AllThingsD » Liberty Media

Lockerz Nearing Closure on $45 Million Round From Live Nation, Others

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:00:29 +0000

Seattle-based Lockerz, an e-commerce company trying to build a rewards-based program for teens, is close to securing a third round of capital totaling $45 million.

Lockerz’s CEO Kathy Savitt said so far $36 million has been raised, but that the total amount should be final in the next 60 days.

The led investor is DAG Ventures, with Lockerz’s previous investors, Liberty Media and Liberty’s CEO, Greg Maffei, as well as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also participating.

New to the round is Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. Already, Live Nation has started to work with Lockerz to sell concert tickets for Britney Spears, Rihanna, Blink-182 and others. Members of the Lockerz community can use points they earn to get discounts on those tickets.

Savitt, who started the company in 2009, said it has started to see some significant traction, clocking 46 million unique users a month, who spend an average of 17 minutes on the site, and with most of the users falling between the ages of 13 and 35.

With the round of funding, Savitt said they will be expanding the number of places users can redeem their points, making them more valuable. To date, they’ve only been used in Lockerz’s own shop, but going forward, she said, they can be used for concert tickets, like with Live Nation, but also in restaurants and retailers.

“The whole notion of points is to be a social loyalty currency that would reward engagement in a meaningful way. The first phase offered a limited number of prizes, and then discounts on merchandise, and now we are taking that next step to make it a true global currency, by making them redeemable all over — on Lockerz and off of Lockerz,” Savitt said. “We have a lot coming in the next 60 to 90 days.”

Members of Lockerz can earn points, technically called PTZ, in more than 10 ways, including uploading photos, answering polls, watching videos, listening to music, inviting friends, or just logging in. More information on how Lockerz works and its target demographic of Gen Z can be found in this interview with Savitt from February.

The money will also go toward future acquisitions. Earlier this year it acquired Plixi, a photo-sharing site, and more recently purchased AddToAny, a content sharing site, which will ultimately become Lockerz Share. Savitt said they have a third acquisition coming in the next few weeks in the social content space.

The company has about 65 employees, and previously raised $30 million in capital.

Dancing Queen: After Meeting With Microsoft Last Week, Yahoo Is Next on Hulu's Sales Card

Kara Swisher — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:05:02 +0000

Here’s a handy helper for those following the fate of the Hulu premium online video service, whose noisy efforts to sell itself have gotten a lot of attention of late:

“In preliminary talks” = “hawking itself to one of a half dozen big moneybag tech companies who will visit with Hulu’s bankers and management to see its presentation at Morgan Stanley’s office in Century City in Los Angeles.”

Last Friday, for example, that meant a look-see for Microsoft execs, to show the software giant the story of how paying top dollar for the popular Hulu would be a great investment.

This week, sources said, Yahoo will get the expected gander at the books too, among the other companies targeted by Hulu as part of a sales process in its very early stages.

Among those companies on the short list, sources said, along with Microsoft and Yahoo are: Google, Verizon, AT&T and Amazon.

None of these should come as a surprise, since they all have a big interest in the digital distribution of content business.

Google is perhaps the most interesting and difficult of the group, due to both its massive YouTube unit and the even more massive interest by government regulators about its disturbing massiveness.

Amazon is the company that seems most suited as a Hulu buyer, since it already makes its business selling and distributing content. In addition, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar was a former exec — bringing a certain level of familiarity and presumably much less of the grumpy disgruntlement that he experienced with Hulu’s current media giant owners.

Microsoft seems like the longest shot and least enthusiastic, although it certainly could afford it.

As for Yahoo: Good lord, it needs something sexy to tell weary investors.

Not in the initial round, but other possible acquirers Hulu is targeting: Facebook, Netflix, Samsung and Liberty Media.

And definitely not among those kicking the tires: Disney, News Corp. and Comcast, the trio of partners who own Hulu, along with Providence Equity Partners.

The big question, of course, is whether media-focused Apple — a notorious buyer of almost nothing — would be interested in Hulu.

These blind dates with the best possible buyers will presumably give each insight into Hulu’s business and give Hulu information on what they are looking for.

Sources who have heard the pitch said Hulu is positioning itself as an inevitable competitor to cable, which seems an odd position to take, unless it can get regular access to the kind of top-drawer content that consumers want.

And that will be the most important issue for anyone buying Hulu: The time and terms of rights to the television and movie content on the site, which has been a critical part of its success.

Buyers I have interviewed said Hulu has to offer at least an 18-month license for its content and a pile of rights to hit shows to differentiate itself from competitors.

As Peter Kafka wrote, Hulu buyers would indeed get exclusive content, but with strings attached.

He also noted that the latest content licenses for Hulu’s owner/partners — Disney’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox — have recently been completed, deals that will stay intact if Hulu is sold.

Unlike Netflix, which has had to pay top dollar for a small pile of premium content while deftly using a large archive of older content to attract subscribers, Hulu’s success has had a lot to do with more access to popular current shows offered by its media giant owners.

Those shows include TV hits such as “The Office” and “Glee.”

That access has become a point of contention with those owners, who have differed with Hulu management about what comes next for the mostly advertising-supported site, even though its slick product has been a clear hit with consumers.

Of course, some speculate that Hulu might not sell at all, just as it never went public as it had said it might do previously. In that case, it will be interesting to see what will become of Hulu once the music stops.

(And, if anyone would like to email me the Hulu presentation or notes on it, please do, so I can formulate a bid myself!)

But, until this deal churns slowly, leakily and loudly forward — let’s enjoy some apt Hulu content. As usual, the fun version of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” by the kids from “Glee” was not available on the site.

Thus, I selected frequent “Glee” guest star Gwyneth Paltrow belting out Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me” on the show, as a good alternate metaphor for the sales process:

Barnes & Noble Loss Widens on Higher Expenses

Maxwell Murphy — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:25:06 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s fiscal fourth-quarter loss widened on higher expenses, though the bookseller posted higher revenue, thanks to surging online sales.

The nation’s largest book-store chain offered no guidance for the current fiscal year as its board of directors continues to evaluate a takeover offer made last month by billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Media Holding Corp. Liberty’s closely watched offer values the chain at $17 a share, or about $1.02 billion, a valuation that some said is too low, given the possibilities for Barnes & Noble’s increasingly popular Nook e-book device in the rapidly growing e-reader market.

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Sony Films Leave Netflix

Ethan Smith — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 15:58:31 +0000

Movies distributed by Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures Entertainment were removed from Netflix Inc.’s on-demand Internet service Friday, a Netflix executive wrote in a blog post, adding that the absence was “temporary.”

The removal of an unspecified number of movies stemmed from a contractual issue between Sony and Liberty Media Corp.’s Starz cable channel. Starz supplies Netflix Watch Instantly with movies from Sony and Walt Disney Co. as part of its deal to show the studios’ movies on its pay-cable television channel.

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Netflix CEO: We're Not Causing Cord-Cutting

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:53:26 +0000

One of Netflix’s earliest strategic advantages was its $30 million deal with Starz, the Liberty Media-owned cable network, to license its content for use on the Web, which it struck in 2008, essentially the pre-historic age of Internet video. Now the deal is up for renewal in the first quarter of 2012, and the speculation is that it may cost the company $200 million or more. Asked to comment on that possibility by Kara Swisher at the All Things D conference, CEO Reed Hastings answered: “It wouldn’t be shocking.”

He also added some color to the perceived trend of “cord-cutting,” where consumers forsake cable or satellite TV subscriptions in favor of Internet-based video entertainment. He said the small decline in conventional TV subscriptions seen in 2009 had more to do with the recession and the uptick in residential foreclosures. Netflix, he says, is complementary to cable and satellite subscriptions.

Here are some highlights of the conversation.

[ See post to watch video ]

Liberty Says Nook Inspired B&N Bid

Jessica E. Vascellaro and Nat Worden — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:00:45 +0000

Liberty Media Corp. executives laid out their rationale for their surprise bid for Barnes & Noble Inc., touting the potential of the bookseller’s Nook e-reader and the vast network of retail stores it can use to promote it.

Liberty Media Chairman John Malone and chief executive Greg Maffei told investors Monday that the potential for the Nook platform to become the e-book application of choice for consumers on all tablet devices built on Google Inc.’s Android operating system helped motivate the company’s bid for the ailing bookstore chain.

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Liberty Media Bids for Barnes & Noble

Joan E. Solsman — Thu, 19 May 2011 23:57:36 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc. said that Liberty Media Corp. has offered to buy the bookseller in a deal valuing it at about $1 billion.

Barnes & Noble shares were up 20 percent in after-hours trading Thursday on the news, matching the $17-a-share offer price from John Malone’s media empire.

The bookseller has been reviewing strategic alternatives, including a sale, since last summer.

The offer for the country’s largest bookstore chain represents a bold foray for Liberty into a new segment of entertainment products and signifies the growing significance of digital and online business in the book industry.

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Starz to Delay Some Content On Netflix

Sam Schechner and Nick Wingfield — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:07:49 +0000

Pay-TV channel Starz plans to delay the availability of new TV shows and movies to Netflix Inc., adding to the list of media companies that have signaled plans to keep new content away from the growing online-video giant.
Starz, owned by Liberty Media Corp., said that, beginning April 1, new episodes of its original shows, like the forthcoming “Camelot,” will be delayed 90 days before being available on Netflix and a handful of other Internet services to which it licenses content. Starz added that exclusive first-run movies on the channel will “later follow suit.”
The shift comes as Netflix is generating increased anxiety in the entertainment business for its growing heft. Some networks and cable operators fear Netflix, with 20 million subscribers, could siphon away their customers, particularly with its new video streaming service.

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How Lockerz Is Making Shopping a Lot More Fun for the 19 & Under Crowd

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:30:13 +0000

Seattle-based Lockerz is trying to build an all-new e-commerce experience targeting teens, by stealing aspects from FarmVille and Facebook.

For adults, it makes a lot more sense when described as the teenage version of American Express, which rewards you with points for making purchases that can be redeemed for discounts.

The almost three-year-old company has already had a lot of success.

It has raised $30 million from high-profile investors such as Kleiner Perkins’ sFund and Liberty Media. It has 18 million members in 195 countries, and has eight original Web video series in production for 2011, one of which was launched last week. It has 73 employees, and recently acquired Plixi, a photo-sharing site.

The company was founded by Kathy Savitt, who says by her own admission that she’s not exactly stereotypical for starting a company at the age of 45.

But she says her passion is fueled by her obsession with how the generation you grow up in affects the way you live your life. In particular, she has a fascination with Generation Z, which as you may guess follows both ‘X’ and ‘Y,’ and is defined as kids no older than 19, who were born between 1992 and today.

There’s a long story about why Savitt became interested in the category, and after chatting with her earlier this week in the company’s Seattle Pioneer Square headquarters, it’s definitely worth retelling. Here’s the video of my interview with Savitt:

[ See post to watch video ]

I first became acquainted with Savitt back in the dot-com heyday.

She was president of MWW Savitt, a public-relations firm in Seattle, which helped launch 100 start-ups. After nine years, she sold the agency to Interpublic.

A vacation was on the horizon, until one day she found herself being recruited by one of the leading e-commerce sites, and she caved.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos talked her into accepting the job of VP of Strategic Communications, Content and Initiatives.

The task in front of her was to refocus the company’s marketing efforts from traditional TV to a PR blitz that put the product and customer experience at the forefront, including the novel idea of free shipping. While at Amazon, she sat on the senior leadership board, which coincidentally included working alongside her brother, who helped start Amazon’s Web services.

But Savitt was never one to sit still. She decided to leave in 2006 for American Eagle–to everyone’s surprise, she said. ”I’m a huge Jeff Bezos fan, but at the heart, I’m a geek–not of algorithms, but of demographics.”

She moved to Pittsburgh and helped grow the youth apparel company’s Web site from a $100 million annual business to $250 million, among many other accomplishments.

But once again, her interest was drawn to Gen Z kids, who were barely hanging on to the low end of American Eagle’s demographic–and not really the focal point of any well-established brand or retailer.

She determined there was no company organized to interact with the next generation of kids. “We were heading towards a global emergency,” she joked.

She parted ways with American Eagle after three years to conduct focus groups on her own dime and to determine exactly what drives that generation and how they interact with the Internet. Savitt describes what she learned from those focus groups in the video above.

With those learnings in hand, she wrote a business plan and founded Lockerz in March 2009.

She calls the site, which was officially launched in February 2010, the homepage for Gen Z-focused content, commerce and community.

There are three main functions:

– Members earn points: “PTZ” can be earneda dozen different ways, by watching videos and discovering new clothes, electronics and other goods. This is where a comparison can be made to a social game on Facebook. Users can help friends earn points by clicking on content and items the friends have accumulated on their page–much like the way FarmVille players give gifts and items to neighbors in hopes that they will return the favor.

– Redeem Points: Users can redeem PTZ by participating in an auction for a chance to win a prize. Chances are high, and prizes include things like videos, Xbox games or even PayPal gift certificates. Users can also redeem points to get a discount on a full-price item from the store, which includes clothes, consumer electronics and a number of other categories.

– Decalz: There are also virtual goods. Users must purchase “decalz,” which are placeholders for items they like from the store, such as a Dakine backpack or a G-Shock watch. They cost $1 each, and once they appear on their site, friends can start earning you PTZ by clicking on them. Users also earn decals when they purchase an item.

While this sounds confusing, these are the kinds of dynamics Savitt says Gen Z is looking for. It’s the same crowd that can multitask efficiently with three tabs open at a time, surfing YouTube, Amazon and Facebook.

To be sure, Lockerz also has content, including video and soon photos through its acquisition of Plixi.

It has partnered with content owners for most of the 3,000 videos, but it is also producing several original Web series of its own. “The Homes” launched last week, and is about a teenage girl who moves across the country and meets the cute boy next door. Generally, the video production is good and the acting is mediocre, but it’s all about cross-promotion, so the actors’ clothing and the girl’s laptop and sunglasses can be purchased from the Lockerz store.

Lockerz is planning to announce today that the series has already reached one million page views in less than a week, and that it’s opening up its video collection to non-members immediately. That means members can share the clips on other social networks, where non-members can watch, and potentially earn PTZ if they choose to sign up afterward.

So, how does all of this result in revenues?

Savitt says that while there’s a lot of moving parts, it’s simple.

The company is selling advertising (banners and pre-roll video), and it’s an e-commerce site that sells physical and digital goods.

Since many of the items end up being discounted because of the points being redeemed, Savitt explains: “We hedge the revenue loss in other ways,” like selling Decalz to members and selling ads, “which allows us to lower our margins.”

Savitt’s goal is to reach profitability by year end.

Barry Diller and John Malone Complete Their Divorce

Peter Kafka — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:40:42 +0000

Barry Diller and John Malone, who have been tied together for 17 years, are officially split up, for good: Malone’s Liberty Media is abandoning its majority stake in Diller’s IAC holding company and taking $220 million along with IAC’s Evite.com and Gift.com units, as parting gifts. Meanwhile Diller himself is making a smaller break with IAC by stepping down as CEO, but will remain as chairman. More details from Shira Ovide.

A Nerd by Any Other Name Would Be as Geek–Bing Gordon Waxes Poetic and More at the SFund Launch

Kara Swisher — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:32:43 +0000

BoomTown will admit it: I am a social party pooper.

In any case, here is a lovely video I did yesterday while at the launch of the sFund.

The sFund is a $250 million fund for social start-ups, whose partners include Kleiner Perkins, Amazon, Facebook, Comcast, Liberty Media, Zynga and Allen & Co.

The event participants included, as you can see above, Silicon Valley power VC John Doerr, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, and VC Bing Gordon.

All are also below.

At the end of the presentation to the press, the sFund’s new majordomo, Gordon (who looks like a clean-shaven version of Hagrid from “Harry Potter”), took to the stage and read a very unusual poem about entrepreneurs, which I recorded for posterity. After which, he took on a video interview.

Here’s the result:

[ See post to watch video ]

[Photo credit: Richard Morgenstein]

Liveblogging the Unveiling of the SFund at Facebook (With Guest Stars: Kleiner, Amazon and Zynga)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:44:40 +0000

BoomTown had to park a badillion miles away from Facebook’s suburban HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. and hoofed it there for a press event that unveiled the sFund.

What’s that? A $250 million fund for social start-ups.

10:40 am PT: The excitement was building–well, not really…well, not at all, in fact–at the Facebook cafeteria, as the Silicon Valley press got to see the name of the sFund on screens throughout the room.

Kleiner Perkins power VC John Doerr started off the proceedings with some microphone snafus, when he tried to get out from behind the podium.

“John, sometimes you have to stay in the box,” joked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was sitting onstage in what appears to be an Internet Hall of Fame group.

The others would be Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and Founder Mark Pincus, and giant-man-about-Web Bing Gordon.

Doerr talked on about the importance of social, related to the Internet.

Then, he introed Zuckerberg, hoodie-less, who agreed with him, talking about photos and how social made them hot on Facebook.

Apparently, everything is going social. Personally, I am now contemplating becoming a hermit.

Doerr went full Oprah on him, asking what would inspire him to innovate, if he were starting out today (and presumably there were no Winklevii around to “borrow” an idea from).

“If you take any passion and map it to an industry,” said Zuckerberg, it will result in disruption.

Then Doerr channeled Barbara Walters at Pincus, tossing him a softball query about the fabulousness of it all.

For example: “What’s inspired you to be a CEO at this amazing company?” (Note to Walt Mossberg: Let’s file that tough one away for D9!)

11:01 am:Thank goodness then for Bezos, who simply said he hoped these new companies will take some of that $250 million and use Amazon Web Services.

He talked about how these trends grow virally and “sometimes violently.”

Ouch!

Speaking of pinchy, Bezos moved on to some chemical explosion metaphor, and I am now certain I want to be a hermit crab.

Then, after a question about what he would do now, he veered to bioengineering! Doerr wanted a social answer, but Bezos was talking test tubes and “engineered and synthetic life.”

But Gordon behaved for John “Diane Sawyer” Doerr and talked about how social is the only place to be for the cool kids.

He reeled off the other partners, including Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co.

One more question from Doerr: Five years from now, what is going to make you “delighted” about and for the customers you service.

Gordon: He could see the family.

Pincus: He has 12-week twins, not the Winklevii, who are still too young to use Facebook. He was excited it is all getting wired.

“When everyone is always connected to one another, rather than connected to the Web,” he said, that’s the bomb.

He called the big social companies “dial tones,” as in Zynga was the gaming dial tone, Amazon was the shopping dial tone and Facebook was the dial tone.

Zuckerberg: I was not sure he was actually answering the question. But I believed his wish was about these social networks getting to scale.

He went on though, talking about how some companies were building a “light” social layer versus companies where social was “built fundamentally into the product.”

These, of course, have an advantage, according to the gospel of Zuckerberg.

Bezos: He talked about Amazon’s Web services some more–this dude is a retailer, so he was sure good at selling.

Gordon, who is apparently like Ed McMahon to Doerr’s Johnny Carson, rounded up the feel-good session.

11:17 am: Q&A.

Go Miguel Helft, from the New York Times, who asked a good question, about what took so long for Doerr to do this fund, since social–i.e., Facebook–has been around for seven years or more.

Doerr joked, “Next question.” Ha.

But really. Doerr did not answer except to say that Zynga only exploded a year ago, so back off, Miguel.

There were two other dullish questions, about new partners.

“It’s a quarter-billion-dollar party,” said Gordon, which I was not quite wanting to attend. Which made me a social party pooper.

Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.

Then, there ws a question about whether this is not simply the “fbFund,” as in Facebook, since the social networking site was going to benefit the most from all this.

No, it was not, declares Doerr.

More questions–about monetization, advertising, free versus paid and an off-topic one about rumors of Amazon launching an app store (of course it is!).

Zuckerberg took the monetization one. All of the above, it’s great, money for all.

The event finished with a very odd poem by Gordon, which ended with a decent joke about the possibility that entrepreneurs, if they are lucky, get a movie “made about you.”

He was referring to “The Social Network,” which trashed Zuckerberg.

In any case, quarter-billion-dollar party on, Mark.

Social Heavyweights Prime the Pump With $250 Million Fund

John Paczkowski — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:38:54 +0000

During a press event at Facebook headquarters this morning, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced a new $250 million fund for start-ups playing in the social space. The venture capital firm’s partners in the effort: Amazon.com, Facebook, Zynga, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company LLC.

The release below; Kara Swisher is covering the event live.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Launches $250 Million sFund Initiative for Social Web Entrepreneurs

Amazon.com, Facebook, Zynga, Comcast and Liberty Media to Invest and Help Accelerate a New Wave of Social Web Innovations

October 21, 2010 – Palo Alto, Calif. – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced the sFund, a new $250 million initiative to invest in entrepreneurs inventing social applications and services. Amazon.com, Facebook, and Zynga, the leading companies defining today’s social and online environment; entertainment and media leaders Comcast and Liberty Media and Allen & Company, LLC, have committed to invest in the sFund and serve as strategic partners. The sFund will provide financing, counsel, and relationship capital for a new generation of entrepreneurs to deliver on the promise of the social web.

“We’re at the beginning of a new era for social Internet innovators who are re-imagining and re-inventing a Web of people and places, looking beyond documents and websites,” said KPCB partner John Doerr. “There’s never been a better time than now to start a new social venture.”

The sFund will be led by KPCB partner Bing Gordon, former chief creative officer and longtime executive at Electronic Arts and board director of Amazon.com and Zynga. Gordon said, “Social is just getting started and the opportunities are vast. As in the early days of the Internet, the race is on. Today every business, organization, and entrepreneur should have a social strategy.”

“Social apps are viral, and when they hit, it often happens suddenly, and then they grow explosively. That’s one of the reasons the scalable, elastic, no capex, variable cost nature of Amazon Web Services is ideal for social apps,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “The top three companies that develop for Facebook all use AWS.”

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said, “The Web is being rebuilt around people, and we’re at a point where any app, website, or device can be designed to be social from the ground up. We’re focused on enabling entrepreneurs to build companies that can disrupt their industries.”

Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, noted, “Zynga’s successes – such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars – show the speed with which entrepreneurs can transform existing industries and invent entirely new ones through social platforms. Our model demonstrates consumers’ desires to connect with others in new and valuable ways.”

Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation, said, “Social businesses play an increasingly important role in our entertainment and communications products. We’re very pleased to be a part of the sFund and look forward to seeing the great innovations that are generated from its investments.”

All anchor investors in the sFund initiative are prioritizing developer services for entrepreneurs, who will be part of an active ecosystem. The strategic partners launching the sFund each bring unique contributions. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will provide AWS Getting-Started Support for one year, priority access to worldwide Startup Events, and dedicated business and technical support. Facebook will contribute access to its platform teams, beta APIs, and new programs, like Facebook Credits. Zynga will host periodic sessions with sFund companies to focus on management and technical development, including open source collaboration. Comcast Interactive Capital, Comcast’s venture fund, will provide access to Comcast’s resources, teams, and relationships.

Over the past year, there has been unprecedented innovation in social applications. KPCB’s latest social ventures show the breadth of the social opportunity, from seed stage to scale-up, and enterprise to entertainment, including:

Cafébots — The first company dedicated to Friend Relationship Management. By building applications that are useful, fun, and scalable, consumers will be able to extract more information from and make better use of their social graphs. KPCB led a Series A funding for the company founded by a team of Stanford PhDs.

Flipboard — The world’s first social magazine, delivering a beautiful, personalized experience of the news, images, and information being shared by your friends across social network feeds on your iPad.

Jive — Jive’s social software leverages innovations in social to radically change the way work gets done in the enterprise. Jive has over 3,000 customers serving 15 million users. KPCB led a growth stage funding round in July.

Lockerz — A new social commerce company aimed at ages 13-30 creates a revolutionary new way to shop, play content, and connect. In less than a year, Lockerz has grown to more than 17 million members, offering major discounts on the best fashions, electronics, music, and more.

KPCB will have 10 U.S. partners working on the fund, including Chi-Hua Chien, John Doerr, Eric Feng, Bing Gordon, Lila Ibrahim, Randy Komisar, Aileen Lee, Matt Murphy, Ellen Pao, and Ted Schlein. Another four KPCB partners in Shanghai will extend the sFund’s reach in China.

Go to www.kpcb.com/sfund and www.facebook.com/kpcbprofile, or follow us at twitter.com/kpcb to learn more about the sFund.

Malone Is Fired Up by Cable and Ready to Buy

Jessica E. Vascellaro — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:03:07 +0000

Liberty Media Chairman John Malone is fired up about cable again, believing its high speeds will give it an edge over satellite as consumers devour more entertainment digitally.

The compulsive deal maker says he is looking for new investments, especially overseas, in cable, which he helped build over more than two decades as chief executive of Tele-Communications Inc. before it was sold to AT&T (T) in 1999.

At the same time, the proud libertarian, who has feuded with regulators throughout his career, says he’s concerned the Federal Communications Commission could turn cable into a “dumb pipe” by limiting cable companies’ ability to bundle services like Internet and television. (An FCC spokeswoman says that “unbundling of services is off the table,” and any FCC changes would “encourage rather than inhibit investment.”)

More broadly, Mr. Malone engineered his way through the recession, merging Liberty’s stake in DirecTV (DTV) back into the satellite company, among other moves.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In Sun Valley, Media Chiefs Fret Over Economy

Jessica E. Vascellaro — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:11:48 +0000

Media and technology executives and investors are sounding new alarms bells about the economy, worried it could wipe out recent growth.

In an interview Thursday morning at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, WPP LLC chief executive Martin Sorrell cited the possible widening of Europe’s economic troubles along with the coming expiration of some tax cuts for business as among the fears of the media, entertainment and technology executives attending the annual event. “People feel that things are uncertain,” he said.

Liberty Media Chairman John Malone echoed the feeling, telling a group of reporters Thursday morning that he believes the high levels of debt held by the U.S. and other governments could hamper growth for years to come. Gordon Crawford, a well-known media and technology investor with Capital Research & Management Group, said earlier in an interview that he believes the U.S. is in for “several years of very modest growth.”

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Liberty Media Jumps 10 Percent as Q2 Sales, Ebitda Beat

Tiernan Ray — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:12:49 +0000

Shares of John Malone’s Liberty Media Interactive (LINTA), owner of “QVC,” are up sharply this morning after the company beat Q2 expectations for revenue and operating profit.

Revenue fell, year over year, to $1.9 billion, the company reported, yielding adjusted Ebitda of $412 million. Still, that was ahead of the $1.834 billion and $345 million average estimate of analysts.

Revenue at QVC, which is most of the business, fell 4 percent to $1.7 billion, though that was an improvement from prior quarters, said QVC president and CEO Mike George.

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Now Things Get Interesting: CBS Joins Comcast's Web TV Trial

Peter Kafka — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:09:42 +0000

Yet another addition to the growing list of programmers signing on to Comcast’s “On Demand Online”: CBS will join the cable provider’s trial program, which will allow subscribers to get Web access to shows they get on TV.

CBS (CBS) will join previously announced partners Time Warner (TWX), which is offering up programming from its Turner channels and HBO; Liberty Media’s Starz; and smaller players like Scripps, Rainbow and A&E. The twist is that CBS is the only broadcaster to sign up for the trial.

I noted that this was in the works last month, and it makes plenty of sense: For one thing, CBS would like to tie up with Comcast (CMCSA) as a way to extract “retransmission fees” from the cable company for the rights to carry its programming, which it currently doesn’t get paid for. The broadcaster also needs a big ally, as its broadcast competitors at GE’s (GE) NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Disney’s (DIS) ABC have already tied up with Hulu.

Comcast’s trial program, which is supposed to start this month and which parallels plans being promoted throughout the cable industry, is in many ways a response to Hulu, which has unnerved the pay TV business. The industry is worried about the specter of “cable cutters” who dump their cable TV subscriptions and watch free Web TV instead. So it’s trying to convince subscribers that if they keep paying up, they’ll get to see whatever they want online, legally.

CBS, meanwhile, passed on the chance to join with Hulu early on, and has since been complaining that the joint venture’s business terms undermine broadcasters’ chances of making real money on the Web.

CBS and Comcast aren’t talking about what the economics of this tie-up look like, but given that it’s a trial, it’s likely there isn’t much to talk about yet. But ultimately, CBS imagines a world where cable companies pay it for the right to put its shows on the Web and where it can charge Internet advertisers the same rates it gets for on-air TV.

That’s a long way off, but this is a start. “This is about extending the economics of the television market to an already independent, healthy online market,” says CBS digital boss Quincy Smith.

UPDATE: Comcast has a few more programmers on board. In addition to Scripps, A&E and Rainbow, which I’ve written about before, but which have not been formally announced, Comcast is bringing in BBC and MGM Impact, a VOD channel it runs with MGM.

Here’s the release.

CBS TO PARTICIPATE IN COMCAST’S ON DEMAND ONLINE ?NATIONWIDE TRIAL

As the First Broadcaster To Participate, CBS Agrees to Test Standards and Principles for
“TV Everywhere” Model

NEW YORK and PHILADELPHIA, July 14, 2009–CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A) and Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) announced today that CBS is the first broadcast network to participate in Comcast’s technical trial of On Demand Online. The new service will significantly expand the number of top-rated TV shows available online and across platforms at no additional charge to Comcast’s cable customers while delivering increased advertising value to content owners. During the course of the trial, CBS plans to test various types of current and library content.

“CBS and Comcast share the same vision of giving consumers more–more content, in more places,” said Matt Bond, Executive Vice President of Content Acquisition, Comcast Cable. “On Demand Online is a major step in extending consumers’ television experiences online, and ultimately across platforms by giving any television network, including top brands like CBS, the ability to make their content available on the Web.”

“CBS is very supportive of initiatives that help extend our content to new platforms in such a way that we gain new audiences and additional value for our advertisers,” said Quincy Smith, Chief Executive Officer, CBS Interactive. “Comcast is already a trusted platform to distribute CBS content on air as well as on demand; expanding this relationship online is a logical step. In addition, CBS’s strategy has always been about open, non-exclusive distribution of our content in a consumer friendly way, which is a core tenant of TV Everywhere and On Demand Online.”

CBS’s participation in Comcast’s technical trial comes on the heels of last month’s joint announcement between Time Warner Inc. and Comcast which introduced a set of principles called “TV Everywhere.” Developed by the two companies, the principles are designed to serve as a framework to facilitate deployment of online television content in a way that is consumer friendly and pro-competitive.

Comcast will begin its technical trial of On Demand Online with approximately 5,000 customers from across the U.S. in the coming weeks–the first national trial of its kind. A major focus of the trial is to test Comcast’s new “authentication” technology, which will allow Comcast customers to receive the same content online for free that they subscribe to on TV. The service will utilize a simple log-on system for streaming content and, in the future, will allow for download content to go. The On Demand Online service will roll-out in phases, adding new features, functionality and content over time to provide consumers with a new way to watch television.

On Demand Online is part of Comcast’s Project Infinity, the company’s long-term vision to give customers an ever growing amount of video content on multiple platforms, whenever they want.

Starz Joins Comcast's "Web TV You'll Pay to See" Lineup

Peter Kafka — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:02:01 +0000

Liberty Media’s Starz Entertainment has signed on to Comcast’s “On Demand Online” program, which is the first test of the cable industry’s “authentication” and “entitlement” strategy. Or, as I like to call it, “Web TV You’ll Pay to See.”

Starz, which has the cable and Web rights to much of the Disney catalog, among other assets, says it will make some of those films, including “Wall-E” and “High School Musical 3,” available for Comcast’s (CMCSA) test, which is supposed to launch this month. Also available: TV series like “Crash” and non-Disney movies like Sony’s “Step Brothers.”

The idea is to protect cable subscription revenue by giving pay TV customers–but only pay TV customers–Web access to all the shows they get on TV and hope this keeps them from canceling their subscriptions. Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, who has been pushing a parallel effort he calls “TV Everywhere,” signed onto Comcast’s effort last month and offered up a handful of TV shows from his TBS and TNT networks; Comcast also has roped in Scripps, Rainbow and A&E.

I’m told Comcast will have a few more partners before it launches the trial, but the emphasis here is on “trial”: The cable guys appear confident they can handle the technical aspects of the program, but they’ve never tried anything like it before, so this is really a test to see if they can pull it off. And if that works, the real work will be the negotiations between cable programmers and cable providers over who gets what, when.

Does John Malone Want To Own AOL?

Eric Savitz — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:46:47 +0000

Does Liberty Media (LINTA) want to own AOL?

CNBC’s David Faber raised the question this morning at the tail end of a long interview with Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei. And Maffei indicated that Liberty, the media empire controlled by billionaire investor John Malone, actually does have some interest in the Time Warner (TWX) unit, which is currently on track to be spun off as a separate company via an IPO.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Liberty Media Chairman John Malone: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:58:22 +0000

As many already know, John Malone has been a cable legend since he first ran Tele-Communications Inc. back in the early 1970s.

Besides being there at the founding of many channels, the Liberty Media (LCAPA) chairman’s influence put most of them on the map and his forceful business skills willed cable into becoming a key consumer medium for entertainment and news.

Malone talked about that experience onstage at the seventh D: All Thing Digital conference and how it mirrors what is going on now as more content is being distributed on the Internet. And, more importantly, he discussed how it might or might not be paid for.

You should listen, because Malone is a genuine media pioneer who could teach Web players a thing or two.

Here’s the full D7 video of the session:

[ See post to watch video ]

Liberty Media Chairman John Malone: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:16:42 +0000

As many already know, John Malone has been a cable legend since he first ran Tele-Communications Inc. back in the early 1970s.

You should listen, because Malone is a genuine media pioneer who could teach Web players a thing or two.

Here’s the full D7 video of the session:

[ See post to watch video ]

In Case You Missed It, Here's the Print Version of D7, Um, Online!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:53:06 +0000

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal did a special Technology Report section, made up of excerpts of selected interviews from the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

It includes sessions with Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer ringing in Bing; Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz trying to find a reason to curse at BoomTown; Roger McNamee and Jon Rubinstein of Palm (PALM) introing the Pre; Twitter Co-Founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams saying “we do not know” was the microblogging service’s mantra; entrepreneur Mark Cuban talking smack about the Internet; cable legend and Liberty Media (LMDIA) Chairman John Malone cracking wise; and NBC Universal (GE) head Jeff Zucker doing the Hulu.

As the event’s hosts and interviewers, Walt Mossberg and I also did a mini-essay about the event, in which we continued to jest about various goofy names that digital eras had been given.

As we wrote:

“Before the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week in Carlsbad, Calif., we declared—with our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks—that Web 2.0 was over and Web 3.0 had begun.

While we were poking fun at Silicon Valley’s incessant need to stick a hyped-up catchphrase on each and every development, the use of such jargon was actually important, because we think that the digital sector is now moving full bore into an entirely new cycle of profound change.”

We decided to focus in on smart phones and the mobile platform as critically important in the next era, although what we were talking about was the complete integration of computing into every part of our lives in a way that is seamless, ubiquitous and, ideally, dead simple.

As we also noted in the essay:

“From using easy gestures to grab any piece of information from the Web to having powerful computers in the palm of your hand to being able to quickly dip into complex social networks to getting real-time information from across the globe as it happens, this is an era when computing could become as integrated and invisible as electricity and just as important.”

So read all about online and in print (if you saved a copy) and you can also watch video highlights on this site too.

But, best of all, All Things Digital be posting the full video of all the sessions on this site soon.

D7 Video: Liberty Media's John Malone

Beth Callaghan — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:14:36 +0000

John Malone has been one of the original pioneers of television, ever since he was running TCI and the notion of 500 TV channels was revolutionary. He takes the stage at D7 to talk to Walt Mossberg about paid content and the future of television as it converges with the Internet.

[ See post to watch video ]

Liberty Media's John Malone: Video Will Be Everywhere, but Someone's Got to Pay for It

Peter Kafka — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:48:27 +0000

Remember when the notion of 500 TV channels was a new idea, and a big one? John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media (LINTA), does. He’s the one who floated it, way back in 1992, when he was running TCI, which at the time was the biggest and most powerful player in the cable business. Since then, Malone has moved in and out of several companies, often via dizzyingly complicated investment structures, but has always stayed connected to TV in some form. Which makes him a timely guest to have on the D: All Things Digital stage this year, when convergence–the true marriage of TV and the Internet–has become a reality and we move from 500 channels to an infinite number.

Session Highlights

[ See post to watch video ]

Live Blog

Walt Mossberg introduces Malone and his history and portfolio. Question: In five, ten years, are people going to be using the word “television”?
Malone: In five years old guys like me will still call it television, but it will come from anywhere, in many formats, via many distribution channels. Anything anywhere in increasing quality and quantity and decreasing costs. That’s the trend.
Walt: We’re used to the idea of shows, linear programming, on television sets. But younger people aren’t spending money on cable or satellite. The first thing they have to have is Internet, and they watch video on laptops. That’s a big change.
Malone: From a business perspective, the challenge for those of us in the distribution business is to deliver over multiple channels. So cable providers are trying to increase speed, add voice, add playback options, experimenting with Slingbox, trying to evolve with digital technologies. If you’re prudent as an investor, you’re trying to play all of these fields. The idea of programming linear channels has already broken down. By and large, most broadcasters don’t view broadcast as core anymore. They’re all moving to cable networks and their dual income streams (ads plus subscription). All of these media need to evolve as technology evolves.

Walt: The music business started falling apart when the album fell apart–unbundling. What’s the impact of that on video? Malone: For starters, things like live sports that can’t be watched on delay, become more important. “The big event, that’s heavily promoted, and can attract a big audience.” The economic bets are increasingly going to the big event, and it’s stealing the oxygen from the room, relative to tonnage. That’s having a big effect on other broadcast programming.
Walt: So starting something like a new “Seinfeld” is that much harder. Malone: Yes, because audience is ever-fragmented, and it’s harder to get their attention. First law of physics: Big bubbles get bigger and smaller ones disappear.
Walt: So who are the big bubbles? Malone: Sports. DirectTV just paid big dollars for its NFL contract. In terms of people’s appetites to watch entertainment on HD screens, it continues to grow.
Walt points out that MLB.com is really good. Malone. “Thank you. We own the Braves.”
Walt: “You own a lot of things.” Malone agrees.
Walt: Why doesn’t anyone offer me, through satellite or cable, a “real” Internet experience when it comes to TV, where I can get what I want, on demand? The DVRs they offer don’t cut it. Why can’t I buy a service where I turn it on and it’s like the Internet, where I get whatever I want? So it’s all Hulu, all the time, but with everybody fed into it, and with all the content?
Malone: “It’s this nasty little thing called bandwidth,” and no one has the capacity to give everyone everything at the same time. Yet. “It’s getting there.” Comcast (CMCSA) advertises thousands of simultaneous titles. Where the technology has been most heavily invested in, you’re starting to get a taste of it.
Walt: But you think that will happen? What happens to traditional programmers in New York or LA?

Malone: Monetizing is hard. Advertising may not do it. Hulu has ads but they’re not significant. How do you spend enough money to produce high-quality programming with advertising?
Walt: But you figured out how to get people to pay for content, when you pioneered cable TV.
Malone: Yes. It was a huge, titanic fight. We needed a law change to sell what had been free TV. So we bundled the “transport” charge with the content. That was the key.
Malone starts explaining the history of cable TV, from broadcast to Turner’s early satellite stuff to HBO. [If you're interested, I think this is a well-written (and opinionated) history]. Back to the future: The concern is that if it’s off the Internet, then psychologically, it’s free. That’s a big jump.
Malone: Here’s two efforts where I tried to get people to pay for content. I helped created @Home. The initial suggestion was to differentiate high speed vs. low speed by charging for some content. We proposed this to Gerry Levin at Time Warner. Couldn’t get it done, and we sold to AT&T, and the rest is history. Second: We suggested to broadcasters that they shouldn’t give away HD when that came in, but to bundle it into subscriptions. That didn’t go over either. Retransmission consent is changing some of that. Don’t know if that will be enough to save CBS (CBS).
Malone: We got people to pay for stuff by tying communication with content. If you can introduce incrementally, that say, 4G wireless service comes with these three things that you can only get with that, maybe that can work. I think it’s a very interesting watershed.
Malone points out that Liberty’s Discovery shows are not available on the Web–”they only tease it.” That’s very deliberate. There are other models of getting people to pay for stuff online–Bloomberg can do it by charging a very small audience a lot of money. People are OK paying for things they’re used to paying for. People will pay for access to NFL games on TV, and I think they’ll pay on the Web.
Malone: The question you have to ask yourself: Is an aggregator going to do that? Or as a consumer, will I have to have lots of relationships with lots of people?
Malone: You would love to be the aggregator. Cable would love to be. Hulu would love to be. Walt: Will you be in that competition? Malone: “If I live long enough, sure.”
Malone: We tried this with Vongo–Web movie distribution–not very successfully. We couldn’t get a broad enough control of rights. Movie rights are split between Showtime, HBO and us. No one has been able to get enough access to make that work yet.
Walt: What’s up this concept of “windowing”? Why can’t we get rid of this? Why can’t I watch the new Star Trek movie on my TV right now? I’d pay for it?
Malone: One reason is fear of piracy. Also the recognition that the appetite for the public in terms of willingness to pay goes through these windows.

Walt: I know the reasons for it historically, but it makes no sense today.
Malone: “A lot of it has to do with training the public, and the public doesn’t change its behavior quickly.” Devices are great, and they’re sexy. But systems and architectures and mindsets take time to change.
Q&A What is the future of local TV broadcasting? Malone: I asked Rupert Murdoch (old partner/rival) the same question today about local newspapers. My knee-jerk reaction was that the government has done it. Of course my reaction is to blame lots of things on the government. They should have allowed papers and TV stations to combine. Clearly there’s a need for local news and a demand for local advertising. The question is combining these in a way that’s economically viable. We’re studying that in a couple of local markets. More broadly, what’s the role of localism? Will all advertising go national? Will all content go national? I really don’t have an answer. Barry Diller has been trying to build out CitySearch for a long time, and it’s a real struggle for him. He’s about break-even on it, I don’t want to give away any secrets (again, Diller is a former partner/rival). I know that at Discovery, we would not produce anything that didn’t have global appeal, and couldn’t be translated into 87 languages.
Question: If Apple released an HD TV next month with the ability to create iPhone-like apps for people like Discovery, would that be appealing to you? Malone: It’s a chicken-and-egg question. A question of scale. How do you dare risk alienating your existing distribution infrastructure? That’s the problem with Zulu–I mean Hulu. It’s very experimental.
Malone: Cable industry has traditionally been too close, and too reliant on proprietary technology, and that’s been a problem. One of the reasons you’ve seen a digital explosion has been open-technology platforms.
Question: What about an iTunes-style unbundling for video? Malone: Yup, what we call a la carte. The reality is that 99 percent of channels are very inexpensive for the distributor. They’re basically giveaways. That’s the way the business evolved. Advertising is important because access to all those people is important for advertisers. Walt: Why can’t I buy the channels I want? Malone: The money you would save would be de minimus. Also, the very expensive services, like ESPN, have way too much leverage. No distributor wants to live without ESPN because they might risk losing 15 to 20 percent of their base.
Walt: So blame Bob Iger? Malone: The guys who don’t have leverage don’t charge very much. The ones who do have leverage won’t let you go a la carte.

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 we were able. It was not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

Welcome to Lucky D7: Still Gambling on the Digital Future

Kara Swisher — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:26:10 +0000

Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

It’s been a real winning streak since then for D, due in large part to our great speakers–such as Microsoft (MSFT) icon Bill Gates and Apple (AAPL) legend Steve Jobs.

Both have been onstage many times over the years, including a historic interview the pair of tech titans did together in 2007 at D5.

Other amazing speakers have included: Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE), Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp (IACI), legendary director George Lucas, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN), former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer, Walt Disney (DIS) honcho Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), CBS (CBS) CEO Les Moonves, Democratic and Republican pols like former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain, all the leadership of Google (GOOG) and many, many more.

We have had a lot of great moments onstage with all these tech and media players over the years, to be sure, with interviews ranging from the funny to the sublime to the truly disastrous.

But, like the digital industry and the innovation our conference focuses on, we also like to lean forward to try to figure out what the Next Big Thing is around the corner, whether it comes from Silicon Valley or not.

That’s why we’re kicking off our conference on May 26 with two of the founders of Twitter–Biz Stone and Evan Williams–who are riding high on tech’s latest hot thing, which might turn out to be either a rocket ship or a shooting star.

They’ll be followed up over the next two days by a plethora of interesting players, from the leaders of several major mobile companies to content execs hit hard by fast-moving digital forces to a new Internet leader like Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is trying to turn around one of the Web’s great icons from its more recent lackluster path.

And, as we always do, we will be featuring a spate of demos too, trying to see if we can unearth that next next thing.

In the past, the D stage has seen the debut of start-up products like Sling Media’s Slingbox, Aliph’s Jawbone and Pure Digital’s Flip, all of which have gone onto glory. And also some, like Palm’s Foleo, which did not.

While not everyone can attend D, our crack staff is committed to bringing all the action from this year’s conference to readers of the All Things Digital site via up-to-the-minute blogs, photos, videos, tweets, digs and more. We’ll also, as soon as we can, post the videos of each of the onstage sessions, in their entirety.

Until it all kicks off, here is the list of speakers, below, in alphabetical order, who will be appearing at 2009′s D7 conference:

Irving Azoff | CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM)

Mitchell Baker | Chairman of Mozilla

Steve Ballmer | CEO of Microsoft

Carol Bartz | CEO of Yahoo

Mark Cuban | Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures

Eve Ensler | Playwright and Founder of V-Day

Arianna Huffington | Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo | CEO of Nokia (NOK)

Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIMM)

John Lilly | CEO of Mozilla

John Malone | Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation (LCAPA)

Roger McNamee | Partner, Elevation Partners

Jon Miller | Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.

Jon Rubinstein | Executive Chairman, Palm (PALM)

Randall Stephenson | CEO of AT&T (T)

Biz Stone | Co-founder of Twitter

Owen Van Natta | CEO of MySpace

Katharine Weymouth | Publisher of the Washington Post (WPO)

Evan Williams | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter

Jeff Zucker | CEO of NBC Universal (GE)