According to sources close to the situation, Facebook is anticipating getting approval from government regulators to officially distribute its S-1 public offering prospectus to investors within days, which would mean its road show could begin as early as next week.

As I reported back in January, the social networking giant is expected to go public in the second or third week of May, a timeline (get it?) which currently appears to be on track.

In addition — although some have speculated that its famous CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg might not take a “hands-on” role in the high-profile process, having missed one pre-IPO meeting with Wall Street analysts and bankers (can you blame him?) — sources said he would be appearing before potential shareholders, and would be present at key meetings to help sell the company to them.

Of course, he will — although there was much speculation that the Silicon Valley superstar would bow out of any of the hubbub around the huge IPO, and that bankers were practically begging him to appear, sources said Zuckerberg is too key to all aspects of its business not to appear.

(No word as yet on whether he will don a tie, as he sometimes does, or if his usual hoodie will be Zuckerberg’s outfit of choice — although his sartorial choices on the road show are sure to get excessive media scrutiny.)

“Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg and Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “He’ll do his job as CEO, as he always does.”

Indeed, although he is often portrayed as shy and not a fan of the limelight, Zuckerberg has always stepped up — and rather enthusiastically — when a public appearance is needed, whether in times of trouble or touting for the eight-year-old company.

This is a touting-Facebook moment, of course, as it seeks to raise up to $10 billion in a blockbuster offering that could value the company at $75 billion or more. Filed in February, that will make it the biggest Internet IPO ever.

Also expected to play key roles in the road show are CFO David Ebersman and COO Sheryl Sandberg, as well as other top Facebook execs.

Whether they all can rev up the jets and get going on the road show depends on the Securities and Exchange Commission finally declaring Facebook’s preliminary prospectus of its business and finances “effective” or in legal compliance.

Facebook has updated the initial filing several times, with new financials as well as information about its purchase of photo-sharing site Instagram and its ever-nasty patent battle with Yahoo.

But, overall, the SEC process has been rather smooth for the company, and sources said it appears it will continue that way.

After the road show: A sales process in which investors ask their questions of management and then officially begin to place orders for Facebook stock.

Among the areas of likely concern are that Yahoo patent lawsuit and, most importantly, how Zuckerberg and others characterize the slowing of its explosive revenue growth in its most recent filing update.

Last week, Facebook said its revenue was $1.058 billion, up 46 percent for the year, but down 6 percent from the previous quarter. In the first quarter of 2012, its net income was $205 million, which was down from $233 million a year ago. The company attributed the decline to rising costs, including in marketing and in research.

After the road show, Facebook’s bankers will price the offering — which is widely expected to be massively oversubscribed — and then it will go public on the Nasdaq market, under the “FB” ticker.

The rest, as they say, will presumably be history — or, in fact, the future for Facebook in the public eye.

Facebook filed an updated version of its S-1 public offering document today, which included somewhat disappointing first-quarter financials.

In the new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, its fourth update for its upcoming public offering, the social networking giant’s revenue was $1.058 billion, up 46 percent for the year, but down six percent from the previous quarter.

In the first quarter of 2012, Facebook’s net income was $205 million, which was down from $233 million a year ago. The company attributed the decline to rising costs, including in marketing and in research.

Facebook also said its current share price was $30.89 each, which values the entire company at about $77 billion.

Some investors might worry about the latest results, which show a slowing in Facebook’s torrid growth. But Facebook said the quarterly decline was due to seasonality — it was flat in the same period a year ago.

As it noted in the document:

“We believe that our rates of user and revenue growth will decline over time. For example, our revenue grew 154% from 2009 to 2010, 88% from 2010 to 2011, and 45% from the first quarter of 2011 to the same period in 2012. Historically, our user growth has been a primary driver of growth in our revenue. We expect that our user growth and revenue growth rates will decline as the size of our active user base increases and as we achieve higher market penetration rates.”

Its audience, though, was still growing strongly: Facebook also said it had 532 million daily active users, up from 372 million a year ago and 483 million in December. Its monthly active users were up from 680 million last year to just over 900 million and up from 845 million from December.

Facebook also added an explicit figure for average revenue per user, which was $1.21, up six percent year over year. It also said the number of full-time employees grew 46 percent from last year to 3,539 at the end of March.

The last update to Facebook’s regulatory filing for its mid-May IPO was in late March. That one gave investors more information about a patent infringement lawsuit waged by Yahoo — Facebook noted its counter claim in the newest filing — and also its motion to dismiss Paul Ceglia’s legal attempt to garner half of the company. It then included more information about growing engagement by users of the social networking site.

Along with some other minor changes in the new document, Facebook noted, in news that was already known, that it would trade its stock on the Nasdaq market under the ticker symbol “FB.” It also said it had bought photo-sharing start-up Instagram, another piece of old news, and noted its just-struck patent deal with Microsoft.

One new detail about Instagram: Facebook forked over “approximately 23 million shares of our common stock and $300 million in cash” to buy it.

Also, said Facebook, in an interesting new section on its global business:

“In the first quarter of 2012, 50% of our revenue was generated by users in the United States and Canada, a decrease from 54% of our revenue for the first quarter of 2011, and in 2011, 52% of our revenue was generated by users in the United States and Canada, as compared to 58% in 2010, as we experienced more rapid revenue growth in markets such as Germany, Brazil, Australia, and India.”

Here is the whole updated file, if you want to peruse yourself:

4thfbs1update

Demand Media, which has suffered from stock weakness and worries about its traffic and costs, beat Wall Street expectations in its fourth quarter earnings report, which was released after the market closed today.

The Santa Monica, Calif., online media company said it earned eight cents per share, up one cent on analysts’ estimates of seven cents. Revenue came in slightly higher too, at $84.4 million compared to an expected $81.95 million.

Still, Demand shares were down almost five percent in after-hours trading on the news, to $5.94.

Demand said that about $50 million of that came from its content businesses, while just over $31 million was due to its registrar business.

Free cash flow was up five-fold from $3.3 million to $18.3 million, which Demand said was due to cost controls and decreased spend on its flagship eHow site, which has seen changes in its content and distribution platform.

Demand also said it is going to buy back more of its stock, upping a $25 million plan to $50 million.

Said the company:

“During the fourth quarter of 2011, Demand Media repurchased 1.9 million shares of common stock for $13.3 million under its Board-authorized $25.0 million share repurchase program. To date, the Company has repurchased 2.8 million shares of common stock for $20.1 million. On February 8, 2012, Demand Media’s Board authorized an increase of $25.0 million to the program, taking its total authorized repurchases to $50.0 million.”

In a conference call with analysts after the reports, CEO Richard Rosenblatt acknowledged it was a “turbulent year,” but noted that Demand would be enhancing its properties for higher page views and more direct traffic.

He also addressed the departure of some of Demand’s founders. “All three were very important members of our team,” he said. “But it’s the natural evolution of a young company.”

If you want more deets, read all about it here in the company’s official press release:

4Q11 Results Release FINAL02.16.12

A little more than a week ago, Morgan Stanley kneecapped Demand Media’s stock by downgrading the Santa Monica, Calif., online content company’s prospects.

Some worries: Pressure from algorithm-tweaking Google, upon which Demand relies heavily for traffic; worrisome drops in said traffic due to said tweaking; and not enough uptake on higher-quality, premium stories the company had promised in the fall.

Demand shares fell 6.5 percent that day, to close at $5.93.

It has recovered a bit to $6.13 today, but is still off almost 8 percent since the beginning of the year, and 71 percent from a year ago.

One irony to the tough call by Scott Devitt, of course, was that Morgan Stanley was the investment bank that had taken Demand public in January of 2011, at $17 a share.

In addition, the recent departure of three of the company’s six founders has also worried investors.

All this will presumably be on display today when Demand reports its fourth-quarter earnings. Wall Street analysts are expecting Demand to earn seven cents a share on an adjusted basis on an expected $81.95 million in revenue.

We’ll see after the market closes, as well as what its execs have to say about the key metrics of costs and traffic.

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has instituted a hiring freeze across the company and is considering a reduction in force in support units of the company.

While the details of any layoffs — which are expected to be small and selective for now — are still being worked out, sources said that the stricture not to fill hundreds of open positions is the first step toward significant cost-cutting initiatives across the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in the wake of what it expects to be another weak quarterly report next week and a looming proxy fight.

Yahoo reports its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday. While the company has managed to improve the results in the last part of the quarter, sources said they will still show continued weakness in its key businesses and consumer usage.

That’s as competitors such as Google and Facebook have been showing significant growth, especially in the display advertising market.

Thus, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson appears to be zeroing in on costs and managing for margins, said multiple sources, much as his predecessor Carol Bartz did at the start of her tenure.

But many think Yahoo needs even more drastic changes, including massive cuts in staff and also product arenas, to give the company new life.

That includes shifts in leadership at the top levels too. In a major move this week, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the company’s board and all roles there. More directors are expected to leave soon, too.

That will likely come after negotiations to sell part of its lucrative stakes in both the Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan are successfully completed.

While not a certainty, Yahoo’s board hopes that will happen sometime before activist shareholder Daniel Loeb initiates a proxy battle against the company in the coming month.

Sound complex?

It is, and also troubling to Yahoo’s long beleaguered rank and file, who have been worried about more layoffs.

The Yahoo troops have been under intense pressure and have suffered from ongoing attrition. Just yesterday, for example, Yahoo lost one of its top advertising execs, Seth Dallaire, to Amazon.

The company can ill afford such departures of key talent, even as it seeks to pare employee numbers in other parts of its business.

At the end of its last quarter, Yahoo reported that it had 13,700 staffers, down from 14,100 in the previous year.

Yahoo, of course, declined comment.

Tonight at 1 am PT, techies who have nothing else to do — that would be me! — can click onto a brand new tech site called The Verge.

Well, kind of — it’s the result of many months of work by the gang that defected from AOL’s popular Engadget tech powerhouse, set up temporary shop under the Web site name This Is My Next and busied themselves with creating The Verge.

I have another screenshot below of the new site that will be focused on news, reviews and features about tech, and which has been getting a final tweaking all today.

From my quick perusal, it has a vibrant and slick design, with a lot of packed boxes, swooshy movement and plenty of content.

Along with the launch, The Verge’s parent company — formerly doing business as SB Nation, focused on sports — will also transform into Vox Media.

In a chit-chat with Vox’s CEO Jim Bankoff, top exec Marty Moe and Josh Topolsky, The Verge’s Editor-in-Chief, the trio of former AOLers all said they were going to for the big time.

“We want to build the platform for talented native Web voices, in sports and tech for now, and then we plan to grow more verticals,” said Bankoff.

“We want to create more than a news site or blog about tech — the frustration at AOL was that we did not get the resources or manpower to realize that bigger vision,” said Topolsky.

(You’re speaking to the choir, brother!)

Said Moe: “We think this category has not had a large enough vision…not enough has been innovated over the years and we think it is a big opportunity.”

Topolsky said the site, along with a mass of original content from 30 writers, will also be helped by a strong database of information about all its topics and gadgets and also focus a lot on community input.

“What we want to do was graduate beyond the blog,” he said.

(Hmm…and here I just got the hang of this blog thing.)

Bankoff, who would not say how much Vox spent on launching The Verge — my back-of-the-envelope guess, several million dollars — said that costs were spread out between the tech and sports sites with centralized sales and product teams.

Initial launch sponsors are BMW, Sony and Samsung, said Moe, who is aiming to sell “major brand advertisers on the idea that we will be the premiere destination of consumer tech coverage.”

It has to grow past big sites like Engadget to do so, but Topolsky said that This Is My Next had three million unique visitors in the last month and more than 10 million page views.

“We have done that with a lot of editorials and in-depth reviews,” he said. “I think people are really hungry for great content and stories.”

As to competitors, Topolsky said that “this not to necessarily I win if you lose,” although his clear aim is to unseat sites like CBS-owned CNET, Engadget and Gawker Media’s Gizmodo and perhaps even newsier sites such as TechCrunch and AllThingsD (as if!).

“We are going to do the nuts and bolts stuff,” he said. “Somewhere between Engadget and Wired.”

Topolsky compared The Verge to a “boutique hotel — we have the same stuff everyone else has, but it is a much more elegant experience.”

Later, that will change, he promised, noting that “this is only version 1.0.”

Of course — but what else would you expect from a gadget site?

(Good luck and congrats to the entire The Verge team from AllThingsD!)

And here is another lovely screenshot, as promised:

Like other computer makers, Dell said consumer demand for personal computers was sluggish, a trend that weighed on low-end “netbook” computers as buyers looked instead to tablet computers, like Apple Inc.’s iPad. To offset the slowdown, the company is focusing on more profitable products, such as data storage and software.

Dell’s results stood in contrast to those of rival Hewlett-Packard Co., which cut its 2011 forecast earlier Tuesday at a hastily scheduled earnings call.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

One of the results of Yahoo’s weak earnings report earlier this week has been the renewal of chatter about possible changes in its leadership and even ownership.

And continued investor discomfort with its troubled stock price–Yahoo shares are down 7.25 percent year over year and an astonishing 49 percent on a five-year basis–and the level of renewed grumbling by major institutional shareholders is causing some key players to go back to their PowerPoints to reevaluate various options.

(By way of contrast, Google is down about 4.5 percent year over year–largely due to last week’s earnings release with higher than expected expenses–but still up more than 20 percent for the five years.)

As many might recall, last year Yahoo was under scrutiny by a number of interested parties–from big media companies to other digital players to private equity firms–considering a number of takeover scenarios.

Most of them were just talk and no action resulted, but that did not mean that interest went away.

The truth is, they are still out there and ruminating–this time with what sources describe as a much more amenable Yahoo board, with several of its key members willing to entertain any legitimate offers or ideas to improve the Silicon Valley search giant’s prospects.

In the last go-round, by contrast, Yahoo’s top execs–including CEO Carol Bartz–denied any interest in the swirl of rumors related to a variety of ideas.

That’s definitely changed–at least at the board level–so here are three very credible scenarios of what could happen:

Peetie, Peetie, Yahoo-Sweetie

Late last year, BoomTown wrote a post about the interest that former News Corp. COO and President Peter Chernin–who now owns his own entertainment production company–had in the situation at Yahoo.

As I wrote in November:

But multiple sources from a variety of sides said that Chernin, a well-liked and deeply experienced media and entertainment exec, has been contacted by a number of private equity firms and other investors about his interest in becoming involved should any of the various and sundry scenarios around the Internet giant pan out.

And Chernin, many sources said, has expressed a definite interest in the situation, perhaps because he was deeply involved in a previous deal when running News Corp.

At the time, it involved combining the media giant’s Myspace social networking site with Yahoo and also Microsoft’s portal MSN and creating a new company, code-named “TrafficCo.”

Indeed, that interest remains for Chernin, who has also been an increasingly active investor, including in the digital sector. He is an angel funder of the hot social media app start-up Flipboard, and also just joined the board of the popular Pandora music service.

The most likely possible scenarios have him joining with deep-pocketed partners, including Providence Equity Partners and, yes, Microsoft, as well as investment banks or advisory firms, such as Morgan Stanley and Code Advisors.

The approach being considered–which would only be done in a friendly way, with the cooperation of Yahoo’s board–would center on making a large enough investment in its shares, allowing the group to take control of the management and the board, putting Chernin in as chairman and maybe CEO (or with a new CEO–see next section).

If Microsoft were involved–and Chernin has strong ties there–such a scenario might include folding all its online properties into Yahoo and renegotiating its rocky search partnership, too.

This is an idea that intrigues a lot of people–including current Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock, co-founder Jerry Yang and other board members–who have indicated recently to several investors and dealmakers a willingness to listen to credible player such as Chernin.

But, in this scenario, it would be up to Chernin and his partners to make a prosposal, said sources, and he might decide that the complexity of getting the power to make big changes at Yahoo is too big to tackle.

In addition, Chernin remains a successful Hollywood player, with several major television and movie projects in the works, as well as big investment possibilities in Asia.

“Does he want the headache of Yahoo at this point in his career?” asked one person, among many Chernin has talked to recently about becoming involved in the company. “Would you?”

Maybe so, if it would provide a big financial windfall. Many think an exec with a reputation like Chernin’s could easily begin to move Yahoo’s moribund stock upward quickly.

ABC (Anybody But Carol)

Here’s one truth: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz does not get proper credit for a number of moves she has made since coming to the company two years ago, including cleaning up the messy corporate structure, de-complexifying garbled systems, cutting costs and bringing its far-flung operations into line.

Yahoo’s stock is certainly doing better than when she arrived in early January of 2009, when it was in the $12 range compared to its current $16 price point.

But here’s another: That stock price now includes more than $10 in solid assets–cash and Yahoo’s much more valuable stakes in China’s Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan–leaving very little true share appreciation.

And here are more truths: Bartz’s inability to get revenues growing, innovations flowing, promising start-ups acquired and–most importantly–to stop the continual exodus of talent out the door of Yahoo has made her tenure shakier than ever.

Add to that making its relationships with Asian partners more tense, almost no traction in key mobile, video and social arenas, a record of loud public declarations that have fallen flat and serious troubles in Yahoo’s search and online partnership with Microsoft–a deal Bartz struck and is charged with managing–recently highlighted in Yahoo’s earnings earlier this week.

As shareholder activist Eric Jackson, who has long agitated for change at Yahoo, wrote this week in a post:

“The truth is that investors are fed up with Bartz. Their enmity towards Bartz is palpable when you talk to them. Bartz talked a big game coming into the job and she hasn’t delivered. It’s that simple.”

Well, not that simple and maybe not fair, but it’s also clear that no one thinks Bartz will be re-upped when her contract is up in 18 months.

Thus, it’s no surprise that ideas of other possible leaders of Yahoo are being contemplated now.

Here’s the short list I have made of my choices: Akamai President and Yahoo board member David Kenny; former Microsoft exec and current Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson; former AOL CEO and current News Corp. digital head Jon Miller; and Nikesh Arora, current Chief Business Officer and sales head at Google.

There are plenty more to pick from, of course, and any could be installed in conjunction with an effort such as Chernin’s.

AOL Under the Hoop

No good Yahoo scenario plotting can be contemplated without including AOL and its flashy CEO Tim Armstrong.

Armstrong has made no secret of wanting to get ahold of Yahoo properties to apply the strategy he has been trying at AOL to get it moving again.

Which is: To become the premiere digital media company.

Which is actually Yahoo’s new motto–although arguably, in word and deed, Armstrong has been much more active in pushing the concept and narrative.

That includes his incessant acquisitions of all kinds of online media properties, including the big fish–the $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post and the coronation of its even-flashier co-founder Arianna Huffington as content chief.

Armstrong has certainly not been averse to the idea of a Yahoo-AOL hookup with him at the top, and has been actively talking to anyone interested in such a deal.

And things could get a lot more interesting if AOL linked with a bigger strategic partner, such as News Corp. or Disney or even Google, Armstrong’s former stomping grounds.

Still, wishing does not make it so, especially with a much smaller and weaker set of assets than Yahoo and a still poor record on goosing its advertising sales.

AOL’s stock is down 30 percent year over year, as investors still worry about Armstrong’s ability to turn the company around, which kind of puts him in the same situation as Bartz.

“AOL is waiting under the hoop for whatever happens, which is a good place to be,” said one person close to the situation. “Why not?”

Why not, indeed–so, let the games begin.

So many people have asked Napier about the possibility that Rackspace might be taken out, it’s not hard to detect that his answer is well rehearsed. Rackspace is not for sale, he says, and he won’t comment on any approaches by larger companies it may be fielding. But he clearly doesn’t mind the speculation.

The market certainly is working on the assumption that an acquisition is coming. I talked with Napier on Friday, the day after Rackspace reported quarterly earnings that grew 50 percent over the same period in 2009, which was enough to send Rackspace shares up by more than $3, or more than 8 percent, closing at $40.07–more than twice what it traded for a year ago.

Rackspace will be a giant all its own, Napier insists, before it gets taken out by one of the lumbering tech giants that might like to drop a few billion dollars to absorb it. Ask him Rackspace’s chances of being acquired in the next several months, and he insists the company is not for sale. It sure sounds like he means it, as the growth opportunity that lies before him is just so good. But it’s also clear that he enjoys being in the position of being asked.

It’s a nice sentiment, but organic growth is only going to get you so far. Rackspace will cross the billion-dollar mark in revenue for the first time this year, and it has only $105 million in cash, so the only acquisitions Rackspace can make without going into a debt are small ones like the one last week of Anso Labs that NewEnterprise reported exclusively. The smart money says we’ll get a chance to see how serious Napier is about remaining independent before the end of the year.

NewEnterprise: Let’s talk about your business against the backdrop of the industry you’re in. In the last few weeks we’ve seen both NaviSite and Terremark acquired by larger companies. Clearly there’s some consolidation going on in the Web hosting and cloud services hosting business.

Napier: There is a shift in technology market around cloud. The market is shifting from one where companies do things themselves to buying technology as a service. We think of it as a world that’s going from buying inputs to buying outputs. We think this is a nascent trend and we’re in the first game of a seven-game series. On a macro basis we see this as the biggest growth opportunity in technology. Our strategy is to win the most valuable segment, which we believe is going to be the service segment. So if you look at how the market is developing, you have players like Amazon that’s offering a do-it-yourself cloud. For people who want the lowest price, and can do the work themselves, Amazon is an incredible pick. What we’re focused on is trying to be a service leader. We want to serve companies that want to run a critical app and who want us to run it for them and take accountability for it so they can sleep well at night. Over the past six quarters or so we’ve found ourselves in a crazy good spot. The growth opportunity ahead of us is expanding.

Let’s talk about growth. You don’t have all much cash on the balance sheet, about $105 million or so. You can grow organically, or you can acquire. You’ve made some small acquisitions recently. Is that going to continue?

We are an organic growth company. We have been since inception. The acquisitions we’ve done have been about technology and talent to improve our portfolio and the way we serve customers. We will remain an organic growth company. There are, I think, really two kinds of companies. Those that can grow organically and those that can’t, and so they grow by acquisition. Some companies are good at growing through acquisition. We’re just not. We’re organic growth folks here, so we’re going to stick to that. But we’ll still buy technology, capabilities and talent that we think is critical. As to the consolidation that’s taking place in the industry, it’s a great validation of the growth opportunity. There are some legacy tech and telecom companies that are behind and are trying to buy their way into the game. There was a similar wave of consolidation eight years ago and a lot of our competitors got taken out.

So let me ask the question you’re getting a lot lately. I’ve had three conversations with different people who have each picked three different large technology companies they think should acquire Rackspace. Have you been approached by anyone?

We have a policy not to comment on anything like that all. What I will tell you is that we’re not for sale. We feel like we have a tiger by the tail. I’ve been lucky to be at the company for 11 years and I think the next 11 years look better than the last. We’re not building the company to flip it. We think the market opportunity is such that new giants are going to emerge, and we want to be one of those giants.

Absent a scenario that someone shows up with eight or 10 billion in cash to buy your company, what are your strategic priorities for the year?

There’s a couple. We are making big investments in our product and service portfolio. That’s one. And then number two, we think we have a chance to improve the fundamental economics of our business model. As we make these investments, we’ll add more services and capabilities on top of our basic compute service. This drives up the average revenue for our basic compute which creates better outcomes for our customers and increases our economics. It’s a virtuous cycle. Our average revenue per server has increased for six consecutive quarters.

What are your biggest costs, and what kind of gross margin do you tend to run?

I think of them as investments, but I know that’s just semantics. Our no. 1 investment is technology and the Rackers [employees] that serve our customers. So if you look at the cost of revenue line, a year ago it was 31.5 percent. As of the end of 2010 it was 31.1 percent. We made some improvement. But we’re more focused right now on developing customer loyalty than we are in driving efficiency. It’s early in the game, and anytime a market is going through a period of rapid growth like this, it’s all about winning as many loyal and profitable customers as we can. When the growth slows down someday we’ll focus more on improving efficiencies throughout the business. Even so, in 2010 we grew faster, increased our margin and and improved our return on capital. Those are all difficult things, and we pulled it off.

This debut was supposed to happen a few weeks ago in San Francisco, with Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs sharing stage time. Instead, Murdoch will show off his new publication at the Guggenheim in New York, with Apple content boss Eddy Cue stepping in for Jobs.

We’ve got a very good idea of what to expect: A newspaper that’s both old-fashioned and cutting-edge, which will sell for 99 cents a week or $40 a year. And the best way to experience the new publication will be on an iPad, not at a museum.

Still, it will be interesting to hear News Corp. pitch this one in real time, and to see how it leverages all of its resources and a very rare Apple endorsement. (This Web site, we should note, is owned by News Corp. as well.)

10:40 am: Greetings! So excited to be in the Guggenheim that I’m starting this one a few minutes early.

10:44 am: And here’s Jon Miller, who has been shepherding this thing at News Corp. Here’s some fresh scoop! The Daily will be be live onstage for the demo, he says, but won’t appear at the app store until noon.

[Note: The Daily can be found here at the Apple App Store]

10:47 am: Miller is working the room very well; now chatting up Reuters’ Ken Li.

10:48 And Steve Rubenstein, who has been handling PR for the Daily launch. He semi-taunts me by noting that there were tasty canapés at Rupert Murdoch’s private party Tuesday night.

10:49 am: If you’d simply like to watch a livestream of the event, minus my commentary, head to thedaily.com at 11 ET.

10:50 am: That sound you hear is the rustle of departing page views.

10:51 am: Cunning of the News Corp./Rubenstein/event-planning crew to split up the press by species. Gives us something to talk about.

10:52 am: BREAKING NEWS! Jon Miller says Wi-Fi here at the Guggenheim has been working “intermittently.”

10:52 am: WAAAAAAY More interesting is that Engadget’s Joanna Stern being hassled for daring to take out a camera during a press conference. She is being moved three seats back. Where that’s OK, apparently.

10:56 am: Pre-launch music, btw: Some kinda samba thing going on. Festive and, dare I say, a smidge bit sexy. Rowr!

10:58 am: Slightly curious is that registration staff told media that they’ll have “review units” available after presser. But everyone in media has an iPad, right? It’s required, no?

Perhaps the notion is that the presser will end before noon, and the Daily won’t be available until then, so if you want to get hands-on in the meantime, that’s the way to go. Which would be smart!

On the other hand, if they’re simply handing out free “review” units to the press, well, that’s kinda smart too. Because the press likes free stuff.

11:03 am: Our crack tech guy Adam Tow tells me TheDaily.com site is now saying that the app will be available at noon ET. I can’t see that on my screen, but I’ll take his word for it.

Especially because that’s what Jon Miller said a few minutes ago.

11:05 am: Given News Corp. pub WSJ’s focus on privacy, and Apple’s, interesting to review the Daily’s:

When you use the Services, we may collect certain non-personally identifiable information about that use. For example, in order to permit your connection to the Services via the Internet, our servers receive and record information about your computer and browser, including potentially your IP address, browser type, and other software or hardware information. If you access the Services from a mobile or other device, we may also collect transactional information such as a unique device identifier assigned to that device (“UDID”), your geolocation, or other transactional information for the device in order to serve content to it. We also may use cookies and other tracking technologies (including browser cookies, pixels, beacons, and Adobe Flash technology including cookies), which are comprised of small bits of data that often include an anonymous unique identifier. Websites send this data to your browser when you first request a web page and then store the data on your computer so the web site can access information when you make subsequent requests for pages from that site. We may use these technologies to collect and store information about your use of the Services, such as pages you have visited, search queries you have run, and advertisements you have seen.

11:06 am: And we’re live. Here’s Rupert Murdoch, iPad in hand.

“Good morning. I’m Rupert Murdoch.”

Thanks for the “amazing Steve Jobs,” a man who has “single-handedly changed the world” of technology and media.

“Steve has been a champion of the Daily from day 1.”

“New times demand new journalism.” [hrm]

Trying to take best of traditional journalism, including “shoe-leather reporting” editing, “a skeptical eye” [hrm!] and combine them with awesome tech.

“”Simply put, the iPad demands that we completely re-imagine our craft”

Shooting for audience that is sophisticated and reads a lot, but not print.

We have that, but it’s niche. No “true news discovery.” The magic of newspapers “and great blog” lies in “serendipity.”
True!

Similarly, we must make the business of news-gathering viable again.

Goal is to be indispensable source for news and entertainment. “A robust new voice.”

Shout-outs to Jesse Angelo and Greg Clayman, who run editorial and business, respectively, for the new pub.

Daily will be 14 cents a day–99 cents a week–because no printing, delivery costs, etc.

More superlatives for the Daily, including a “sense of fun.”

Target audience is “tablet” audience–[note emphasis on tablet, not iPad].

And a shout-out to Jon Miller, too.

[Unless I misheard and it was News Corp. CTO John McKinley.]

“We believe the Daily will be the model for how stories are told and how they’re consumed.”

And another shout-out to “all our friends at Apple”

Okay. Here are Miller, Angelo, Clayman.

11:13 am: Miller starting off. Not a demo–this is live production.

Trying to figure out how to produce new news for tablet era. “We think we’ve developed that.”

Angelo shows off home screen of the Daily, with Egypt as main headline. Applause.

Have been doing live production for about six weeks.

11:14 am: They have a reporter on the ground in Cairo right now. Josh Hirsch [sp?].

Lots of big pictures, video embedded in text.

And here’s one of the 360-degree photos. Which look cool!

Can put audio behind them, etc.

HD video–here’s a clip about prisoners making toys in Angola prison. Note the bluesy background music. ’Cause it’s about a prison, duh.

11:16 am: Back to Miller. Have rethought navigation.

11:17 am: Back to Angelo, showing off swipey carousel. Sorta silly to describe this to you in a liveblog, but there’s a “play” function and a “shuffle function,” and a video anchor who will discuss the main stories of the day.

11:18 am: Back to MIller. “The Daily is not an island” can share to Facebook, Twitter, email.

11:18 am: Angelo: We can also pull HTML5 pages into device. Can also link out. [Subtext--we are TOTALLY NOT ignoring the Web, you dummies. We're not idiots.]

Bringing Twitter feeds directly into app. So you can see what Lily Allen (used to be semi-famous a couple of years ago) has to say about something.

11:19 am: Miller: We have apps and games section, with a link directly to Apple Store.

And we have an awesome sports section [sounds familiar!].

11:20 am: Angelo: Yes, check out our awesome sports section. Troy Polamalu talking about Clay Matthews’s hair.

“For sports fans, we really think this is the showstopper”–customizable sports filter by team/sport, brings in scores, tweets, etc.

11:21 am: Miller: Publishing once a day, with updates throughout the day “as the news warrants.”

Verizon sponsoring first two weeks of free subscriptions.

11:22 am: The art in this liveblog, by the way, is coming directly from livestream. Nice job, Adam Tow.

11:22 am: Here’s Eddy Cue. Never seen him before. A very, very, very big deal in media circles.

Running through iPad, iOs success. iPad customers are huge news eaters. 200 million news apps downloaded so far.

I’ve been using the Daily for the last two weeks. “It’s amazing.” Amazing that it’s done every single day. More superlatives, etc.

Basically, a repeat of what Miller et al just said.

Okay. Here are the new details on push subscriptions. First time Apple has used this tech. 99 cents a day, $40 a year. [ahem].

11:26 am: And now, oddly, press conference comes to a halt for a photo opp.

11:26 am: Waiting for them to set up chairs for Q&A.

Questions and Answers

How will back issues be handled? Where will old copies be stored?

Angelo: Best thing to do is to save articles you care about. And it will also be archived on the Web. Internal archiving not there for 1.0.

Q: When will other pubs start using subscription option?

Announcement “very soon for other news publications.”

Q: How will you measure impressions, etc. for advertising?

Miller: Will have tech built into app for that. I should have mentioned during presentation that we love advertisers.

Q: For Rupe: How will you measure success?

A: We want to sell millions. But keep costs low. We have spent $30 million so far, “all of which has been written off in figures we’ll announce today.” But overall costs $500,000 a week going forward.

Q: Another question about subscriptions.

A: A non-answer from Cue.

Q: Who/what does Daily compete with? And how will other News Corp. properties be integrated?

A: Miller: Gotta compete with everything. “you’re competing with Angry Birds at some level.” [Hey that's my line!]

Murdoch: In NY, for example, we already have multiple outlets competing with each other. This is another.

Q: What about breaking news? How will that work?

A: Angelo talking up twitter feeds, sports scores, but “we can drop in a new page if we want to, and we will.” BUT! As a conusmer, I don’t like Web sites that change constantly. It’s not a great experience. [THAT IS: This is a newspaper, not a Web site.]

Q: What’s the political tone of this thing. Centrist, right?

A: Murdoch: “The editorial position will be in the hands of the editor.” Cue Angelo, who sorta hedges. On op-ed page, “We’re patriotic.”

Q: Someone wants to know if Rupert is really into this. Also, will there be an Australian version?

Murdoch. Duh.

(An Australian version “always a possibility.”)

Q: Why do this with the Daily instead of existing brands. Also, what’s up with your phone hacking newspapers in the U.K.?

A: Murdoch: Existing tablet apps are what got me excited about launching a new one. No comment on “the other matter.”

Q: You’ll be working with other tablets besides iPad, right?

A: Murdoch. Yes. And “we’ve been quite honest with Apple about that.” We’ll defnintely be on all platforms. But Apple will be the dominant one this year, in my opinion.

[Sorry, missed a Q. Seems to be about what apps Murdoch likes.]

Q: More about the editorial voice, please.

A: Angelo: Thinking it through. We know that people spend a lot of time with these apps–35 minutes, 40 minutes. “It’s unbelievable.” So how do you create content rich enough to keep people there?

Q: What did Steve Jobs say about this in the last couple of days?

A: Murdoch: “He did call me last week” and told me app was “really terrific. He was extremely flattering.”

Q: How will people find this stuff, since it’s not on the Web?

A: Cue: We’ve downloaded 10 billion apps. People can find this stuff.

Miller: We feel really good about this. We didn’t want to make compromises.

Q: I ask about what’s available on the Web.

A: Some of it will be mirrored on the Web, when it can be done technically. [Sorry, hard to type and write.]

[Sorry, now even more confused about what's available on the Web and what isn't. Going to have to follow up with the gang later.]

[Where's Greg Clayman, by the way?]

11:47 am: Q: How do you balance a subscription model with a large audience that advertisers want?

Murdoch: “They’d pay a much lower rate per thousand if it was free. They realize it’s something that people want.” And we can tell them more about who sees it. “It’s not just scattered out there….We’ll draw a better class of advertiser, and a better rate.”

11:48 am: Q: What’s the split between ad and subscription revenue?

Miller: Subscription will be larger at start, and then eventually 50-50, “which is the magic number.”

And we’re done. Will try to follow up, may have more answers/comments here, or in a separate post. Thanks for checking in!

Here is the press release announcing the Daily:

Introducing The Daily

First National Daily News Publication Created for iPad Launches today in the Apple App Store

New York, NY, February 2, 2011 – Today Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation, unveiled The Daily — the industry’s first national daily news publication created from the ground up for iPad.

“New times demand new journalism,” said Mr. Murdoch. “So we built The Daily completely from scratch — on the most innovative device to come about in my time — the iPad.”

“The magic of great newspapers — and great blogs — lies in their serendipity and surprise, and the touch of a good editor,” continued Mr. Murdoch. “We’re going to bring that magic to The Daily — to inform people, to make them think, to help themengage in the great issues of the day. And as we continue to improve and evolve, we are going to use the best in new technology to push the boundaries of reporting.”

The Daily’s unique mix of text, photography, audio, video, information graphics, touch interactivity and real-time data and social feeds provides its editors with the ability to decide not only which stories are most important — but also the best format to deliver these stories to their readers.

“News Corp. is redefining the news experience with The Daily,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think it is terrific and iPad users are really going to embrace it.”

Led by Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo and Publisher Greg Clayman, The Daily is the first application made available on the App Store as a subscription — which will be billed directly to an iTunes account. And because this paperless paper requires no multi-million dollar presses or delivery trucks, it will be priced at just 99 cents a week (or $39.99 for an annual subscription).

“The Daily launches at a moment when advances in technology are changing the job of the modern editor,” says Mr. Angelo. “These advances are giving us new ways to tell stories. We intend to take advantage of all of them, and make The Daily the new voice for a new era.”

Each day The Daily will publish up to 100 pages focused on six key areas: news, sports, gossip and celebrity, opinion, arts and life, and apps and games. It will offer views from across the political spectrum. They will come from across cultures and generations, across America and the world.

The Daily will feature Sudoku and crossword puzzles, localized weather reports, and a customizablesports package that captures news on the user’s favorite teams. Subscribers will also be able to leave comments on Daily stories in either written or audio form — as well as bookmark them in-app to read later.

As readers move through The Daily’s content, they will be helped by several highly intuitive navigation tools. And while The Daily lives on the iPad, most of its articles can be easily shared via Facebook, Twitter and email. The Daily will link out to the web, as well as bring the web into the app.

“In short, says Mr. Murdoch, “we believe The Daily will be the model for how stories are told and consumed in this digital age.”

The Daily has bureaus in New York and Los Angeles, as well as stringers across the country. Full companybios are available at TheDaily.com/about. Executive staff includes:

John Kilpatrick – Executive Creative Director
Steve Alperin – Managing Editor
Mike Nizza – Managing Editor, News
Richard Johnson – LA Bureau Chief
Sasha Frere-Jones – Editor, Arts & Life
Chris D’Amico – Editor, Sports
Elisabeth Eaves – Editor, Opinion
Peter Ha – Editor, Apps, Games and Technology

The Daily is also changing the way advertising is offered and consumed within a news publication. Full-page ad units are completely interactive, customizable, and offer a rich mix of branding and direct response opportunities. Launch advertisers include HBO,Macy’s, Paramount, Pepsi Max, Range Rover, Verizon, and Virgin Atlantic Airways.

“With The Daily, Rupert Murdoch has given us the chance to rethink the entire experience of news delivery and consumption,” said Mr. Clayman. “The ability to actively listen to and engage with our audience means we can continually provide an experiencethat consumers value in this fast-evolving tablet space. Together with our customers, our advertising partners, and the team at The Daily, we are excited to create a new form of media.”

About The Daily
The Daily is a first-of-its-kind daily national news publication built exclusively as an application for tablet computing. It provides readers the engaging experience of a magazine combined with the immediacy of the web and the need-to-know content of a newspaper, all while elevating user experience beyond the printed word. The Daily is a subscription-based news product, published 365 days a year, at the cost of $0.99 cents a week or $39.99 a year. For more information on The Daily go to: www.thedaily.com.

Finally, here are screenshots from The Daily’s listing in the App Store:

It was a complaint that Sunny Gupta heard often around the time that the company he was working for, Opsware, was being acquired by Hewlett-Packard. “CIOs kept pulling me aside and telling me their jobs were changing,” he said. “A job that used to be about managing technology was quickly becoming one of managing costs.”

It was a rare opportunity to launch a service that numerous big companies were clamoring for. His response is Apptio, a cloud-based service that tracks IT costs and other metrics for CIOs who are constantly under pressure to justify their budgets to CEOs. Backed by $41 million in venture capital funding from Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Shasta Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz–the venture firm run buy Gupta’s former Opsware colleagues Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It’s growing like crazy, and customers include Cisco Systems, Starbucks, Facebook and J.P. Morgan Chase. Cisco liked it so much it joined with the venture firms in a $16.5 $20 million Series C round of funding that closed last November, and it also resells Apptio to its customers.

I caught up with Gupta by phone while he was on a trip to London to talk about Apptio’s business and how it’s shaping up.

NewEnterprise: Sunny, let’s start at the top. What does Apptio do?

Sunny Gupta: IT has a lot of raw materials like labor, hardware and software. A lot of these things are tracked at the company level. But the CIO’s job is managing the IT products. We aim to help the CIO really understand the cost structure of all their IT assets. We do this by producing what we call a Bill of IT. It captures the supply and demand of IT resources to the business. It helps the CIO show what the levels of demand and spending really are. We also help them with planning and budgeting and forecasting. And then we help them make cost-reduction decisions and benchmark their performance against other companies in their industry.

How many customers do you have?

We have about 60 customers, and we are managing more than $50 billion in IT spending.

So every company does a return-on-investment analysis on its IT spending. This sounds like it’s a lot more detailed than that.

You can think about it as a detailed ROI, but the way our customers think about it is as an ongoing management system that tracks the fully loaded cost structure of the products and services they provide to their businesses on a month-to-month basis. It tracks costs, but also utilization, so you can see how the resources are being used, and whether or not it makes sense to, say, consolidate a data center.

You said Facebook is a customer. Can you tell me a little about how it’s used there?

The CIO there uses Apptio to track monthly telecom expenses, and to help understand costs and to make decisions around getting the most out of what they spend.

A lot of companies are struggling with decisions about moving their IT to the cloud or keeping it on-premise, or some mix of the two. How does Apptio fit in a situation like that?

We’re seeing a lot of hybrids. At the large companies, the biggest portion of their costs are still in-house. Without naming names, some of our largest customers have 50,000 or 100,000 servers. These are systems that have been in use for a long time and they’re critical to the business. But we also see large enterprises adopting external cloud services. It may be Amazon Web Services or something from Rackspace, or they may be using a software-as-service like Salesforce.com. The trick is to get a handle on what the costs are and if you think it might be time to move something to an external provider so you can make an objective decision.

A lot of the time a CIO has to decide between something that’s really good and really expensive or something that’s good enough and less expensive. Can you help in cases like that?

That’s one of our prime use cases. If you talk to Rebecca Jacoby, the CIO at Cisco, she says she’s stopped asking “Why not IT?” and started asking “Why IT?” If what you have is good enough based on the cost structure and utilization, you get the granular visibility into all those metrics so you can make decisions. For example, it may be that you don’t need as much storage as you think you do, and so the best move isn’t to switch to the cloud but to stop paying for some of the storage that you’re not using. For the first time, executives are able to make business decisions around technology based on true business metrics. We find on average that customers are able to save 5 to 6 percent of their spend, and over 12 to 18 months they can reduce it by 10 to 15 percent.

What’s involved? If it’s a cloud based service, I presume there’s nothing to install at the customer site.

It’s fully cloud-based, so there’s nothing to install. It takes the financial data from enterprise resource planning software, like SAP or Oracle, and it also takes IT operational data, support tickets and other data. It combines them with the financial data. Once you have all that data you can start working on what-if scenarios and make decisions about what to do–or not do–next. If you want to control or reduce costs, having that detailed visibility is the first step.

That’s similar to other shopping apps such as those from e-commerce powerhouse Amazon, but Smoopa has a few neat features.

First of all, Smoopa always includes shipping costs in its prices. It also shows recent prices for the 12 million products in its database, so you can get an idea of whether to buy now or later (kind of like what Farecast/Bing Travel does for air flights). And it gives users the ability to track the price of a product and be alerted when it comes down. Users can also share a product price with friends through in-app Facebook integration.

Boston-based Smoopa currently has data from Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Office Depot, Buy.com and TigerDirect. CEO Mendel Chuang said the company doesn’t carry Amazon feeds yet, in part because the company obscures shipping costs in the product listings it provides through its API.

Chuang reported that retailers are increasingly comfortable with customers pulling out smartphones while they browse, even if it makes them likely to spend their money elsewhere. Best Buy has a policy of matching its own online prices, which are apparently often lower than those on its shelves. And after all, you’re already in the store, so you may value the convenience of buying a product right there, where shipping is always free.

Smoopa is available for free in the U.S. through Android Market, and online at www.smoopa.com. The company is working on an iOS version.

Chuang, who formerly led marketing for Google Friend Connect, launched Smoopa with a team of three other MIT grads. The company is bootstrapped and expects to make money from affiliate revenue sharing. It built its bar-code-reading technology in-house.

With the offering, LinkedIn hopes to raise $175 million. The company reports revenue for the 2009 fiscal year of $120 million and a loss of about $4 million. And for the first nine months of 2010 it reported revenue of $161 million with a profit of $1.9 million, or about 4 cents a share. It may be profitable now, but it doesn’t expect to be profitable on a GAAP basis in 2011 because it expects its costs to increase. Leading the list of costs it expects to increase: Technology infrastructure.

As of Sept. 30 it was sitting on nearly $90 million in cash.

As BoomTown’s Kara Swisher reported earlier today, the offering will be led by Morgan Stanley, with J.P. Morgan Securities, Allen & Company and UBS Securities all part of the underwriting team. No mention of Goldman Sachs however, which is also an investor.

The Mountain View, Calif., company runs what it calls “the world’s largest professional network on the Web with some 90 million members in 200 countries and territories.” The filing reports a monthly average of 65 million unique visitors during the three-month period ended December 2010, nearly double the 36 million from the same period in 2009, and 5.5 billion page views during the same period, up from 2.8 billion in 2009.

LinkedIn’s had a head count of 1,000 990 full-time employees as of Dec. 31. Of those, 524 were in engineering, product development and customer operations; 313 were in sales and marketing; and another 153 were classified as general and administrative.

Revenue for the first nine months of 2010 breaks down like this:

LinkedIn says that 27 percent of net revenue came from customers outside the U.S.

CEO Jeffrey Weiner made $462,297, including a base salary of $250,000 a year and a bonus of more than $211,000. He has options to purchase 3,521,237 shares at an exercise price of $2.32 per share, and blocks of these options vest on a monthly basis. So far, options on about 1.6 million shares, or about 45 percent of his total option grant, have vested.

CFO Steven Sordello made $342,507, with a base salary of $240,000 and a bonus of $101,306. He has options to buy about 295,000 shares in various blocks, with strike prices that range from 46 cents to $2.32 a share.

Founder and chairman Reid Hoffman owns more than 19 million pre-IPO shares, or a little more than 21 percent of the company. With valuation estimates for the company ranging from $2 billion to $3 billion, Hoffman’s stake would be worth somewhere between $428 million and $642 million.

Weiner owns 3.8 million shares, or about 4 percent, a stake worth between $82 million and $123 million. Among LinkedIn’s VC investors, Sequoia Capital has a little less than 17 million shares, or 19 percent, followed by Greylock Partners, with 14 million shares, or a little less than 16 percent. Bessemer Venture Partners has 4.6 million shares, or about 5 percent. They invested total venture funding of $103 million and collectively hold stakes worth between $796 million and $1.19 billion, depending on the valuation.

LinkedIn’s long-awaited entry into the public market is one that many expect will be followed by other Internet firms in the coming year, including Zynga, Chegg and, finally, Facebook. And news of the filing comes on the heels of yesterday’s IPO by Demand Media, a Web publisher based in Santa Monica, Calif., which went public yesterday, with an offering that valued the company at $1.5 billion. Another anticipated IPO, by Skype, looks like it will be delayed until later this year.

Yet an IPO is only one of the various scenarios that could take place at LinkedIn. According to NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes, one scenario could be an acquisition by Google or Microsoft that takes place either right after filing of the S-1, or right after an IPO. Recent stock purchases have pegged the company at a valuation of about $2 billion, and an IPO would likely push it even higher.

We now know, though, that the company will offer a $30 unlimited data plan for the iPhone, similar to that offered for other 3G smartphones, although it still plans to move away from unlimited plans, so there is no telling how long the plan will last. Verizon also said it will charge the same price for the hotspot feature ($20 for 2GB) that it charges for most other smartphones that can act as a wireless hotspot. The hotspot feature is the main distinguishing characteristic of the Verizon iPhone, which in most other respects resembles its AT&T sibling. Even more details on service plan pricing were briefly available on Apple’s site, for those that want to check out voice plans and text messaging rates.

Verizon has also outlined its policies, including who is eligible for an upgrade and what its exchange policy will be for recently purchased devices.

There are still a few unknowns, such as the voice quality of the phone and how Verizon’s well-regarded network will hold up amid the crush of new iPhones hitting the network. And it likely will be a crush. Some analysts have predicted the company could sell 11 million iPhones out of the gate, something that the company on Tuesday’s earnings conference call said was a reasonable forecast.

Tucker is a 13-year veteran of Sun Microsystems whose last job was as Sun’s CTO of cloud computing. He was also VP of the AppExchange at Salesforce.com. He’s also known for “Lew’s Law,” which he describes as more of an informal observation about how far the cost of computing can realistically fall.

I caught up with him last week in New York City to talk about what Cisco, long the powerhouse of networking, plans to do in the cloud.

NewEnterprise: First off, what is Lew’s Law?

Lew Tucker: It’s just an observation, not a real law, that the price of computing will never be free, because it requires energy to compute. Computing is really about changing the state of physical bits, and that requires energy. It’s great that we’re driving the costs down. Moore’s Law is hammering the costs. But there is a lower limit. Right now the dominant cost is around managing software, operations and everything else. So we can take a lot of those costs out through automation.

NewEnterprise: When I think of Cisco I think of industrial-strength routers and switches. How do you get from there to cloud computing?

LT: Eight months ago I thought the same thing. I was with Sun for many years and then left to go to Salesforce.com to do software as a service. I became very enamored of the Salesforce model. I came back to Sun to build the Sun Cloud, which was to be a direct competitor to Amazon Web Services. I was an Amazon user myself and I loved how you could so easily spin up as many servers as you wanted without having to buy them, configure them and so on. Building a cloud is another thing entirely. When Cisco called me, I said to them, “You’re about routers and switches and I’m all about complex distributed computing systems.” And Cisco said they were really about networking and making distributed systems. I started digging into it and realized there was a really unique position at Cisco if you think of cloud computing as a fully automated system with different elements. Some of those are networking elements, and some of those are integrated boxes with computing and storage and networking all in one. Some are networking services.

NewEnterprise: When you think about how cloud computing works, you really can’t do anything without fast connections between one system or another, which is something that Cisco knows very well.

LT: The network has always been a shared piece of infrastructure. There are a lot of different applications running on different servers that are trying to reach either each other or their endpoints. So there’s an awful lot that’s going into the network to make that happen in a fair and efficient way.

NewEnterprise: So what hardware is Cisco building here?

LT: We build pre-integrated compute, storage and networking that we’re calling our Unified Computing Systems. You can buy a rack of these systems, and they’re driven by a set of APIs [application programming interfaces]. We’re not alone in that. Hewlett-Packard does something similar. Then the customers add in their own preferred storage environment, like EMC or NetApp, or they can build their own.

NewEnterprise: What kind of use cases are you seeing in companies? What are your customers asking for right now?

LT: Right now what they are asking about is collaboration services, the integration of video and voice and calendaring and messaging. We’ve seen consumer services like Facebook change what people expect at the office. We have a collaboration product called Quad that looks just like Facebook. WebEx is a Cisco service. We’re working on offering that as both a hosted form and one that runs inside the customer’s own environment.

NewEnterprise: So there are a lot of cloud providers out there already–Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which has its Azure platform. They’ve already deployed their services and have relationships with vendors. How do you see the market shaping up, and what is Cisco’s place in it?

LT: I think there’s going to be two or three large cloud providers, but then there will be many smaller ones who specialize in delivering specialized services. Take health care. In that industry, groups of companies are going to get together and offer a HIPAA-compliant cloud. You’ll also see something similar happen around financial services. Those are two industries that have very specific needs. The cloud will be dominated by a few large providers for sure, but there will also be many specialty cloud providers.

NewEnterprise: You’ve been on the job about six months. What have you learned so far?

LT: I’ve learned that there’s an amazing amount of technology within Cisco. It has the largest concentration of network engineers in the world. Part of my job is to go and align our products and roadmaps with this future world that we’re moving into and to uncover a lot of the new approaches to how we solve different networking problems. I’m an engineer, and I like nothing better than being in a room with a bunch of other engineers with a whiteboard as they all battle it out. I’ve also learned that building cloud infrastructure is a lot harder than everyone thought.

Speaking at an investor conference on Wednesday, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha made his best case for the company and its opportunities in both smartphones and tablets. Motorola also plans to have 4G phones in the market early next year, Jha said, without giving specifics. But he also acknowledged the company is headed for some serious turbulence.

The first quarter is normally down from the prior quarter, but this year’s first quarter is shaping up to be a lot worse, with the cellphone unit expected to post a loss.

“We have an additional challenge potentially with Verizon,” Jha said, speaking in code so as not to use the iWord. “There is a competitive dynamic developing.”

Mobilized isn’t afraid to say the phone that must not be named. He’s talking about a Verizon iPhone.

Jha talked a lot about the company’s efforts to diversify–selling more phones to carriers other than Verizon, increasing sales in Latin America and China, and adding tablets. Jha said the company will sell both 7-inch and 10-inch tablets.

However, clearly not everyone was impressed. As noted by Barron’s, Nomura Securities launched coverage of Motorola stock on Thursday with a “reduce” rating, saying that a CDMA iPhone could ultimately push Motorola into the mid-tier of the smartphone battle, where it will face more competition from Asian makers, such as Samsung.

And the timing could hardly be worse for Motorola, which is spinning off the cellphone unit, a process that is slated to be completed on Jan. 4.

Longer-term, Motorola faces the challenge of using an operating system, Android, that is used widely in the industry, while spending more than rivals on research and other development costs.

One conference attendee suggested HTC’s research costs are a third of what Motorola spends. Jha said that there is a difference in the two companies’ cost structures, but rejected the idea that it was that pronounced.

“I think we are investing more in software differentiation,” he said. “I think we will make that investment matter.”

There’s also the fact that the phone businesss is so hit driven. That’s something the company learned on the positive side with the RAZR way back when, and on the negative side in the drought that followed the release of that slim flip phone.

Although the competition among Android devices is fierce, Jha said he doesn’t regret the company’s bet back in 2008 to focus so much of its resources on that operating system.

“There are obviously tradeoffs in every decision,” Jha said. “But on balance it’s been a very, very good decision for us.”

Jha said he knows that in order for Motorola to produce the kind of profit margins it wants long-term, it will have to be able to differentiate its software. Hardware differentiation, he said, gives only a six-month advantage versus doing something unique in software.

“I don’t think I can get to a gorilla position from where I am in one easy sweep, but I think it is possible to create differentiation in this business,” Jha said.

As Kara Swisher has reported, Google (GOOG) and MySpace owner News Corp. (NWS) are close to a “realistic” search deal to replace the famous three-year, $900 million pact signed during the Web 2.0 boom. The old deal expired this summer, and the two companies have been negotiating a replacement while working through a couple of one-month extensions.

News Corp., which also owns this Web site, doesn’t have much leverage here. Its once-hot social network has long been eclipsed by Facebook, and Microsoft (MSFT) doesn’t seem inclined to make a competitive bid for the MySpace business.

Translation: The new deal should save Google $200 million in traffic acquisition costs, Khan says. And he figures that those savings will show up as soon Google’s Q3 results, due out next week: He’s boosted his net revenue estimate to $5.33 billion, up from $5.32 billion.

So, yes, the quote from Prince about the Internet being “completely over” made him sound like a Luddite idiot.

And adding that computers and other digital gadgets “just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you” pushed the music superstar over the edge into seeming like that crazy ranting dude you often encounter on the street claiming the government has invaded his brain.

But–after spending several days here in Los Angeles this week, talking to execs, talent and others who toil in the entertainment industry–I can’t say what I am hearing is that much different in terms of the continuing frustration with the lack of decent business models to replace the ones that have worked for so long and been so lucrative for the entertainment and media industry.

From music to movies to television, the biggest minds here still sound perplexed as to what will finally be the golden ticket to carry them through to the inevitable next era of digital distribution.

Still, so many questions and so few answers.

Will consumers buy subscriptions to cloud-based content? Will advertising be enough to pay for broadcasting online? Who will pay for the high up-front production costs of most major entertainment projects? Can costs come down enough to make up the difference?

And while there is now a lot of interest around tablets, such as the Apple (AAPL) iPad, and Hollywood types seem to accept that their customers are shifting their buying and consumption habits around entertainment drastically, there still remains a level of outright hostility to it all that has not changed much.

“Why is the consumer always right?” said one exec to me this week in a typical statement. “You can’t have a business if there is no business model.”

Indeed. And, in fact, that’s just what Steve Levitan, co-creator of “Modern Family,” the ABC television hit, talked about cogently at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference last month, telling a largely tech-centric crowd some truths it much needed to hear.

(FYI: We’ll be posting the video of the entire interview session with Levitan and also longtime Hollywood player Lloyd Braun here tomorrow.)

As much as he himself loves tech products, Levitan noted that lack of a business plan or credit for consumption online made digital largely pointless to his work.

“At its core, 90 percent of my job is still sitting down in a room full of people and breaking stories,” he said. “And that requires virtually no technology.”

It’s a salient point and not so different from Prince’s saying: “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

If you remove the sillier parts of his quote that preceded it, such a statement is not unreasonable from an artist who wants to be paid for his creative efforts.

Thus, instead of mocking that sentiment, perhaps it is time for tech leaders to figure out a way to keep talent from being dragged into the future without so much kicking and screaming.

Or, as Prince might sing: He was dreamin’ of being paid when he said the Internet was over, so sue him if he went 2 fast.

Speaking of which, Prince really deserves a little more respect, folks, if only for his classic “1999,” seen here (jacked onto the Web, natch):

“We’re not cutting Sun to profitability, we’re growing Sun to profitability.”

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said that back in January as the company closed its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun. Interesting, then, to read Oracle’s latest 8-K filing in which the company adds up to $825 million in restructuring costs to the buyout–some 80 percent of them evidently earmarked for employee severance payments at Sun’s European and Asian outposts. The company had initially projected about $325 million in restructuring costs for the Sun integration, so this is a significant increase.

Oracle (ORCL) refuses to say how just many employees will lose their jobs in this latest round of the cuts, but it’s safe to say the number will be significant, judging by the size of the restructuring charge it plans to take. Prior to the close of its acquisition by Oracle, Sun sacked 3,000 employees, about 10 percent of its global workforce, and took a restructuring charge of $75 million to $125 million.

The new restructuring charges Oracle just announced are nearly seven times that figure. And while it’s impossible to accurately extrapolate the number of jobs to be eliminated this time around from that earlier figure, it’s easy enough to see that it’s going to be a large one.

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.

The increase comes amid speculation that AT&T’s (T) iPhone-exclusivity deal with Apple (AAPL) is nearing its end. But a company representative tells me it has “nothing to do with the iPhone or any other device.”

$325. That’s a pretty steep increase from $175. Though to be fair, it’s not quite as bad as the one already implemented by rival Verizon (VZ). Last November, that carrier doubled its smartphone ETF from $175 to $350, a move AT&T was quick to cite as partial justification for its own decision.

And, indeed, the company is following in Verizon’s footsteps here. Like its rival’s ETF, AT&T’s drops $10 per month for each month of a two-year contract. Which means that at the 23rd month of a two year contract, AT&T subscribers must pay $95 to leave the carrier. The contract is nearly over, yet subscribers are obligated to pay nearly a third of the full ETF if they break it at that time.

Now it’s true that ETF’s were created as a means of recovering legitimate costs associated with subsidizing mobile phones. If AT&T is paying a $325 subsidy for the iPhone, the company should be able to recoup that money when customers break their contracts. But does it really stand to lose $95 if they do so in the 23rd month? Doesn’t seem likely if those customers can walk away just a month later without consequence, taking their handsets with them.

Evidently there’s quite a bit of sales momentum in the iPad 3G, despite its $129 price premium over the Wi-Fi-only version and monthly data costs. Wu upped his forecast iPads to two million units from one million. Meanwhile, Mac sales have been ramping up thanks to the recent debut of new laptops.

“Our sources indicate that Mac momentum is strong helped by a recent significant refresh of the MacBook Pro to new Intel Arrandale processors, offering much better price-performance and an industry best 8-10 hours of battery life,” Wu writes.

“While it is still early,” the analyst adds, “we believe the Mac business is tracking to its third consecutive quarter of 20%+ Y/Y unit growth indicating further share gains.”

With that in mind, Wu has raised his projected Mac sales for the quarter to 3.2 million, a slight increase from his previous forecast of 3.1 million.

Apple (AAPL), as it always does, left plenty of room for upside surprises to revenue when it last reported earnings. Sounds like the company is more than likely to deliver on them when it next reports.

Perhaps both.

The Web video site is getting ready to roll out its much discussed subscription offering of $9.95 a month, the Los Angeles Times reports. That jibes with chatter I heard earlier this week, though I’m not yet convinced this is a done deal.

But for argument’s sake, let’s say the report is correct, and the joint venture between GE’s (GE) NBC, Disney’s (DIS) ABC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox is about to test a premium plan. If they are doing so at $9.95 a month, it’s possible they’ve ended up with a price that will make both consumers and network TV guys unhappy.

How’s that?

$9.95 a month–$120 a year–is an awful lot to pay for free TV. Industry sources expect the initial plans for “Hulu Plus” to focus on access to a deep catalog from its broadcast TV owners. So instead of just getting the most recent five episodes of, say, “Family Guy”–those will still be available for free on regular Hulu–you’ll get an entire season or more.

If you’re really, really into a couple shows that run on ABC, NBC or Fox, then perhaps a Hulu subscription makes more sense than buying the shows on DVD or downloading them from iTunes.

But if you’re really into “Mad Men” on AMC or “Justified” on FX (which is great), or anything else on cable, Hulu Plus may not do much for you. And at the same time…

$9.95 a month doesn’t go that far once Hulu pays the bills. TV executives expect that Hulu will need to hand over something like $1 to $1.50 per subscriber to each of its network owners. Because that’s the same price the broadcast networks are trying to extract from cable TV operators in “retransmission” fights (see: ABC vs. Cablevision). And that money is worth a whole lot more to them than Hulu subscriptions. Which means the TV guys can’t undercut themselves on the Web.

So Hulu will need to pay out something like $3 to $5.50 off the top for every $10 it brings in. And then it has to shoulder the streaming costs, billing costs, customer service costs, etc.–figure a couple bucks a month more for that stuff. That gets you something like a 30 percent gross margin, which is nothing to brag about.

And what happens if Hulu wants to expand the service and add shows from other providers? It will either have to cut into its thin margin to pay for the programming or raise its rate above $10 a month. Which is already a lot to pay for free TV.

There are a few things Hulu and its owners can do to make Hulu Plus more attractive. Offer the service on more platforms, for one, like Apple’s iPad. And tinker with “windows,” so that Hulu subscribers get to see stuff before the freeloaders.

But moving windows is a good way to confuse/piss off most users, who don’t have any interest in digital/analog TV economics and just want to watch shows.

Also, access to Hulu on the iPad seems a bit less valuable given that Disney’s ABC, one of Hulu’s owners, is already giving away free access to its shows via a very popular app. Industry sources says Hulu CEO Jason Kilar tried desperately to get ABC not to introduce its free app for this very reason.

But while Disney is a minority owner in Hulu, Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs is the largest individual shareholder in Disney. If you want to connect the dots on that one, you’ll be doing the same thing everyone else in TV Land is doing.

It was a backhanded compliment, but also a threat. What will Amazon (AMZN) do if Apple (AAPL) delivers on it, as early reviews of the iPad suggest it might? If the iPad succeeds in capturing e-reader mindshare, and the market decides the iPad is indeed a direct competitor to Kindle, how should the retailer respond?

Simple: With a price cut. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests that Amazon drop Kindle’s price to $149 from $259, which seems reasonable (manufacturing costs permitting).

By widening the pricing gap between the two devices, Amazon might temper the maybe-I-should-just-spend-the-extra-money-and-get-the-iPad hesitancy that, let’s face it, a lot of potential Kindle buyers are probably already experiencing.

At $149, the Kindle as single-purpose reading device is a pretty compelling proposition, particularly given the selection advantage the Kindle store has over the iBook store. It’s an impulse buy.

At $259, it starts to become “half the money I need to buy an iPad.”

The rest of it is self-explanatory. But if you don’t want to read, you can go check out this sample video I’ve queued up for you.

Note that this doesn’t work on all of YouTube’s videos. And I can’t figure out how to make it embeddable. Enjoy.