“It’s not just posts and pictures and the fun things with friends, but this is really serious stuff,” Sandberg said. “This is about growth, this is about jobs and empowering people.”

Facebook added $15.3 billion in value to the European economy in the past year, according to a new Deloitte study released today, Sandberg said. Business associated with the company was responsible for 232,000 jobs in Europe this year, the study also found. (Here’s Facebook’s summary of the study, and Deloitte’s PDF.)

Sandberg, who closed DLD and seemed to be the most-anticipated speaker at the event, said Facebook will today start a promotion to give €100 worth of ad credits to 50,000 European small businesses. She acknowledged that that’s a minor amount, but said it should be enough for most small businesses to reach all of their target customers on Facebook.

Facebook is planning to go public later this year, and while Sandberg presented on larger trends, she was also obviously trying to justify the company’s value.

Sandberg shared a variety of examples of Facebook app makers and advertisers who are seeing impact from Facebook, from social game maker Wooga to music service Spotify to traditional Bavarian clothing maker Trachten Angermaier — which apparently grew sales 20 percent in the past year and hired eight more people, based on its presence on Facebook, she said.

Even though the average Facebook user has just 130 friends, Facebook research indicates that “the distance between one person and one million is four steps,” Sandberg said. That is, it takes just four people sharing content from a brand to reach one million users.

“This is word of mouth at scale,” Sandberg said.

Facebook is now the No. 2 driver of Web traffic (after Google), and Web visitors referred by Facebook tend to be more engaged than those from other sites, Sandberg said.

On a broader level, Sandberg argued that social media is transforming interactions between people and businesses. She identified what she thinks are the three major social media trends:

• The ongoing online transition from “anonymity to authentic identity”
• The importance and value of “the wisdom of friends” versus straight information
• “The transition from being receivers of information to being broadcasters of information,” which is shifting power from institutions to individuals.

(Image credit DLD)

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

In its early days, the service didn’t have the “steep social network growth” you might expect, because it was about a core community of creators, Karp said. The company originally set out to build novel tools that offered an escape from the restrictive templates of Facebook and Twitter.

When the site really took off was when the curators — people who primarily respond to other Tumblr users’ content by “reblogging” it on their own pages — came on board.

Today, creators are probably 10 percent of Tumblr, and curators are 90 percent, Karp estimated.

And further, the average post on Tumblr is reblogged nine times, he said.

That can mean a single post gets the amplification of nine separate blogs, nine RSS feeds, nine blogs’ page views and followers, and nine bloggers’ syndication on Facebook and Twitter. “So your content has a huge footprint,” Karp said.

What’s next for Tumblr, which just raised a bunch of money and brought in some senior management? Well, monetization, for one thing. Karp said Tumblr is pursuing “novel approaches to revenue,” including selling blog themes.

At 15 billion page views per month across more than 41 million blogs, “with that many page views we could throw AdSense up there tomorrow and be profitable,” Karp said. But that’s not what he wants to do.

Karp said Tumblr is also working to “try and filter our network in ways that are more appealing to a global market.”

He added that Tumblr takes pride in being a New York-based company, and in hiring people with experience building things on the Web, rather than degrees from schools like Stanford. Half of Tumblr’s recent hires have relocated to New York to work for the company, most of them from the West Coast, Karp said.

(Image courtesy of DLD)

Jack Dorsey at AsiaD

What about “social”? Not so much, Dorsey said. Twitter is a way to learn about what your friends are doing, but more than that it’s a way to learn about what other people who are relevant to you, from all over the world, are doing.

“We definitely see social as just one part of what people do on Twitter,” Dorsey said. “We think of it as an information utility and a communications network.”

Twitter also beats players like Google+ and Facebook by being more accessible, Dorsey argued. You don’t have to tweet to get value out of Twitter. Twitter is both a destination and a distribution channel. And the service “works on every single device on the planet today,” he said.

(Correction/quibble: Twitter works on every networked device! It’s not currently working on my cellphone, which is in airplane mode while I’m traveling in Germany.)

Even in the post-SOPA glow of U.S. Congresspeople reversing themselves on anti-piracy bills after Internet protests and dissent last week, Dorsey was less committed to describing Twitter as a tool of democracy.

Dorsey did say he sees feedback and opinions surfacing more directly than ever before. So during the SOPA debate, congresspeople could see what their constituents are saying about the legislation from their phones, in real time.

“The question is what do we do with that,” Dorsey said.

Though Dorsey was also representing himself at DLD in his second full-time role as CEO of the payments company Square, he got fewer questions about that — probably because Square is not yet available outside the United States.

Dorsey said Square is looking closely at Asia, including China. It seems like a natural fit because many people in Asia have already stopped carrying cash, he said.

Of Square, Dorsey said, “We’re going to work very, very hard this year to go outside the United States.”

To get things going, I used that old trick of word association, channeling a technique perfected –aptly, for the location — by Sigmund Freud.

The panelists — who included Google’s Nikesh Arora, LinkedIn Chairman and investor Reid Hoffman and Accel Partner’s Jim Breyer — had to give lightning observations on Facebook, Google, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Nokia, New Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and smartphones.

The results were very interesting and very different, as you will see here below in a chart of it, posted recently by DLD on its Facebook page (click on the image to make it larger):

And here is a digital version of its whole DLD book that the chart was in:

Oh, to be misquoted!

Last week, a lot of folks on Twitter and elsewhere thought I had called Groupon co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason a “corporate douche bag” onstage in an interview gone badly awry.

While such a comment is not beyond me, the fact of the matter is that he called himself that.

At the DLD conference put on by Burda Media in Munich, Germany, I interviewed Mason, along with Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, about local online markets that they both now dominate online.

During the session, I pressed Mason about his aborted acquisition negotiations with Google, as well as future IPO plans for the Chicago-based social buying service.

When he demurred, I let it go, but then the ever-voluable Mason decided to explain himself.

“I used to watch people doing like what I just did on TV and be like, ‘What a corporate douche bag, I’m never going to be like that.’ And here I’m doing it. You made me do it!”

I didn’t, but thanks for the credit, Andrew!

After I pressed him on the Google talks, he tried the kiss-and-not-tell excuse.

“It’s very personal between the companies. You’re exploring each other and then everybody wants us to do that out in the open. We don’t have all the answers yet. We’re figuring things out. “

Thus, putting words in his mouth, I concluded:

“Sorry to put words in your mouth, but you’re basically saying ‘We’re a fucked-up group of people behind the scenes, but please invest in our IPO.’”

Mason’s answer: “Yes!”

I’m glad I cleared that up!

In any case, here’s the full video of one of the more enjoyable interviews I have done in awhile:

Murdoch, who runs Europe and Asia for his father Rupert’s company (which also owns this Web site), offered up the quasi-launch date during an onstage interview at the DLD conference in Munich.

As far as I can tell from the coverage, Murdoch didn’t reveal any other details that haven’t been reported–he confirmed that the service will cost 99 cents a week, etc.–but Staci Kramer at paidContent seems to have a good summary. You can watch the chat yourself here.

Meanwhile, I can offer up one tiny morsel of news about the Daily. And granted, it really is tiny. But: Here’s something you won’t see when the app launches, but will eventually–3-D video.

People familiar with the Daily tell me plans for future editions of the app include a gee-whiz feature that will allow correspondents to offer readers a 360-degree view of whatever they’re talking about.

It’s easier to show than to tell, and I can’t embed a sample here, but you can see one on this YouTube page. Most of the applications we’ve seen for 3-D Web video so far involve music videos set in party scenes. But you can imagine how much more interesting this might be if it involved someone reporting from, say, Tunisia.

Actually, no need to: The not-at-all bashful entrepreneur has been working hard to make sure we’re all aware of what he’s calling “the Mahalo 4.0 launch/pivot.”

So there will be no shortage of places to read about this today. And if you want to hear Calacanis pitch his pivot himself, you can do that too, via a livestream of the DLD conference, where he’s presenting right now.

So here’s what you need to know:

• Calacanis, who launched Mahalo in 2007 as a “human-powered search engine,” then turned it into an “answers” site, is now trying to move deeper into the “how to” category dominated by Demand Media. Which just happens to be going public today in a very hot offering that will value the company at more than $1 billion. [Correction: Demand will start trading on Wednesday, January 26]
• The most important part of the move is a new emphasis on video, which Mahalo is creating itself. That’s a different strategy from Demand’s, which relies on a computer to spit out editorial assignments, then hands them out to an army of freelancers.
• Calacanis and Mahalo president Jason Rapp, who came on board last spring, have hired a team of 50 editors, who are now cranking out some 900 videos a week on topics like “How to Cook a Ham.” They plan to have a staff of 100 dedicated to videos by the end of the year.
• Mahalo still relies primarily on Google ads for revenue, which the company won’t disclose. But last week Calacanis said incoming dollars from Google’s YouTube have shot up 9x in the last year.
• Rapp says Mahalo still doesn’t need to raise any more money beyond its initial round, which brought in $20 million from investors like Sequoia, CBS and News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

If you missed Calacanis’s pitch this morning but still want to see people talking about his site, here’s a promo clip the company supplied. It features Calacanis’s employees, but not Calacanis, so it’s a lot less interesting. But you’ll get the idea.

Mahalo 4.0 from Mahalo.com on Vimeo.

He made the comment to great applause in the auditorium, although the “social games is all a bubble” theorists collectively sighed.

Now to be fair, what he actually said was that Angry Birds was searched for more than Mickey Mouse. Given that Angry Birds is very much au courant, while Mickey first hit the screen in 1928, that is not all that surprising.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

It was vintage Parker, who always tries to paint himself as more of a geek than the multicolored life of the digital party. In truth, he is very much both.

In these clips, he talks about the fabrications in the movie “The Social Network,” in which Justin Timberlake played him as a hyperactive version of Falstaff.

Parker thought the character was “morally reprehensible,” although that’s what made him so fun to watch.

Parker also took issue with other creative liberties about the social networking site in the movie and noted that the film was “a complete work of fiction.”

As an example, he pointed out how there are “no Victoria’s Secret models in Silicon Valley” as there were in “The Social Network.”

You’re kidding! Hollywood glamorized the nerdtastic tech scene in order to make it more exciting to audiences? I cannot believe it!

(And, frankly, Parker seems to be enjoying the attention as much as he does tweaking the film.)

Parker also talked about Facebook being a neutral platform, making a much more interesting observation about what the true power of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg really is.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/video-sean-parker-on-no-victoria-secret-models-in-silicon-valley-what/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110121/from-u-s-to-germany-to-china-boomtown-goes-around-the-digital-world-in-a-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20110121/from-u-s-to-germany-to-china-boomtown-goes-around-the-digital-world-in-a-week/#comments Sat, 22 Jan 2011 01:22:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39822

It’s a big, wide and very digital world out there and that’s why I’m headed around the globe–quite literally–for the next week.

First stop, due east of San Francisco, where I arrived today in Munich, Germany, to moderate several sessions for Hubert Burda Media’s annual DLD conference.

That includes interviewing a whole lot of players I see all the time in Silicon Valley, including investor Reid Hoffman, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Google sales majordomo Nikesh Arora, as well as the two hottest start-up leaders on the Web, Groupon’s Andrew Mason and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare.

And while there are even more U.S. techies here–many on their way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland–I like DLD because it gives me a chance to meet a lot of European entrepreneurs and also grok a different and global perspective on tech, media and more.

It starts Sunday.

Then, from here, even farther east. I head for Hong Kong, where I’ll be meeting my All Things Digital other half, Walt Mossberg and ATD’s secret brain Lia Lorenzano to meet with our Dow Jones partners and scope out a possible AsiaD conference in China in the fall.

We’ve had our international aspirations before that did not pan out–see one of the many videos I did for a possible EuroD in 2007, while we visited Dublin, Ireland–so nothing’s certain.

But we’re hoping we can pull off some kind of international conference in 2011, one of the many parts of the expansion of our D offerings, including more events and many additions to our reporting staff on the ATD Web site this fall.

I will be posting videos from both places, including another episode of “Where in the World Are Walt & Kara?”

Until then, enjoy this one from Dublin Castle in 2007:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110121/from-u-s-to-germany-to-china-boomtown-goes-around-the-digital-world-in-a-week/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110112/andrew-masons-goat-rodeo-of-groupon-investors-will-be-fun-to-watch/ http://allthingsd.com/20110112/andrew-masons-goat-rodeo-of-groupon-investors-will-be-fun-to-watch/#comments Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:01:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39446

Next week, at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, BoomTown will be interviewing one of my favorite start-up CEOs: Andrew Mason of Groupon.

And what’s my very first question for the adorkable toast of the digital town, who has just collected a billion dollars in funding, giving his hot social buying site a $4.75 billion valuation?

No, it’s not about what Mason is going to do with all that moolah.

Not, it’s not about why Groupon spurned the $6 billion acquisition offer from Google (and the Yahoo one before that).

No, it’s not about what hair care products Mason uses to get his hair looking so much like Justin Bieber’s coif.

Most of all, what I want to know is how he’s going to manage his ridiculously large–and, let’s be honest, very opinionated–investor group, which is made up of a big chunk of the digital arena’s most prominent VC firms, institutional investors and angels.

Consider the list, which is much more diverse than Facebook’s at a similar time in its gestation (and, in fact, it feels a lot like the social networking site’s current investor stampede):

Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group (formerly DST Global), Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis and others.

(How in the world is the ubiquitous Ron Conway not shoved in this pig pile? Or is he?)

And, of course, the inevitable Allen & Company acted as financial advisor for this massive funding, which also feels like a bit of a private pre-IPO.

It will be interesting to see exactly whom among this shareholder group that Mason and the other top Groupon execs will listen to and who will have the most influence over the next year.

None of the new moneybags got a board seat, which is probably a good thing. As most entrepreneurs know all too well, investors can be a tricky thing–at once helpful and then not so much.

Mason, a clearly gifted exec, certainly has his hands full now, managing expectations for the fast-growing company, as well as the business itself.

Let’s hope that now that this surreal investor sideshow circus is over, that Groupon’s precious time can be focused on just that.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110112/andrew-masons-goat-rodeo-of-groupon-investors-will-be-fun-to-watch/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101108/brandee-no-comment-barker-finally-comments-pr-honcho-leaving-facebook/ http://allthingsd.com/20101108/brandee-no-comment-barker-finally-comments-pr-honcho-leaving-facebook/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:35:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36942

BoomTown usually does not get all weepy over the departure of public relations folks at Internet companies, in that cynical I’ve-seen-’em-come-and-I’ve-seen-’em-go kind of way.

But the leaving of Brandee Barker (pictured here) from Facebook most certainly elicited a small single tear of sadness this morning, when she called into All Things Digital Global HQ to say she would no longer be tossing me her patented–and very endearing–hand-in-the-face “no comment” for the powerful social networking site.

After four long and tumultuous years, she leaves the company on Dec. 10.

(In a changing-of-the-guard theme, Barker follows longtime advertising sales exec Mike Murphy, who also recently resigned, out the door.)

In a statement, Facebook said:

“We can confirm Brandee is leaving Facebook to start a communications consulting business focused on early stage tech companies. We are grateful for her dedication and the company has benefited greatly from her contributions. We suspect Brandee’s future clients will also value her talents and experience and we wish her much success with her new venture.”

Indeed, although the geeks always get the credit, Facebook owes an awful lot to Barker, for helping its products and services stand out in a sea of competitors.

For certain, it was not as influential as it is today when Barker got there as its head of PR, just as the start-up was beginning to make itself known.

There were only seven million Facebook members when Barker joined, compared to 500 million today.

Still, the veteran communications exec was quickly aware of its power when 750,000 of those members protested against Facebook’s introduction of the initially controversial news feed.

“I had no idea when I took the job that it would be like that,” said Barker, who was employee No. 120 at Facebook, in an Interview with me this morning.

In fact, it has been like that ever since then, as she has navigated a series of triumphs and just as many mishaps for the company as it grew and grew.

One of her favorite moments, she told me, was the introduction of the Facebook platform at its inaugural F8 developers event several years ago.

“Mark [Zuckerberg] had a real vision and the craziness that followed it was an incredible experience,” said Barker, who was the one largely responsible for introducing the decidedly quirky co-founder and CEO of Facebook to the world.

For the most part, Barker shepherded him well, even as the fire hose of attention increased in media, consumer and regulatory pressure over issues ranging from the controversial founding of Facebook–Barker has a masters from Harvard University in Winklevii crisis management–to privacy snafus and more.

A lot of her ministrations were funny, though, as she remembered: “Another great moment was when I insisted Mark take a suitcase instead of a backpack to his first Davos in 2007, so I went out and bought him one.”

And let us not even get into the flip-flop controversies or when I snarkily called Zuckerberg “toddler CEO” to Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes.”

Barker handled it all with grace and humor.

But as Facebook has grown to more than 1,500 employees and its business has boomed, Barker–who recently returned to the company after having a baby–decided that bigger was not better, at least for her.

“I had a pretty deep evaluation when I was away from the company that what I am good at and what I like is working with early-stage companies and their teams,” said Barker, who will start a communications consultancy. “At this point in my career, that’s what I want to do.”

Barker noted, in fact, that there were a lot of companies started by former early Facebook employees like her that might become clients, although she declined to be more specific.

In the end, another “no comment” for me from Barker!

I don’t mind, because here is my comment, on the record and for attribution: It’s a sad day for Facebook, and I’ll miss Brandee Barker very much.

Speaking of no comment, here is Barker in one of my favorite no comments, from behind a plant at a 2008 Silicon Valley luncheon for the German DLD conference:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101108/brandee-no-comment-barker-finally-comments-pr-honcho-leaving-facebook/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20080917/kara-visits-burdas-dld-luncheon-in-silicon-valley/ http://allthingsd.com/20080917/kara-visits-burdas-dld-luncheon-in-silicon-valley/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:23:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=3881 Yesterday, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg and I jumped into the BoomTownMini and took a road trip down the lovely 280 to Palo Alto’s MacArthur Park restaurant for a lunch thrown by Germany’s Hubert Burda Media.

Burda runs an annual digital conference in Munich called DLD (Digital, Life, Design), which a lot of U.S. tech types have gone to, including me, even though the media giant is best known for its old-line magazines about fashion, cooking and crafts.

But Burda has also been dipping into the digital sector a lot, especially via the tireless tech networking of the company’s Steffi Czerny and Marcel Reichart, who have established a high profile for the company among Silicon Valley denizens.

That was in evidence at Burda’s luncheon yesterday, which was crowded with a panoply of techies and hosted by Czerny, Maria Burda, the wife of CEO and owner Hubert Burda, and well-known Israeli investor Yossi Vardi.

Czerny has been taking Maria Burda (pictured here, she is also a famous German television star, better known as Maria Furtwängler) around the Valley on a learning tour this week to meet with companies like Ning, Mozilla, Facebook, and with venture capitalists. They are also here to attend Google’s Zeitgeist partners’ event, which starts today.

Here’s a video of yesterday’s luncheon, where I was asking everyone about the troubled economic situation and more.

It includes chats with Mullenweg and Seesmic’s Loic Le Meur, BillShrink’s Peter Pham, Facebook’s Brandee Barker and Randi Zuckerberg, Wired’s Steven Levy, Vardi and Burda and Czerny:

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080917/kara-visits-burdas-dld-luncheon-in-silicon-valley/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20080124/here-comes-clay-shirky/ http://allthingsd.com/20080124/here-comes-clay-shirky/#comments Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:11:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080124/here-comes-clay-shirky/

When I was in Munich, I ran into well-known Web pundit, teacher and consultant Clay Shirky (pictured here), who was on the “Exploding Media” panel at Hubert Burda Media’s DLD–Digital, Life, Design–conference held there this week.

So I used the opportunity to talk to the always thoughtful Shirky about his new book, called “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” which is set to come out in about a month from Penguin Press.

I have not read the book yet, but it should be another that seeks to figure out what impact digital technologies are having on society. It is described as “how the wildfire-like spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects–for good and for ill.”

That sounds about right, but let’s let Shirky explain in this video:

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080124/here-comes-clay-shirky/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080123/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-the-naomi-campbell-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20080123/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-the-naomi-campbell-edition/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:03:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080123/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-the-naomi-campbell-edition/ Why was supermodel Naomi Campbell suddenly standing right next to German publisher Hubert Burda at the final lunch for his company’s DLD–Digital, Life, Design–conference in Munich yesterday?

I have no idea, nor do I know why Burda broke out into song either–how much do you have to love a media mogul willing to do that?

But I got it all on video and a whole lot more on the last day of the pre-Davos European gathering focused on digital issues and innovation.

(And here is a post by European serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, who apparently thinks his video shows that Accel Partners’ Simon Levene and I were not impressed enough by Campbell.)

In any case, DLD’s motto was: “Uploading the 21st Century.” And while it did not quite do that, there were definitely a lot of interesting moments I captured for your viewing pleasure.

Along with Campbell (who was supposed to appear on a panel on Africa, but did not) and a singing Burda, the video features clips from two sessions today.

The first was titled “Exploding Media” and included: pundit Clay Shirky riffing on flash mobs; a very funny clip of kids talking about television (made by Technorati’s Peter Hirshberg); Google’s Marissa Mayer noting that Google will still not be in the content business; Yahoo’s Bradley Horowitz discussing Yahoo’s plans to de-focus on making original content; and BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis advising old media to just ask WWGD? (What would Google do?).

Another session on the video features the founders of the genetics-focused social-networking company 23andMe–Anne Wojcicki, Linda Avey and Esther Dyson–answering questions about fears people have about learning too much about DNA.

Here is the video (and now I am off to Hamburg to visit Xing, a business social-networking company):

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080123/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-the-naomi-campbell-edition/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-euroschmoozing/ http://allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-euroschmoozing/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:45:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-euroschmoozing/ Here’s a video I did about the first day of DLD–Digital, Life, Design–put on my Hubert Burda Media in Munich this week.

The three-day conference focuses on digital innovation, science and culture. It is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial Israeli investor Joseph Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart.

I was here to interview Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. In our session this afternoon, we talked about digital tools to improve reporting on human-rights abuses, the situation in China for U.S. Web companies like Yahoo and Google, along with what techies can do to help in this important arena.

I also hung around the conference and schmoozed, Eurostyle!, with a lot of folks, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis, BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis and Vardi.

There is also some video from an interesting social-networking panel, featuring Matt Cohler of Facebook, Lars Hinrichs of Xing and Joanna Shields of Bebo.

Added bonus: I also got the no-comment-hand-over-camera move from Facebook’s Brandee Barker, but a promise of German beer!

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany-euroschmoozing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany/ http://allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:36:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany/

I am now at the DLD conference in Munich, which is put on by Hubert Burda Media, a gathering that has become one of Europe’s most interesting in recent years.

The three-day DLD–which stands for Digital, Life, Design–focuses on digital innovation, science and culture and has the most cosmopolitan audience of any conference out there.

It is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial Israeli investor Joseph Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart.

It is interesting to be here to garner a lot of different viewpoints from outside the U.S., and I will be visiting a lot of German Web start-ups over the next week.

There is also a lot of Olympic-level schmoozing, of course, since there are precious few such events in Europe compared to the conference-crazy U.S.

There are also, of course, a lot of the usual suspects from the States and especially Silicon Valley.

So far this morning, I have run into folks like former Microsoftie Linda Stone, Yahoo’s Bradley Horowitz, writer and entrepreneur Esther Dyson, Facebook’s Matt Cohler and, yes, Martha Stewart (who needs no introduction).

I am also here to interview onstage for DLD today Kenneth Roth (pictured here), longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, which investigates, reports on and seeks to curb human-rights abuses in some 70 countries.

To say I am out of my league in interviewing such a serious and substantive figure is an understatement, especially given that I spend all my time contemplating the monetization of widgets (to be more specific, the non-monetization), the fate of content on the Web and the exact date the hype of social networking will end.

Still, I will give it my best effort and perhaps focus on the use of digital tools to get information and stories of heinous injustices out worldwide. After all, the Web has to be more than SuperPoking and dumb online videos on cats skateboarding.

Our session is aptly named: “Inconvenient Stories.”

My favorite kind.

Video, of course, to follow.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080121/kara-visits-dld-in-germany/feed/ 0