AllThingsD » L.A.

InStyle Pairs With Groupon on Beauty Bargains

Voices — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 19:13:08 +0000

In its latest alliance with a major media property, deal-a-day service Groupon is partnering with Time Inc.’s InStyle fashion franchise on a three-day promotion offering half-price or better deals at editor-selected salons in six U.S. cities (brow tweezing in Boston, fake tans in L.A., etc.). Groupon has already run promotions with McClatchy in many of the newspaper chain’s local markets, and it announced a similar deal with Media General this week.

Another Googler Goes to AOL: YouTube Boss Dave Eun Replaces Bill Wilson as Content Boss

Peter Kafka — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:46:44 +0000

Former Google sales boss Tim Armstrong has brought a slew of former colleagues with him to AOL, but this may be his highest-profile hire so far: Dave Eun, who has been in charge of content deals at Google and YouTube, will replace Bill Wilson, one of the last high-profile AOL guys from the pre-Armstrong era.

The deal to bring Eun on board was finalized last night, Armstrong told employees in an all-hands email (see below). It’s not a huge shock to see him leave–he’s done a lot of heavy lifting there already, and sources say that like many Google (GOOG) executives who have left recently, Eun felt he couldn’t move much higher in the company.

Eun used to have a role that paralleled Armstrong’s at Google: Make peace with traditional content companies. But instead of trying to sell them ads or negotiate search deals, Eun was supposed to hammer out deals to help get their content onto Google. Most recently, he was focused on getting TV networks and movie studios to put stuff on YouTube, which involved new ad-supported deals (see: Turner, ESPN, etc.) as well as the possibility of renting clips by the stream.

Wilson is a longtime AOL (AOL) guy who rose up the ranks and was pushing for the original content strategy that Armstrong embraced even before the last regime change. He seems to be leaving on better terms than other pre-Armstrong executives, as he’ll be staying with the company until May to manage the transition.

By leaving just as AOL has spun off on its own, Wilson is giving up a chance at some significant upside via low-priced stock options. But sources say Wilson doesn’t have another job lined up.

In an interview this afternoon, Armstrong says that Wilson approached him about leaving the company “several weeks ago”. When I asked him if Eun’s last role–developing partnerships with big media outlets–signaled a shift in AOL’s “roll your own–cheaply” strategy, he made a point of saying that’s not the case. Eun’s hire will simply “supercharge” AOL content plans, he said.

Nonetheless, Armstrong did allow that AOL has some significant content partnerships to announce in the coming months.

Here’s an interview I conducted with Eun late last year, focused on YouTube’s efforts to turn a profit and add new content:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here’s Armstrong’s note to the troops:

As you know, content is at the core of our strategy and we have broad aspirations in this space. We’re focused on scaling our content platforms, production and partnerships to offer quality, original content that will engage consumers and bring them–and their friends–back to our properties time and again.

The fact that we have such a strong foundation in the content space is due to the determination and dedication of Bill Wilson. He saw the opportunity presented by audience fragmentation on the Web and positioned AOL’s content offerings in a number of key verticals. Early in the new year, Bill told me that although he remains committed to the vision and strategy of AOL, he’s ready for a break.

After nine years with the company and after the significant changes we made this year moving from licensing content to becoming a principle in content, he wants to take a step back. Bill built a strong management team and laid the groundwork for the content strategy that we’re now pursuing. While I’m disappointed by his decision, I respect his intent and have asked him to work with me, not only to find his replacement but also to transition with that person to ensure that, as a company, we don’t miss a beat on the execution of our content strategy.

Bill is a talented executive and great person, and I’ll be working with him closely and supporting his transition. Bill cares about AOL, he cares about the content and the products, and he has worked incredibly hard to keep AOL on the media map.

I’m pleased to announce that David Eun will be coming on board in March to head up our content business. Some of you may remember David from his tenure at Time Warner where he helped to oversee AOL as Vice President, Operations, for the Media & Communications Group reporting to Don Logan.

David, who joins us now from YouTube and Google, has had a long career in offline and online content and is the person responsible for managing Google and YouTube’s content partnerships. David brings an impressive breadth of media experience to AOL at an exciting juncture as AOL forges a new future as a high-scale producer and partner in the content space. He will be based in New York.

Bill will be staying on until May 1 to help ensure a smooth transition with David, who begins work March 1.

You may wonder why this topic wasn’t raised during yesterday’s Q4 employee call. My preference is always to share this type of news with you in person, but the facts are that there were elements of this announcement that were not finalized until last night. This drove us to announce this news this morning–to our employees first.

As we have discussed, AOL is now in a phase of transition from playing defense to playing offense. As I said on the employee earnings call yesterday, AOL’s back in the game and we’re playing to win. We have a lot of work to do, but we’re going to do it. Please join me in welcoming David back to AOL and in thanking Bill for his dedication and leadership at AOL – TA

And here’s the release:

AOL NAMES DAVID EUN PRESIDENT OF AOL MEDIA AND STUDIOS

Eun Will Oversee All AOL Content, SEED.com and Studio Operations

New York, NY, February 4, 2010 – AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) today announced that David Eun will join the company as President of AOL Media and Studios, effective March 1. As AOL’s chief content executive, Eun will be responsible for the company’s more than 80 content sites, its new SEED.com publishing platform, as well as the newly acquired StudioNow video platform and AOL’s NYC and LA studios.

Eun will report to AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong and will be based in New York. He succeeds Bill Wilson, President, AOL Media, who will transition out of the role after nine years with AOL.

Until 2006, Eun helped to oversee AOL as Vice President, Operations for the Media & Communications Group at Time Warner Inc. In that role, he helped provide operational oversight and develop new businesses, particularly in digital distribution and broadband content and services, for the company’s AOL, Time Warner Cable and Time, Inc. divisions. Eun joins AOL from Google, where as Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, he was responsible for managing global content partnerships with Google and YouTube.

“David brings an impressive breadth of media experience to AOL at an exciting juncture for the company as we focus on scaling our content platforms, production and partnerships to offer quality, original content that will engage consumers and bring them–and their friends–back to our properties time and again. I’m delighted to welcome him back to AOL as we continue to pursue our strategy and mission in digital content and journalism,” Armstrong said.

“Bill Wilson has been a driving force for content at AOL and under his leadership the quantity and quality of our premium branded and niche offerings have expanded significantly. On behalf of AOL, I want to thank Bill for the energy and dedication he has brought to the role. Bill has been an outstanding leader at AOL,” Armstrong added.

“AOL has a unique opportunity to bring together its core strengths in the key areas of content and journalism, distribution, and advertising to engage its users, partners and advertisers in a way very few companies can. These three elements will be fundamental to success as the media and technology industries evolve and converge,” Eun said. ”And after nearly 15 years of seeing this convergence approach, I couldn’t be more excited to be returning to AOL to help Tim and his team capture that great promise.”

AOL is one of the largest producers of original content on the Web, with more than 80 official AOL and custom-built sites including more than 20 which rank in the top five in their U.S. comScore Media Metrix category. Approximately 80 percent of AOL’s content is originally produced by a growing team of staff and freelance journalists, including nine Pulitzer Prize Winners. AOL also produces more than 50 original video productions a month at state-of-the-art studios in New York and Los Angeles as well as through a network of freelance video producers.

SEED.com, AOL’s premium content management system, assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL’s properties. StudioNow, which AOL acquired in January, allows the company to integrate a fully functional video creation platform into SEED and leverage a national network of creative professionals to develop and produce quality video in a way that is rapid, efficient and scalable.

Before joining Time Warner, Eun was a partner at Arts Alliance, a venture capital firm focusing on digital media, information technology and business services. He started his career in media at NBC, where he led some of NBC’s first cross-media initiatives involving television programming, the Internet, and retail consumer products. He is a former management consultant with Bain & Co., and attended Harvard Law School and Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in government.

A Boost for Joost in Hollywood, Well, Burbank

Kara Swisher — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:38:38 +0000

Joost threw a party in North Hollywood (which is really closer to Burbank than Hollywood) Tuesday at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’s Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre for a small throng of Hollywood folks, most of whom looked to be about 21 years old collectively.

(You can just imagine a big Hollywood muckety-muck telling his lowly recent college grad of an assistant to go to the party, because “we gotta be up on this digital stuff you young people like.”)

It was an interesting party for me for a lot of reasons, some of which had nothing to do with Joost, but mostly because it represents yet another foray into Hollywood for the Internet Story, The Sequel. (Also see the video after the jump.)

In the last go-round, there were all sorts of empty alliances struck between techies and the entertainment industry that went precisely nowhere–or as they say here, into perpetual turnaround.

But with broadband penetration improving significantly and the explosion of video on the Web, the best example being the spectacular growth of YouTube, a new dance has begun.

And because Hollywood is terrified of YouTube, and its owner, Google, alternatively scared, intrigued and indignant over copyright issues, the entrance of Joost, an online video platform for the distribution of professional content on the Web, could be just what the industry is looking for. Joost is counting on that compelling content to sell advertising on the site.

It’s funny, of course, that Hollywood is embracing a company founded by the same duo–Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström–who disrupted the phone industry with its Skype service and created the controversial peer-to-peer file-sharing service Kazaa, used by many to illegally download–yes–copyrighted entertainment content.

But now, of course, if you aren’t YouTube, you are a friend.

And Joost did not disappoint. Newly installed and perpetually smooth CEO Mike Volpi, a longtime Cisco executive pictured here, was there to assuage the worries and try to encourage content creators to think of Joost as a partner.

It was well received, too–some there were discussing the benefits of porting existing content from television onto Joost, while several people I talked to were working on all kinds of original new content, such as one person I know working with a group making cutting-edge Web videos about the business and machinations of Hollywood.

Here is another excellent piece about the event by Fortune’s most excellent Adam Lashinsky.

And here’s a video I did from the party, with a bit of touring of television history and a bit of the party and a bit of Volpi in action:

[ See post to watch video ]

Please see this disclosure related to me and YouTube (owned by Google).

It's (No Longer) Gray in L.A.

Kara Swisher — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:02:02 +0000

I’m headed down to Los Angeles tomorrow for a few days on a reporting trip–I know, freakish, a blogging reporter or a reporting blogger–to see folks at Fox Digital, Move.com and others, as well as go to a big Hollywood-style bash for online video site Joost tomorrow night.

There will be coverage of all that here, of course. And, it’s a good thing, as I like going south of Silicon Valley, because it is almost impossible to write about the digital sector now without having much more than a passing knowledge of the entertainment industry.

The sector has been undergoing wrenching changes for a while now, but it is only going to get worse–or better, depending on your perspective–for the industry as it moves forward. So many of the most exciting recent start-ups, such as Joost, are aimed directly at the heart of what Hollywood has been doing for so long now–distributing great content to consumers.

For a long time, the entertainment industry has been terrified of this. I will never forget when the first Internet bubble burst in about 2001, when a major Hollywood executive and I were having lunch and he said to me: “I am so glad that is over.” By that, he meant the Napsterization of content and all the Web activity that had so hurt the music industry as it was.

That was, of course, way before YouTube was a gleam in the eyes of Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and well before broadband penetration had finally gotten to a point where things could get interesting. Now Hollywood knows it is no longer a black-and-white fight, but mostly shades of gray.

At our recent D5 conference, for example, we featured a lot of old-media players, all of whom acquitted themselves well when talking about digital issues, especially compared to past performances. While not wholly embracing the changes, all of them were able to finally learn to almost love the Web.

So I have been planning to spend a lot of time there and in this column, getting to know the players who are moving this circus and art–as George Lucas called it–forward.

Still, L.A. can be disconcerting to some (although I have always loved it), so you might like to check out the video for Loudon Wainwright III’s marvelous “Gray in L.A.,” which you can see a video of here. The song is featured in a recent movie called “Knocked Up,” a comedy also set in L.A.

My favorite lyric? The first: “When it’s gray in L.A., I sure like it that way cuz there’s way too much sunshine around here./I don’t know about you, I get so sick of blue skies wherever they always appear.”

I could not agree more.