BoomTown always enjoys the maiden voyage of a newly public company, so liveblogging Demand Media’s first quarterly earnings seems like a must-do.

It’s also the first public outing for CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who has sold off his previous entrepreneurial efforts.

And it seems like a good start, as the Santa Monica, Calif.-based online content company, which had its IPO in late January, finally out to rest some controversy about how much is actually earns by posting $1 million in net income in the last three months of 2010.

Okay, that is a weensy amount, to be sure, but it beat expectations, as well as for revenue, with sales of $73.6 million for the fourth quarter.

Of course, Demand wants Wall Street to look at “Adjusted OIBDA” results, which was up 88 percent, and which it is a much prettier $20.1 million in earnings.

Also on deck, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kakfa noted today:

“Expect to hear at least one riff on whether or not the company feels threatened by Google and changes the search engine is making to push “content farms” out of its results. CEO Richard Rosenblatt insists that his company is not a content farm, and that Google is just fine with his stuff, but I have a feeling the issue won’t go away just yet.”

We’ll see–here we go:

2:05 pm PT: It took me a bit to get into this conference call, since I could not get the live broadcast from the Web site at all and the teleconference operators were snoozing.

And I tuned in just as Rosenblatt (pictured here) was talking about how Demand was helping people get information about how to ripen avocados.

No, really.

(Memo to self: Curb the snotty journalist tone, especially since I love me a good, ripe avocado.)

Rosenblatt, who seems only a little nervous, pressed on by talking about its massive eHow site, as well as Cracked.com and other major branded sites Demand has.

The latest is TypeF women’s health and beauty site, which is guided by supermodel Tyra Banks.

Rosenblatt then linked it all to advertisers and how much they want to spend on sites like this.

“We are not limited to just a few key verticals,” he said, touting its sales staff, including Rosenblatt’s daring raid of Chief Revenue Officer Joanne Bradford from Yahoo.

“The company is well positioned to capture an increasing share of brand revenue,” said Rosenblatt.

2:18 pm: Rosenblatt then zeroed in on the juicy issues, which center around the quality of the content Demand churns out.

Or, as critics have argued, lack of quality.

“The level of specificity is arcane to some,” noted Rosenblatt, using the example of flying paper lanterns and how to make a roof rake as examples of the kind of niche content Demand produces.

Arcane is right, but it takes all kinds!

Plus, insisted Rosenblatt, it’s good! Accurate! Edited! Useful!

He took the gloves off here, which made me want a Demand piece about taking care of leather gloves (linseed oil?).

“We’re just getting started,” said Rosenblatt, about the company and not the glove care tips.

2:24 pm: The CEO turned it over to the CFO, Charles Hilliard, which meant I was off on my critical Web search about taking care of my gloves.

That’s because he immediately said: “Adjusted OIBDA.”

Which-let’s be honest–sounds like a communicable disease.

Essentially, said Hilliard, it’s up, up, up for Demand, in terms of revenue, earnings, page views and more.

You can read all these gory financial details in the press release here.

For some reason, Hilliard is using the retail term, “same store sales,” as a comparison. I covered retails for years, so it is a surprise for this to be the metaphor, but Demand obviously sees itself as a content store.

2:39 pm: Q&A time and the Google-fights-spam question came first!

Rosenblatt said he welcomed it and appeared unconcerned. His avocado-ripening, roof-rake-making, flying-lantern company needed to make no excuses!

The next question is about expansion, including internationally. Sure, Western Europe.

Then, a sneaky follow-up on content farms.

“We consider ourself very white hat,” declared Rosenblatt.

I wonder what the best way to clean a white hat is?

Voila! It’s right here on eHow:

“1. Wash your white hat in the washing machine if it is made of cotton or polyester. Just add laundry detergent and one cup of bleach. Wash the hat using the hot water setting. Do not put the hat in the dryer. The hat will shrink and then it won’t fit your head.”

Call the Pulitzer Prize committee!

(Wait, snotty again! I also love clean, white hats.)

I was so riveted by the white-hat thing, I completely missed the next question, but tuned in again to one about revenue momentum.

Essentially, Bradford–who looks great in a white hat, I might add–is on the case.

Then some internal technical questions and about guidance for Q1. CFO Hilliard said that the company was guiding for growth, despite more public company expenses.

(Needless to say, you can find out about how to run a public company here on eHow.)

The last question was about how much branded advertising will make up total revenue. Between five and 10 percent of 2010, said Hilliard, but it is the fastest category of growth.

And also one about curation of content and use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for feedback.

Rosenblatt said that feedback can even become content, which will be part of new eHow redesign to come.

Want some tips on that? Of course, Demand Media has the answer, at least to this easy question.

Although there have already been several big-deal books on Google already–including Ken Auletta’s “Googled,” which was bought by Hollywood for a movie–a new pair is about to debut in coming months.

One is penned by prominent Silicon Valley journalist Steven Levy, who had a lot of access to the Google and its denizens, and the other is what appears to be an insiderish tell-all by a former employee.

That would be “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59,” which sounds naughtier than it probably is.

Reads the Amazon description of the book, coming out in mid-July, in part:

“Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. No academic analysis or bystander’s account can capture it. Now Douglas Edwards, Employee Number 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers a chance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie and competition at this phenomenal company.”

Apparently, Edwards was the search giant’s first director of marketing and brand management, although I do not recall him at all from when I covered the company in its early days.

Actually, the book likely to get more attention–and written by someone I do know well–is Levy’s, coming out in mid-April and titled “In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.”

That would be the Googleplex in Moutain View, Calif., where Levy was ensconced for a while.

It will be interesting to see what he comes out with, given he seems to have been up close and personal for Google’s two biggest crossroads–the rise of its Android mobile operating system and the rise of social networking giant Facebook.

So too, the recent hand-over of top management from CEO Eric Schmidt to co-founder Larry Page, which will take place right around when Levy’s book comes out.

While business tomes, especially ones on Internet companies, have yet to make big bank, the topic will be much in the news then.

In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news and opinion sites.

As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–who was derided by some when she co-founded the left-leaning site in 2005 with investor and well-known communications exec Kenneth Lerer–will become president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group within AOL.

The deal was signed late this afternoon, and the board of directors of each company and shareholders of the privately held Huffington Post have approved the transaction.

In an exclusive video interview BoomTown conducted earlier today in Dallas, just before Super Bowl XLV, both Armstrong and Huffington were jovial that the whirlwind deal, begun in November, actually worked out so quickly.

Perhaps giddy, they hit upon a common motto:

“One plus one equals 11.”

Get it? One and one next to each other is the number 11!

Let’s move on, shall we?

AOL said it is expected to close in the late-first or early-second quarter of 2011.

Once culminated, it will put Huffington in charge of all AOL content and other properties, including well-known names such as Engadget, Moviefone, MapQuest and TechCrunch.

She said she plans to move to New York from Los Angeles, although she will also maintain her longtime Brentwood home there.

And content for all these sites will be integrated deeply into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.

More to the point, the flashy acquisition–which essentially came together in less than two weeks in January–will become the linchpin of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse.

For AOL, the deal gives it a popular branded site that is very good at generating lots of page views and impressions very efficiently–which is the company’s whole thrust these days.

That means lots more ad inventory to sell and an injection of content talent, giving AOL the scale it desperately needs.

The move also obviously gives AOL a much-needed editorial identity and cohesion, which it doesn’t really have.

In fact, many think AOL needs a rallying point to bring clarity to its hodgepodge of recent acquisitions that all center on the notion that a strong company has yet to emerge in the premium content space.

Here is a mock-up of the front page of AOL tonight (click on it to make it larger):

While it all makes for a riveting narrative by the charming Armstrong, AOL still has not delivered the business turnaround promised after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009.

Wall Street, which has given Armstrong a lot of rope, has become more impatient of late to see results–especially more robust increases in its display advertising business, as its access business dies off–after AOL spun off from Time Warner in 2009.

In its quarterly report last week, AOL reported earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $596 million.

But, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

The bigger picture is that Armstrong’s turnaround is still in progress. Ad revenue was down 29 percent in the last quarter, although that number is worse than it looks. A big chunk of the decline comes from moves AOL has intentionally made that will cut revenue in the short run in return for more profitable sales down the road.

A more representative data set for Armstrong are his display ad sales, which are down 14 percent overall and eight percent in the U.S..

The bad news is that the rest of the Web ad industry is well into rebound mode; the good news is that AOL has trained Wall Street to expect numbers like these. If you’re waiting to see positive sales numbers, Armstrong said during AOL’s earnings call this morning, wait until the second half of this year.

In any case, the move is a good one for the Huffington Post since it will vault it to the next level of growth.

Other companies, such as Yahoo and NBC Universal, had looked at the company as a purchase target, and many expected it to eventually sell out to a larger company.

Sources close to the Huffington Post said that that outcome seemed the most likely, and the recent expansion of the site and its audience made it a good time to do a deal now.

Talks with Yahoo last year went nowhere, sources said, but Armstrong was not as slow to act.

Indeed, the actual deal happened quickly, said Armstrong and Huffington in a video interview with BoomTown earlier today (which you can see here).

The pair started talking in early November of last year at the Quadrangle Conference in New York and continued their discussions through the holidays.

Armstrong made the official offer to Huffington by phone in January, while she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he was snowed in in New York.

Five time multiple to the Huffington Post’s upward of $60 million in expected revenue for the coming year, and nearly 10 times the $31 million for 2010, the offer was accepted quickly.

AOL used cash for $300 million of the purchase and $15 million in stock for the rest.

“The idea of turning a fire hose of traffic onto our content made enormous sense,” said one person close to the situation. “Everything is changing so fast, it seemed like the time was right.”

An IPO was also considered for the Huffington Post, sources said. But since the site only recently moved into profitability–although barely–such an event would have been farther out.

That’s despite the fact that the Huffington Post has seen fast-growing traffic and influence, spurred in part by Huffington’s larger-than-life persona in both the mainstream media and blogosphere.

The wide-ranging site–which has added a number of content areas in recent years beyond its flagship political offering–currently has almost 26 million unique monthly visitors, according to recent stats, moving in close range to established news organizations such as the New York Times.

That kind of success seemed unlikely when the Huffington Post launched on May 9, 2005, positioning itself as as a liberal counterweight to the popular right-leaning Drudge Report.

But the Huffington Post’s heady mix of celebrity bloggers, personality and voice, as well as aggressive curation of links from other sites, quickly caught on.

To fund its efforts, the New York-based online media company has raised $37 million from angel investors such as Lerer–the largest individual shareholder, followed closely by Huffington–and venture firms such as Greycroft Partners, Softbank Capital and Oak Investment Partners.

The growth has not been without controversy around issues such as lack of payments to bloggers who contribute and accusations that the site uses too much content from other Web sources when linking.

And Huffington herself has also been a lightning rod, which has been both positive and negative for the site.

But, there is no question she is one of the Web’s most prominent players, along with writing books, appearing on television frequently and being a fixture at high-profile events in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

That includes a never-ending panoply of parties that feature a potent mix of movie stars, corporate poo-bahs, glad-handing politicians and lots of journalists from all over the media.

In fact, full disclosure, I was at one of those parties this past weekend for actor Colin Firth and others involved in the making of the Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech.” (Apropos of nothing, actor Helena Bonham Carter is as smart as you would expect, but much more delicate.)

As part of the AOL deal, CEO Eric Hippeau–who has been integral to professionalizing the business and will be joining Lerer Ventures–and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman will leave the Huffington Post.

Ironically, Coleman was replaced by Armstrong as head of ad sales at AOL after he took over as CEO. Coleman got a big payout and will now apparently get another.

But the rest of the 200 Huffington Post employees are moving over to AOL with Huffington, who Armstrong hopes will be the company’s ace in the content hole going forward.

There are likely to be changes to come too at AOL, within weeks, especially in its content-side management and site staffs.

AOL provided some quotes in support of the deal from prominent Internet figures who know Huffington well.

“Arianna is one of the preeminent authors and editors of our time, and Tim has a remarkable track record of business success,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “Bringing them together creates tremendous potential for AOL.”

And Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said:

“Editorial vision and leadership are essential in order to transmute our shared cacophony of voices into a valuable dialogue. Arianna’s expertise, empathy, and entrepreneurial enthusiasm forms a kind of alchemy turning mere words and phrases into powerful expressions of humanity.”

Inter-Internet harmony: How sweet!

Here is the official press release, with all the details, but there is also an 8 am ET AOL conference call tomorrow:

AOL AGREES TO ACQUIRE THE HUFFINGTON POST

Acquisition Will Solidify AOL’s Strategy of Creating a Premier Content Network With Local, National and International Reach

Arianna Huffington To Lead Newly Formed The Huffington Post Media Group Which Will Integrate All Huffington Post and AOL Content, Including News, Tech, Women, Local, Multicultural, Entertainment, Video, Community, and More

The New Combined Media Group Will Reach 117 Million Americans and 270 Million Globally

Group Uniquely Positioned To Redefine the Future of Brand Advertising and Marketing For an Engaged and Influential Audience

New York, NY–February 7, 2011–AOL Inc. [NYSE:AOL] announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.

The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age–leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.

The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.

As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

“The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.”

Armstrong continued, “Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company.”

“This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us,” said Huffington. “The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years–though now at light speed–by combining with AOL. Our readers will still be able to come to the Huffington Post at the same URL, and find all the same content they’ve grown to love, plus a lot more–more local, more tech, more entertainment, more finance, and lots more video. We are fusing a legendary and powerful new media brand with a vibrant, innovative news organization, known for its distinctive voice, a highly engaged audience, an expertise in community-building, and a track record for demystifying the news and putting flesh and blood on the data while drawing our audience into the conversation.”

Huffington continued, “By uniting AOL and The Huffington Post, we are creating one of the largest destinations for smart content and community on the Internet. And we intend to keep making it better and better.”

Kenneth Lerer, The Huffington Post’s Co-Founder and Chairman, said, “The Huffington Post team has created a potent brand with the proven track record of knowing how to grow traffic, inform and entertain its readers and build a one-of-a-kind online community. Add that to the powerful scale and resources of AOL and you have the perfect combination for today and the future. Together these two companies will be a premier online content provider. From local citizen reporting through AOL’s Patch, to The Huffington Post’s national reporting on politics, business and culture, consumers will have access to everything they want whenever they want it.”

AOL has agreed to purchase The Huffington Post for $315 million, approximately $300 million of which will be paid in cash funded from cash on hand. The Huffington Post is privately owned by its two cofounders, as well as a group of investors. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of government approvals. The boards of directors of each company and shareholders of The Huffington Post have approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter 2011.

The Huffington Post over-indexes on educated, affluent users, reaching the key decision makers in C-suites around the globe. The Huffington Post speaks to this influential audience via a host of prominent voices on its group blog. Among those who have blogged on The Huffington Post are: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Larry Page, Diane Sawyer, Buzz Aldrin, Nora Ephron, Bill Maher, Madeleine Albright, Robert Redford, Katie Couric, Neil Young, Rahm Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Al Franken, Ari Emanuel, Harry Shearer, Senator John Kerry, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Madonna, Lawrence Summers, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Craig Newmark, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Russell Simmons, Sean Penn, Bill Gates, Norman Lear, Charlie Rose, Elizabeth Warren, Tavis Smiley, Sheryl Sandberg, George Clooney, and former President Bill Clinton. And the audience speaks back, generating four million comments a month***.

The Huffington Post’s affluent, influential audience, that is growing at a rate of 22 percent (December 2009 vs. December 2010)****, when combined with AOL’s massive scale, video offerings and local expertise, will represent an incredibly desirable demographic for a broad range of advertising partners across the board.

And here is Armstrong’s internal memo to the AOL staff:

AOLers,

We are taking another major step in the comeback of AOL. Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet. We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world–The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet.

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader–one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information. Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience. By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable–social, local, video, mobile and tablet.

The Huffington Post is core to our strategy and our 80:80:80 focus–80% of domestic spending is done by women, 80% of commerce happens locally and 80% of considered purchases are driven by influencers. The influencer part of the strategy is important and will be potent.

The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women’s content. In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone. Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people–the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information. Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space.

Arianna Huffington is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Internet space and someone that is even more successful in building communities and relationships in every corner of the globe. The Huffington Post and Arianna have created a company that has partnered with the most successful and well-known leaders in all aspects of society that touch important topics to give consumers direct access to the most influential decision makers and community leaders.

This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more. This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post. Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market:

* Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

* The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet. It grew 22% last year–that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% – and 15x as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

* Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.

* AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

* Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way.

To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group. Within this group will be AOL Media, AOL Local & Mapping, AOL Search and our new friends at The Huffington Post. We will continue operating the towns structure, AOL.com and HuffingtonPost.com.

I’m thrilled to announce that Arianna Huffington will join AOL’s executive team as President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. We have asked Jon Brod to lead the overall operational integration on the AOL side of the combined entities. Jon will lead the local group integration and work closely with David Eun and the teams in AOL Media. We will work quickly with The Huffington Post to create a combined organizational design to coincide with the deal closing. While we wait for the required regulatory reviews to be completed and the transaction to close before implementing the design, we will move very quickly to plan the details of the integration of the two companies. To this end, we will announce the new organizational structure as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we will continue creating great content and products for our consumers within the town structure and stay laser-focused on the aggressive goals we have set for our winter luge. We are on the right track and will continue our weekly operating cadence and town structure to drive successful results against our company goals.

Here’s a special message for all of you we taped to welcome The Huffington Post and Arianna to our AOL Family:

http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2011/02/aol-agrees-buy-huffington-post

And of course we wanted to welcome Arianna to our “You’ve Got” video of the day–check her out on AOL.com.

We will be holding a company all hands meeting to address your questions related to today’s exciting news. We will video conference from our New York office on the 6th Floor at 9:30 AM ET and will be joined by Arianna Huffington and key executives from her organization. We will also be holding a call for our west coast offices at 2:00 PM ET and for our Patch offices at 2:45 PM ET. See below for meeting info (conference rooms will be sent out shortly).

AOL is playing to win…and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet. Let’s go get it done.

–TA

(More full disclosure: As has been previously reported by MediaMemo, All Things Digital had the briefest and most preliminary of discussions with Armstrong about moving to AOL last year, while exploring several other options. All’s well that ended well: We stayed at Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.)

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser is still the world’s most popular, but its dominance is being steadily eroded by competition from Mozilla, Google and Apple. Can a new, aggressive approach to privacy change that? Can Microsoft really protect users from tracking across the Web–and do users really care?

Dean Hachamovitch, who oversees IE for Microsoft as a corporate VP, gives Walt Mossberg an update on the browser wars.

Greetings! We’ll be starting shortly. If you were in the room right now with our select crowd, you would have just heard some Aerosmith. And now, one of my favorite Van Morrison songs : “Jackie Wilson Said.” Also, we’re not using the classic red D interview chairs for this one. Going with a kind of teal blue. Now you know!

Some Isley Brothers now.

Some Elvis Costello. Don’t know this one, though.

And…here’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Kara is wearing something that might have been bedazzled. Walt’s wearing Waltwear.

An update on the state of the ATD empire, which is getting much bigger.

Walt brings on Dean Hachamovitch.

Dean, by the way, is wearing a black long-sleeve shirt that says “private” in big white letters. Hope someone asks him about it.

Ah, and Dean has a “private” shirt for Walt, too. We’ll get to privacy in a bit, it seems.

DEAN: Working on IE 9, in beta, downloaded over 20 million times. Most important is its performance. It’s amazingly fast. Also, it blurs the boundary between Web sites and apps. And also, some talk about privacy.

WALT: Okay, that was a nice ad. But please talk about reports that you’ve been eclipsed in Europe by Firefox.

DEAN: Yes, we used to have 90 percent market share back in the ’90s. But now we look at how many people choose to use our most recent versions. “We are delighted that IE 6 market share is going down. We are delighted that IE 7 market share is going down.”

DEAN: And bear in mind how much the Internet is growing. “There are a lot of different factors. It’s a very complex situation.”

WALT: Okay, on to privacy. Safari used to have some kind of privacy feature, but that’s old. Then in IE 8, you introduced a new feature, not by default, which tried to extend that protection to other sites on the Web you traveled to.

DEAN: You were describing “over the shoulder privacy.” But we’re also concerned about tracking. There are two kinds of tracking: “Expected tracking” and “creepy stalking.”

Pandora and Amazon are expected tracking. You want them to know what you’re doing. But the important thing is that you have visibility and control, and you get benefits.

For instance, when I go to Amazon, they know that I bought Spice Girls and Fergie, and they tell me other stuff I should get.

WALT: Some of that tracking isn’t sophisticated enough.

DEAN: Anyway, creepy stalking is bad. Because consumers aren’t aware of what’s going on, and they don’t have control of it.

WALT: We don’t allow slides at our conferences usually, but we’re going to make an exception. Please show us some slides!

Dean is showing people a monitor that shows you what cookies were attached to a certain NPR page, which includes tracking info that comes from Facebook integration.

Now a Fox News page with similar info.

A reminder that cookies, by the way, aren’t the only tracking info involved here. Also pixels, etc.

But even once you root around and look at the pixels and tracking info, you might not really understand what you’re looking at or who is behind them.

WALT: Microsoft is a big Internet advertiser and publisher. Don’t you do some of this stuff?

DEAN: Yes, and in addition to us and Google, etc, there is an amazing ecosystem of information brokers. There’s a huge industry around this.

WALT: So what’s coming?

DEAN: With the new rev of IE 9, first quarter of 2011, you’ll be able to “go to a Web page, click on a button and you’ll be protected from tracking.” Any Web page can do this.

It will block content on that page. It will be an open publishing platform.

WALT: Why would a publisher want to do this? They have a legitmate need to want to know things about you, to serve you better ads, right?

DEAN: We have a lot of interest from a lot of different organizations that want to make lists. Publishers, government agencies, consumer advocacy, etc.

WALT: So, I have to download a list from someone I trust to make this work. Will you maintain this list?

DEAN: No. People will find these lists the same way that they find other things on the Web they like. From Facebook, or friends, or wherever.

We think it’s important to have people exercise judgment in making these lists. The most important thing is that you go off to the Web and find one you have confidence in.

WALT: But why do I have to hope that I go to sites that have these buttons?

WALT and DEAN are trying to explain how the list and button combination will work. Frankly, I’m confused. We’ll have to circle back to this.

WALT: A cynical journalist might suggest that you’re embracing privacy and wearing a shirt because Firefox et al are eating your lunch.

DEAN: Paying Windows customers want a great experience that includes privacy, including through their browser. But another way to view people who use browsers is that they’re objects to be boxed and sold. We don’t believe that. We believe Windows customers should have a great experience with their browser.

WALT: As opposed to?

DEAN: Well, Chrome, for instance, is funded by advertising.

WALT: So is The Wall Street Journal.

DEAN: I think advertising is great. But be careful about connecting advertising with tracking. We have advertising customers, and we want them to be delighted. And we have Windows customers, and we want them to be delighted. We have a unique position on this that gives us an opporunity to lead.

WALT: All the other browsers have a privacy mode.

DEAN: But that’s for “over the shoulder” privacy, not tracking.

WALT: Some of this tracking stuff is very hard to block. Can you really protect a user from all of it?

DEAN: Good question. Flash, for instance, enables tracking “Flash cookies” and they’re inherent in Flash. Only way to turn them off is to turn Flash off.

WALT: So this won’t block Flash cookies?

DEAN: It will if you tell it to.

WALT: But that’s pretty extreme.

DEAN: Yes. We’re touching on the ambiguity to the consumer about what actually is important and worthwhile tracking, and what isn’t.

We want to help consumers make progress being in control, but it’s a work in progress. It’s happening in Berkeley and in Brussels.

WALT: Let’s switch gears. Some people, not mainstream people, are debating whether the future of entertainment and progress and productivity will be on the browser and in the cloud. Google is pushing that via Chrome OS, and they also have Android apps that store local cloud on the device. Where do you come down on that?

DEAN: It’s a great case of “and”–you’ll have local apps and cloud versions. Like with Office mail, etc. We’re doing work on speed and safety so you can feel more comfortable in the cloud. “I think it’s the best of both worlds.”

WALT: So not a religious issue? Just practicality?

DEAN: Yes.

Questions and Answers

Q: What do you think of what the FTC says about privacy?

DEAN: The paper they put out in December is a good framework. And they’ve responded positively to what we’ve put out. They’re in favor of self-regulation, and we’re eager to work with them. I’ve had conversations with them, and what they say makes sense.

WALT: You’ve been talking to competitors about working together on this?

DEAN: We’ve been talking across the industry.

Q: Who is supposed to make banking, etc., more secure? This isn’t just about someone saying something on Facebook, but opening up the wrong window and having your bank account drained.

DEAN: We take it very seriously. “Security is an industry issue. I have to say it that way, because anything that we can talk about here has multiple parties involved.” if your Facebook is hacked, was it using your banking password?

Q: I’m talking about a national security issue.

DEAN: There’s a lot of working going on within the industry, working with law enformecement, to make things more secure.

WALT: But since you have the biggest market share, there’s a lot of responsibility on you. What do you do about that?

DEAN: Well, one thing we do is put out updates every eight weeks, because things change.

But really, “the best thing you can do to remain secure is to keep all your bits updated….That would make such a difference.”

Q: Firefox has plug-ins like AdBlock, that let you block ads. They seem to be effective at blocking things like beacons, too. Are they effective and can you do something analogous?

DEAN: Add-ins require installation, etc. You need a list, too. But we’re building that functionality into IE, so you don’t need to download anything else. We’re also working with people who make lists for AdBlock Plus, and they’re eager to work with IE 9 as well.

WALT: But AdBlock blocks ads, too. You’re not going to do that, right?

DEAN: It comes down to the list. If a list author lists sites that involve ads, then they’ll go away, too.

WALT: So you could surf the Web without seeing ads?

DEAN: It depends on the list.

WALT: I do think ads are good, by the way. [Me too!]

DEAN: Right. “Ads are great!”

But this is one of the reasons the ad industry wants to create lists for this. So they can distinguish tracking from nontracking.

Q: You’ve been talking about desktop browsers. Will these features come to mobile as well?

DEAN: “We’ll be talking about our mobile browser very soon, and I’ll just smile, and you can infer from that.”

Q: How much more value does tracking really add to advertising?

DEAN: Hard for me to answer that. Maybe the next time you have one of these things, you could have someone from the ad industry.

WALT: Good idea.

And we’re done.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/live-microsoft-browser-boss-dean-hachamovitch-at-dces/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101230/2010-was-the-year-the-internet-got-scary-get-used-to-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20101230/2010-was-the-year-the-internet-got-scary-get-used-to-it/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 15:00:46 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=1112

I can’t remember a year during which computer security stories jumped so readily from the tech and business pages to the front page.

The year 2010 was bookended by two such cases. It opened with Google’s disclosure that it had come under attack in China, an apparent attempt to penetrate the Gmail accounts of certain activists and journalists.

It ended with the WikiLeaks affair, which stemmed from the alleged theft by an Army private of classified documents stored on a government network.

And let’s not forget in mid-year came the story, as fascinating as it was sobering, of Stuxnet, a computer worm developed by parties unknown–although the smart money is on Israel–that penetrated and ultimately damaged equipment used in the Iranian nuclear program.

Computer hacking–which has for too long evoked images in the public mind-set of teenagers in basements taking digital joyrides–has finally revealed itself to everyone for what it has long been for those in the know: The domain of espionage, sabotage and possibly warfare.

In Google’s case, the attacks upon its systems raised questions about where it draws the line with authorities in Beijing about such matters as freedom of speech. When the attack was first disclosed, Google publicly mulled shutting down its operations in China.

Then in protest, it stopped censoring its search results, giving mainland Chinese access to the same search results available to residents of Hong Kong. Beijing responded by blocking access to Google’s site.

Finally, Google and China came to a new agreement, and Google appeared the loser in the battle of wills.

Computer security is one of those things that companies and governments say they take seriously, but never really seem to get a grip on, judging by the results.

In any case, there is no firewall or software in existence that could have prevented Bradley Manning from stealing the documents that he is alleged to have given to WikiLeaks. As a low-level Army intelligence analyst, he was a trusted insider who had access to this material in the course of his day-to-day job.

So, it was not technology that failed. The failure was one of internal policies that allowed him access to data not relevant to his position.

Any employee of a midsize company can see how wrong that is. Human-resources documents are limited only to those who work in that department. The same is true of people who work in the legal office, business development department and so on.

But it apparently didn’t occur to anyone in government to limit the access to what became the WikiLeaks cache to people who worked only for or closely with the State Department.

If it turns out that thousands of companies are better at protecting their business secrets than the U.S. government is, then it’s not for nothing that the Central Intelligence Agency task force investigating the WikiLeaks affair bears the initials “WTF.”

Something similar was true of Stuxnet. One of the reasons the attackers, whoever they are, succeeded was that they used several so-called “zero day” vulnerabilities in Windows.

These are undocumented weaknesses that hackers save up for special occasions as a way to open a back door into a computer and then insert a troublemaking payload, like a worm. Zero day exploits are a fact of life, and once spotted in the world, they’re usually patched.

The Stuxnet attackers used as many as four zero day exploits as a way to get their worm into targeted computers. Microsoft, to its credit, made short work of fixing them once they came to light.

Even so, the Stuxnet worm burrowed its way from Windows machines into industrial control computers known as SCADA systems, which are widely used to run factories, power plants, pipelines and all sorts of other infrastructure essential to modern life.

The worm was designed to find a specific target: The systems controlling a set of as many as 1,000 centrifuges at the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, and make them spin faster than they were supposed to.

The ability to attack industrial computers and cause them to do things they’re not supposed to do has been a lingering fear among security experts for years. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy in 2007 looked at the potential for attacks on SCADA systems and proved that it was possible to seize control of an electrical generator and then make it destroy itself.

They also found that many of these systems are connected to the Internet for what seem like good reasons: Convenience and cost savings. But these connections have also opened them up to the same kind of attacks that rattled the Iranian facility in Natanz.

Another Stuxnet-like worm, the thinking goes, could be used to bring down a power grid, or poison drinking water, or shut down an oil or gas pipeline. The good news is that such an attack is expensive–Stuxnet, by one estimate, cost $10 million to create–and requires a lot of specialized insider knowledge.

The bad news is that the Stuxnet source code is circulating in the wild for anyone to study. And as the WikiLeaks case shows, there are often insiders willing to take part in criminal schemes.

The other bad news? Securing these systems won’t come cheap.

If history is any judge, there will likely be a barrage of computer security companies that try to spin these incidents into opportunities to make a sales pitch. That’s what security companies do, after all.

But they usually miss the point. How can you plan for a vulnerability you’ve never seen? How can you stop an otherwise trusted insider from abusing their access to sensitive information? Both are fundamentally difficult problems for which there are no easy answers.

Spending money on last year’s security vulnerabilities is like preparing to fight the last war: Circumstances inevitably change, and they certainly will in 2011. New kinds of attacks will arise, and they will catch their targets by surprise.

And the public, like the CIA, will reasonably ask, “WTF?”

The unvarnished fact is that the networked society to which we’ve become accustomed in the last several years has a soft, vulnerable underbelly.

And the more we rely upon it, the more people with a combination of advanced technical skills and repugnant motivations are going to look for ways to turn it against us.

Some will do so as a means of making a personal profit. Others may see it as a way of advancing a political or ideological agenda.

But others will want to use theirs skills to do serious harm to innocent people on a large scale.

And the events of 2010 point the way to a world where that’s a more realistic scenario than it ever was before.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101230/2010-was-the-year-the-internet-got-scary-get-used-to-it/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101203/back-in-the-day-with-woz-a-sneak-peek-inside-the-new-and-improved-computer-history-museum/ http://allthingsd.com/20101203/back-in-the-day-with-woz-a-sneak-peek-inside-the-new-and-improved-computer-history-museum/#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:51:56 +0000 Drake Martinet http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33419

What could be better than listening to legendary Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak wax poetic about his first and favorite gadget–which turns out to be a transistor radio?

Well, doing it inside the newly renovated Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., certainly raises the geek factor to 10.

The museum has spent the last five years planning and installing “Revolution: The First 2,000 Years of Computing” and will open the doors to the public on January 10, 2011. That’s “011011,” Woz reminded the small crowd of journalists invited for an early tour of the new Silicon Valley facility.

The museum has more than doubled its public space to accommodate the new exhibit, which includes an impressive collection of the rare, revolutionary and ridiculous–mostly relating to computing from the 1950s onward.

The whole shebang was largely funded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose name features prominently in the signage.

Woz led a tour that highlighted some of the machines that meant most to him. He recounted hours spent at the IBM Model 026 punch card machine, and fawned over a Honeywell Kitchen Computer.

That device was originally sold by Neiman Marcus, complete with mod ’60s styling and bearing the “Mad Men”-esque slogan: “If only she could cook as well as the Honeywell computes.”

Woz said it was the machine that inspired him to believe computers could be attractive things for the home.

After a long meander through many, many more Woz-ly musings, the tour ended at the Homebrew Computer Club exhibit, complete with an Apple 1–signed by Woz–basically identical to the one that recently sold at Christie’s of London for $210,000. (Woz flew there and signed that one too.)

Once open, the expanded museum promises to be the perfect spot to take that über-geeky date, or just wander and reflect amidst hundreds of miles of wire and mountains of transistors.

No word on whether Woz will also be on permanent display.

He seemed to enjoy it, but you can judge for yourself by checking out our highlight video reel from the tour, complete with an interview about Woz’s first and favorite gadget, the coming robopocalypse and the iPhone as a future historical artifact.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101203/back-in-the-day-with-woz-a-sneak-peek-inside-the-new-and-improved-computer-history-museum/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101008/in-defense-of-standards-ethic-and-honest-financial-reporting-at-hewlett-packard/ http://allthingsd.com/20101008/in-defense-of-standards-ethic-and-honest-financial-reporting-at-hewlett-packard/#comments Fri, 08 Oct 2010 23:22:29 +0000 Ben Horowitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30872

“I’m not afraid
To take a stand”
—Eminem

Disclaimer: my business partner, Marc Andreessen, is on the board of directors of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). I note that I have no inside information, and this blog post is based purely on published material. In 2007, I sold Opsware, the company that I founded and ran to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6B. I worked at Hewlett-Packard from 2007 to 2008 as an executive in the software business.

Recently, my old company Hewlett-Packard has been in the news–and not in a good way. I’ve been watching the coverage from the sidelines up to this point, but felt increasingly compelled to join the conversation and share my point of view. So here goes.

After firing their CEO, Mark Hurd, the HP board has been accused of everything from incompetence to being prudes. The criticism comes from credible, important journalists and bloggers such as Joe Nocera from the New York Times (NYT), prominent economics blogger Felix Salmon, and former GE (GE) CEO Jack Welch. In addition, HP competitor Larry Ellison lambasted the board and even went so far as to hire Mark Hurd to be President of Oracle (ORCL).

So why in the world did the HP board fire such a high performing CEO? Don’t they care about profits and shareholder value? Aren’t those the most important things? Who cares about his personal shenanigans? Did Mark and his marketing contractor even have sex?

While I am pretty sure that there is much more going on behind the scenes than has been broadly reported, as there often is, let’s look at what has been reported:

* Mark Hurd falsified expense reports.

* The false expense reports are related to a contractor named Jodie Fisher, a former softcore porn movie actress and Playboy model with no relevant marketing experience, who HP was paying up to $5,000 per marketing event.

* At the time of his departure from HP, Hurd issued a public statement saying that he’d violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct:

“As the investigation progressed, I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career. After a number of discussions with members of the board, I will move aside and the board will search for new leadership. This is a painful decision for me to make after five years at HP, but I believe it would be difficult for me to continue as an effective leader at HP and I believe this is the only decision the board and I could make at this time. I want to stress that this in no way reflects on the operating performance or financial integrity of HP.”

Let’s start with the issue of falsifying expense reports. This factor has been largely dismissed in the press with characterizations like this from Joe Nocera of the New York Times:

“When pressed, H.P. said that Mr. Hurd had fudged some expense reports.”

Nocera goes on to argue that there must have been an alternate motivation to dismiss Hurd, because clearly no CEO would be fired simply for “fudging” an expense report.

When I first read of the expense report issue, my reaction was the opposite of Nocera’s. If the Chief Executive Officer of a public company falsifies any official financial statement, he must be fired. In my mind, this is non-negotiable. We are not talking about a low-level employee tossing an extra receipt into his expense report. We are talking about a public company CEO who is paid tens of millions of dollars a year and is responsible for the integrity of the company’s financial statements fraudulently reporting his own expenses. Why is this a problem?

Every person who invests in Hewlett-Packard does so on the basis of HP’s financial statements. Every pension fund, every retiree, every charitable organization, every employee who joins and is compensated via stock options. When they do so, they trust that the statements are true and that the numbers are accurate. The person they trust to ensure accuracy is the CEO.

If the Chief Executive is willing to compromise the integrity of the company’s financials for any reason, then it is impossible to trust any statement. Every day, there are many potential reasons to falsify financial statements. Here are four examples:

* If you miss the quarter, shareholders will lose money.

* If revenues aren’t high enough, you’ll be forced to lay-off hard working, valued employees.

* If you grow slower than a competitor, you may jeopardize your job.

* A shareholder that you’ve been having an illicit affair with doesn’t want the stock price to go down and threatens to tell your wife.

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

What reason was so powerful that it caused Mark Hurd to break his ethical standard, falsify an official financial statement, mislead the board, and ultimately be fired? It seems that this was done to cover up a “close personal relationship” with a woman named Jodie Fisher, who later accused him of sexual harassment, then subsequently withdrew her claim after Hurd personally paid Fisher a large sum of money.

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

Finally, Hurd admitted in a press release to violating the company’s standards of ethics and integrity. So what? Why do companies have standards and ethics anyway? Shouldn’t they just be concerned with profits? Do we want choir boys or shareholder value?

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

Companies should not merely be thought of as money generating machines. Business can represent human society at its best. A business is a group of people working together to deliver value to the world and improve people’s lives. When done ethically, business quite literally changes the world for the better. However, if the dark side of human motivation is not mitigated with standards and ethics, business can destroy.

We saw this unfold at Enron, a company that was, in its time, celebrated for its impressive profits. Underneath the profits was a culture designed from the ground up to completely ignore any ethical standard including a dazzling display of ethically questionable sexual activity among its executives. These activities, such as promoting secretaries to executive positions in exchange for sexual favors, parallel Hurd’s behavior with Jodie Fisher. In Enron’s case, the bad behavior bled over into first line employees who conspired to create blackouts in California in the name of profits and in the absence of ethics. Ultimately, Enron imploded in a swirl of criminal behavior that bankrupted the company, but not before destroying tens of thousands of peoples’ life savings and damaging millions of innocent victims. After the fact, the press bemoaned the culture that lead to the destruction. However, the same reporters instantly forgot the cause as they cavalierly dismissed Hurd’s ethical breach.

In closing, I point out the impressive courage of the HP board of directors to ignore popular opinion and do the right thing. It is not an easy thing to fire a popular, highly successful CEO. It’s even more difficult when you know that you will be roundly criticized for tolerating that same CEO’s failure to develop internal successors. Despite those factors, Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors stood tall and protected the company, its shareholders and all of us from a dark and destructive journey. As a member of the business community and as a citizen, I am extremely proud of and grateful for their actions.

Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Loudcloud, later renamed Opsware Inc., in 1999 and served as CEO of the company before it was acquired in 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. He was most recently vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101008/in-defense-of-standards-ethic-and-honest-financial-reporting-at-hewlett-packard/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100815/exclusive-facebook-snaps-up-chai-labs/ http://allthingsd.com/20100815/exclusive-facebook-snaps-up-chai-labs/#comments Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:32:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32227

In yet another small acquisition, Facebook has bought Chai Labs, several sources said.

BoomTown could not confirm the price for the purchase of the content-focused start-up, but it is likely to be around $10 million and directed at acquiring talent.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Chai Labs, which was founded by former Google (GOOG) AdSense exec Gokul Rajaram, raised $1.1 million in funding last year, according to a regulatory filing, and $1.3 million before that.

On its Web site, Chai Labs says that advisers to the company include prominent Silicon Valley players, such as Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman and Joe Kraus, who appear to be angel investors.

Chai Labs describes itself as a “technology platform [that] enables publishers to easily customize and launch scalable, search-friendly sites in several verticals. We seamlessly complement our partners’ editorial teams, and some of our most compelling implementations have occurred when editors and journalists have worked side-by-side with our platform.”

The ability to help publishers create, store and deliver content is something that makes sense for Facebook, given the powerful social-networking site has been trying to work with media companies rather than compete with them.

Facebook declined to comment and Chai Labs has not responded to an email query.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100815/exclusive-facebook-snaps-up-chai-labs/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100707/dorky-park-nokia-sics-russian-police-on-blogger-with-prototype-phone/ http://allthingsd.com/20100707/dorky-park-nokia-sics-russian-police-on-blogger-with-prototype-phone/#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:21:12 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=44342 Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A prominent consumer electronics company has asked authorities to help it retrieve a prototype phone from the journalist who revealed it–prematurely–to the world.

Sounds a lot like the Gizmodo/iPhone 4 prototype debacle, doesn’t it? But it’s not. This time, the consumer electronics company is Nokia (NOK), the journalist is Eldar Murtazin, editor-in-chief of Moscow-based mobile-review.com, and the authorities are the Russian police.

Claiming that it’s been unable to recover the prototype N8 that Murtazin previewed unfavorably earlier this year, Nokia has turned to Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs for help.

“We have asked Mr. Murtazin for the return of all Nokia property in his possession,” Nokia said in a post to the Nokia Conversations blog today. “As he has declined to reply, we asked the Russian authorities to assist us. We leave it to the Russian authorities to determine the most appropriate course of action.”

The company insists its decision to pursue Murtazin isn’t a response to his criticisms of the N8, but rather an effort to protect its trade secrets in an increasingly competitive smartphone business.

Murtazin claims he hasn’t violated Nokia’s trade secrets and says he made repeated attempts contact the company over the past few months with no success. “Nokia says there has been a trade secret infringement,” he wrote in a post to his blog. “But we have never signed any non-disclosure agreements with them and Nokia knows that very well.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100707/dorky-park-nokia-sics-russian-police-on-blogger-with-prototype-phone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/ http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:10:32 +0000 Peter Kafka http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=486

What’s the future of the media business? Demand Media, the Google-savvy “content farm” that generates thousands of computer-assigned, low-cost Web items a day? Or ProPublica, a nonprofit that produces deep-dive investigative pieces and publishes them on its own site and in the pages of high-profile partners?

Good guess: Some of both. But let’s allow both parties to make their own case.

Brief background: Demand Media is Richard Rosenblatt’s follow-up to MySpace, which he sold to News Corp. (NWS); Paul Steiger founded ProPublica after a long career at The Wall Street Journal.

Below is the full video of the interview, followed by the liveblog:

Liveblog

9:41 am: Kara asks Paul Steiger to explain what he’s up to.

Steiger: Stories are aimed at abuse of power and empowering people to make change. I started there because when I was leaving the Journal in 2007, the traditional news business was collapsing. We had $10 million in funding and that wasn’t something I could turn down in that environment. I didn’t have time to be worried–I had to leave the Journal because of mandatory retirement age, and my wife said I couldn’t wear sweatpants during the weekday.

9:44 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Please explain the controversy regarding Demand.

[WARNING: Rosenblatt speaks very quickly. It's unlikely that I'll be able to get more than impressionistic stabs at what he's saying.]

“We only write content that people want….We’re not journalists, all right? The only people that call us journalists are journalists.” That said, what we do is “more like service journalism….There’s no piece of content made that we think is good” because we only make content that people tell us they think is good.

9:46 am: Rosenblatt–We do no marketing. All traffic comes from organic search.

I don’t know why people call this “dreck.” When you do something 6,000 times a day, it always looks like it’s of low-quality. We’re okay with that; we’re continually trying to prove to people that we’re doing good stuff.

We have a deal with USA Today and others that we’ll be announcing.

9:47 am: Kara to Steiger–What do you think of all this?

Steiger: I see this as a reordering of the environment that we’re all going to have to live in. You [Demand] make stuff people want; you control costs, and it’s working. Another model is the Politico model, with a combination of tightly controlled print plus a big Web site. We do the most expensive, the most important journalism for democracy.

Kara: Example?

Steiger: A story we did with the Los Angeles Times about nurses getting bogus licenses. A story about police in New Orleans killing people. There are five or six things like that in the past year where we can point to changes that have taken place because of our stories. These things can cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands to produce.

In the old days, that could be a loss leader for for-profit newspapers. Can’t do that anymore, so we need philanthropy. “Silicon Valley, come on in!”

9:50 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Will you do “Top 10 nurses that beat people up”?

Rosenblatt: No

Kara: Wait a minute! People may want it!

Rosenblatt: I think journalism is important, and the problem is trying to pay for it. We can help publications like USA Today, where we generate content and revenue for them, and they can take that money to fund other reporting. We’re not going to save journalism, but we can help it.

Kara to Rosenblatt: You employ a lot of journalists.

Rosenblatt: Not journalists.

Kara: Former journalists?

Rosenblatt: They may have been former journalists, and they may do journalism somewhere else. We call them freelancers, content creators.

9:53 am: Kara asks Rosenblatt to explain editing/oversight.

Rosenblatt: Eleven people touch this stuff before it gets published, etc. Anyway, let’s say we do 7,000 pieces of content a day. That’s 77,000 individual touches per day, with 10,000 freelancers around the Web. That’s amazing. That’s what the Web is made for.

9:54 am: Kara–How do they get paid?

Rosenblatt: They can get paid by piece or by revenue-share. But most of them prefer to get paid by content, because it’s guaranteed.

9:55 am: Kara–at The Wall Street Journal, we had people who worked for months on a single story. Is that done?

Steiger: The Journal, the New York Times and Washington Post are still vertically integrated and have powerful enough brands and talent that I think they can make it into the next generation.

Kara: Two of those are in dicey shape.

Steiger: Remember that there are two things going on right now. There is a secular shift, with the business model being destroyed. But there’s also a recession. So as that eases, we’ll have a better sense of who can survive.

9:58 am: Steiger–I’d love to go back to 10 years ago, or longer, to the golden age of journalism. But not even Silicon Valley can produce a time machine.

Kara: So do you think even the big newspapers that survive will switch to audience-driven content creation? That’s not what journalism is about.

Steiger: No matter what you’re doing, you’re still making stuff with an idea of what the people who are reading you want. It’s a broader way of thinking about it than Demand, but there’s a common thread.

9:59 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Where is your actual business? Is it domains?

Rosenblatt: We have two main businesses: Registrar/domains. It’s steady, recurring revenue, and it generates a lot of data. Almost 10 percent of the Web hits our servers via these domains. It’s an exciting source of data.

Then we have the media business. That’s 50 percent bigger, in revenue, than other business and growing fast.

Of that business, less than 10 percent is domain advertising business. Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) stick ads on tenniselbow.com, etc. We think that’s a great business also.

Kara: Is your media business profitable?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

Kara: Does that mean it’s not profitable?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

Kara: But you’re going public, right?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

10:03 am: Kara–you’re dependent on Google, right?

Rosenblatt: In the way that everyone is dependent on Google. Or that the iPhone is dependent on AT&T (T). But everyone searches on the Web. So some of our sites, like eHow, are getting traffic from Google. But others aren’t.

If Google changes their algorithm, we think about that. But we spend a lot of care on what we do, and we think there’s a move to quality long-tail content that Google values.

10:05 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–AOL is doing what you’re doing. Yahoo just bought Associated Content. It has more distribution than you do. What does that mean for you?

Rosenblatt: We love that AOL (AOL) and Yahoo are validating what we’re doing. “In a market this big, that’s in the first inning, there’s plenty of room for all of us.”

10:05 am: Kara to Steiger–How do you feel about the kind of journalism you do becoming nonprofit work? Does that depress you?

Steiger: “I’m the opposite of disheartened. I’m very excited.” Yes, the business is shrinking and people are losing jobs, and I don’t want to make light of that. But we’re attracting great people; we’ve won a Pulitzer Prize. The work will get done. The work is crucial to our society, and it needs philanthropic support. But so do orchestras and clinics and universities.

10:07 am: Kara–Is there a way to actually make money doing this?

Steiger: “Conceivably, but I can’t think of what it is.” If you’re focused entirely on this, “at this stage, you need philanthropic help.”

Kara to Rosenblatt: Can you think of how to do this?

Rosenblatt: You can hold a conference and charge people $5,000 a head. [Applause in conference room and in D8 cave.]

Q&A

For Rosenblatt: Why won’t you call your people “journalists”? Steve Jobs was full of venom for “bloggers,” too. Why not call people who write for money “journalists”?

Rosenblatt: If our writers want to call themselves journalists, great. But they’re not doing reporting from Afghanistan. We’re content creators, making things that people want.

Steiger: I just think that the labels get in the way.

Q: Who are those 11 people that touch Demand Media’s content? What do they do?

Rosenblatt: Some people are involved in “titling.” For SEO or social media purposes. Three people are involved in checking each title. Then people involved in each property select stories, depending on the voice. Then copy editors, copy chiefs, writers. We’re actually going to be adding more. We can make it so efficient, that we can add more roles, and everyone can keep making the same amount of money.

Q: What about rolling out content on the domains you run?

A: Not yet. Maybe in coming years. It’s not a focus right now. We do think the assets that you own and we own, we think those assets “have great optionality later” to put content on.

Q for Steiger: Do you share Steve Jobs’s distaste for bloggers?

Steiger: I sleep with a blogger! My wife blogs from 11 pm to 2 am. I’m an enthusiastic supporter of blogging. They bring a lot of audience to ProPublica’s Web site. I think what Steve was getting at is that there’s a danger of too many people commenting and not enough people finding out what’s going on. [I don't think that's entirely what Jobs was complaining about, btw.]

This content-creation session is now over.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

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