become one of the most celebrated parenting sites on the web, named by Time Magazine as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 and by Forbes as one of the Top 100 Websites for Women. Its stable of bloggers contribute daily to parenting topics including pregnancy, child care, health, food, family activities as well as lifestyle topics such as home, fashion and family products. As the premier blogging platform for a new generation of connected parents, Babble has created a vibrant community of parents who support, encourage and celebrate the highs and lows of raising children.

Babble attracts a broad and engaged audience with its nearly constant stream of posts, written for and by moms. Disney Interactive will infuse its Moms and Family evergreen content into Babble, thereby enriching the Babble user experience and extending the best of what Disney has to offer to today’s parents.

“Parents’ relationships with Disney are founded in stories, and Disney’s best stories are about families. We believe that Babble and Disney can harness the power of storytelling to inform, entertain and empower parents everywhere,” said Brooke Chaffin, SVP of Moms and Family, Disney Interactive Media Group. “With more than 3.9 million mom blogs in the US alone, Disney Interactive recognizes and values the important and powerful role moms have taken on in new media.”

“We can’t imagine a better next step than joining the world’s leading media company for families, The Walt Disney Company, and look forward to bringing together Babble’s resonant voice and community with Disney’s expansive family audience, wide range of content and multi-media platform,” said Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, Co-Founders of Babble.

Babble will remain headquartered in New York. Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman will join the Disney Interactive Media Group.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/exclusive-disney-acquires-hipster-mommy-blog-platform-babble-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/adobe-admits-its-saying-buh-bye-to-flash-for-mobile-devices/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/adobe-admits-its-saying-buh-bye-to-flash-for-mobile-devices/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:15:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=142353

In a blog post by one of its execs, titled “Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5,” Adobe said what had already been reported: That it would no longer be developing its well-known Flash for mobile devices.

Here’s the key graph:

“Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.”

Last night, reports surfaced that the high-profile software company — whose Flash technology has been a flagship product — was halting development on the mobile version of its browser plug-in.

Now, Adobe will focus its PC Web browser business on tools that allow Flash developers to create mobile apps by packaging their code to run on Adobe’s AIR platform.

The move has big implications for Adobe going forward and also for mobile device makers, such as Google and Research In Motion. But not Apple.

As Ina Fried wrote:

“The move, if true, would be a major blow to Android device makers, who have long touted Flash compatibility as a key competitive advantage over Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

It would also mark a posthumous vindication for former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products.”

Turns out Jobs was prescient, as usual.

Here is the full version of the Adobe blog:

Flash to Focus on PC Browsing and Mobile Apps; Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5

POSTED BY DANNY WINOKUR, VICE PRESIDENT & GENERAL MANAGER, INTERACTIVE DEVELOPMENT AT ADOBE ON NOVEMBER 9, 2011 5:59 AM IN BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS, CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS, DEVELOPERS, VIDEO

Adobe is all about enabling designers and developers to create the most expressive content possible, regardless of platform or technology. For more than a decade, Flash has enabled the richest content to be created and deployed on the web by reaching beyond what browsers could do. It has repeatedly served as a blueprint for standardizing new technologies in HTML. Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices.

However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.

These changes will allow us to increase investment in HTML5 and innovate with Flash where it can have most impact for the industry, including advanced gaming and premium video. Flash Player 11 for PC browsers just introduced dozens of new features, including hardware accelerated 3D graphics for console-quality gaming and premium HD video with content protection. Flash developers can take advantage of these features, and all that our Flash tooling has to offer, to reach more than a billion PCs through their browsers and to package native apps with AIR that run on hundreds of millions of mobile devices through all the popular app stores, including the iTunes App Store, Android Market, Amazon Appstore for Android and BlackBerry App World.

We are already working on Flash Player 12 and a new round of exciting features which we expect to again advance what is possible for delivering high definition entertainment experiences. We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible, just as we have done with CSS Shaders. And, we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged.

We are super excited about the next generations of HTML5 and Flash. Together they offer developers and content publishers great options for delivering compelling web and application experiences across PCs and devices. There is already amazing work being done that is pushing the newest boundaries, and we can’t wait to see what is still yet to come!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/adobe-admits-its-saying-buh-bye-to-flash-for-mobile-devices/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111108/exclusive-saul-hansell-departs-aol-to-be-eir-at-betaworks/ http://allthingsd.com/20111108/exclusive-saul-hansell-departs-aol-to-be-eir-at-betaworks/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:57:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=141912

Saul Hansell, the prominent former New York Times tech reporter who went to AOL several years ago to head one of its content efforts called Seed, will leave the company to become an entrepreneur in residence at Betaworks.

The move to the New York venture firm is the right one now, said Hansell in an interview today.

“I have been watching people go starts thing for a long time and now I want to go start things,” he said. “I’ve got some ideas around news that I want to explore.”

Hansell, in a blog post, did try to not paint the move as as anti-AOL one:

“I know my friends in the technology press well enough to suspect some of them will see my move as part of a broader trend at AOL. I’m not sure the easy take is the right one. Based on my experience, I am more bullish on [AOL CEO] Tim Armstrong’s clear vision of a company built from the ground up for online journalism and the potential of AOL’s assets to achieve that vision.”

Hansell joined AOL the day after it split from Time Warner to run what he jokingly calls the “free-range, organic content farm” of Seed and has remained through its many iterations, including the purchase of the Huffington Post.

He is currently the “Big News” editor in that unit, which centers around topics.

Here’s Hansell’s blog post on the move:

Heading into the workshop.

Two years ago, when I explained to my children why I left the New York Times, one of the greatest spots ever to be a reporter and writer, I told them that I wanted to be an inventor. Since then, I’ve had the thrilling experience of being part of AOL, which is doing more than nearly anyone else to rethink the way that news is gathered, presented and paid for.

Now it’s time to strike out on my own and seek my fortune as an inventor. I’ve left AOL, and Monday I started as an entrepreneur in residence at Betaworks. If you’re not familiar with it, Betaworks has started and invested in a number of companies that are on the vanguard of real-time social experiences — several of which relate to news and publishing — including Bit.ly, ChartBeat, TweetDeck, and News.Me. It’s run by John Bortwick, whom I first met in 1997 when he sold his startup, Total New York, to America Online. We’ve become friends, and I couldn’t think of a more fertile environment in which to germinate a new idea than the bustle of creativity bursting out of the Betaworks loft in the meat packing district.

I know my friends in the technology press well enough to suspect some of them will see my move as part of a broader trend at AOL. I’m not sure the easy take is the right one. Based on my experience, I am more bullish on Tim Armstrong’s clear vision of a company built from the ground up for online journalism and the potential of AOL’s assets to achieve that vision. At AOL, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest and most dedicated journalists, engineers and product executives I’ve ever met. And the brilliant acquisition of the Huffington Post brought in many more people who have been outpacing the industry through journalistic innovation.

I will always be grateful to Tim for giving me the chance to prove that I had more to contribute to a journalistic organization than simply articles and to Arianna for inviting me to join the HuffPost team. And I’m in debt to so many who offered so much advice –some of which I ignored to my own detriment — on the nuances of technology, product design, PowerPoint, and the ways of big companies. Yet as AOL continues to refine its organization, it became clear that this was the time for me to try my hand at starting a company.

It’s too soon to say much about what I’m doing. But I think there is a lot left to invent around both how to present news to people that takes advantage of the technology available today.

I expect you’ll see a lot more soon.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111108/exclusive-saul-hansell-departs-aol-to-be-eir-at-betaworks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111107/big-sigh-demand-media-beats-wall-street-expectation-in-q3/ http://allthingsd.com/20111107/big-sigh-demand-media-beats-wall-street-expectation-in-q3/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:43:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=141456

Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations in the third quarter, posting a loss of five cents a share. Investors had expected it to lose from four to six cents.

Revenue was up 25 percent to $85.1 million, compared to $65.4 million in the same period a year ago. Minus traffic acquisition costs, sales increased 26 percent to $78.1 million from $62.2 million.

The stock of the Santa Monica, Calif., social content company has suffered in the quarter due to worries about its traffic and growth, but it has recently bounced back after hitting all-time lows.

After losing almost nine percent today, in profit-taking ahead of earnings after a recent price surge, Demand shares rose over 17 percent in after-hours trading to $8.30.

Some more details, according to a Demand statement on the Q3 financial results:

Content & Media Revenue increased 27% to $50.7 million, compared with $39.8 million in Q310.

Traffic acquisition costs (TAC), which represent the portion of Content & Media revenue shared with Demand Media partners, of $3.4 million, or 6.7% of Content & Media revenue, compared with $3.2 million, or 7.9% of Content & Media revenue, in Q310.

Content & Media Revenue ex-TAC grew 29% to $47.4 million, from $36.7 million in Q310.

Registrar Revenue increased 20% to $30.7 million compared with $25.5 million in Q310.

In addition to its more high-profile content business, Demand also has a domain registry unit.

“We reported another strong quarter as we continue to build Demand Media’s foundation for long-term growth,” said Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media in the statement. “The Company is uniquely positioned to deliver data-driven professional content through its robust content publishing platform. We are now in the process of optimizing that platform while increasing our investment in video content and enhancing the quality, engagement and user experience of our sites.”

There will be a conference call at 2 pm PT today, which I will liveblog (as long as it is lively!).

Until then, enjoy the official Q3 earnings press release:

3Q11 Earnings ReleaseFINAL

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111107/big-sigh-demand-media-beats-wall-street-expectation-in-q3/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111107/what-answer-will-investors-be-demand-ing-in-the-q3-call-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20111107/what-answer-will-investors-be-demand-ing-in-the-q3-call-today/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:13:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=141087

Just last week, it seemed as if the dangerous riptide had finally turned for Demand Media, the social content company whose stock for the quarter bottomed out in mid-October, in the $5-a-share range.

It has now rebounded to close Friday at $7.76, with a market valuation of just over $651 million — still a far cry from a high of over $27 a share in the last year, but well below the target price of upward of $14 from Wall Street analysts.

That’s why there will be plenty of questions for CEO Richard Rosenblatt in a conference call scheduled for after the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand reports its third-quarter earnings, following the close of markets this afternoon.

Analysts are expecting Demand to lose four to six cents a share. Revenue is expected to be up.

One issue sure to be on the docket will be the traffic problems at its flagship eHow site, which stymied Demand in the quarter. The situation caused it to release a statement about the issue, “which the Company believes is temporary and was the result of an internal technical issue. The technical issue has recently been remediated.”

Assume you will hear more on that and other topics, including updates on the cost of its content and the continued impact on Demand of search-algorithm changes at Google, as well as how it is faring in attracting more lucrative advertising.

I will be covering the earnings and the analyst call, so tune in later today for answers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111107/what-answer-will-investors-be-demand-ing-in-the-q3-call-today/feed/ 0