It used to take NBC a very long time to get clips from “Saturday Night Live” on the Internet, which is the whole reason that “Lazy Sunday” became a YouTube sensation.*

Fast-forward to today, where NBC and its social media helpers distribute SNL clips in the wee hours of Sunday night, just as soon as the show wraps up. Even more advanced: Now NBC has started showing clips of bits that never made it to TV, period.

Here’s a couple of sketches that never aired on last week’s season finale. But you can see them because they made it to the dress rehearsal, which the show tapes in its entirety.

I think the stand-up satire is pretty great (loved the Bears fan and the Denis Leary guy, in particular). Media omnivore Jason Hirschhorn loved the Jay Pharoah thing.

And that’s what’s great about SNL on the Web in general — it lets everyone pick and choose their favorite bits, Chinese-menu style, and skip the many parts they don’t want to watch. Adding in stuff that was good enough to get staged but not good enough to make the 90-minute broadcast can only be a good thing. If you’re a certain kind of SNL fan, you’ll even get a kick out of dress rehearsal versions of stuff that did air.

I don’t know how long SNL has been putting up un-aired bits on the Web — looks like for all of the past season, at the very least. Perhaps NBC PR will get back to me before the holiday weekend with a more accurate date. But regardless of when they started, I hope they keep it up.

*Which you could argue is one of the reasons Google ended up buying the company for $1.6 billion. Which led to NBC and Fox creating Hulu as an anti-Google/YouTube hedge.

He will now get even more as a newly born public company leader, so we asked a panel of thoughtful insiders to reflect on how it might change his work style.

How do you think Mark Zuckerberg will adapt to working in the public eye?

Notice I said “TV industry.”

Most observers and analysts believe that Siri’s voice commands could eliminate the need for those clunky TV remote controls. With the blurring and exponential proliferation of television and Web content, telling your TV what you’d like to watch, instead of scrolling through a nearly infinite number of program possibilities, makes a lot more sense.

But from my perspective, Siri’s greatest impact won’t ultimately be on users, or on device manufacturers (though they certainly risk losing market share to Apple). It will be on the TV industry’s content creators and packagers. Why? Because a voice-controlled television interface will fundamentally disrupt the six-decade-old legacy structure of networks, channels and programs. And that’s a legacy that — until now, at least — has been carried forward from analog to digital.

There’s an important underlying precedent here.

If the Internet can be generalized to have one effect across every industry that moves online, that effect would be disaggregation. Choices go from finite to infinite. Navigation goes from sequential to random access. And audiences choose content by the item far more than by the collection. We’ve gone from the packaged and channelized to the unbound and itemized. Autonomous albums are fragmented into songs; series into clips; and magazines and newspapers into articles and individual photos.

As much as we may think that has already happened with video, it is nothing compared to the great leveling that will occur in the voice-controlled living room. Voice-controlled TV means direct navigation to individual episodes, programs and clips. And it will almost certainly lead to a discernible deconstruction of the network and channel structure — not to mention the decomposition of even the aggregated marketplaces like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube.

Here’s the simple reason: No one is going to sit on their couch and say, “Siri, show me NBC’s ‘Community.’” In a voice-activated world, monikers like “NBC” become useless. They don’t stand for anything meaningful to the consumer. They’re just remnants of a decrepit channel structure that’s unraveling. And, in the end, they’ll simply connote the fast-fading allure of mid-20th century mass appeal.

To be sure, the TV majors will lose much of their ability to realize network effects. Already, you’re hearing less about “lead in” and “lead out.” What you are hearing more about, however, is disconnected videos. A program on YouTube, for instance, will sit on a level voice-controlled playing field with an NBC show, and that field will soon become even more level, because Siri will eliminate the menus that structure the artificial hierarchies of content collections.

So how will we be able to get network effects back in video? Let’s look at four possible ways:

• Branded Content — Players can build a strong brand that stands for something with their audiences. Break.com, Discovery and Oprah are all meaningful and build long-term customer loyalty. (“Siri, show me new TED Talks.”)
• Curation — Brand the collection with a curation strategy so that the curator’s name and stamp of approval means something to the audience. (“Siri, show me Jason Hirschhorn’s latest movie suggestions.”)
• Social — In the fully social world that we expect to see, focusing on the virality of content means you tap the human distribution network and social operating system. (“Siri, show me what videos my friends are watching.”)
• Personal — We’ve already seen the extraordinary value of well-tuned personalized recommendations, with Netflix’s notable prize and other famed stories of the benefits of great recommendations. Increasingly, our own patterns of individual videos and the brands we affiliate with, along with recommendations from friends, will be combined into personalized recommendations we won’t even have to ask for. I have no doubt that Siri will be as good a “Genius” as iTunes is at recommending what else to watch. Ultimately, in the age of data, whoever knows the most about us will be able to give us the best experience.

Beyond disaggregation, personalization is ultimately the most powerful consumer value of digital media. My mother’s TV experience was to walk over to her TV set and turn a dial to select among three channels to satisfy her individuality. But in the next generation, no two people will receive the same recommendations from the millions of content choices available.

Before he died, Jobs now famously told Walter Isaacson, his biographer, that he had finally cracked the TV code. It’s unclear what Jobs meant, what this entailed or what he thought it would lead to in the years to come. So, barring further posthumous disclosure, Jobs’s own predictions of his ripple effects will be a media mystery for now.

One thing that’s clear, though, is that Jobs’s Siri will start the dismantling — or creative destruction — of the TV industry as we’ve known it for the last 60 years.

This post originally stated that Siri was unveiled the day after Steve Jobs passed away. It’s been corrected to reflect that the announcement actually occurred the day before.

Ben Elowitz (@elowitz) is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a next-generation media company that is reinventing the media model on the social web. Ben is also author of Digital Quarters, a blog about the future of digital media. Prior to Wetpaint, Elowitz co-founded Blue Nile (NILE).

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

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

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

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

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

Does life become a 90s rap video? Cham’ bustin’ 24/7?

I basically had no money in my twenties.

I was luckier than most, my parents helped with the rent and I had spending cash via the Web design firm I started in 1995, Mischief New Media. My clients were “major” record labels and I designed Web sites for their artists. I wasn’t that great and as soon as the Web started taking off they brought those things in-house. But I had a knack for product development and saw an opening for better uber-music destinations in a landscape that had few good ones. So on the side, I started building music sites I would use. RockOnTV, MusicNewsWire and MusicStation, just to name a few.

I got lucky and five years later sold my company to MTV Networks. All those sites were rolled into SonicNet.com, the biggest music site around at the time. Now all defunct!

All of a sudden, I had some money.

What did I do first?

While in my lawyer’s office I made a copy of the check. Then I found what I thought to be the mailing address of the principal that kicked me out of school before my senior year. I wrote “F*CK YOU” on the check and mailed it. I don’t know if she ever got it. But 11 years after high school graduation, I finally had some closure. Yes, I held a grudge, but now I was over it. It’s a long story of trust, betrayal, power gone mad, evils of authority and not for this post. :-) She represented all the people that didn’t believe in me. Deep breath and now back to the story …

The money. What did I do with the money?

Two things I remember vividly.

First, I called my mom up and said something like this:

Me: It’s done. I just sold the company to MTV.

Mom: Oh, my god! Oh, my god! I’m so proud of you!

Me: Bring every bill, everything you owe over to my place tonight. We’re gonna write some checks.

Mom: Are you serious? (SCREAMING)

Me: Yes, see you later.

So, Mom did just that. And for about an hour that night we wrote checks for credit card bills, rent, school, personal loans … you name it.

Buying things is certainly a lot of fun. Travel, cars, all that big pimpin’ stuff. But at the end of the day, if you can help or give back to those that did the same for you … well, that rocks. It’s a great feeling. More importantly, my mom was directly responsible for my product chops. When I was about 3 years old, she bought me a huge box of building blocks. Simple, made of wood, lots of shapes. There is no doubt in my mind that playing with those blocks shaped my creativity. They made me think about structure, balance, systems and more. She always made sure we had what we needed; she went without and worked hard to provide for us.

To this day, it’s the proudest moment of my life.

The second thing? Well, let me step back here …

When you’re an entrepreneur putting it all on the line, as least with me, I worked constantly. For five years. Eighteen-hour days. Getting out very little. Always thinking about work. Work, work, work. When you have one of these events, like selling, you can go a little crazy for a second. It’s not over, there is more to do to realize the dream. But it’s a moment where you get dizzy for a second. And I sort of reverted back to childhood for a few weeks. How so? I went on eBay and bought what I remember to be thousands of Matchbox cars. Why? Who the f*ck knows. I liked them when I was five years old. My mom used to buy me one a week. It was a good memory from simpler times. Now? I was a man-child with cash and clearly no idea what to do with it.

So, I’m sitting in my apartment and these boxes start coming in. I mean tons of them. Unopened collections of f*cking Matchbox cars. I opened one, took a deep breath and just started laughing. What the hell was I thinking? There was no way I was able to return these. My small apartment was filled with toy cars. What now?

I went out to get something to eat a few days later and I noticed the lobby of my building had these huge bins for a children’s toy drive. I turned around, got the wheely pushcart in the lobby and went back to my apartment. I loaded the boxes of cars up and within a few trips had given all of them away. Mostly unopened. In these digital times, needy kids probably thought … what moron is giving me a miniature car? I want Nintendo DS!

And so goes my few weeks of reverting to childhood nuttiness.

Yes, I ended up getting the car and the home. I’ve bought hundreds of pairs of sneakers that put Quincy Smith’s collection to shame. I’ve traveled to all sorts of great places. I love buying stuff for my nieces and nephew. I’ve pretended to be an angel investor. … And yes, of course, I’ve donated to causes (I’m not totally selfish), mostly having to do with education (see www.cfy.org). But these are the two things I remember most.

So what did you do? Tell your stories …

-JH

Jason Hirschhorn is an entrepreneur most comfortable at the intersection between entertainment and technology. He was formerly CEO of his first venture, Mischief New Media, Chief Digital Officer of MTV Networks, President of Sling Media and most recently Co-President of Myspace. Jason is also an investor in Howcast, Buzz Media, 5 to 1 and other startups. You can follow him on Twitter @JasonHirschhorn or via his widely read Media ReDEFined newsletter (@MediaReDEF or http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=mediaredef)

When the selling of Myspace winds down in the next week or so, it’ll probably attract a spate of comments about what a failure the whole social networking enterprise turned out to be.

And — especially when you recall what a Web phenom the social networking site was before it got blown out of the water by Facebook — it was.

That is, unless you think of the mob of former execs who have worked at the company over time, many of whom have moved on to some more golden opportunities after leaving the News Corp.-owned property.

That includes, most recently and notably, former sales head Michael Barrett, who is about to score big as CEO of AdMeld, which is reportedly in the process of selling to Google for $400 million.

Also a big winner: Former Myspace CEO Owen Van Natta, who was fired from that job in one of its many putsches and who quickly rebounded to a top job at online gaming powerhouse Zynga.

So, while it is one of the more overused memes of Silicon Valley, the “mafia” analogy — which has been applied to fertile entrepreneurial breeding grounds such as PayPal, before its acquisition by eBay — is useful when thinking about Myspace.

It is also a good thing to keep in mind about any tech company that goes off the rails: There might still be a silver lining, even if the start-up never sees the light of day again.

As proof, herein is a list I created after pinging a bunch of former Myspace folks:

Jason Oberfest: Former SVP of business development. Now, VP Ngmoco, which was sold to Japanese gaming giant DeNA for $400 million last year.

Dmitry Shapiro: Former CTO, Myspace Music. Now, at Facebook competitor Altly.

Adam Bain: While at Fox Interactive Media, he ran the ad platform for Myspace. Now, head of sales at Twitter.

Jeff Berman: Former president of sales and marketing. Now, GM of the NFL’s digital media unit.

Jason Hirschhorn: Former co-president and chief product officer. Now, on MGM board, angel investor, and there are rumors of him working on a curation start-up.

Amit Kapur: Former COO. Now, CEO, Gravity, an information filtering service start-up.

Chris DeWolfe: Co-founder and former CEO. Now, CEO, MindJolt, an online gaming roll-up.

Ross Levinsohn: Former president of FIM, he was integral to buying Myspace. Now, EVP of Americas unit, Yahoo.

Mike Lang: Former News Corp. strategy exec also involved in Myspace purchase. Now, CEO, Miramax.

Aber Whitcomb: Former CTO. Now CTO, MindJolt.

Jim Heckman: Former chief strategy officer of FIM. Now, CEO of 5to1, recently sold to Yahoo for $25 million.

Dani Dudeck: Former communications head. Now, PR head at Zynga.

Travis Katz: SVP of international. Now, CEO of Gogobot, a social travel start-up.

Richard Rosenblatt: Former CEO of Intermix Media and Chairman of Myspace, he sold it to News Corp. Now, CEO of Demand Media.

Angela Courtin: Former SVP of marketing. Now, EVP at Aegis Media.

These folks should be on the call list of whoever ends up buying Myspace. Last week, I wrote that an investor group, including Activision head Bobby Kotick, is now in the lead for the deal.

As an update, according to sources, Kotick has gotten clearance from Activision’s major shareholder Vivendi to do the Myspace transaction as a passive personal investment.

We can call this the “cord shaving” argument, and if I could remember where I first saw the term, I’d be happy to give them credit. (My hunch is that it was BTIG Research’s Rich Greenfield. Or maybe digital-media-executive-turned-aggregator Jason Hirschhorn. Or maybe Video Nuze, etc.).

This one has a nice ring of logic to it: You’d have to be a very committed non-cable watcher to dump your entire service and make do with the Web stuff. But depending on your viewing habits, it might be quite easy to substitute, say, Netflix for HBO.

It would be cheaper, too–you’d just have to wait a while to see “Boardwalk Empire” or “Game of Thrones.” (Though I’d still pay a premium to see Kenny Powers.)*

And that may be what we’re starting to see now.

Here, for instance, is a new study from Accenture that draws a connection between Web video watchers and a drop in premium cable: It figures the Internet is responsible for an eight percent drop in subscriptions.

Alas, just as with the cord-cutting debate, we may be stuck, for a while, with competing sets of data.

Market researcher SNL Kagan, for instance, says that in the last quarter of 2010, subscriptions shot up for CBS’ Showtime and Liberty’s Starz, while Time Warner’s HBO stayed steady.

These are apples and oranges data points: The Accenture numbers are taken worldwide, while the Kagan numbers are U.S.-only. And they cover different time periods, too. Etc.

Still, there’s a reason why Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has been so forceful about bashing Netflix publicly. Investors, at least, are concerned that the Web service (and perhaps Web video in general) will indeed cut into HBO’s business. So this won’t be the last we hear about this one.

And here’s one of the least unsafe-for-work Kenny Powers clips I could find. But it is still not going to be safe for some workplaces. It is awesome, though:

* For the concerned reader who inquired: No, you can’t get anything HBO shows via Netflix’ streaming service. But if you’re patient enough, and you subscribe to the DVD tier of the service, you’ll be able to get the shows and movies that way.

Yardsellr is announcing today that it has closed a $5 million Series A funding round led by Accel Partners.

Harrison Metal, which is run by investor Michael Dearing and gave the social listings and transactions site seed financing last year, also participated in the round.

Yardsellr says it uses “social plumbing to power all interactions between buyers and sellers, although users create listings and consummate transactions.”

Welcome to eBay, Facebook-style!

Online shopping with a social element is starting to boom, at least in terms of financings.

Earlier today, Svpply–a social retail discovery site stocked with stuff you and your friends think are cool–got a $550,000 seed round investment led by Spark Capital and Founder Collective, along with high-profile angels like Ron Conway, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley and former Myspace co-President Jason Hirschhorn.

And Topguest, a check-in loyalty service that was founded just five months ago, announced last week that it nabbed $2 million in Series A funding, as well as nabbing well-known Facebook investor Peter Thiel as an adviser.

Yardsellr takes yet another social tack, organizing the Internet shopping experience around “Blocks”–using the traditional neighborhood yard sale as an analog inspiration for innovation.

Blocks are micro-communities of people interested in the same products, determined via social networking, specifically following them on Twitter or liking them on Facebook.

Founder Daniel Leffel said in an email that it was better to organize this way “instead of categories, because categories organize products while Blocks organize people.”

Then, he said, when sellers list items, for free, they go out into the feeds of members who have joined the relevant blocks. Sellers can then buy additional traffic to their listings.

Yardsellr also handles payments for sales, with the buyer paying a small transaction fee.

That’s opposite from eBay, where Leffel once worked. Several former eBay execs are also working at the start-up.

TechCrunch reported the move this afternoon, and I’ve confirmed it with my own sources, who tell me Hirschhorn does not have a new job lined up. Here’s Hirschhorn’s version of the announcement, via Twitter:

And here’s a statement from Jon Miller, the News Corp. (NWS) exec tasked with turning around the once-dominant site:

We fully respect Jason’s decision to leave and his personal desire to return to New York. As many people know, Jason is like family to me, and as expected, he’s done everything we asked of him and more. We’re incredibly grateful for the passion and enthusiasm he brought to the company. And as I know Jason agrees, Mike Jones has done an outstanding job leading MySpace into its next evolution and is the right person to take the reins. There are no plans to bring in additional management.

And finally, HIrschhorn’s goodbye note to his staff:

From: “Jason Hirschhorn”
Date: June 17, 2010 5:20:38 PM EDT
To: “FIM MySpace All”
Subject: My Transition

MySpacers,
 
I wanted to share some personal news with you. After much thought I have decided to leave MySpace. It was a hard decision, but is weighted in my desire to move back to New York City.
 
The past 15 months have been the most exciting in my career. The challenge that we have all worked on together, reinventing MySpace, is a dream project.
 
With the roadmap in a solid place, the Futura designs being executed now, and a new leadership firmly in place, I felt this was a good time for me to transition out.
 
I did not take this decision lightly. But given my faith in my partner Mike Jones and his brilliance, coupled with the amazing teams we have in place, I feel as optimistic as ever about MySpace.
 
I cannot thank Rupert, Jon and Owen enough for giving me the opportunity to work at MySpace. It has been a pleasure working with each and every one of you.
 
I will be in the office until the end of the month and available to Jon and Mike during the transition.
 
You are all family. I will miss you.
 
P.S. My mom is pissed I am leaving LA!
 
Best,
 
Jason

Hirschhorn’s departure isn’t a total shock: It’s hard to find an example of any company, anywhere, that has really worked with more than one person in charge.

And Hirschhorn always seemed like an uneasy fit at MySpace, though his mood seemed to improve when former boss Owen Van Natta was moved out earlier this year. I’m told that he’s leaving on much more amicable terms than Van Natta and may end up working with Miller on some other News Corp. digital projects.

Still, despite Hirschhorn and Miller’s sunny description of MySpace, it is very much a troubled, money-losing asset. Former rival Facebook eclipsed it in audience, dollars and mojo long ago. And an ad deal with Google (GOOG), which generated the bulk of its revenue for years, is expiring very soon.

The most charitable description of MySpace would be a “work in progress,” which is the phrase News Corp. COO Chase Carey likes to use, over and over.

The good news for Hirschhorn’s former co-worker Jones: If he can show any positive result at all, the glory will be all his.

Here’s a March interview Kara Swisher conducted with two men, in which they explain that things aren’t as bad as they seem:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100617/myspace-co-president-jason-hirschhorn-leaves/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100607/veoh-ceo-shaprio-resurfaces-at-myspace-music/ http://allthingsd.com/20100607/veoh-ceo-shaprio-resurfaces-at-myspace-music/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:39:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=20190 Dmitry Shapiro, last seen mourning the end of Veoh, has a new gig: Today is his first day as chief technology officer at MySpace Music.

It’s not a huge shock to see former start-up CEOs join big companies after the demise of their own. But this move is a bit more surprising: It means Shapiro will be working for one of the companies that helped put him out of work.

That’s because MySpace Music is a joint venture between News Corp. (NWS) and the big music labels, including Universal Music Group. And Shapiro, among others, has pointed to Universal’s copyright-infringement lawsuit against Veoh as one the primary reasons for the video site’s downfall.

But apparently, Shapiro doesn’t mind working for Universal now. In any case, he’ll be reporting to MySpace execs Courtney Holt, Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, not Doug Morris. And you could argue that it makes sense for MySpace Music to have a tech guy on board who has intimate knowledge of the big music labels, warts and all.

Plus, MySpace Music needs help from wherever it can find it. The site still boasts some 30 million unique users. And as other free music sites melt away, it is one of the only places to get legal streams without paying for them. But two years after launch, it’s still a mess to navigate, and I don’t know anyone who uses it on a regular basis. Maybe Shapiro can help.

Veoh, meanwhile, never actually went away. Something called Qlipso purchased the site, which had raised some $70 million, for less than $10 million in March.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100607/veoh-ceo-shaprio-resurfaces-at-myspace-music/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100519/myspaces-jason-hirschhorn-talks-about-futura-new-logo-and-marketing-dude-and-bands-boomtown-has-never-heard-of/ http://allthingsd.com/20100519/myspaces-jason-hirschhorn-talks-about-futura-new-logo-and-marketing-dude-and-bands-boomtown-has-never-heard-of/#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 12:15:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28571

Yesterday afternoon, BoomTown got on the phone for a little chitchat with MySpace Co-President Jason Hirschhorn (pictured here) about the company’s latest hire, as well as an update on major changes the social networking site is undergoing in its bid to revive itself.

Plus, since I have written a lot about the departures of execs there, such as the Partovi brothers, fair is fair to discuss the arrivals!

The most recent of which is David Donegan as MySpace’s SVP of marketing. He replaced longtime MySpace marketing head Angela Courtin, who left earlier this month.

The former managing partner of Kastner & Partners Interactive, who also has an entertainment background, had previously been the director of interactive marketing at Red Bull.

Donegan will report to Hirschhorn, who said he made the hire because he is interested in just the kind of “nontraditional marketing” for MySpace used to flack Red Bull’s energy drinks.

“We wanted a CMO who understands viral marketing, events and how to build traffic online,” said Hirschhorn in an interview with me. “And you can be scrappy and you don’t have to spend $100 million to do that.”

Take that, Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT)!

Still, the job will be a big one as it entails launching a new look and feel–as well as a new logo–under an internal initiative code-named “Futura.” Rolling out in the fall and winter, it encompasses a wholesale new branding campaign for the troubled News Corp. unit.

“We are repositioning ourselves as a place for self-expression and discovery, so the marketing has to reflect that too,” said Hirschhorn about efforts MySpace has outlined to curate content better.

They include innovations in everything from video snippets to topic pages to adding trending data to pages, as well as simplified navigation and a redo of the site’s profile pages already underway.

Hirschhorn also points to platform plays for the service, such as the recent and seemingly successful effort by MySpace Music to host online auditions for Fox’s television hit, “Glee.”

That points to more entertainment, said Hirschhorn, focused on celebrities and entertainers using MySpace to “make sure fans know what they are about” and a place for those same fans to discover new acts.

Such as British band Florence & The Machine, which I have never heard of.

I will soon, insisted Hirschhorn, via MySpace Tools, which will differentiate it from leader Facebook.

“It’s not a reskinning of the site,” he said. “It is a reimagining.”

Until it is all there, though, here’s a video of Hirschhorn giving me a tour of some of the new concepts for MySpace in March:

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100519/myspaces-jason-hirschhorn-talks-about-futura-new-logo-and-marketing-dude-and-bands-boomtown-has-never-heard-of/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100420/like-boomtown-said-partovi-brothers-finally-leave-myspace/ http://allthingsd.com/20100420/like-boomtown-said-partovi-brothers-finally-leave-myspace/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:22:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27307

Well-known tech entrepreneurs and twin brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi (pictured here, right to left) are leaving MySpace, in a high-profile departure for the struggling social networking company.

Internal memos were sent around to staff this afternoon about the executive change, said sources, which you can see below.

“Hey everybody, it’s been super tough staying quiet about this news at the request of our execs,” said Hadi Partovi, in an internal memo obtained by BoomTown. “I know some of you are very surprised about this, and I want to apologize for not having had the option to brief you personally in advance.”

Hadi was SVP of Technology at the News Corp. (NWS) unit, while Ali was SVP of Business Development. Hadi will leave MySpace entirely, while Ali will have a special adviser role, said the memo from MySpace Co-President Michael Jones.

In a blog post in March titled, “MySpace Musical Chairs: Will the Partovis Stay or Will They Go Now?,” I wrote:

“In all likelihood, said sources, the Partovis will remain at MySpace for the next several months, although they are likely to move eventually to more senior advisory or special-project roles there in order to pursue longtime outside investing and entrepreneurial interests.”

Now that has come to pass.

The fate of the well-known tech wunderkinds has been one of the more interesting guessing games of late at MySpace.

MySpace managers have been keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially related to such well-known innovators.

The Partovis arrived in the midst of turbulent change at MySpace last August, just after its original CEO and co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, was suddenly tossed out and replaced by CEO Owen Van Natta, as well as COO Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

As part of its new strategy to become an entertainment hub, the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace bought the Partovis’ social music start-up, iLike, in a deal engineered by Van Natta.

After it closed, Hadi was mostly working in MySpace’s Seattle office, and Ali was mostly based in San Francisco.

(See this funny welcome video Ali Partovi did at the time.)

But Van Natta suddenly got the boot in January after clashing with News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller, as well as Hirschhorn and Jones, sending MySpace into yet another storm.

Hirschhorn and Jones were then named co-presidents.

While several sources said the Partovis are not unhappy with the pair or with the new MySpace mediacentric strategy, the brothers sold their company with the idea of working with Van Natta.

“That firing reset things,” said one source close to the situation in March.

Nonetheless, there was some progress with iLike, including integration of MySpace Music with Google (GOOG) and a MySpace Events offering.

In addition, the pair have wide-ranging interests outside the company, including an active investment portfolio in such start-ups as Facebook, Dropbox, Opower, BlueKai and Flixster.

They have already scored big with investments in Tellme, which was sold to Microsoft (MSFT); Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon (AMZN); and IronPort, now owned by Cisco (CSCO).

And though iLike was not the success they had hoped for, their entrepreneurial record is strong. Ali Partovi sold LinkExchange to Microsoft, and Hadi Partovi, who also worked at Microsoft, co-founded Tellme.

Now, it seems, the Partovis are moving on to the next challenge.

Here are the internal memos from Hadi Partovi to iLike staff and from MySpace’s Jones:

From: Hadi Partovi
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Fwd: Organizational Update (re Ali + Hadi)
To: staff
Cc: Ali Partovi

Hey everybody, it’s been super tough staying quiet about this news at the request of our execs. I know some of you are very surprised about this, and I want to apologize for not having had the option to brief you personally in advance.

I also want to call out looking backwards that we’ve all done a heck of a lot in just the last 6 months to help improve the MySpace business and to integrate iLike technology. Just a short list is below.

- iLike integrated MySpace Music into Google search (iLike provided the team, technology, and Google deal)
- iLike team+technology helped implement MySpace Events, launched with multi-million-dollar sponsorship commitments
- all iLike.com traffic has been merged into MySpace’s overall Comscore metrics
- iLike’s products have been featured in a TV ad by Apple, and will be in an upcoming TV ad by another major tech company
- iLike’s promotional engine has been used multiple times in coordination with MSM to promote new albums or new artists
- MSM videos have been integrated into iLike.com and iLike on Facebook
- iLike’s artist-stats are integrated into the MySpace artist dashboard
- iLike.com drives search engine traffic to MySpace artist pages
- iLike team implemented the imeem traffic redirection and data backend of imeem playlist integration
- iLike team provided backend metadata + recommendation engine for MySpace music search and song-similarities

Most importantly, thanks to our work, MySpace is the #1 provider of music on Facebook, music on Google, and Concerts on iPhone. Regardless of any challenges that MySpace needs to overcome, that is a great legacy that I know we’re all proud of.

I’m personally very sad that I won’t be working with any of you–the amazing team we built at iLike is perhaps our greatest accomplishment.

I’ll send an email to the Seattle folks to organize a proper going-away celebration :)

hadi

From: Mike Jones
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 4:52 PM
Subject: Organizational Update
To: XXX
Cc: Jason Hirschhorn

Hi everyone,

Effective on Friday, MySpace SVP of Technology Hadi Partovi is leaving to pursue other opportunities. In addition to continuing his work as an advisor and angel investor to various startups, he will be following his passion for education by working directly with technology focused non-profits. Hadi leaves as a valued friend to the company, and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

Ali Partovi will be stepping down as SVP of Business Development, but will continue working with MySpace as a strategic advisor working on special projects. He will also be taking time to invest in and advise startups.

Hadi and Ali were instrumental in integrating iLike’s best in class technology into the MySpace brand. Last week’s successful Events launch was a direct result of that collaboration. Other noteworthy product integrations include last year’s Google Music Search integration and the Local Concerts App, which is currently the most downloaded concerts app for the iPhone and was featured in one of Apple’s latest iPhone TV spots.

Please join us in thanking Ali and Hadi for their contributions to MySpace.

-Jason & Mike

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100420/like-boomtown-said-partovi-brothers-finally-leave-myspace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100324/hello-goodbye-what-does-talent-exodus-from-internet-companies-like-yahoo-actually-mean/ http://allthingsd.com/20100324/hello-goodbye-what-does-talent-exodus-from-internet-companies-like-yahoo-actually-mean/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:13:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25830

On March 30, a core group of Yahoo’s Buzz Marketing team, which focuses on all kinds of nontraditional marketing efforts, is leaving the company to set up a new firm.

The name of the group of former Yahoo (YHOO) staffers–including Brian Mullin, Sean Florio, Mike Weaver, Kelly Delaney and Jason Anello–is Manifold.

“After a great run at Yahoo!, we’re looking forward to new challenges in the world of nontraditional marketing encompassing social, word of mouth, experiential and interactive,” wrote Mullin to me after I inquired. “Exciting times.”

Maybe for Manifold, but what does the departure actually mean for Yahoo?

Does it represent a worrisome and seemingly unending hemorrhage of talent? Or is it simply an example of ever-shifting and very normal staff movements within a company? Or what?

Probably all three, although when big-name employees go into turnaround situations–as has happened a lot of late at Yahoo and MySpace–stories mount that paint a direr picture than is perhaps fair.

“I actually think that is totally normal in any transformative phase, the cynics may decide in any one situation to make more of it, but when you reinvent, people leave, new ones join and current employees with history and new-found faith make a nice mixture,” wrote Jason Hirschhorn, co-president of MySpace, to me about the lagging social networking site that is owned by News Corp. (NWS). “Change is a catalyst for all of it.”

Which is not to say that some departures do not represent potential trouble. Yahoo losing its top advertising sales exec, Joanne Bradford, was very bad news for the company. She’s headed for fast-growing social media start-up, Demand Media.

And the ugly circumstances of the firing of MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta created great uncertainty at the worst possible time.

And with those departures comes greater scrutiny, especially internally, about the efficacy of comeback plans, as well as a nagging worry that there are much greener Silicon Valley pastures to be found elsewhere.

That said, in the fourth quarter, Yahoo actually brought on 700 employees, including about 250 from two acquisitions.

Some of the more prominent of those hires, according to a Yahoo spokeswoman, include:

• Sashi Seth joined as SVP, Search Products to lead the search business. Shashi brings with him a wealth of experience from Google, eBay, Cooliris, and AOL.

• Raymond Stern, joined as SVP BD & Partnerships, North America. Raymond joined from Intuit where he was SVP/Strategy & Corporate Development and spent more than ten years 10 years as a partner at The Boston Consulting Group.

• Bobby Figueroa, VP, Consumer Advertising Experience. Bobby joined from Google.

• Gil Yehuda, director, Open Source Product Management. Gil was most recently an analyst at Forrester Research and also worked at Fidelity Investments and Xerox.

• Chris Lehmann joined Yahoo! News as News Blog Deputy Editor. Lehmann is a former senior editor of Congressional Quarterly, political columnist for the New York Observer and features editor for New York magazine.

• Eric Adelson joined Yahoo! Sports/Special Projects Editor. Eric wrote for ESPN The Magazine from its inception in 1998 until the fall of 2008. He has also written for Newsweek, Details, and Boston Magazine.

• Manish Sinha joined as the Customer Advocacy team as VP, Global Customer Care. Manish spent more than 15-years at Microsoft.

• Mollie Spilman joined the CMO organization as SVP of B2B Marketing. Mollie has held key leadership positions at several companies including People Magazine, BH&G, Discovery Networks, Phase2Media, and TidalTV. She was also at Advertising.com for over five years, both pre and post AOL acquisition, and ran both the sales and marketing organizations.

• Deb Meyer joined the customer advocacy group as vice president of agency revenue and development. She joined Yahoo! with more than twenty years of industry experience, having most recently worked for AOL as head of US sales for Bebo. Prior to Bebo, she spent nearly a decade with Nielsen Online and more than ten years in the agency world, working for McCann-Erickson and Grey Advertising.

And while MySpace has seen an ongoing exodus too, there have been numerous recent entrants, according to its spokeswoman:

-New VP of Data Platform, Arvind Puri (was CTO of Buzznet/Buzzmedia, before that worked at the LA Times, Yahoo and Overture)

-New Senior Manager of Online Marketing from BillShrink, Tony Adam

-New Director of Tech & Product PR, Vincent Chang, ran his own consulting co w/Tariq Krim’s Jolicloud as a client, based in SF

Hellos to all, of course, which at some point have to be louder than the goodbyes.

In that vein, please enjoy this video of the Beatles classic:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100324/hello-goodbye-what-does-talent-exodus-from-internet-companies-like-yahoo-actually-mean/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100317/the-myspace-sale-or-spin-off-may-be-a-non-story-but-my-barry-manilow-badge-is-sure-for-real/ http://allthingsd.com/20100317/the-myspace-sale-or-spin-off-may-be-a-non-story-but-my-barry-manilow-badge-is-sure-for-real/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:30:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25691 Like others, without inquiring, BoomTown got an email–from someone who would know–regarding inexplicably whirling rumors of the sale or spinoff of MySpace.

Read the “pre-emptive” note: “There is no truth, zero, zip to myspace sales report.”

Well, to tell my truth, I actually wasn’t wondering, especially since that was the exact same on-the-record answer I got from MySpace Co-presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Michael Jones when I asked them that very question in an interview last week about the fate of the social networking site within its parent company, News Corp. (NWS).

But whatev!

In any case, what is completely true–and I could not be more thrilled–is that I am now the proud and only owner of a Barry Manilow badge (pictured here in all its glory) from a yet-to-be-released feature MySpace is working on.

It was sent to me by Mike Macadaan, head product dude at MySpace now, after my recent video tour–which you can see below–of the changes being planned to try to revive the troubled Internet service.

When shown the badge idea, full of hipster stuff about three decades too young for me, I wondered what there was on MySpace for Manilow fans–Fanilows!–like me.

Hence, my one-of-a-kind Barry badge (which sort of makes the crooner look a little like Carol Brady/Florence Henderson, whom I also love, so no foul).

I am not sure I am ready to take a chance again on MySpace–or if anyone is–but, Mike, you came and you gave without taking, so I won’t send you away.

(A free All Things Digital T-shirt to the first commenter below to name those tunes.)

And, so more will understand Manilow’s bizarre appeal, here is one hysterical video mashup of “Copacabana,” which somehow includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a pimp and dog wearing a pirate hat:

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100317/the-myspace-sale-or-spin-off-may-be-a-non-story-but-my-barry-manilow-badge-is-sure-for-real/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100311/myspace-musical-chairs-will-the-partovis-stay-or-will-they-go-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20100311/myspace-musical-chairs-will-the-partovis-stay-or-will-they-go-now/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:11:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25497

While there have surely been a lot of departures of talent at MySpace over the last year, including two major shifts in top management, one of the more interesting guessing games of late concerning the social networking company has been over the fate of well-known tech wunderkinds Hadi and Ali Partovi.

According to many sources inside and outside the company, that’s just the discussion the pair of serial entrepreneurs has been having with its newest leaders, as well as with News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller.

(News Corp. owns MySpace, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

In all likelihood, said sources, the Partovis will remain at MySpace for the next several months, although they are likely to move eventually to more senior advisory or special-project roles there in order to pursue longtime outside investing and entrepreneurial interests.

“They’re definitely staying for now,” said one source. “But it’s the ‘how’ is what’s being worked out.”

There are many shifting scenarios as the sides hash it out, said sources, but MySpace execs are keenly interested in avoiding the appearance that the company is in the grip of a talent drain, especially with such high-profile innovators.

Still, in an interview with BoomTown at MySpace’s Beverly Hills, Calif., HQ earlier this week (you can see part of that chat in the video below), Co-President Jason Hirschhorn said that there are likely to be a lot more departures at the company, as well as arrivals.

“It’s normal in a situation like this,” said Hirschhorn, quite correctly, given the wringer MySpace has gone through over the last year.

The Partovis arrived in the midst of turbulent change at MySpace, after its original CEO and co-founder, Chris DeWolfe, was suddenly tossed out and replaced by CEO Owen Van Natta, as well as COO Michael Jones and Chief Product Officer Hirschhorn.

As part of its new strategy to become an entertainment hub, MySpace bought the Partovis’ struggling social music start-up, iLike, last summer in a deal engineered by Van Natta.

After it closed, Hadi (pictured left) became an SVP of technology, mostly working in MySpace’s Seattle office, and Ali (pictured right) became its SVP of business development, mostly based in San Francisco.

But Van Natta suddenly got the boot in January, after clashing with Miller, as well as Hirschhorn and Jones, sending MySpace into yet another storm.

Hirschhorn and Jones were then named co-presidents.

While several sources said the Partovis are not unhappy with the pair or with the new MySpace media-centric strategy, the brothers sold the company with the idea of working with Van Natta.

“That firing reset things,” said one source close to the situation.

In addition, the pair have wide-ranging interests outside the company, including an active investment portfolio in such start-ups as Facebook, Dropbox, Opower, BlueKai and Flixster.

They have also already scored big with investments in Tellme, which was sold to Microsoft (MSFT); Zappos, which was acquired by Amazon (AMZN); and IronPort, now owned by Cisco (CSCO).

And though iLike was not the success they had hoped for, their entrepreneurial record is strong. Ali Partovi sold LinkExchange to Microsoft, and Hadi Partovi, who also worked at Microsoft, co-founded Tellme.

That said, with talent-retention packages in place for both Partovis, and good will between them and the new leaders, the sides are trying to come up with a workable arrangement.

MySpace declined to comment, but The Clash sure will (as well as Jones and Hirschhorn, below):

[T-shirt photo courtesy of Zazzle.com]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100311/myspace-musical-chairs-will-the-partovis-stay-or-will-they-go-now/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100310/video-back-to-the-future-at-myspace-or-just-another-retread/ http://allthingsd.com/20100310/video-back-to-the-future-at-myspace-or-just-another-retread/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:19:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25316

Earlier this week, BoomTown visited MySpace HQ in Beverly Hills, Calif., to interview its new co-presidents, Michael Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, and get a look-see at its evolving revival plans to stop the social networking ship from sinking further.

Thus, I got a tour of a storyboard-like room at MySpace, where the team is trying to formulate the “discover and be discovered” motto it is now using, which is pretty much its old motto restated.

Can the old become new again?

In fact, a lot of the plan does sound a lot like shades of the past at MySpace, focusing on a younger, artistic demo with a heavy dose of pop culture.

Jazzed up, of course, with the latest social networking hooks, a cleaner user page redesign, topics pages, a focus on sharing content of all kinds, especially music, games and entertainment, and more.

That includes a new Today on MySpace, or TOM, to greet new users, rather than the famous analog Tom Anderson, co-founder and former first friend to all. Get it?

It is all part of a very slow-moving effort to turn MySpace into a socially-charged entertainment hub, which is now being led by Hirschhorn and Jones.

They took over management immediately after News Corp. (NWS) execs suddenly fired CEO Owen Van Natta last month.

The pair reported to Van Natta, and now they essentially share his job to revive MySpace, which has lost ground to fast-growing and more innovative sites such as Facebook.

Still, it is not a small enterprise, with upward of 100 million monthly visitors and just above $350 million in annual revenue.

Here’s a video of the tour I did in which the pair describe some of what they have been up to, which seems to center, most of all, on turning back the clock and returning to MySpace’s roots.

Is a proper retread–which is completely dependent on keeping talent and executing well–enough to stem the losses if there are enough newfangled features to make it all feel fresh?

Or not?

Time will tell, but here’s a sneak peek:

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100310/video-back-to-the-future-at-myspace-or-just-another-retread/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100309/video-new-myspace-co-presidents-hirschhorn-and-jones-talk-about-the-past-troubled-present-work-in-progress-and-future-revival/ http://allthingsd.com/20100309/video-new-myspace-co-presidents-hirschhorn-and-jones-talk-about-the-past-troubled-present-work-in-progress-and-future-revival/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:24:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25263

On Monday, as part of a press hello-there MySpace is doing this week, BoomTown traveled to Los Angeles for the day to finally check in with the new management at the turmoil-plagued company.

That would be new Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Michael Jones, who are now ferreting away on a slow rollout of a plan to turn MySpace into a socially-charged entertainment hub.

They took over the Beverly Hills-based social networking site immediately after News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller suddenly fired CEO Owen Van Natta last month.

The pair reported to Van Natta and, according to pretty much everyone you speak to, were very much at odds with him.

Perhaps that was inevitable due to the awkward way the trio was hired at the same time last April, as part of a grand plan of overhaul.

Their arrival followed the defenestration of co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, who was blamed for the declining prospects of MySpace in recent years after a red-hot start.

While former Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) exec Van Natta was selected as the experienced one in charge, Hirschhorn ran product and Jones was charged with getting the trains to run on time at MySpace–when they ran right at all, that is.

That all ended when Miller and Van Natta clashed over control of MySpace, which has about 100 million monthly visitors and just above $350 million in annual revenue.

And faster than you can say Rupe, former AOL (AOL) exec and serial entrepreneur Jones, and Hirschhorn–who is a well-known media exec with stops at Sling Media and Viacom (VIA)–got the nod.

What’s that famous Shakespeare quote? Uneasy lies the head that wears a MySpace crown? Or, in this case, two heads and two crowns!

How deliciously ripe with plot.

And so much to cover: From the corporate intrigue to how News Corp. looks at the troubled property to competition like Facebook to what to do about declining traffic, engagement and advertising revenue to rampant sale or spinoff rumors.

And most of all, and what gets unfortunately lost in all this mess–what the heck they are doing to innovate the actual product and make it into an entertainment hub.

Thus, here’s a video interview I did with Hirschhorn and Jones–at their joint desk, like some digital Oscar Madison and Felix Unger–where we talk about all this and more, including whether or not Hirschhorn is a kvetcher or not.

(He is, but I am worse!)

I also posted a tour of MySpace, in which the pair talk about their plans for the revival of the service, with the help of some visual aids.

Until then, enjoy, and no kvetching over the length:

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100309/video-new-myspace-co-presidents-hirschhorn-and-jones-talk-about-the-past-troubled-present-work-in-progress-and-future-revival/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100218/myspace-to-hold-a-remain-calm-all-is-well-meeting-today-for-staff-heres-five-questions-that-someone-should-ask/ http://allthingsd.com/20100218/myspace-to-hold-a-remain-calm-all-is-well-meeting-today-for-staff-heres-five-questions-that-someone-should-ask/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:07:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24579

MySpace has apparently scheduled an all-hands meeting today, which one source noted is to talk about the new order and to rally the likely much dispirited troops at the struggling social networking site.

With the sudden firing of relatively recently installed CEO Owen Van Natta last week by News Corp. digital head Jon Miller, it will be up to the two new co-presidents he installed, Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones, to give MySpace employees a whole lot of reason to believe they can reinvigorate a site that seems woefully resistant to revival so far.

While the one-time trio of Van Natta, Hirschhorn and Jones did manage to stanch the traffic declines in their short and, in hindsight now, rocky, tenure over the last year and have worked to fix the shoddy plumbing, getting the water running regularly is nothing that will inspire anyone internally or externally.

But they do seem to know that, at least.

In any case, if BoomTown were there–and don’t assume I am not skulking around, boys–here are five basic questions I would want the new leaders to answer, including Miller, who is clearly the silent third partner here. (Bonus: I left out Facebook-related questions, as that would be too painful):

While it might be looking backward, exactly why and how was the decision to fire Van Natta made? Was the direction in which he was leading MySpace–related to the socialization of music and other entertainment content–the wrong one? And should those staffers he brought in, such as advertising head Nada Stirratt and many others, be prepping resumes?

What are the three top priorities for MySpace? A massive redesign? A rebranding? Perhaps spinning off as a kind of huge start-up from owner News Corp. (NWS) so it can live or die on its own merits and have more of a chance of attracting talent and encouraging innovation? And, if MySpace stays part of the massive media empire, what are the benefits of that now?

Is MySpace trying to keep its remaining users or bring in new ones? If the former, what will keep them? If the latter, what will get them to try the service (again)?

Do you really believe MySpace can once again be on the growth path it was once on, and can what has clearly become a tired brand be reborn? What are the precedents for such a situation–and you may not use Apple (AAPL) as the example, because there is no Steve Jobs present?

And, perhaps most important: Who’s really in charge?

Of course, that might or might not be a very rhetorical question, to say the least.

Until it is all settled, you can add more questions below in comments. Also, here’s that famous video clip from the movie “Animal House” to enjoy, which is still incredibly funny after all these years:

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100218/myspace-to-hold-a-remain-calm-all-is-well-meeting-today-for-staff-heres-five-questions-that-someone-should-ask/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/ http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:33:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24330

Last week, someone who has been at MySpace for a while told me what it’s like working inside the social networking company, which has gone from supernova to also-ran in the course of a few years.

Reflecting on the downward spiral, which MySpace owner News Corp. (NWS) has been trying to slow over the last year, and how hard it has been to do a turnaround of any kind, the exec could not shake the idea that it could still be revived.

“MySpace is kind of a hot mess,” said the exec, referring to its still-large audience and well-known brand. “It’s both impossible to save and hard to give up on.”

Unfortunately for all those involved, that mess got even messier yesterday after the ousting of CEO Owen Van Natta by News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller.

While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as infighting among top execs finally came to a head today.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Escalating tensions over strategy going forward had grown untenable between Miller and Van Natta, as well as among and between Van Natta and his top two execs, COO Mike Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

(Pictured from left to right above are Van Natta, Jones and Hirschhorn.)

Sources said relations had gotten so bad that Hirschhorn had told Van Natta recently that he was planning to resign by June.

It was a threat that moved well beyond well-known gripes the former media exec had aired to many outside the company over the last year about how MySpace was in much worse shape MySpace than he thought, and that reflects weariness from the weekly commute between his home in New York and the company’s Los Angeles HQ.

And after a recent blog post that claimed Hirschhorn was the one leaving, relations became even frostier, sources said.

The relationship between Miller and Van Natta had also become badly frayed, several sources noted, mostly over the pace of change and the level of control Van Natta had over MySpace.

“There were serious disagreements and something had to give,” said one person close to the situation.

After firing Van Natta in an afternoon meeting yesterday in what several people described as a “termination without cause,” Miller (pictured here with Van Natta behind him) appointed Jones and Hirschhorn co-presidents of MySpace.

It was a dramatic shift from only nine months ago.

With the backing of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, Miller hired Van Natta last April, after jettisoning co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe.

But despite his CEO title, the former Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) exec didn’t get to select the two top executives beneath him.

Both Jones and Hirschhorn were hired by Miller directly–also with Murdoch’s involvement and approval.

The idea at the time of assembling this troika was that three heads are better than one, especially in dealing with the technological, administrative and business hairball that MySpace had become over the years.

As it turned out, three heads came with three brains and three different ideas of what MySpace needed to do to fix itself.

While the work to clean up the company, make cuts and attract new talent proceeded, it seems as if not enough progress was made on the what-next part of the equation, as various strategies were considered.

That led to an increasing number of clashes as pressure began to mount to do something, even as rival Facebook’s growth skyrocketed.

While Van Natta and the others distilled the idea of making MySpace the place where consumers and artists store and keep track of their entertainment content online, using a series of “super tools” to move them all over the Web, the lack of concrete changes even began to irk Murdoch.

In News Corp.’s earnings call last week, in fact, Murdoch said about MySpace, despite recent encouraging signs of stabilization: “It’s not yet where we want it.”

Uh-oh, that might have been a clue to watch for big changes!

In addition, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted, News Corp. disclosed that MySpace and the rest of its digital portfolio were coming up short on their end of a $900 million, three-year search deal with Google (GOOG), meaning that News Corp. would receive around $100 million less than originally anticipated.

This was due to changes made to the site’s design, which cut down on some page views that the old site created to show higher traffic.

And, said sources, any new search deal with Google or, perhaps, Microsoft (MSFT) is not expected to be stellar.

“MySpace will get paid what it is worth,” said the source about search fees. “But the days of big payouts are over.”

The real problem, of course, is that MySpace’s audience has been going elsewhere, particularly Facebook, and will continue to do so until a bold new direction is set.

Many in the industry do not think that is even possible and that News Corp. shouldn’t even own MySpace anymore.

There is also a good argument that the company should have, and could have, sold the asset several years ago, either to Yahoo (YHOO) during its takeover fight with Microsoft or to another bidder when the company was riding high.

Now, News Corp.–which is dealing with many other vexing digital issues, including a pitched battle over paid content–is stuck trying to fix a distressed asset that became that way by allowing the old regime to run it in a less than rigorous manner.

And despite all the Band-Aids applied so far, reviving MySpace will take a lot of more arduous work from Jones and Hirschhorn, neither of whom has helmed as big an organization, despite recent layoffs.

In addition, the co-presidents must get along well, and power-sharing arrangements are always tricky to pull off.

So, until Miller, Jones and Hirschhorn figure it out–or not!–and, in honor of MySpace’s music meme, here is Cobra Starship’s “Hot Mess” video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100211/after-even-more-turmoil-can-the-hot-mess-at-myspace-be-saved/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100210/myspace-ceo-van-natta-was-fired-by-news-corp-digital-head-miller-in-late-afternoon-meeting/ http://allthingsd.com/20100210/myspace-ceo-van-natta-was-fired-by-news-corp-digital-head-miller-in-late-afternoon-meeting/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:59:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24314

The long-running telenovela that has been MySpace over the years took yet another dramatic turn late today when News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller fired MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, whom he had hired only nine months ago to turn around the troubled social networking site, according to several sources.

(The pair are pictured above in happier times, with Van Natta on the left, during an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with them at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in May. You can see the full video below.)

While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as problems among top execs finally came to a head today.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Among the issues were tensions between Miller and Van Natta, as well as growing tensions with his top two execs, COO Mike Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

Miller hired Van Natta, but the CEO didn’t bring in the two executives directly beneath him: Both Jones and Hirschhorn were hired by Miller, along with News Corp. (NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch, who signed off on both men.

Sources also noted that Van Natta, a former Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) exec, had begun to bridle at not being able to select his own execs and at increasing meddling in the MySpace turnaround by Miller.

“There were three senior thinkers put in place to fix MySpace and it became clear that not all those voices were needed anymore,” said one person close to the situation. “So, Owen was the odd man out.”

And out he went in a flash, with Miller flying to Los Angeles early in the week to deal with rumors that it was Hirschhorn who was on his way out.

In fact, the well-known media exec had been vocally complaining for months about the harder-than-expected struggle to right MySpace’s once innovative business and had told many he was contemplating leaving within the next few months.

Today, several sources said, he conducted an all-day review of the plans Van Natta, Jones and Hirschhorn had been working on to revive MySpace and morph it into an entertainment and music hub.

After it was over, multiple sources said, Miller met with Van Natta and told him his tenure at CEO was over.

The move came as a shock to the staff at MySpace, as it was not expected, although it was clear that top execs at News Corp. were aware of the decision made by Miller.

“Simply put, it was a power struggle and Jon won,” said one source.

Miller has not returned my emails or phone calls about the situation, and a News Corp. spokeswoman declined to comment.

Ironically, after fixing a range of technical and product issues over the last several months, MySpace was beginning to see stabilization in the bleeding of users.

Comparatively, rival Facebook has seen explosive growth, reaching 400 million global users this week.

More details to come, but here is the D7 interview with Miller and Van Natta:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/myspace-ceo-van-natta-was-fired-by-news-corp-digital-head-miller-in-late-afternoon-meeting/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20100210/that-was-fast-owen-van-natta-out-at-myspace/ http://allthingsd.com/20100210/that-was-fast-owen-van-natta-out-at-myspace/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:45:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=16178

Owen Van Natta, the prominent Internet executive brought in to overhaul MySpace, has left after less than a year.

News Corp. (NWS), which owns the social network, has replaced the CEO with his former lieutenants, Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, who have been named co-presidents.

It is Van Natta’s second consecutive short-tenured job. Prior to MySpace, he ran music start-up Project Playlist, where he stayed for less than six months. Van Natta built his reputation at Facebook and Amazon (AMZN).

A  press release spins this as a mutual decision between Van Natta and Jon Miller, the News Corp. executive who joined the company less than a year ago himself to run digital operations. But that’s going to be a difficult story to sell.

For starters, it’s clear that attempts to turn the social network around are taking much longer than expected, as News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch acknowledged last week during the company’s earnings call.

Last fall, News Corp. disclosed that MySpace and the rest of the company’s digital portfolio were coming up short on their end of a $900 million, three-year search deal with Google (GOOG), which meant News Corp. would receive around $100 million less than originally anticipated.

That may be in part because of changes the new MySpace leadership made to the site’s design, which cut down on some of the page views the old site created. But the shortfall was primarily because the MySpace audience has been migrating to other sites, particularly Facebook, for some time.

MySpace executives have been overhauling the site, mainly under the hood, and rolling out a series of incremental changes in recent weeks. These changes aren’t supposed to win back Facebook users–the company has declared that it’s no longer trying to compete with that site as a social network anymore–but are designed to help it hang on to existing users and establish itself as some sort of entertainment hub.

A tough task under any circumstance. But tensions in the corporate suite didn’t make it easier. Miller hired Van Natta, but the CEO didn’t bring in the two executives directly beneath him; both Jones and Hirschhorn were hired by Miller (along with Murdoch, who signed off on both men).

People who have talked to Van Natta say he has been relatively public about his frustrations at the job in recent weeks. Describing Jones and Hirschhorn as happy campers would be a stretch, too.

But whatever finally prompted the move seems to have come relatively quickly: The MySpace and News Corp. insiders I’ve talked to so far seem taken aback by Van Natta’s departure.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Here is the official press release from News Corp.:

Owen Van Natta Steps Down as MySpace CEO; ?Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn Elevated to Co-Presidents

Los Angeles, CA, February 10, 2010–News Corporation today announced that Owen Van Natta will step down from his position as MySpace CEO, effective immediately. Mr. Van Natta will be replaced by newly-elevated co-Presidents Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, who will each report to Jon Miller, Chairman and CEO of Digital Media for News Corporation.  All three executives joined MySpace in April 2009, with Mr. Jones and Mr. Hirschhorn previously serving as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer, respectively.

“Owen took on an incredible challenge in working to refocus and revitalize MySpace, and the business has shown very positive signs recently as a result of his dedicated work,” said Jon Miller, News Corporation’s Chairman and CEO of Digital Media. “However, in talking to Owen about his priorities both personally and professionally going forward, we both agreed that it was best for him to step down at this time. I want to thank Owen for all of his efforts.”

Mr. Miller continued, “Mike and Jason have demonstrated true leadership in their operational and product guidance, respectively, and I have the utmost confidence in both of them to lead MySpace into its next chapter.”

In a joint statement, Mr. Jones and Mr. Hirschhorn noted:

“We joined MySpace last April with very a specific set of goals in mind, and are anxious to continue working together to make those goals a reality. This business is now pointed in the right direction, and we have a great team of employees that will continue to push MySpace closer to its potential as the place where people go to be discovered and to discover great content.”

Mr. Van Natta commented:

“MySpace is an incredibly unique place and we’ve made real gains in terms of product focus and user experience.  I’m proud of the work we’ve all accomplished together and look forward to watching its continued growth.”

Prior to his role as MySpace COO, Mr. Jones founded and operated several online businesses, including Userplane, a leading provider of tools for online communities such as MySpace. Userplane was acquired in 2006 by AOL, where Jones subsequently served as a senior vice president and focused on social media monetization and also pioneered the distribution of widgets and other technology to Web publishers. He also was founder and CEO of Tsavo Media, an online content and search network developing next-generation publishing platforms and technology services.

Since joining MySpace, Mr. Hirschhorn oversaw all aspects of product development, and previously has led both start-up and established online businesses. He was president of Sling Media, Inc.’s Entertainment Group, which created consumer-driven applications and services for the Slingbox device, and was chief digital officer at MTV Networks, where he oversaw the company’s digital media businesses, products and strategies. Hirschhorn joined MTV Networks following the acquisition of his company, Mischief New Media, which provided interactive services to the entertainment industry.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/that-was-fast-owen-van-natta-out-at-myspace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100125/social-media-storytelling-at-sundance-myspace-youtube-and-oprah-dudes-and-also-my-twitter-hating-mom-discuss/ http://allthingsd.com/20100125/social-media-storytelling-at-sundance-myspace-youtube-and-oprah-dudes-and-also-my-twitter-hating-mom-discuss/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:01:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23364 On Friday, BoomTown was back at the Sundance Film Festival for the fifth time for my annual techie panel at the famous independent film confab.

This year, we opened the New Frontier on Main series with a session titled, “Spotlight on Social Media: Successful Strategies for Storytellers.”

Panelists included Robert Tercek, president of digital media for OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network; filmmaker Ondi Timoner; Chris Gebhardt, head of Participant Media’s TakePart social media platform, which just sold a documentary featuring Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT); David Eun, head of film partnerships for Google (GOOG) video unit YouTube; Jason Hirschhorn, chief product officer of News Corp. (NWS) social site MySpace; and Matt Jacobson, Facebook’s market development exec.

The conversation was super lively about how social tools can bring filmmakers closer to their audience–before, during and after a work’s creation. There was also a lot of talk about how the Web gives movies with little chance of theatrical distribution more opportunity to be seen and possibly make money.

But still, with ever more disaggregation of entertainment and the confusing array of new mobile devices to receive content, it is not clear that Silicon Valley can save the day for anyone trying to reignite the indie space via software, hardware or any Web innovation.

Incredibly, Oprah dude Tercek ignored my brilliant idea for an Oprah-cam attached to the television host’s head. As in Oprah 24-7! Talk about social storytelling!

Here are my video interviews on this and more with three of the panelists–Hirschhorn, Tercek and Eun–as well as thoughts from my mother, Lucky, who most recently was bashing Twitter in this column and does so again here (although she said she would be happy to watch a movie via magic glasses).

Also, at the end of the video, I ski and use my Flip camera, for no good reason.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100125/social-media-storytelling-at-sundance-myspace-youtube-and-oprah-dudes-and-also-my-twitter-hating-mom-discuss/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100121/boomtown-heads-to-sundance-film-festival-in-the-fifth-annual-meet-the-geeks-pilgrimage/ http://allthingsd.com/20100121/boomtown-heads-to-sundance-film-festival-in-the-fifth-annual-meet-the-geeks-pilgrimage/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:19:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23327

Today, BoomTown is loading the wife and kids, along with mom, into our tricked-out All Things Digital Winnebago and heading to Park City, Utah, for the 26th Sundance Film Festival.

Now, what I know about independent filmmaking could fit neatly into a thimble, with room to spare.

But what has brought me back there for five years running is the chance to introduce those auteurs gathered on the frozen tundra to a slice of what’s to come from the digital world–for Sundance’s terrific New Frontier on Main series.

Increasingly, that matters a lot to those who make movies, especially those associated with smaller film efforts that might never see the light of a theater projector.

Thus, the tech sessions at Sundance are packed to the gills, with huge crowds turned away, because Hollywood knows what’s coming, and it has increasingly less control over it.

Imagine, for example, what the Apple (AAPL) tablet will mean to media giants in relation to entertainment distribution. And exactly how might you tell a story on a smartphone? Or not!

They can’t say they were not warned.

Last year, I interviewed a trio panelists: Chad Hurley, co-founder and CEO of the Google (GOOG) video service YouTube; Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, the premium online video service and joint venture among News Corp. (NWS), Disney (DIS) and GE’s (GE) NBC Universal; and Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix (NFLX), the largest online DVD rental service, which has been moving into an ever wider range of movie distribution on the Web.

This year, my panel–which takes place Friday at noon and runs 90 minutes–is titled: “Spotlight on Social Media: Successful Strategies for Storytellers.”

Here’s the description:

“Today’s social media sites have the potential to bring content creators closer to audiences than ever before–creating new marketing opportunities for independents. But what more can be achieved? Can we create meaningful experiences through our profiles pages, or is it all just self-promotional clutter? Are the popular sites we use today the end of the line, or just a peek into the future?”

In other words: Will Twitter’s 140-character influence murder all creativity? Or just bruise it a little bit?

The subjects of my prying interview questions on this important issue include Robert Tercek, president of digital media for OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network; filmmaker Ondi Timoner; Chris Gebhardt, head of Participant Media’s TakePart social media platform; David Eun, head of film partnerships for YouTube; MySpace’s Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn; and Matt Jacobson, Facebook’s market development dude.

Whatever that means, since the hot Silicon Valley social networking site has done little in the way of storytelling as yet and much more in the way of pokes!

But, as ever, I shall strive to drag answers about innovation and more out of the lot of them.

Video to come, of course!

So, until I get there and thaw out the Flip digital video camera, here is my longish video from last year with the panelists, as well as cameos from my kids and once-indie film star and now TV hit queen Jane Lynch.

And below that, my 2008 Sundance video featuring Lynch and MySpace co-founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe.

And if you want to know even more about Sundance, there is a new app on the iPhone for the festival. It costs $4.99, with the proceeds benefiting the not-for-profit Sundance Institute.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100121/boomtown-heads-to-sundance-film-festival-in-the-fifth-annual-meet-the-geeks-pilgrimage/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091208/video-google-real-time-search-event-plus-noshing/ http://allthingsd.com/20091208/video-google-real-time-search-event-plus-noshing/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:03:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21660

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Here is a short video BoomTown did at the Google search event yesterday, where the company launched a number of new features to its flagship offering–most of all, comprehensive real-time search.

Innovations also included a hopped-up mobile translation service, voice-querying in Japanese and Google Goggles, which searches from pictures you take on your mobile device.

This video includes one of the real-time data partners that Google (GOOG) announced today, MySpace’s Chief of Products Jason Hirschhorn, as well as Google PR dude Nate Tyler and a view of the superior spread the company put out for the occasion–unlike the food-free Bing search event by Microsoft (MSFT) a week ago.

Here is the video of Google’s presentation, which took place at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley:

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