The Chicago-based startup, which uses computers to turn structured data sets into prose, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture firm that invests on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.* The money comes along with a deal to put Narrative Science’s automated writers to work for the CIA and “the broader intelligence community.”

Narrative Science had previously raised $6 million. While it made its initial splash by figuring out how to create sports stories based on box scores, without the need for human intervention, it has been making most of its money creating prose most people won’t ever see: Daily reports for the likes of financial services firms, or a large fast-food chain, etc.

But I still think the notion of automated stories for newspapers and other publishers is both fascinating and unsettling, so I like to keep in touch with the company, even as it focuses on enterprise sales.

If you’d like to see an example of their stuff, you can head to Forbes, which is using Narrative Science to create automated earnings reports and previews, like this look-ahead at Smucker’s prospects for tomorrow.

And as far as the CIA and like-minded agencies, you can imagine lots of places where Narrative Science could go to work. Those guys have a lot of data, and it would probably be helpful to have some of that sorted into sentences and summaries. It would be great to show you an example of that work, but obviously that’s not gonna happen.

But here’s a fun scene from “Homeland.” No computer could have created that eye thing Claire Danes does:

* Normally I don’t bother to write about funding rounds where the companies won’t tell you how much money they’re raising. But then again I don’t normally write about the CIA taking equity stakes in the startups I cover. First time for everything!

Forbes magazine put out its much-watched Midas List today, which is kind of the Oscars for venture capitalists in tech. (Caveat: Think more khakis and dudes than glitz and glamour.)

On the Top 10 list of 100 of the best-performing and most influential tech investors, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz led the list at No. 1 and No. 2, as they did last year. And several others in last year’s list remained on it: Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners’ Reid Hoffman, and also David Sze, Peter Thiel and Bessemer Venture Partners’ Jeremy Levine.

Accel scored well on the rest of the list with nine partners named; Sequoia Capital had six VCs on the list; Benchmark, Greylock and New Enterprise Associates got five slots; Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins and Meritech Capital Partners had four; and Andreessen Horowitz, Institutional Venture Partners and Venrock each had three.

As usual, there were few women on the list — only three — reflecting the lack of gender equality in the top tier of the VC business, which solidly remains a boy’s club, despite a lot of noise about changing it (see the pictures here and become depressed once again). Those women who did manage to get on the Midas List were Jenny Lee at GGV Capital, who jumped from No. 94 to No. 36; Kleiner Perkins’s Mary Meeker, who dropped from No. 42 to No. 47; and Theresia Gouw of Accel at No. 82, up from No. 92.

One notable part of the massive Forbes package of VCs on parade was the intense and multipart focus on the travails of Kleiner Perkins and its longtime leader and legendary VC John Doerr. Doerr clocks in at No. 26 on the list, dropping from No. 12 last year, a significant fall.

He does address the nagging issues at the storied firm, including ill-conceived investments in clean tech, a late-to-the-game move into social media, and even its big stake in stock-declining online gaming giant Zynga, in a video (below) and in several pieces, one of which is titled ““John Doerr’s Plan To Reclaim the Venture Capital Throne.”

More like “Game of Thrones” from reading it; there is another, more critical article in the New York Times that appeared yesterday. That piece focused on Kleiner’s investment in the troubled green-car startup, Fisker Automotive, and also the firm’s ongoing sex-discrimination lawsuit with former partner Ellen Pao.

“It was a challenging year, one of my more challenging years in the venture business,” said Doerr to Forbes.

Indeed, although Forbes does hand Kleiner a hey-we-have-some-sharpie-young-folks-here-too! gimme with its focus on “new generation” partners Megan Quinn and Mike Abbott in an interesting Q&A, as well as yet another piece on Kleiner supporters — such as Google’s Eric Schmidt — touting the firm as perhaps down but definitely not out in the “mojo” department.

“John always wins eventually, and the reason he always wins eventually is because he has the processing power and human energy,” Schmidt told Forbes. “Whatever the set of challenges, he will drive the change in the firm. They’ll have a crisis meeting and another crisis meeting, but he will do it. It may be messy but he will get them there.”

Presumably, if Doerr and team can get some mileage out of its Twitter investment next year and somehow turn around Zynga’s moribund stock. (Kleiner has held on to a pile of it, which is why Doerr recently joined the board that already had Kleiner’s Bing Gordon on it.)

On problem for Kleiner, and boon to others like Accel and Greylock, was that the firm was not early in Facebook, whose IPO — as rocky as it was — gave many VCs making the top of the Midas List the needed turbocharge in terms of performance. Other key companies to help VCs look good this year, according to the Forbes report: Workday, LinkedIn and Skype.

Here’s Doerr, who is indeed a legend, even if more bruised and battered this year, talking about it all to Forbes’s Connie Guglielmo, in the video interview:

Speaking of media attention, here’s a more provocative video interview by Forbes with Sequoia’s Doug Leone (No. 4, up from No. 18 last year), in which he takes aim at VC firms that do too much self-promotion — three guesses which pioneering browser inventor he is referring to here, and the first two don’t count. He called it an “embarrassment,” although Sequoia did hire an excellent PR person from Google this year — nonetheless making the point that the focus should be on entrepreneurs and not investors.

Except, of course, when it comes to scoring high on the Midas List.

In addition to earlier investors, who include Lerer Ventures, Oak Investment and Bedrocket, SoftBank Capital has also put money into the new round; SoftBank principal Nikhil Kalghatgi will join the company’s board.

NowThisNews has now raised nearly $10 million in the last year; Eric Hippeau, Lerer Ventures’ managing director, says NowThisNews is still talking to some strategic investors about kicking in a bit more. Danielle Morrill noted the new round earlier this month.

So that’s the money part. How’s the startup itself doing?

Just fine, said Hippeau. He said the company, which launched last fall, has already created 300,000 videos, and that last month it generated 20 million video streams. By comparison, HuffPost Live, Huffington Post’s own version of a video news service, generated 48 million streams in March.

The big caveat with NowThisNews’ video stream numbers is that the conceit behind the service is that it’s “mobile first” and is supposed to reach a new generation of video viewers who live on their phones. But Hippeau said that a majority of the company’s views are coming from the Web, via syndication deals it has with outlets like BuzzFeed, MSN, the Guardian, Forbes and the Atlantic.

“They’re going through the same experience that a lot of people who are trying to do mobile are going through, which is that you’re going to build a mobile audience not only through mobile but from the Web, as well,” Hippeau said.

The big question is whether NowThisNews’ product, which generally leans on quick-twitch, MTV News-style summaries, or found footage with music overdubs, can stand out in a world where there’s a whole lot of that stuff — particularly on YouTube, which pulls in a billion viewers a month, and is increasingly reaching those folks on their phones, too.

Here’s NowThisNews’ take on a pregnant panda story. If you’re looking for a voice-over, there isn’t any. But there is some explanatory text on the video’s homepage: “‘Evolutionarily Challenged’ Panda Is Artificially Inseminated. Dying breed can only mate once a year.”

Our friends at Solve Media wrote a thoughtful white paper on this topic, and I’ve combined some of their thinking with my own ideas in order to come up with a holistic definition of native advertising. Here are the five criteria any true native ad should meet:

• Non interruptive — Doesn’t interrupt the user flow and fits seamlessly into the experience
• In Stream and Contextual — Complements, rather than competes with, the content around it
• Preserves Trust — Engenders trust by delivering value as opposed to employing deceptive marketing tricks
• Maintains Brand Integrity — Takes the long view to craft and communicate a brand’s story authentically
• Adds Value — Supplements the experience by either entertaining, informing or engaging

The reality is that very few online marketing platforms — including many that stake a claim to being native — pass even the first test of the gauntlet by delivering a message without interrupting the user. Dan Greenberg of Sharethrough has written frequently as one of the leading proponents of native advertising. He alludes to “strategies built upon twin pillars of content and choice versus banners and interruption,” citing Sponsored Stories on Facebook and Promoted Tweets on Twitter as innovative in this regard. I disagree. The sponsored stories that appear in my Facebook News Feed usually don’t qualify as content, are rarely useful and frequently interrupt.

Promoted tweets aren’t much better — almost always promotional, thick with branding and rarely appearing as if they belong in my stream. And neither product offers “choice,” a key ingredient in establishing trust. Sponsored stories cannot be hidden like other stories that appear in the News Feed, and nothing can be edited out of your Twitter stream. Neither platform offers much choice, and in Facebook’s case, there’s less choice than users are otherwise accustomed to having.

When considering all five criteria, it turns out that content as a medium for delivering a brand’s message may be the only pure-play way to achieve them all. Good content doesn’t interrupt. In fact, it does the opposite, drawing you into a plot. It delivers value through entertainment, education, or some combination of both. Working our way down the list into the more nuanced characteristics, content can organically appear in places where it feels natural to discover. By entertaining or educating the reader and avoiding being overly promotional, it’s easy to engender reader trust. And it’s a natural way to tell a story.

There are several platforms innovating around delivering native advertising through content today, but they vary in purity based on the above criteria:

Publishers

The Atlantic produces some of the highest quality content of any publisher in business today. While they received their fair share of criticism for the Church of Scientology debacle, they have an enormous opportunity if they can retain their high standard of quality across their sponsored stories. This will be their challenge.

Combining branded sponsorship with viral content as well as anyone, BuzzFeed is setting a new standard for content marketing. Context of sponsorships and brand adjacency questions may pose longer-term challenges.

Forbes’ Brand Voices is innovative and shows enormous potential as a content marketing platform for brands to communicate directly with customers. Worth mentioning, their use of frequent homepage takeovers and uninitiated pre-rolls feels disingenuous with native aspirations.

Platforms

Aiming to build a native ad network, Sharethrough is setting a super high standard for ad quality, and it shows. The line between content and advertising can be easily blurred, though, and both interruptive-ness and context are open questions with their offering.

While Solve Media’s captcha replacements are a big improvement from the status quo and an attractive opportunity for brands, prompting a user to engage in a type-in exercise is almost always interruptive from any activity in which they were previously engaged.

Outbrain drives discovery of article and video content through personalized recommendations that appear in the footer of online article pages. Maintaining quality has been a challenge as marketers have tried to use it as a platform to distribute spammy content.

Committing to native is a tricky business, and there are more than a few traps and temptations lurking around the bend. Several content recommendation “imitators” have arrived on the scene over the past year, perhaps underestimating the importance of efficient targeting and high quality content to engender the reader trust that differentiates these offerings. Without that trust, these lookalikes will eventually revert to the least common denominator and become just another ad network, albeit one disguised as content.

“The natives are getting restless” are words originally uttered by Dr. Moreau in the 1933 sci-fi horror film, “The Island of Lost Souls.” However, the “natives” in question weren’t natives at all, but rather the human/animal hybrid results of Dr. Moreau’s experiments. Similarly, most online advertising platforms claiming inclusion in the native family today aren’t native at all, bearing only one or two elements of the full scope, therefore being hybrid experiments. Those platforms that do meet the full standard are in prime position to capture mindshare by delivering authentic experiences and offering brands new and unique ways to reach their audiences.

Josh Guttman is a Senior Vice President at Outbrain, a content discovery platform. Follow him on Twitter at @JGut.

Sources familiar with the negotiations tell AllThingsD that HP CEO Meg Whitman wants out of the $47 million, 15-year naming rights deal, which is scheduled to end in 2016. The move is part of a global reevaluation by HP of its marketing efforts and sponsorships. The change could be announced as early as this summer, in time for the 2013-14 hockey season.

Software giant SAP is said to be interested in taking over the naming rights. Its founder, former co-CEO and chairman of its supervisory board, Hasso Plattner, is the majority owner of the Sharks. Plattner, who ranks at No. 122 on the Forbes magazine list of global billionaires, with a net worth of $8.9 billion, recently bought out two other co-owners, the longtime Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Kevin Compton, and former VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos. Following that deal, Plattner’s stake in the team is said to be in the neighborhood of 90 percent.

HP spokesman Michael Thacker declined to comment, as did SAP spokesman James Dever.

A change in the arena’s naming rights would have to be approved by the San Jose city council. Michelle McGurk, a spokeswoman for San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, had no immediate comment. Update, 4:50 PM PDT: I just received a statement from McGurk. See it below.

Scott Emmert, a spokesman for the San Jose Sharks, didn’t immediately return messages seeking a comment.

According to people familiar with the discussions, Plattner raised the issue of HP’s naming rights with Whitman directly during a routine meeting. HP is a significant SAP customer. Asked if HP intended to hold on to its naming rights through 2016 as the current agreement states, Whitman said, “Frankly, I’d like to get out of it.”

HP inherited the naming rights from Compaq, the computer company it acquired in 2002 for $25 billion. At the time, San Jose’s arena was known as The Compaq Center at San Jose. It has been known as the HP Pavilion at San Jose since late 2002. The rights are said to cost HP about $3.1 million a year.

As annual expenditures go, $3.1 million is pocket change for HP. While it doesn’t disclose marketing expenditures directly, those expenses fall under the “selling, general and administrative” (SG&A) line item on HP’s income statement, which in fiscal 2012 was $13.5 billion.

Still, since Whitman took over as CEO in 2011, marketing functions that had previously been run by HP’s disparate business units — the PC unit, the printer unit and so on — have been centralized under Chief Marketing Officer Marty Homlish.

Over the years, HP has become involved with hundreds, if not thousands, of events and programs that it sponsors as a way of raising the visibility of the HP brand. Those programs and sponsorships are now in the process of being systematically reevaluated, and many are being canceled outright.

The HP Pavilion name was given to the arena to align with the company’s main PC brand, known as Pavilion. But with personal computer sales in rapid decline, attaching the brand name to a sporting facility is no longer seen as an effective use of marketing dollars, people familiar with HP’s thinking say. Money saved from canceled marketing efforts is being redirected into either new marketing efforts or into HP’s research and development budget.

HP will still have access to the arena and to San Jose Sharks games. Sources say the company intends to hold on to a single luxury box it owns to entertain customers. Oddly enough, the naming rights for the luxury suites belong to another tech company: They’re currently known as Citrix Suites.

Informally known as the Shark Tank, the arena seats 17,562 for hockey games, and more than 19,000 for concerts. It hosts as many as 190 events a year, including the SAP Open, a men’s tennis tournament. It was briefly the home court of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors during a period when the Oakland Coliseum was under reconstruction.

Update: Here’s the statement I just got from Michelle McGurk, a spokeswoman for San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed:

“We’ve enjoyed a long and productive partnership with both the Sharks and HP, and we greatly appreciate their long-standing and valuable commitment to our community.

“The current agreement is scheduled to end in 2016, so we would be starting a process in the coming year or so to explore contract alternatives in the normal course of business.

“Because the Arena is an outstanding facility and Silicon Valley a unique location, we’re optimistic that we will be able to end up in position of mutual benefit for everyone, without speculating on any specific outcome.”

But profitability is what Tumblr expects to achieve in 2013, according to Bloomberg.

“We expect that the monetization will lead us to profitability this year,” were the words of head of sales Lee Brown, who joined the company last fall.

In particular, Tumblr said that the addition of paid post promotion on its mobile apps will be a big new revenue driver. Tumblr has the 50th most-used iPhone app in the U.S., according to Onavo, which doesn’t yet publish Android ranks.

So could profitability actually be within the realm of possibility? Maybe so, since Tumblr seems relatively cheap to run.

The New York City-based company has raised $125 million in venture funding and has 162 employees. Tumblr previously told Forbes it had $13 million in revenue in 2012 — with an estimated $25 million in operational costs — and it hoped for $100 million worth of revenue in 2013. That would be a year-over-year gain of 769 percent.

The Internet Cool Kids liked the idea of justice being brought here and the public unmasking and shaming of the men behind this kind of behavior. It was like a great big digital Hollaback.

–Forbes reporter Kashmir Hill, writing in response to Adrien Chen’s piece on Gawker outing controversial Reddit user Violentacrez

Women in tech had a good showing on Forbes magazine’s 2012 “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” list, which came out this past week.

Like the higher-profile tally from Fortune, it features the female movers and shakers from a variety of arenas.

No. 1 on the list is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has certainly had her hands full with the economic crisis in Europe this past year.

But women related to tech also were numerous in the group, so here’s the rundown:

No. 4: Melinda Gates, co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

No. 10: Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

No. 15: Virginia Rometty, president and CEO, IBM

No. 17: Ursula Burns, president and CEO, Xerox

No. 18: Meg Whitman, CEO, Hewlett-Packard

No. 21: Marissa Mayer, CEO, Yahoo

No. 25: Susan Wojcicki, SVP, Google

No. 29: Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief, Huffington Post Media Group, AOL

No. 48: Safra Katz, president and CFO, Oracle

No. 49: Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and chair, Emerson Collective

No. 58: Padmasree Warrior, CTO and chief strategy officer, Cisco

No. 70: Sue Gardner, executive director, WikiMedia Foundation

No. 84: Mary Meeker, general partner, Kleiner Perkins

Obviously, there’s no benefit to Google. But it’s important to the company to help our families through this horrific if inevitable life event.

– Google “chief people officer” Laszlo Bock in an interview with Forbes, on the death benefit paid to the spouses or domestic partners of deceased Google employees: With 50 percent of their salary for 10 years, immediate stock vesting and $1,000 a month for any surviving children until they reach 19 years old

Actually, if truth be told, Buffalo, N.Y., is one of the loveliest places to visit in the summer, especially if you’re lucky enough to be right next to majestic Lake Erie.

And that is where the Z80 Labs will have its grand opening today in the Queen City, home of chicken wings and lots and lots of snow, by launching its first start-up, called AppVue.

While visiting the Western New York city this past weekend, I paid a visit to the new facility, which is in a large airy room on the first floor of the Buffalo News.

What’s most heartening to see, of course, is the definitely more earnest and rawer kind of entrepreneurism on display, of a kind that is often lost in the slick, well-oiled machine of Silicon Valley.

That was the point by well-known venture capitalist Jordan Levy of SoftBank Capital, who has long split his time between New York City and his home in Buffalo. He founded the incubator with SoftBank’s Ron Schreiber.

“It’s easy for entrepreneurs in places like Palo Alto to get going,” the voluble Levy said to me on my visit. “We wanted to find a way to keep really great techies here to create an ecosystem that would be able to jump-start even more and help this city keep jobs.”

The longtime investor (pictured here) had already made scores of wins from fundings of companies such as OMGPOP (sold to Zynga) and Buddy Media (sold to Salesforce.com). But Levy appears particularly proud of Buffalo-based Synacor, where he serves as chairman. It’s a successful cloud platform service for companies that want to put video online.

As the big tech dog in Buffalo, Synacor is playing a big role in Z80 Labs, which will focus primarily on making investments in digital media and mobile Internet companies.

The tech incubator — which will provide office space, support and mentorship to its start-ups — is also getting an assist from a $4 million Innovate NY grant provided by the state.

Such a solid base is just what the founders of AppVue — which “specializes in mobile apps that make trusted recommendations among social media friends and networks” — told me they needed.

Essentially, it’s another new take on app discovery, which is a vexing issue for both app creators and users.

After AppVue won the University at Buffalo’s Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition, besting 19 other companies, its trio of founders — Matthew Epstein, CEO; Andrew Cassetti, EVP of product development; and Chief Architect Nathan Schiffer — told me that, until now, there have been no other options but to leave the area to make it in tech.

“We wanted to stay here, and now we can,” said Epstein. “And we are getting the kind of attention we need to try to make this a real company.”

Let’s hope so. It’s already looking impressive at its start — both Forbes CEO Mike Perlis and New York power VC Fred Wilson will make appearances today for Z80’s debut.

I’d suggest Frank & Teressa’s Anchor Bar on Main Street — where chicken wings were apparently invented, and an arena in which Silicon Valley will never have an upper hand.

The gloves are now really off in the proxy battle for Yahoo.

In a letter to Yahoo’s board, activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point is alleging that the company’s new CEO Scott Thompson has inaccurately added a computer science degree to his resume.

(Update: Yahoo confirmed that Loeb is correct about Thompson not having such a degree and called it an “inadvertent error.”)

Thompson went to Stonehill College, near Boston, from 1975 to 1979, according to his LinkedIn profile, but it does not specify his degree.

(Second Update: Stonehill College also confirms that Thompson only graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration (Accounting).)

And older bios, such as one from his director bio for F5 and one from Forbes, as well as a Stone Hill College alumni newsletter, note that he graduated only with a Bachelor’s of Science in accounting.

But in official bios from his job at eBay as head of its PayPal payments division, as well as on the current Yahoo one, a degree in computer science also appears, along with the accounting degree.

“Scott received a bachelor’s in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College,” read the Yahoo and eBay bios. It is also in Yahoo’s regulatory filings.

According to Loeb’s letter:

Upon recognizing this discrepancy, Third Point initially assumed that the documents we had reviewed were incorrect and the representations in Yahoo!’s public filings were accurate. However, we were then informed by Stonehill College that Mr. Thompson did indeed graduate with a degree in accounting only. Furthermore, Stonehill College informed us that it did not begin awarding computer science degrees until 1983 — four years after Mr. Thompson graduated. We inquired whether Mr. Thompson had taken a large number of computer science courses, perhaps allowing him to justify to himself that he had “earned” such a degree. Instead, we learned that during Mr. Thompson’s tenure at Stonehill only one such course was even offered — Intro to Computer Science. Presumably, Mr. Thompson took that course.

I am awaiting a call back from Stonehill about Thompson’s degree, which the college is checking now. And I called Yahoo for comment and also am waiting for that, too.

If Loeb’s allegations are true and Thompson burnished his resume to add educational expertise to lend him more tech credibility, it could become a serious issue for Yahoo.

It would also call into question — as Loeb does in the letter — the amount of vetting done by Yahoo on the CEO choice, which was conducted by board member Patti Hart.

It gets worse: Loeb is also alleging that Hart changed her degree from Illinois State College from business administration to a loftier economics and marketing.

(Update: Loeb is correct. Yahoo said Hart has a degree in business administration, with a specialty in economics and marketing — although I am not sure what that means exactly.)

But Thompson’s educational pedigree is the main issue here, of course, and Loeb is calling for his head if explanations are not provided.

“If Mr. Thompson embellished his academic credentials we think that it 1) undermines his credibility as a technology expert and 2) reflects poorly on the character of the CEO who has been tasked with leading Yahoo! at this critical juncture. Now more than ever Yahoo! investors need a trustworthy CEO,” said Loeb in the letter.

But read it for yourself — here is the full letter from Loeb:

Third Point Letter to Board May 3 Release

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

As many readers know, we have been adding to our staff here at AllThingsD, most recently in our new reviews section, with the addition of Lauren Goode earlier this year.

Now Walt Mossberg and I are proud to announce that Mike Isaac is joining our team to cover the social Web and its biggest players, including Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

He comes to ATD most recently from a staff writer position at Wired, where, among many other things, he spent much of his time writing about Google’s mobile and social efforts.

From 2010 to 2012, his coverage at Wired included the decline and fall of Hewlett-Packard’s mobile empire, Google’s surprise acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and Facebook’s steady trudge toward IPO-hood.

Prior to that, he wrote about the business of tech for Forbes magazine and Forbes.com, with a particular emphasis on start-ups and social. His work has also appeared in Paste magazine, Performer magazine, DNR magazine and the Washington Examiner.

Isaac holds a degree in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and is a former Georgetown University journalism fellow.

He takes over the social beat from Liz Gannes, who will be stepping up our coverage of the many businesses of Google, innovation, venture investing and the start-up scene — especially its bigger companies, from Pinterest to Quora to Dropbox. Gannes, as everyone who follows her knows well, has become a key observer of Silicon Valley and its players, and her insights into the tech scene have become one of our most invaluable offerings.

We’re excited for both of them, and look forward to their stellar work on our site.

… one of the secrets that goes well beyond location is that the guy with the most data wins.

– Tim O’Reilly, in conversation with Jon Bruner of Forbes at O’Reilly Where, his company’s conference on “the business of location”

Instead, this one took me about 90 seconds: From this tweet to this Forbes article to this post from Dartmouth College. That’s where Kim, Dartmouth’s president, performed the rap from the Black Eyed Peas song “The Time (Dirty Bit)” last year. Enjoy, starting at the 2:05 mark:

Bonus video: My colleague Liz Gannes, Dartmouth ’04, notes that this was not Kim’s first “Glee”-tastical performance. Here, he partakes in a 2010 Michael Jackson tribute, starting with the Vincent Price rap from “Thriller,” followed by enthusiastic dancing. Begins around the 1:20 mark:

The irony here is that Levo League’s co-founders are exactly the kind of women who don’t seem to need assistance from Web sites. Caroline Ghosn and Amanda Pouchot are well-educated, hyperambitious and plugged-in: They boast credentials like degrees from Berkeley and Stanford, jobs at McKinsey, and backing from the likes of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Ning’s Gina Bianchini, and Gilt Groupe’s Susan Lyne. (It doesn’t hurt that Ghosn’s father, Carlos, is the CEO of Nissan and Renault.)

Then again, it would be kind of hard to get people to visit your new career site if you couldn’t offer aspirational pixie dust. “Be a schlub, just like us” won’t cut it.

The pitch here is basic: The Web site is free for users, who have to apply for access (Ghosn and Pouchot do the vetting themselves, but that won’t last if the site grows they way they imagine). It offers a variety of forums, real-time chats with mentors, and old-fashioned job postings. Employers will pay for sponsorships and job postings.

Like all smart start-ups, Ghosn and Pouchot argue that they’re ready to take share away from an established heavyweight — LinkedIn, in this case — by offering something better. And like lots of start-ups, they have a messy backstory, which seems to involve a predecessor site and some unhappy former co-founders. (But if you can make sense of this Forbes story which attempts to explain it, good for you.)

In any case, the site should be up and running now, so you can check it out — once you make the cut. And you can see what Ghosn and Pouchot have to say for themselves in this interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120320/levo-league-wants-to-help-you-find-a-job-if-youre-a-gen-y-woman/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120112/why-rhapsody-is-probably-bigger-than-spotify-in-the-u-s/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/why-rhapsody-is-probably-bigger-than-spotify-in-the-u-s/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:00:24 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=163067 Jon Irwin is not pals with Sean Parker. He doesn’t hold splashy press conferences. He hasn’t been on the cover of Forbes.

But for now, at least, he can claim a bragging right that Spotify’s Daniel Ek doesn’t have: The CEO of Rhapsody has more paying subscribers than any other digital music service in the U.S.

Probably, that is. We can get into the numbers in a minute. But at the very least, Irwin argues, his company ought to get a bit of the attention that Spotify does.

They’re both doing the same thing, after all — trying to get consumers to pony up $10 a month for an ad-free service that lets you listen to any music you want, on your iPhone or (just about) any other device.

The big difference between the two is that while Rhapsody offers users a free trial period to sample the service, Ek’s company will let you listen to music for free forever.

That offer comes with advertising, and some restrictions — you can only do it for a certain number of hours per month, and you can’t take it with you. But that free offer, in conjunction with a big push from Facebook, is the real reason that so many people have heard about Spotify recently. Free, legal music is a pretty compelling offer.

Why hasn’t Rhapsody gone that route? Irwin has a long answer for that, but the short one is that he doesn’t think Spotify’s freemium model can convert enough subscribers to cover the costs of the music it gives away. The Spotify camp argues otherwise, but we’re not going to get an authoritative answer for some time.

In the meantime, Irwin can take can comfort in the fact that he has more Americans paying for his service than Ek does.

He thinks. Irwin says he passed the one-million mark at the end of last year. And while Spotify hasn’t broken out its U.S. subscriber total, we can guess that it has less than that. At the end of November, it said that it had 2.5 million paying subscribers worldwide. That’s 900,000 more than the 1.6 million it said it had in June, and that growth hasn’t all come in the U.S., because Facebook has been promoting the service everywhere.

Now, back to the future. Spotify is likely to keep growing for a while, thanks to that Facebook firehose, as well as international expansion — my bet is that Ek opens shop in Germany fairly soon.

But Irwin thinks that both companies are going to end up needing help from partners with much bigger reach — cable guys like Comcast, or wireless giants like Verizon — if they’re going to get real scale.

He explains in this interview we conducted yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show:

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120112/why-rhapsody-is-probably-bigger-than-spotify-in-the-u-s/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111130/newscred-raises-4-million-for-its-web-based-newswire/ http://allthingsd.com/20111130/newscred-raises-4-million-for-its-web-based-newswire/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:00:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=148357 Problem: You own a Web site and would like to fill it up with some nice-looking newsy content, but you don’t want to pay people like me to make it. NewsCred wants to provide the answer: It syndicates news stories from outlets like the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and Forbes, and places them on sites around the world.

The New York-based start-up has been at this in various incarnations since 2009, but CEO Shafqat Islam says he’s getting some traction, and is able to charge Web publishers $3,000 to $5,000 a month per “vertical” for access to his (borrowed) content. He says he’ll do $1 million in revenue this year; last month, Islam raised a $4 million Series A round led by First Mark, along with Lerer Ventures, AOL Ventures and Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital.

Content syndicators aren’t a new idea, by any means, and NewsCred’s basic pitch sounds quite similar to Mochilla, which has raised a pile of money. Several folks are trying versions of this in video, including AOL’s 5min and U.K.-based Perform Group’s ePlayer. And Demand Media has tried putting its super-low-cost freelancers to work for publishers including USA Today.

NewsCred’s basic pitch seems to be that it has a better selection of blue-chip content makers, all of which are getting guaranteed payments for their stuff. Islam pitches his product as a disruptor out to take on the likes of the Associated Press, but he also syndicates content from Reuters and Bloomberg, also giant newswires. So presumably they don’t feel threatened quite yet.

Here’s an interview I conducted with Islam earlier this week, featuring a cameo from Pat the Contractor (NewsCred is in the process of moving into its own place, after graduating from start-up launcher General Assembly).

(Side note: To get a sense of how difficult it is to hammer out some of these content deals, or just get a foot in the door, see this email exchange between Islam and an executive at Dow Jones, which, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111130/newscred-raises-4-million-for-its-web-based-newswire/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111105/tech-leaders-make-forbes-most-powerful-people-list/ http://allthingsd.com/20111105/tech-leaders-make-forbes-most-powerful-people-list/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:21:36 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=140901 Forbes has compiled a list of the 70 most powerful individuals, and along with some of the world’s leading politicians and religious leaders, tech leaders made a strong showing.

The top four most powerful people are politicians, including Barack Obama in the top spot. At No. 5 is Bill Gates, who ranks high for his philanthropic role as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Some of the other tech leaders and their rankings:

5. Bill Gates, co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

9. Mark Zuckerberg, founder, Facebook.

30. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders, Google.

40. Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.

42. Robin Li, CEO, Baidu.

44. Li Ka-shing, chairman, Hutchinson Wampoa.

58. Tim Cook, CEO, Apple.

60. Masayoshi Son, CEO, Softbank.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111105/tech-leaders-make-forbes-most-powerful-people-list/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111031/no-such-thing-as-easy-bake/ http://allthingsd.com/20111031/no-such-thing-as-easy-bake/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:01:53 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=138124

The problem with true hyper-growth … It’s the problem like baking a cake in three minutes.

— Marc Andreessen, talking about growth at Y Combinator’s Startup School this weekend

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111031/no-such-thing-as-easy-bake/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110728/heres-what-steve-forbes-is-telling-his-staff-about-that-brutal-fortune-article/ http://allthingsd.com/20110728/heres-what-steve-forbes-is-telling-his-staff-about-that-brutal-fortune-article/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:53:04 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=103727 Fortune depantsed longtime rival Forbes today with a story detailing the business magazine’s finances, which have been terrible.

Don’t worry about it, Forbes chairman Steve Forbes tells his staff, via an internal memo which you can read below.

Before we go further: I worked at Forbes for 10 years; I still know lots of folks who work there. Now: The Fortune piece is useful because it details, via internal documents from banker J.P. Morgan, just how badly the bet that Elevation Partners placed on the magazine in 2006 has worked out.

The fact that Elevation (better known as either Roger McNamee’s private equity fund, or Bono’s private equity fund) bought a minority stake in the publisher at close to the market peak has been well known.

But the Fortune piece spells out just how badly timed it was: Elevation’s projections had Forbes generating close to $90 million in EBITDA in 2009; instead, the company had operating losses of $19.7 million. Last year the company went into default on a $90 million credit line.

Fortune also argues that the deal has been a disaster for the Forbes family, but I’m not sure that this is the case. After all, it allowed them to take more than $100 million out of the company while holding on to a majority stake. If they hadn’t done that five years ago, they certainly couldn’t do so today.

Regardless, Fortune does a good job of showing just how precarious life has been at Forbes for the past couple years — as it has been at every business magazine (just ask Portfolio and BusinessWeek) — and the publisher’s uncertain future. Elevation and Forbes have interlocking put and call options that kick in next month, and it will be interesting to see how long Elevation remains a minority owner.

—

Fortune Story on Forbes
Steve Forbes [XXX@forbes.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 9:43 AM
Today Fortune magazine published a story on Forbes with the clear intention of disrupting the business of its most formidable competitor.

Fortune was aware that this was highly confidential, private information and of no value to release to the public. Though the intention is to harm our business, it will not adversely impact Forbes because it highlights a very difficult time in the past when all the media industry was going through unprecedented upheaval.

Forbes has the finest team – you – in the media world today. Forbes is profitable and is successfully navigating these extraordinarily turbulent seas. The company continues to grow and thrive with powerful new strategies and talent.

We are attaching (below) a statement that will be sent later today to the media responding to this article.

Media Statement
Contact: Monie Begley Feurey
SVP Corporate Communications, Forbes Media
XXX@forbes.com

Forbes Media is profitable and in full compliance with all bank loan covenants.

In 2010, as part of a newly formulated strategy, Forbes sold Investopedia for cash realizing a profit on the sale of this investment. The decision to sell this non-core investment was taken
by the board of Forbes Media upon the recommendation of management.

In 2008, Steve Forbes and Tim Forbes, CEO and COO repectively, initiated a reorganization of the company, including the integration of its independent operating units, Forbes magazine and Forbes.com.

They also decided to expand the company management team, which led to the successful recruitment first of Lewis D’Vorkin as Chief Product Officer and then Mike Perlis as CEO of the integrated business.

The last decade has seen unprecedented upheaval across the media industry.Within that decade Forbes magazine, uniquely among its largest competitors, Fortune and Business Week, grew its total readership to record levels – 5.4 million in 2010 – and grew its share of advertising from 33% to 40%. The company also launched 16 local language editions, giving it the largest worldwide brand footprint among business publishers. At the same time, Forbes.com grew to one of the largest and most profitable business websites in the world, with, on average, 20 million monthly unique visitors.

Since 2010, the company has pursued its strategy of putting journalism at the center of social media. This strategy is at the cutting edge of media today, which is why it is garnering support from audiences and advertisers alike.

Elevation Partners are enthusiastic supporters of the direction of the company and have been full participants as these strategies have been developed.

Steve Forbes remains Editor in Chief and Chairman of Forbes Media. Tim Forbes is Chairman of Forbes Digital. The Forbes family remains the controlling shareholder of Forbes Media.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110728/heres-what-steve-forbes-is-telling-his-staff-about-that-brutal-fortune-article/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110721/as-ceo-bartz-fiddles-with-turnaround-yahoos-stock-value-burns/ http://allthingsd.com/20110721/as-ceo-bartz-fiddles-with-turnaround-yahoos-stock-value-burns/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:05:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=101057

Yahoo — which turned in yet another disappointing second quarter on Tuesday, but with all new excuses for the continuing decline in revenue — is now getting toasted by Wall Street.

That would be the marshmallow — and not the champagne — kind.

The stock of the Internet giant dropped below $14 a share, to close at $13.48 yesterday, after the company said its display advertising business in the U.S. was hard hit.

Today, it’s already down even further.

That’s close to an eight percent haircut for the past two days and a decline of 20 percent for the past three months.

In that same three months, Google is up over 13 percent, Microsoft is up over five percent, Amazon is up over 17 percent and Apple is up 13 percent.

You get the general idea here.

The decline means Yahoo’s market value is now only $17.5 billion, and more than two-thirds of that value is accounted for by its Asian assets (more than $9 billion) and cash ($3.3 billion).

That means its other properties are worth just above $5 billion now.

And while CEO Carol Bartz tried again — in a conference call with analysts after the earnings were released — to portray the situation as another part of her never-ending turnaround of the company, the issues at Yahoo are not new.

They range from display weakness to search declines to a talent drain to ineffective marketing to the lack of a consistent and fast-developing pipeline of innovative products to its flaccid board.

The earnings mess — no surprise, given estimates going forward were also missed — was seized on by investors and the press. (See, it’s not only me!)

In a column earlier this week in Forbes, titled “Carol Bartz’s 8 Blind Spots That Sunk Yahoo,” longtime and noisy Yahoo critic Eric Jackson noted:

“[T]he Bartz hiring is a cautionary tale to all boards and investors: An over-confident ex-CEO with no industry experience can make a bad company worse before things get better.”

But perhaps more damaging was a post today in The Wall Street Journal’s Heard It on the Street column by Martin Peers, titled: “Yahoo’s Unsurprising Surprise.”

It began with the cutting line: “Talk about having a credibility gap on display.”

Then it got worse:

“Admittedly, it may be that Yahoo has dropped off the radar screens of so many investors that this latest episode can’t do further damage. Certainly, aside from cutting costs, Ms. Bartz’s turnaround plan for Yahoo remains stillborn.”

That might be too kind if the stock continues to decline, a development that — in turn — might once again begin the speculation of Yahoo as a takeover target.

Which, if that could manage to get Yahoo shares back up, might be a reason to break out the bubbly.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment, which — given stock prices are what they are — is probably a good idea.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110721/as-ceo-bartz-fiddles-with-turnaround-yahoos-stock-value-burns/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110615/viral-video-kashmir-stylings-on-facebook-facial-recognition/ http://allthingsd.com/20110615/viral-video-kashmir-stylings-on-facebook-facial-recognition/#comments Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:22:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=86783 Whatever side of the Facebook facial recognition debate you are on — is it privacy panic or a Big-Brother crisis? — this video by Forbes blogger Kashmir Hill is pretty clever.

Hill — who has perhaps one of the best bylines evuh — clearly has come down on the former, writing earlier this week about the social networking company:

“As I’ve made clear here before, I think that the privacy concerns about the new tool are overblown. The tool is limited to identifying you to your friends — people who already know what you look like.”

(Hey, Kashmir: Let me know when the aliens who really created Facebook and Google come for you, after they decide to start harvesting the Earth as planned using their nefarious photo-tagging tools!)

All kidding aside, enjoy the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110615/viral-video-kashmir-stylings-on-facebook-facial-recognition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110419/news-me-the-ipad-news-aggregator-blessed-by-big-publishers-gets-ready-to-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20110419/news-me-the-ipad-news-aggregator-blessed-by-big-publishers-gets-ready-to-launch/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2011 04:23:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31947 News.me, Bit.ly’s social news iPad app, was supposed to launch by the end of 2010. But developers didn’t submit it for Apple’s approval until about a month ago.

Now it looks as if News.me is just about ready for public consumption. I’m basing that observation on a new Web site that spells out, in great detail, how the app is supposed to work, and which instructs users to head to iTunes to download the app.

As I’m typing this, News.me still isn’t available in the app store. So it’s possible that the new web page is simply a new web page. Perhaps it’s just an exercise in positive thinking–maybe this will force Apple into approving our app!

[UPDATE: "Our understanding is that News.me is launching tomorrow", says New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy; the Times is aware of News.me's plans because it helped develop the project in its early stages (see below). I've asked Bit.ly for comment but haven't heard back yet.]

At a minimum, though, we can learn a lot about what Bit.ly has planned when News.me does launch.

The basics:

• News.me will cost $0.99 a week, or $34.99 a year. It will be available as an iPad app, using Apple’s subscription service, or as an e-mail newsletter.
• News.me will provide users with curated Twitter streams that highlight “the most popular or interesting news stories” that appear in their own Twitter feeds, and from the feeds of other Twitter users they select. The notion is that users can “read over the shoulder” of people they find interesting.
• Bit.ly does the curating, using the data it culls as it shortens billions of shared links on the Web. Since News.me relies on Bit.ly data, it has a natural bias toward publishers that use the service.
• News.me lets users read those stories in a “streamlined reading view,” which will be familiar to anyone who has used apps like Instapaper: easy-to-read black text on a white background–without the ads users see when they read the same stuff on a publisher’s Web page.
• News.me will share some of its revenue with publishers who license their content to the service. But publishers who don’t have News.me deals but do appear on the Web will still see their stuff show up on the service. It just won’t look as nice, and they won’t get paid. And they won’t get the chance to run “additional promotion for publisher products that might be of special interest to News.me users (such as iPad applications).”

You can get a pretty good sense of how the app works by reading TechCrunch’s “exclusive” from February. Or you could just ask many of the people whose work often appears on Techmeme. A whole lot of writers and bloggers–including me–have had a chance to play with News.me for a while.

When News.me finally does go live, potential users will have to debate whether they want to pay a fee to read stuff they can get for free on the Web.

But to me, the most interesting thing about News.me is that it’s an aggregator blessed by some publishers that haven’t always been hospitable to aggregators.

There’s the New York Times, for starters, which handed over the beginnings of the service to Bit.ly in exchange for cash and equity. And the Associated Press, which often butts heads with the Web, has signed on, too.

So have Forbes, and AOL and many of its sub-brands, and a good chunk of the blogosphere–Gawker Media, Business Insider, Gigaom, Mashable, VentureBeat, etc. (I believe–but haven’t confirmed–that neither All Things Digital nor News Corp., which owns the site, have a deal with News.me.)

The Times and the Associated Press also work with Ongo, another aggregation subscription service. But Ongo only uses content from publishers it has deals with.

News.me, though, charges money for a service built using other people’s work–even if those people haven’t signed on.

Which is what the Times has complained about in the past–like last summer, when it forced Apple to pull the Pulse newsreader out of its app store. The AP has engaged in similar fist-shaking aimed at Google and the Internet at large.

Here’s News.me’s defense of its model:

Because News.me generally provides a small subset of a publisher’s content, filtered by user actions and News.me algorithms, it is not a substitute for publishers’ own web sites or iPad applications. And, since it exposes users to content they likely wouldn’t otherwise see, it can broaden the audience and, through related-content links, drive new unique users to publisher web sites.

Which is reasonable enough. Everything on the Web gets shared and sampled; if you’re a publisher trying to build or keep an audience, trying to prevent that is counterproductive.

And News.me’s curated browsing conceit–there’s no search function, and you can’t subscribe to a publication-specific feed–makes it worthless for anyone trying to use it to game publishers. This won’t work as a permanent ad-blocker, or a paywall-jumping aid.

I still won’t be surprised to see some publishers who haven’t signed on rattling their sabers when News.me launches–just like the Times and the AP have in the past. Glad to see they’ve come around.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110419/news-me-the-ipad-news-aggregator-blessed-by-big-publishers-gets-ready-to-launch/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20110414/elevation-makes-another-media-bet-ups-marketshare-investment/ http://allthingsd.com/20110414/elevation-makes-another-media-bet-ups-marketshare-investment/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:00:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31795 Elevation Partners, the high profile private equity firm, has made another bet on the media business: It has invested $32 million into Marketshare, an analytics company that helps advertisers figure out the best way to spend their budgets.

The investment is a relatively small one for Elevation, which is best known for big deals that have had a mixed track record, like: Forbes, Palm, Yelp, and, through secondary sales, Facebook. But it’s worth noting that Elevation had already invested an undisclosed amount in MarketShare back in December 2008.

Los Angeles-based MarketShare bills itself as “the industry-leading cross-media analytics solution for global marketers.” Which means it sells software that helps big brands figure out how and where to place their ad and marketing dollars, both on and offline.

Co-founder Wes Nichols plays up his software’s ability to model different scenarios for brands based on a wide range of variables, and says his company has helped steer $100 billion in marketing spend since 2005.

Elevation principal Adam Hopkins will join MarketShare’s board of directors, where Elevation adviser Ted Meisel already has a seat.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110414/elevation-makes-another-media-bet-ups-marketshare-investment/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110413/yahoo-bored-meeting-not-this-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20110413/yahoo-bored-meeting-not-this-time/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:35:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42578

Today and tomorrow, Yahoo’s directors are gathering here in Silicon Valley for one of their regular meetings that take place over the course of the year.

While board meetings in general are usually pretty dull affairs–and Yahoo’s, in particular, are typically glacial ones–there is a lot on the plates of those with purview over the machinations of the long-struggling Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Here’s a primer of what might (and might not) be happening, according to sources, of course, as Yahoo continues on its quest to reinvigorate itself–a journey that is beginning to make Siddhartha’s transformation into Buddha enlightenment look speedy.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment on anything below, although I did run it all by them.

The U-Shaped Turnaround

At Yahoo’s recent sales meeting in San Antonio, CEO Carol Bartz went all Sesame Street on the troops, using the letter “U” as an illustration to indicate where in the cycle the company was in its turnaround.

Apparently, just on the other side of the very bottom of the letter, heading inevitably upward.

Her argument was that the company has finally cleaned up its platform mess and its confusing corporate structure, and that its display and search advertising business is now recovering nicely.

All true, except there are some other key issues, such as the slowness of the search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft to make some serious hay.

In fact, although its display business will show a definite strong recovery in Yahoo’s quarterly results next week, its search business–both in market share and revenue per search (RPS)–has, as one person close to the situation put it succintly, “fallen off the cliff.”

That’s due, in part, to getting the new system with Microsoft delivering better results, which is not happening yet (if ever!).

In this quarter, Microsoft has honored its contractual guarantees and will make up the difference–which will result in masking the magnitude of the RPS loss. It’s a worrisome trend to watch.

The Asia Situation

Yahoo and its Asian partners are still mulling over various options regarding the company’s large ownership stakes there.

What is happening with its share in China’s Alibaba Group, according to sources, is precisely nothing right now, as has been made clear in recent comments by its CEO and co-founder Jack Ma.

“If you cannot make the business cool, you have no right to be angry with me,” said Ma in an article in Forbes published this week, referring to Yahoo. “I just don’t trust them…I’ve been working with them for years, and I’m disappointed.”

Relations between Ma and Bartz, sources said, remain as bad as ever, and even the normally close one between Ma and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is strained.

Plus, Ma told Forbes, as he has said before, Alibaba is not taking its auction site, Taobao, public–leaving Yahoo in possession of an appreciating but decidedly private asset.

Japan is a different story, with the disposition of Yahoo’s stake in Yahoo! Japan the subject of long and continuing negotiations for a while now.

While the earthquake and tsunami crisis there did slow discussions down, there is still active recent movement about a variety of cashing-out scenarios, all of which have massive tax and regulatory issues.

Without boring you with the specifics, one option is to create a tracking stock, another a spin-off of the asset and still another some sort of stock trade.

But no matter what happens, Yahoo will have to pay some sort of taxes on its 35 percent stake in Yahoo! Japan, now worth $8 billion.

But if its CFO Tim Morse–the key figure working on the deal–can pull it off, what will Yahoo do with all that money?

Acquisition Guns Blazing? Or Sputtering?

In a recent forum in Silicon Valley, one of its M&A minions said Yahoo had its “guns blazing” with regard to acquisition activity in 2011, as deliciously reported in The Wall Street Journal, despite the company’s lackluster acquisition record.

Sources said the exec had his ears soundly boxed by his managers for the dopey remarks, since Yahoo has had such a lackluster record in the arena–especially compared to others.

And, oh yes, Yahoo’s M&A head just decamped to gaming phenom Zynga.

That aside, Yahoo should be deep in the market for hot start-ups to help revive its innovative spirit, but it remains hindered by a continued reluctance by new start-ups to join it and by its reputation for being a place where entrepreneurs go to die.

That certainly could change at any time with the right execs in place, but Yahoo is competing with a plethora of more exciting companies and also a seemingly endless venture capital gusher of cash of late.

While it is the board’s job to approve acquisitions and not source them, perhaps it is its job to pressure Bartz and other execs to get off the stick and hit at least one of the targets Yahoo aims at.

Targets are plentiful in advertising, content and even social, with many start-ups playing right into a lot of arenas Yahoo needs some help.

And help it does need as talent keeps walking out the door daily, mostly to hotter prospects such as Zynga and social buying sites Groupon and LivingSocial.

There is no question it is hard for any large company to hold onto top staff when there are so many enticing bonbons out there as options, but it can be done.

One good thing: Its newish head of product Blake Irving and head of U.S. media and advertising Ross Levinsohn seem to be playing well together and are setting a tone of stability that is much needed.

Enter the Kenny

That said, there remains endless swirl, especially with key investors, about the performance of its CEO.

While she started off as a publicly in-your-face exec, Bartz has definitely stepped out of the limelight of late, as her pugnacious manner started to irritate Wall Street and others.

It was a good idea, since it has taken the focus off the lack of stock and revenue progress she had loudly promised.

Still, Yahoo shares have continued to stay locked in the mid-teens, as investors wait for some sign that Bartz’s turnaround has worked.

The entrance of its spanking new director, Akamai President David Kenny, has further increased speculation about management and board changes at Yahoo.

This is Kenny’s first board meeting, but this well-connected newbie is someone who is clearly going to rise quickly to the top of decision-making at Yahoo.

That’s because the smooth and well-liked Kenny, who also has deep advertising experience as founder of the Digitas agency, has a long relationship with Yahoo and also with Yang.

He also now has much more tech cred as a leader of one of the Internet’s most important infrastructure companies, with a ton of regular contacts with media giants, ad networks and video providers that are Akamai’s clients.

In other words, Kenny (pictured here) is the full package of ad and tech experience that would make him an obvious Yahoo CEO candidate when Bartz’s contract is up in early 2013, if not before.

He’s also the person most likely to take over for longtime BoomTown punching bag Roy Bostock as chairman of the board at some point.

None of this is happening soon, but it is clearly an interesting development.

There are other machinations, of course, from continued interest from private equity players in Yahoo, as well as a variety of takeover scenarios, each more complex than the next.

While often derided as yesterday’s news by the elite of Silicon Valley as on an inevitable downward path, those plots are there because Yahoo remains a stellar brand with consumers worldwide and an Internet property with huge traffic and a big ad business.

In other words, it’s a U that someday maybe could be a V.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110413/yahoo-bored-meeting-not-this-time/feed/ 6