Jack Dorsey: Twitter’s Not Really Social

Social is “just one part of what people do on Twitter,” said co-founder Jack Dorsey at the DLD conference in Munich today.
Jack Dorsey at AsiaD

Let’s Play Word Association With Tech Moguls!

Earlier this year, I moderated a panel of tech leaders from the U.S. and Europe, at the opening of the DLD conference in Munich. To get things going, I used that old trick of word association — asking for lightning observations on Facebook, Google, Steve Jobs, Nokia, Rupert Murdoch and smartphones. Results, well, varied.

BoomTown Did Not Call Groupon's Andrew Mason a Corporate D-Bag!

Oh, to be misquoted! Last week, a lot of folks on Twitter and elsewhere thought I had called Groupon co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason a “corporate douche bag” onstage in an interview gone badly awry. While such a comment is not beyond me, the fact of the matter is that he called himself that.

Video: Sean Parker on No Victoria's Secret Models in Silicon Valley (What?!?!)

Here is former Napster troublemaker, former Facebook consigliere and current investor, entrepreneur and movie subject Sean Parker onstage at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, yesterday. It was vintage Parker, who always tries to paint himself as more of a geek than the multicolored life of the digital party. In truth, he is very much both.

From U.S. to Germany to China–BoomTown Goes Around the (Digital) World in a Week

It’s a big, wide and very digital world out there and that’s why I’m headed around the globe–quite literally–for the next week to see some non-Silicon Valley tech trends and more.

At Least Andrew Mason's Goat Rodeo of Groupon Investors Will Be Fun to Watch!

With a ridiculously large investor group and an even larger pile of expectations now, how will Groupon manage its funding success going forward? Whatever happens, the social buying service’s gathering of many of the digital arena’s most prominent VC firms, institutional investors and angels could be one of the digital sectors most interesting sideshows.

QOTD: Prost!

“I recently read in the news that you lost a very special phone at a German beer bar in California. We all know how frustrating it can be to lose personal belongings, especially when it is such a unique item.

At Lufthansa we also noted with great interest your passion for German beer and culture….Therefore we would love to offer you complimentary Business Class transportation to Munich, where you can literally pick up where you last left off.”

Lufthansa spins a bit of clever PR from this week’s iPhone prototype debacle.

Voices

Solar: Street Feeling Upbeat After Intersolar Conference

It’s a nice day for the solar sector, which is getting a boost from a flurry of analyst comments following the recently completed Intersolar trade show in Munich. “By the end of Intersolar, we sensed growing, albeit cautious optimism,” Cowen’s Robert Stone writes in a research note this morning.

Voices

Qimonda Up 80 Percent on $845M Bailout From Infineon, Others

As initially reported over the past week, Qimonda–the troubled Munich-based maker of DRAM–announced yesterday that it has obtained an investment of 605 million euros from a combination of investors, including parent Infineon Technologies and the Federal Republic of Germany.

Kara Visits Burda's DLD Luncheon in Silicon Valley!

Germany’s Hubert Burda Media threw a big luncheon in Palo Alto yesterday, which was stuffed full with Silicon Valley types. It was hosted by the company’s Steffi Czerny and Maria Burda, the wife of CEO and owner Hubert Burda, as well as well-known Israeli investor Yossi Vardi. Burda runs an annual digital conference in Munich, called DLD (Digital, Life, Design), even though the media giant is best known for its old-line magazines about fashion, cooking and crafts. So here’s the video!

Kara Visits DLD in Germany: EuroSchmoozing!

Kara Visits DLD in Germany