Poor Chris Dodd — he just got the top media lobbying job in Washington, D.C., at the very moment that the strong-arming-pols, scare-the-children, Jack Valenti era in media lobbying is now decidedly over.

It’s obviously a very confusing time for big media these days, on a lot of fronts. But any of the consummate insider moves once used by the legendarily pugnacious Valenti (pictured here onstage at our first D: All Things Digital conference in 2003) had a hard time this past week, as Internet players went very public in protesting two Congressional bills aimed at combating piracy online.

Not that Dodd didn’t try to cope.

The former Senator — who is now the chief lobbyist for the once much more powerful Motion Picture Association of America — gave a can’t-we-all-get-along interview to the New York Times on Thursday, in which he called for a meeting with techies to come to some acceptable compromise.

Wrote the Times:

“In an interview Thursday, Mr. Dodd said he would welcome a summit meeting between Internet companies and content companies, perhaps convened by the White House, that could lead to a compromise … ‘The perfect place to do it is a block away from here,’ said Mr. Dodd, who pointed from his office on I Street toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

But on Friday, after politicians quickly moved to delay both the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT I.P. Act (PIPA) — after successful protests pointing out that the legislation could lead to censorship — Dodd went to the full Valenti again:

“We applaud those leaders in Washington who have chosen to stand with the millions of hard working Americans all across this nation whose livelihoods are threatened by foreign criminal websites designed to steal. As a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves; American jobs will continue to be lost; and consumers will continue to be exposed to fraudulent and dangerous products peddled by foreign criminals.”

Foreign criminals! Foreign thieves! Is it just me, or does Dodd sounds like Cher, singing, “Gypsies, tramps and thieves”?

(Let’s be clear, that utterance could never top Valenti’s most infamous quote: “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.”)

To be fair, Dodd is hindered by strict restrictions on his lobbying Congress until next year. That said, this is not an old-timey, private Capitol Hill fight, but a modern-era, social-media-charged one.

And it’s pretty clear that the old scare tactics used by big media will no longer work as well, as consumers — as much as they like their movies — seem to love their Internet more.

Thus, what has happened is that — at least for now — the MPAA and media companies have lost and lost big, after the typically fractious Web powers decided to lock arms for once and cooperate with a creative, take-it-to-the-people approach of showing a disabled Internet.

Dramatic? Yes. Effective? Certainly. (That Facebook and Google agree on anything? Astonishing!)

Where it goes from here is unclear — the MPAA and its constituents could certainly rally and put forth their own protest. Ironically, the most effective way to do that is not via the airwaves or other former means of broadcast to the public, but on the Web.

Which is controlled by Dodd’s foes. (You see the problem here.)

The answer, in the end, might have to be the cooperation he first suggested.

As he told the Times:

“The companies, Mr. Dodd said, are ‘rethinking everything,’ not just about the bills, but about their relationship with an estranged Silicon Valley. That need for rapprochement, he said, ‘has come home in a way that no rhetoric of mine could express.’”

Much more to come, obvi.

Double snaps to Jesse Draper, whose kookified online interview show, “The Valley Girl Show,” managed to get a very decent interview with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

And by decent, I mean that Draper actually elicits some very unusual just-us-girls moments from the typically unflappable Sandberg. No IPO news revealed, but this is almost better.

From experience, I am telling you it is not easy to get Sandberg to talk about leg warmers and say “I’m … like … Sheryl Sandberg” in Valley Girl speak.

I’m … like … impressed, and would now pay to see Draper take on the social networking giant’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Enjoy:

Neil Ashe, who left his job running CBS Interactive in late 2010, has taken a job helming Wal-Mart Stores’ global online commerce unit.

The retail behemoth said that Ashe will become president and CEO of its Global eCommerce division, replacing the retiring Eduardo Castro-Wright. He will operate out of Wal-Mart’s Silicon Valley office in San Bruno, Calif., but will likely make a lot of trips to the company’s HQ in Bentonville, Ark. (Ashe does not have the U.S.-based e-commerce business; Walmart.com is run by Joel Anderson, who reports up through the Wal-Mart U.S. stores business.)

In an interview earlier today, Ashe said that he was “impressed by the company’s realization that the consumer is changing … and the commitment to global e-commerce.”

Noting that Wal-Mart stores see 200 million customers a week, he said the goal was to make the online experience as compelling as the offline one.

“There has to be almost an indifference between physical stores and e-commerce,” said Ashe. “The whole company committed to winning on the Internet.”

Since he left CBS, Ashe has been advising a variety of Web start-ups, including LivingSocial. Ashe joined the board of the Washington, D.C.-based social buying company last spring.

The job at Wal-Mart is a big one, especially given its up-and-down history in the online space. That includes the recent decision to stop selling MP3s from its Web site.

It has also stepped up its efforts, including a number of small acquisitions, such as mobile advertising start-up OneRiot and mobile app company Small Society.

But it did pay big bucks — reportedly $300 million — for social media platform Kosmix.

Ashe noted that Wal-Mart is indeed still dwarfed online by online dominator Amazon. “They are very innovative and strategically adept,” he said.

With 59 million monthly visitors to its U.S. Web site and an aim to go global, how Ashe navigates Wal-Mart’s path in the next years will be interesting to watch.

Here’s the official press release:

Walmart Selects Neil Ashe to Lead Global eCommerce

San Bruno, Calif., Jan. 16, 2012 – Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) today announced that Neil Ashe, 44, is the new president and CEO of the company’s Global eCommerce business, beginning today. Ashe was most recently president of CBS Interactive, where he led all online properties and also drove development of new ways to distribute programming produced by the media giant and its subsidiaries. Websites included CBS.com, CNET.com, CBSNews.com, and CBSSports.com, among others.

Ashe is replacing Eduardo Castro-Wright who announced his pending retirement in September and will assist in the transition.

“E-commerce is a great opportunity for us and we have a long-term vision to win,” said Mike Duke, Walmart’s president and CEO. “We are on track to create the next generation of E-commerce, combining the latest in online innovations with physical stores to give our customers a unique and seamless shopping experience.”

“We have an understanding of what these customers want, a trusted brand, 200 million weekly shoppers, more than 10,000 stores around the world, and the ability to make significant investments in talent and technology. We also have successful online businesses, including in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Brazil. With all of this, it is clear that Walmart is the best- positioned retailer to deliver this multi-channel experience to consumers, many of whom are already connected to the world through smart phones and social media.”

Duke continued, “With his strong personal leadership skills, financial background and experience in successfully working within a major corporation to lead its Internet division, Neil is the ideal leader to help us build this business. He has led companies through all stages of growth and maturity. He also has a deep understanding of the interactive space and how to attract and convert online customers. Perhaps most importantly, much of Neil’s professional success has come through close collaboration and shared goals with his peers — a key attribute as we continue to integrate our online businesses across the company and with our physical stores.”

“Walmart is a special company,” said Ashe. “Growing up in East Tennessee, I have seen first-hand the difference it can make in the lives of its customers. E-commerce gives us a huge opportunity to expand and bring savings to many more people around the world. We have great things ahead of us and I am eager to get started and join the talented team already in place.”

As president of CBS Interactive, based in San Francisco, Ashe led the interactive content business with operations in the U.S., Europe and China. After leading the successful integration of CNET Networks with CBS, he and his team leveraged existing company assets to ramp up CBS entertainment content distribution online, including making CBS.com the largest television network site in the industry.

Prior to this, Ashe was CEO of CNET Networks, initially best known for providing technology-related information, product reviews and price comparisons through CNET.com. He also oversaw dramatic development in the company’s China division, taking it from a small magazine and events operator to a highly profitable, fast-growing online business. During his tenure, the company’s value increased from $100 million to $1.8 billion. Ultimately, Ashe led the sale of the company to CBS and became president of CBS Interactive at that time.

Earlier, Ashe founded a company focused on using the Internet to improve K-12 education in the U.S. Prior to this, he was a partner and managing director at private investment firm Crest Communications Holdings and, before that, was an associate at Smith Barney, the investment bank now part of Citigroup.

Ashe has an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Business Administration, with a major in Finance, from Georgetown University. He serves on the boards of LivingSocial, AMC Networks and the Georgetown University Board of Regents.

Over the past year, Walmart has made investments in capabilities and talent as it continues to build Global eCommerce. It has also further strengthened its position through the acquisition of small Internet specialty companies and continues to expand in new markets such as China and Brazil, including a minority stake in Chinese Internet retailer Yihaodian.

As has been widely reported, well-known TechCrunch columnist and Silicon Valley journalist Sarah Lacy has a new gig: Running her own new tech news site, which debuts today.

(She’s pictured here with another recent adorable start-up of hers, named Eli.)

Not so widely reported? The site, called PandoDaily.com, will feature three of TechCrunch’s most high-profile former bloggers: Michael Arrington, M.G. Siegler and Paul Carr.

That’s right, Lacy is Arrington’s boss this time around — even though his CrunchFund venture firm will also be an investor, in a funding round of more than $2 million for PandoDaily.

Other investors — whom Lacy described as “people I like and respect” — include a panoply of tech movers and shakers, including personal investments from Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Matt Cohler, Jeff Jordan, Josh Kopelman, Zach Nelson, Andrew Anker, Saul Klein, Tony Hsieh and Chris Dixon, as well as seed investments from Greylock Partners, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, Accel Partners and Menlo Ventures.

There will certainly be questions about all these funders who are also topics of PandoDaily’s posts, which Lacy acknowledged. She said the large number of funders was calculated so that none had undue influence.

Of course, many in Silicon Valley will be watching her carefully for any conflicts of interest or punches pulled. Lacy insisted that there will not be a problem and joked that she will definitely not become a VC, referring to the controversy around Arrington becoming one while at TechCrunch.

That issue blew up like a Roman candle, of course, leaving everyone with powder burns — I called the incident a “giant, greedy, Silicon Valley pig pile.”

Interestingly, Lacy did manage to stay out of the spotlight (she was, in fact, having her baby during the worst of the controversy, which was likely more painful).

Ignoring the delicious epic revenge part of this on AOL — which bought TechCrunch and then promptly presided over a tech version of the War of the Roses (and is, ironically, an investor via CrunchFund) — PandoDaily will focus on start-ups in Silicon Valley and everywhere else that homegrown spirit of innovations reaches.

Here’s a screenshot of the cleanly designed and handsome site:

In an inaugural post, titled ““Why I Started PandoDaily,” Lacy compared the site to a colony of trees in Utah, saying, “We have one goal here at PandoDaily: To be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle.”

Which is kind of like TechCrunch, which she left earlier this year.

“This is not TechCrunch 2.0,” Lacy said to me in an interview last week. “But, of course, we will be compared to TechCrunch.”

Of course, especially because of the presence of its star lineup on PandoDaily — who will write regularly, along with an initially small staff of other writers — and also its plans for conferences and other gatherings.

(An AOL source, by the way, said there were no contractual noncompete issues for PandoDaily to worry about.)

Here’s a longish interview I did about PandoDaily with Lacy, who has written two books focused on entrepreneurs, worked at Businessweek and was founding co-host of Yahoo Finance’s daily show “TechTicker.”

She talks about the site’s unusual name, her wrangling over leaving TechCrunch, and the prospect of now running her own show.

Welcome back, Sarah (and call me if you need help with those dudes, as we have wrangled before).

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120116/sarah-lacy-debuts-new-tech-site-pandodaily-and-guess-whos-working-for-her-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120115/goofy-groupon-ceo-andrew-mason-defends-his-decisions-on-60-minutes/ http://allthingsd.com/20120115/goofy-groupon-ceo-andrew-mason-defends-his-decisions-on-60-minutes/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:32:25 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=163904 Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said there’s things he would have liked to do differently and would have liked to have avoided, but that he’s mostly done a good job leading the rocket ship of a company.

In a piece by Lesley Stahl of CBS news show “60 Minutes,” she interviewed the leader of the Chicago-based social buying company in his first national appearance since the company’s initial public offering.

Of course, Stahl asked hard-hitting questions about the fishy revenue figures and the questionable accounting practices that preceded the IPO.

And, because it is “wacky” Groupon, she also questioned the appropriateness of a CEO who has a video of himself practicing yoga in tighty whities in front of a Christmas tree on YouTube.

Mason, who was often grinning during the interview, tried hard not to come off as defensive.

“The difference between me and other CEOs is that I’ve been unwilling to change myself or shape myself around what’s expected,” said the 31-year-old founder. “Am I as experienced or as mature or smart as other CEOs. No probably not, but there’s something useful about having the founder as a CEO.”

At one point, he acknowledged it wasn’t enjoyable when the criticism was peaking and the company was in its quiet period. He likened the experience to the Wolverine’s skin being melted off.

Stahl had no idea what he was talking about.

Did he wear a tie? Nope. But he thinks he should get credit for asking the producers if it was necessary. Is that a sign the boss is growing up? Maybe.

For the record, he does own more than four.

All-in-all, Mason worked hard not to say anything too revealing.

Here’s the whole interview:

And, here’s Stahl comparing Mason to other tech CEOs she’s interviewed:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120115/goofy-groupon-ceo-andrew-mason-defends-his-decisions-on-60-minutes/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120112/goofy-ceo-andrew-mason-on-60-minutes-this-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/goofy-ceo-andrew-mason-on-60-minutes-this-week/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:58:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=163273

Of course, this infamous kooky cat-on-his-head photo from a Vanity Fair magazine shoot made it into an upcoming profile of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” has done a piece on the Chicago-based social buying phenom, set to air this Sunday.

And, naturally, Stahl trots out the “goofy” description of Mason.

In addition, said the preview caption for the CBS television news show: “Groupon’s Andrew Mason says he may not be as smart, mature or experienced as other CEOs, but being company founder is his edge.”

Dumber, juvenile and just-arrived — but I created this three-ring circus with my own two hands? Sounds good to me!

Here is a preview of the Stahl-Mason segment, as well as my own wacky interview with Mason from last year’s D: All Things Digital conference:

(Photo credit: Martin Schoeller, exclusively for Vanity Fair)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120112/goofy-ceo-andrew-mason-on-60-minutes-this-week/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/new-yahoo-ceo-and-bosox-fanboy-scott-thompson-speaks-its-still-early-innings/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/new-yahoo-ceo-and-bosox-fanboy-scott-thompson-speaks-its-still-early-innings/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:28:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159834

Yahoo actually let me talk with its new CEO Scott Thompson this morning, after the company announced it had hired him as its latest leader.

In an interview, the man who is leaving a job running eBay’s large and lucrative PayPal online payments unit was affable and — dare I say it — seemed very sweet, as well as gung ho on Yahoo’s prospects going forward.

Joking about how he took the job only because eBay and Yahoo are located close by each other in Silicon Valley and the commute was just as easy, Thompson opened by noting that those working at the online commerce giant have always had a “keen appreciation for what each other was doing.”

He said that when he was approached in November about the Yahoo job, although sources said it was just offered this week and took eBay by surprise.

Still, soon after being contacted by Yahoo’s exec recruiters, Thompson said he began “exploring in more detail what’s actually here.” As he did so, he added, he “became progressively more fascinated” that Yahoo had more promise than has been assumed in recent years.

“Its potential is still enormous, but the dialogue has not been about what the company is,” Thompson said. “I want to get this wonderful brand to where it could be again … so, as a starting point, this is a great starting point.”

Thompson’s premise is based on his belief that we are still in the early days of the Internet. And, because he is a Boston native — making him, of course, an ardent fan of its beloved Red Sox — he used baseball as a metaphor.

“It’s early innings, and there are the next eight innings in front of us,” he said, noting that he was in the stands with his father when catcher Carlton Fisk hit that famous game-winning home run in the 12th inning of the sixth game of the World Series in 1975.

Note to everyone who is not an obsessive fan like Thompson (and also, I might add, Walt Mossberg): It did take the Red Sox from 1918 to 2004 to actually finally win the Series again, so maybe Yahoo has a chance!

“This remains a great business, and I have no doubt its best days are ahead of Yahoo,” said Thompson, in that same hopeful spirit of this-year’s-gonna-be-the-one.

Thompson noted that he is fully cognizant of the major troubles at the company recently, and had a “real sense of urgency, but not by moving at breakneck speed, because you just do bad stuff faster.”

Instead, he said, he hopes to focus Yahoo the same way he did PayPal, by innovating, making commitments and keeping them, and overperforming.

None are easy tasks, and all have stymied Yahoo in the recent past. Thompson said that he thinks it might be because of not focusing equally on both consumers and Yahoo’s partners and advertisers.

He admitted that his lack of advertising experience was clear — it could be problematic, because it’s Yahoo’s biggest business — but said, “I readily admit what I don’t know, and am ready to learn and rely on Yahoo’s great team.”

While he would not go into deep specifics — Thompson does not start until next week — he said he planned to get some basic grounding, noting, “I have no preconceived notions.”

One thing is clear, said Thompson: “I can assure you I am going to be completely different.”

If that means doing what Fisk did, that would certainly be a home run for Yahoo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/new-yahoo-ceo-and-bosox-fanboy-scott-thompson-speaks-its-still-early-innings/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:08:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159711

As I reported late last night, Yahoo said it had named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO. The exec is currently in charge of the large eBay online payments unit.

He’ll start next week, but there are staff conference calls today and also an all-hands meeting on Yahoo’s main Silicon Valley campus (meet at URLs, troops!) tomorrow.

Yahoo shares are down almost three percent on the news so far, as Wall Street has been hoping for a big sale of some sort and not another turnaround.

Yahoo will be holding a 7 am PT press conference about the move and presumably to swan around Thompson.

(Welcome, Scott! I hope you were informed — please do not listen to what co-founder Jerry Yang says on this important issue — that you are supposed to send all internal memos to me! Also, as one of my Twitter followers, Mike Dudas of Google just tweeted: “If Thompson leads companies as well as he grows a moustache, Yahoo made a great CEO choice!!” I concur.)

A Yahoo PR person confirmed the hire very cordially in a phone call early this morning and the Internet giant also put out a press release.

So did I, of a sort, last night. Given I am too tired to rewrite myself, here is what I had reported:

The company fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in September, and Yahoo has been run by the board and also by interim CEO Tim Morse, who had previously been its CFO.

After Bartz’s ouster, Yahoo said it was looking at a range of strategic options, including the possible sale of all or part of the company.

That was the focus at first, although Yahoo had simultaneously hired Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new CEO.

The company attracted two partial investment bids from private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital, but shareholders were unhappy with the low prices of these so-called PIPE — Private Investment in Public Equity — arrangements.

Yahoo then moved to try to strike a tax-advantaged deal with its long disgruntled Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank, to sell back parts of the large stakes it has long owned in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan.

Those complex negotiations are still ongoing and look promising, which could yield Yahoo billions of dollars in capital to be given to investors, for stock buybacks or to invest in new initiatives.

Since then, the board — long considered one of the more cloddish in tech — has turned its attention to hiring a new CEO, in the hopes of trying once again to revive its flagging fortunes.

Thus, it began looking to hire someone with deep tech experience at a large public consumer Internet company in Silicon Valley.

That narrowed the field, with Yahoo looking at a range of choices with expertise in advertising, technology platforms and more.

There is a lot of that on the deep bench that eBay CEO John Donahoe has assembled at the online commerce giant, including Thompson.

Plus, he is a genuine Internet geek.

According to his eBay bio, Thompson became president of PayPal in early 2008, after serving as its CTO in charge of information technology, product development and architecture.

Before eBay, he worked at Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa formed to oversee global technology for the organization. He was also CIO of Barclays Global Investors and has worked at Coopers and Lybrand on information technology.

And here’s a tasty new wrinkle: Thompson recently “liked” Yahoo on his Facebook page, along with the decidedly more interesting Kickstarter and Splunk.

Again, Scott, thanks for the Facebook tip — I knew the social networking site could come in handy!

(Also, here is an interview I did with him post-announcement.)

And here is Yahoo’s official press release where Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock says nice stuff about Thompson:

YHOO_News_2012_1_4_General

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/confirmed-yahoo-names-paypal-head-scott-thompson-as-new-head/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111206/mike-mccue-talks-flipboard-finally-launches-app-for-apple-iphone-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111206/mike-mccue-talks-flipboard-finally-launches-app-for-apple-iphone-video/#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:01:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=150953

After promises to get it out midyear, Flipboard is finally releasing its much-anticipated mobile app for the Apple iPhone.

The popular social reader is perhaps the most high-profile available on the iPad, in an ever-crowded field that includes such offerings as Yahoo’s recently launched Livestand; another one code-named Propeller, still upcoming from Google; AOL’s Editions; as well as existing news readers like CNN-owned Zite and Pulse. (Katie Boehret takes a look at the new Flipboard app along with some of those competitors in The Digital Solution this week.)

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Flipboard, which has raised a pile of money from prominent funders at a big valuation, has been beefing up its advertising business, and a move into mobile was critical.

The new iPhone app, said Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, was built from the ground up, and is different than the iPad version.

For example — don’t get all excited — it flips up rather than side to side. Wheeeeee!

It also introduces “Cover Stories,” which gives you a curated-for-you look at news and social updates.

In related news, after being banned, Flipboard announced earlier this week that its iPad app was now available in China.

Oh, why hear all about it from me? Here’s McCue in a video interview, at the end of which he also dismisses my offer for him to be CEO of Yahoo (apparently, life is too short!):

(You can read a review by The Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret of the Flipboard app here.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111206/mike-mccue-talks-flipboard-finally-launches-app-for-apple-iphone-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111205/viral-video-rupe-nixes-zynga-ipo-and-facebook-friending-of-wsj-com-host-awkward/ http://allthingsd.com/20111205/viral-video-rupe-nixes-zynga-ipo-and-facebook-friending-of-wsj-com-host-awkward/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:10:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=150050 This might be the oddest interview of late with News Corp. head honcho Rupert Murdoch — no, there’s nothing about PhoneGate.

In it, WSJ.com’s Markets Hub host Paul Vigna asked the (largely offscreen) media mogul some questions about online stuff, as the other two (terrified-looking) panelists watched.

What about buying into online gaming giant Zynga’s upcoming IPO? “No,” gruffed Murdoch. Does he play its flagship game, FarmVille? Of course not.

Murdoch is apparently on Facebook, though. Well, could Vigna be besties with his ultimate boss (News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns The Wall Street Journal, which owns WSJ.com, which also owns AllThingsD.com) on the social networking giant?

“No,” growled Murdoch.

Heh.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111205/viral-video-rupe-nixes-zynga-ipo-and-facebook-friending-of-wsj-com-host-awkward/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-gowalla-ceos-non-denial-denial-email-to-investors-about-facebook-acquisition/ http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-gowalla-ceos-non-denial-denial-email-to-investors-about-facebook-acquisition/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:54:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=150077 Update: Facebook has confirmed it is hiring Gowalla’s core team, while the Gowalla product will be shut down.

Even Gowalla CEO Josh Williams isn’t pretending a deal for Facebook to buy the location-sharing company isn’t happening, as you can read below in an email he sent to his investors.

Both companies declined to comment on a story on Friday and over the weekend. CNN had the scoop about the social networking giant acquiring Gowalla, which I have taken to calling Not-Foursquare.

That’s because — despite its often clever approach and innovation — it never caught up with the leading social location service.

Gowalla, which changed its approach several times, had been for sale for some time, said several sources.

The Austin-based start-up has raised just under $11 million from a range of investors, including Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, Alsop Louie Partners and the Founders Fund, along with a batch of well-known angel investors.

But let’s put this one to bed with the email that Williams sent out after the CNN story broke Friday, which was read to me tonight, so I might not have all of it perfectly and it is missing a sentence about I-will-smack-the-leaker):

Subject: Rumors and speculation

CNN just broke the news that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook. This story was leaked from an unknown souurce.

The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumors and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released.

But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon. Until then, I am so very grateful for what you have done to make Gowalla a success.

The second confirmation email has apparently not yet been sent, but I will try to get it when it is, along with the price.

So, until the official official yes, here’s a video interview I did with Williams in April of 2010 about the location “wars”:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-gowalla-ceos-non-denial-denial-email-to-investors-about-facebook-acquisition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111201/former-palm-and-twitter-techie-mike-abbott-jumps-from-eir-at-benchmark-to-kleiner-partner/ http://allthingsd.com/20111201/former-palm-and-twitter-techie-mike-abbott-jumps-from-eir-at-benchmark-to-kleiner-partner/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:00:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=149086

Kleiner Perkins has nabbed former Twitter engineering head Mike Abbott, who left the social communications company less than two months ago to be an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital.

(Well, that didn’t last long, Mike, but maybe the food was better at 2750 Sand Hill Road than at 2480 Sand Hill Road.)

In an interview this morning, Abbott said that he hopes to stay a VC for 20 years (yipes!), since it allows him to work closely with a wide range of entrepreneurs and also get a broad view across a spectrum of businesses.

“I am really energized about what’s been happening in a lot of places like software,” he said. “From my experience, I think I bring a lot of differentiation for the companies Kleiner is invested in.”

And tech cred too. “We think engineers will be thrilled to have access to Mike and he’s a magnet for talent,” said Kleiner partner Ted Schlein, who compared him to all the comic-book heroes, The Avengers, in one person. “Mike is multi-faceted.”

Abbott was indeed a high-profile hire for Twitter a little over a year ago from Palm, where he served as head of its software and services, in charge of its webOS mobile platform.

He was brought in to provide a level of discipline and reliability to the Twitter communications platform and service, which had been plagued by persistent outages that made the Fail Whale infamous.

Abbott will focus on social, mobile and cloud investments at the well-known Silicon Valley venture firm while working on a team that includes high-profile players Mary Meeker and Bing Gordon.

Here’s the official press release:

Michael Abbott Joins Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as Partner

Engineering Leader to Help Social, Mobile and Cloud Entrepreneurs Build Teams and Ventures

MENLO PARK, Calif., December 1, 2011 – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced that Mike Abbott, former vice president of engineering at Twitter, has joined the firm as a partner on its digital team. Abbott led the building of innovative, high-performance applications and services at Twitter, Palm and Microsoft. With a deep background in social and mobile applications and infrastructure, Mike is also an expert in enterprise infrastructure and cloud computing and “big data” businesses, having founded Composite Software, and advised Cloudera and Jawbone.

“I’m excited to join KPCB’s partners to build new ventures faster,” said Abbott. “The partner mix of founders, operators and investors is ideal for entrepreneurs racing to scale at this disruptive time.”

“Mike is an exceptional and well-respected leader with an outstanding track record shipping great products,” said Ted Schlein, partner, KPCB. “Mike’s deep expertise from Palm and Twitter will help social, mobile and cloud entrepreneurs win.”

Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, said, “Mike is a huge engineering talent and will be a terrific asset to Kleiner’s technology companies. He was instrumental in helping us scale Twitter’s architecture to support incredible growth ̶ from 100 million daily Tweets in January 2011 to about 250 million daily tweets today.”

In less than a year and a half, Abbott grew the Twitter engineering team from 80 to more than 350 engineers in an intensely competitive recruiting market. Abbott’s team rebuilt and solidified Twitter’s infrastructure. Prior to joining Twitter in 2010, Abbott led the software development team at Palm that created HP/Palm’s next-generation webOS platform. Abbott was previously the general manager at Microsoft for .NET online services, which became Azure. Prior to that, he co-founded Passenger Inc. and founded Composite Software. Abbott has advised and invested in numerous software companies such as Cloudera, Hearsay Labs, Saynow and Jawbone.

Mike Abbott is just the third senior KPCB partner added in three years, joining Bing Gordon and Mary Meeker, each with exceptional records serving mobile, social and cloud entrepreneurs. KPCB’s digital team also bolstered its infrastructure expertise with the recent addition of Ray Bradford from Amazon Web Services, where he helped grow the company’s cloud database business.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111201/former-palm-and-twitter-techie-mike-abbott-jumps-from-eir-at-benchmark-to-kleiner-partner/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111129/from-ipods-to-thermostats-nest-ceo-and-founder-tony-fadell-speaks-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111129/from-ipods-to-thermostats-nest-ceo-and-founder-tony-fadell-speaks-video/#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:02:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=147986

When Tony Fadell left Apple for good in March of last year, the man who has been dubbed the “father of the iPod” said in an interview that his “primary focus will be helping the environment by working with consumer green-tech companies.”

Fadell has kind of kept that promise with the recent launch of Nest, his new start-up that is focused on super-smart, well, thermostats.

Before you drift off to dreamland at the thought of being even slightly interested in the mundane household device that you fight over with your family (along with the remote), Nest is indeed in keeping with the idea of making the home more digitally aware.

With a wheel user interface, a Wi-Fi connection, sensors aplenty and an ability to learn your behavorial patterns, Nest is a temperature-taking version of an iPod.

And it’s also pretty, clad in simple brushed stainless steel, and pricey too. And, also like most Apple products, it is selling like hotcakes.

Here’s the always affable Fadell talking about why he moved in this unusual direction, although he gives up little info about Nest’s funding:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111129/from-ipods-to-thermostats-nest-ceo-and-founder-tony-fadell-speaks-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:12:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=146698

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

An early pioneer in graphics chips, the tech company is now aiming at the market for processors driving smartphones, tablets and, soon, PCs. Nvidia’s latest effort is a quad-core chip code named Kal-El, which is the Krypton moniker of Superman.

Is Huang the Man of Steel? Or, at least, can he steal some of major rival Qualcomm’s thunder?

Here’s the video of his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111122/nvidia%e2%80%99s-jen-hsun-huang-on-superman-quad-core-chip-microsoft-and-apple-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111121/former-color-co-founder-peter-pham-heads-to-former-myspace-ceos-l-a-tech-studio/ http://allthingsd.com/20111121/former-color-co-founder-peter-pham-heads-to-former-myspace-ceos-l-a-tech-studio/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:00:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=146141

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter Pham press release.FINAL11-21-11

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111121/former-color-co-founder-peter-pham-heads-to-former-myspace-ceos-l-a-tech-studio/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111118/former-vp-and-apple-director-al-gore-on-steve-jobs-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111118/former-vp-and-apple-director-al-gore-on-steve-jobs-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:53:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=145617

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Al Gore, former Vice President, Nobel Prize winner, environmental activist, sometime VC, occasional entrepreneur and all-around busy dude.

Of course, Gore talked about a wide range of issues, from the legacy of Apple’s Steve Jobs (Gore is on the company’s board), to being an adviser to Google, to the “broken” U.S. political system, to alternative energy.

Here’s his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111118/former-vp-and-apple-director-al-gore-on-steve-jobs-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:34:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=145420

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Hollywood mogul Peter Chernin.

The much-respected entertainment exec, who was the longtime president of News Corp. (which owns this Web site), now runs his own production company in Santa Monica, Calif.

Chernin Entertainment has had some big early successes, including the hit movie “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and the adorkable television show “New Girl.”

But Chernin has always been much more Internet-curious than the average Hollywood mogul. He was deeply involved in the creation of the Hulu premium video service, and now serves on the board of the Pandora online music site. He’s also been giving the troubled situation at Yahoo a look-see with some private equity firms.

Chernin declined to talk about this deal in an onstage interview with Peter Kafka, but he does discuss the prospects for the old media world in the digital age, and the giant opportunities in Asia:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111115/laura-arrillaga-andreessen-talks-about-giving-2-0/ http://allthingsd.com/20111115/laura-arrillaga-andreessen-talks-about-giving-2-0/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:31:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=144175

There are a lot of things to like about Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, who works by day as a lecturer focusing on strategic philanthropy at Stanford University, and also is the founder and chairman of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and the founder of SV2, the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund.

But my recent favorite was when — before being interviewed with her husband, well-known tech legend and now powerful VC Marc Andreessen, about her new book, “Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World,” at a big fancy dinner honoring them — she called the Netscape creator her “trophy husband.”

That was what you might call a good one.

Actually, there are a lot more weighty, serious good ones to take note of in the book, which was recently released, in which Arrillaga-Andreessen tries to find new ways to think about giving.

Interestingly, given her spouse, the answers are not all about digital solutions, and do not require being a gazillionaire geek, either.

Here’s a video interview I did with Arrillaga-Andreessen — who hails from a prominent Silicon Valley family, and was inspired by her parents to focus on philanthropy — talking about the book, and where the sector is going:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111115/laura-arrillaga-andreessen-talks-about-giving-2-0/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111114/googles-bradley-horowitz-talks-facebook-social-networking-and-that-memo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/googles-bradley-horowitz-talks-facebook-social-networking-and-that-memo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:39:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=143649 We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Google+ exec Bradley Horowitz.

In an onstage interview with Peter Kafka, Horowitz talks about the progress being made in the search giant’s attempts to compete against social networking giant Facebook, the concept behind its organization and also the recent controversial internal memo by a Google engineer dissing the company.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/googles-bradley-horowitz-talks-facebook-social-networking-and-that-memo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111114/exclusive-disney-acquires-hipster-mommy-blog-platform-babble-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/exclusive-disney-acquires-hipster-mommy-blog-platform-babble-media/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:45:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=143631

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other words: Mainstream and hipster!

Here’s the Disney official press release:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/exclusive-disney-acquires-hipster-mommy-blog-platform-babble-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111113/viral-video-interview-with-isaac-asimov-on-education/ http://allthingsd.com/20111113/viral-video-interview-with-isaac-asimov-on-education/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:48:19 +0000 Drake Martinet http://allthingsd.com/?p=143520

When you look at all the prophecies about the future that have come true in the span of just 20 years — and now at the growing cadre of online education start-ups that have cropped up — it’s time to check in with the legend behind it all: The late, great science-fiction author Isaac Asimov.

As you will see from the video below (from an interview with Bill Moyers), what Asimov said, way back when, is finally coming true.

Of course.

It’s a bit long, but well worth your time:

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