ESPN, which is majority-owned by Walt Disney Co., plans to show video-highlight clips on Twitter of major sports events in the coming year, including from soccer matches leading up to the World Cup, college football and the X Games extreme-sports tournaments. People can watch the video clips on Twitter’s website and mobile apps shortly after the action happens on TV.

The sports network plans to sell ads that will run inside the video clips, and marketing sponsors will commit to buying from Twitter a minimum value of “promoted”—or paid—Twitter posts to circulate their marketing pitches.

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Joyus, the video shopping platform startup led by former top Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, said it had raised $11.5 million in a second round of funding, led by InterWest Partners and Time Warner Investments. Existing investors Accel Partners and Harrison Metal also participated.

In related news, Joyus said that Ido Leffler, co-founder of natural beauty brand Yes To, would join its board.

The San Francisco-based Joyus has now raised total capital of $19 million to push its efforts to combine video with retailing online. Along with the funding news, the company underscored the efficacy of its approach in a study it also released that it says shows “fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands can directly monetize video through direct response product sales.”

Using premium video content to flack its wares, Joyus said that it converts at 5.15 times the rate of visitors who only browse product listings on the site and that its viewers buy 4.9 times more than those who don’t watch the product videos.

“Every time someone watches a video, Joyus can measure the resulting sales revenue, creating the first ever metrics for return on investment (ROI) using online video to drive product sales,” said Joyus, which noted that on a half-dozen product areas that the average revenue per video (RPV) view ranges from 47 cents to 93 cents, meaning every thousand views of video on Joyus produces between $470 and $930 in direct sales revenue. Joyus shares a cut of the sales on its site with its merchants and provides the purchasing tools.

While others might dispute this performance and many online retailers have added video to their sales processes, Joyus CEO and founder Cassidy said in an interview that online retail has to shift from a focus on engagement statistics and monetization via brand advertising to direct product sales results.

“The data on video shopping needs to be aimed at a return on the investment rather than on just brand recognition,” she said. “We think by providing an informative and entertaining experience, where you can make purchases right away, consumers buy and that this is the direction online commerce is moving.”

As I noted in a previous post about Joyus when it launched in mid-2011: “If you think about a link-laden infomercial, you’ll get a general idea of what is being created by Joyus.”

While Cassidy did note that a comparison could be made to television shopping networks like HSN, which shows elaborate demos of its products, Joyus has its own tech stack and video platform that allows shoppers to watch in a non-linear way that is preferable online and also on mobile.

“We are aimed at those customers who are bred and born on digital, so the merchandising formula is different,” said Cassidy. “This is a shopper from 30 to 50 who wants entertainment and commerce together in a format that is convenient.”

After a massive breach of its computer systems yesterday, LivingSocial has sent out emails to all of the 50 million customers impacted, a company spokesman said, and is now working with law enforcement in an investigation to help find the perpetrators.

The company declined to give more information about how the hackers might have entered the Washington, D.C., daily deals company’s system to get access to names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords. But it did note that it was taking extra measures to restrict access to all of its systems and consumer data and has been doing heavy monitoring of consumer accounts.

LivingSocial also underscored that credit card information of its users has not been hacked. “We store credit card data through a financial processing network, so the full number literally does not exist anywhere in our system,” the spokesman said.

Still, the hack is a huge blow for LivingSocial, which is owned in part by Amazon, impacting 50 million customers, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help stanch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

VTel’s Chief Executive Michel Guite says he’s made it a personal mission to upgrade the company’s legacy phone network, which dates back to 1890, with fiber for the broadband age. The company was able to afford the upgrades largely by winning federal stimulus awards set aside for broadband. Using $94 million in stimulus money, VTel has invested in stringing 1,200 miles of fiber across a number of rural Vermont counties over the past year. Mr. Guite says the gigabit service should be available across VTel’s footprint in coming months.

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If truth be told, Jerry Yang never really disappeared from the Silicon Valley scene, even though he did leave Yahoo rather suddenly just over a year ago — resigning from the board and all other positions at the iconic company he co-founded with David Filo in 1995, and then going very quiet.

When I met him last week at the airy and newish office space of Ame Cloud Ventures, off Camino Real, he politely declined to talk about that Yahoo tenure and departure, although Yahoo and he are inextricably linked in the history of tech.

That’s because the former Chief Yahoo has moved onto the next stage of his career, which perhaps could be called Jerry 2.0 — a term he’d hate (and give me a hard time for using).

Still, in many ways, Yang has launched a new digital life by focusing on what made him interested in tech in the first place: Entrepreneurs.

“I feel like the thing I missed the most is what really early entrepreneurs were doing,” he said of his latest efforts, which have been well known among techies, even if Yang has never been one to toot his own horn much in general. “I’m not sure at all that I’m any good at this mentoring/investing business — that’s why I’m using my own money, and that’s why it’s not a career.”

Yet. Yang is calling his nascent investment business — he’s more than an angel, but not quite a VC — a “work in progress” that might morph into something more.

“There are no LPs — just me, myself and I,” said Yang. “I invest in things for the long term and have a long horizon and the flexibility.”

That said, via Ame — which means rain (雨) in Japanese and happens to be the acronym of the names of his wife and kids — Yang has already invested in about two dozen startups in which he has typically puts in $100,000 to $500,000.

Explaining the name, Yang said: “Without rain, there is no life.”

And it’s clear that Yang has been very busy dousing the startup sector with a wide range of interesting investments, including:

• dotCloud, an application platform for developers
• AeroFS, a private file syncing and sharing service
• Impermium, an Internet security offering
• Jetpac, a travel app for the Apple iPad
• Lex Machina, IP litigation data and analytics
• Tomfoolery, which is aimed at improving mobile enterprise apps

Yang said what informs his investment choices centers on the activity around mobility, sensors, cloud and big data that is enabling the next generation of computing.

“The main investing premise is the idea that devices are more and more network connected,” said Yang, who noted that data that is being collected is now at another order of magnitude than ever before. “The cloud has become the next-generation supercomputer, and the smartphone has provided the revolution to spur its use.”

To select from the companies he sees, Yang has only one young associate, Nick Adams, who codes, helps on deal mechanics, interacts with entrepreneurs and also has had extensive experience in Asia.

That has been important, since Adams also leads business development for China’s Cloud Valley, which is run by Edward Tian, one of Yang’s strategic partners there. It was with Cloud Valley that Evernote, the hot productivity app in which Yang is also an investor, partnered to create a business there.

Still, Yang is not completely alone. He has weekly meetings with another former Yahoo, Ash Patel — who started the $10 million micro-venture fund Morado Ventures, which means “purple” in Spanish, and has a lot of ex-Yahoos as investors — as well as individual angel and former Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem.

The trio trade ideas and deal flow, sometimes making bets together and sometimes not. Most of all, they leverage their time in the tech sector, both good and bad.

“I might not have better ideas, but I think my experience is unique and helpful [to entrepreneurs] and there is a value to my network,” said Yang. “I think what I have to contribute, besides money and a network, is that I am very candid about the experience I have had.”

That is indeed the case, because it is clear that Yang has a lot of wisdom to impart from his long and eventful history at Yahoo, as well as his stature as one of the Internet’s most important pioneers.

And, having covered the often circumspect Yang for much of that time, I would have to say that these days he looks about as energized, excited and enthusiastic as I have ever seen him.

“I’m truly humbled by the talent that’s out there, and at the same time recognize it’s a very crowded space,” said Yang. “It is not a career yet, but I’m having a lot of fun, and we’ll see.”

It’s no secret in Silicon Valley that the HBO series “Game of Thrones” is a big favorite among the geek set — including Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — what with its dungeons-and-dragons tone and fur-and-leather outfits.

Which is why Time Warner’s premium cable network decided to do one of its three red-carpet premieres for the third season of the hit fantasy show with a splashy event on Wednesday in San Francisco that will be teeming with digerati.

“We all thought it would be fun for the creators and the cast to come here and feel the enormous enthusiasm this community and our partners have for ‘Thrones,’” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler.

Eight cast members of “Thrones” will be attending, as will Plepler, HBO COO Eric Kessler, creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and … drumroll … author George R.R. Martin.

The show is an adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” Martin’s series of popular fantasy novels, the first of which is titled “A Game of Thrones.”

No surprise — there is much swordplay in the epic. And that’s where AllThingsD comes in, since Walt Mossberg and I will be doing an onstage Q&A with Martin, Benioff and Weiss right after the first show of the new season is aired.

It’s on, or, as Martin wrote: “When you play the game of thrones, it’s either you win or you die.” Or enjoy a lovely party after.

We’ll have video of the interviews later, but here are two trailers for the third season, which begins airing March 31:

Verizon’s budding LTE network was the speed king, easily outpacing Sprint’s WiMax-based 4G service. At that point, LTE was still just a “coming soon” slide on AT&T’s 4G PowerPoint, and barely a glimmer in T-Mobile’s eye.

Fast-forward to 2013, and things have changed considerably. Verizon still has the broadest network, but AT&T is rapidly expanding its footprint nationwide.

And a new report from RootMetrics says AT&T’s LTE is also faster, both in upload and download speeds.

Sprint has made the switch to LTE. And while it is less widely available and slower than the competition, the network is faster than Sprint had said it would be.

Finally, there’s T-Mobile USA, which is also in the early stages of its LTE rollout. While it is last to the game, it has the fastest non-LTE network, meaning that it will have a powerful combination when it finally does get its LTE service up and running.

The full report makes for interesting reading, with RootMetrics having studied the major carriers’ performance in 77 U.S. markets.

When it comes to pure presence, Verizon was clearly king, with LTE in all 77 markets, compared to 47 for AT&T, five for Sprint, and T-Mobile not yet on the radar. However, both AT&T and Sprint have agressive road maps and are adding markets on what seems like a daily basis.

AT&T says it is now in 26 more of the RootMetrics markets, leaving just four of those markets yet to be covered. Overall, it says it is now in 153 U.S. markets, covering 170 million people.

On the speed front, AT&T had the fastest LTE speed and the second-fastest non-LTE speed (behind only T-Mobile). Verizon was the runner-up on LTE, with Sprint significantly slower. However, when LTE isn’t available, Verizon had the slowest speed of the four.

Sources said AOL is set to hire well-known media and Internet exec Susan Lyne to be CEO of its content brands unit at the New York-based Web company, except for the Huffington Post Media Group headed by Arianna Huffington.

Lyne has most recently been chairman of the Gilt Groupe and was CEO previous to that. She will retain her board role at the online retailer, but is likely to give up her director role at AOL. She is set to be on its executive operating committee going forward.

Lyne has had a long and varied career in media and is a high-profile hire. Beside Gilt, she also ran Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and was a top television network exec at ABC.

At AOL, she will have purview over a range of properties, including TechCrunch, Engadget and StyleList.

In related news, Bloomberg reported earlier that COO Artie Minson was departing AOL, but there are no immediate plans for him to leave. But that could change, since CEO Tim Armstrong has been moving to decentralize the company and his role could shift accordingly.

An AOL spokesperson declined to comment.

While not all of the details are known yet, over the past week there have been advance reports and much speculation about what the “PlayStation 4” will include.

Here are three things to look for at tonight’s event, which kicks off at 6 pm ET:

The new PlayStation is expected to stream games over the Web. Remember Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai Inc. last year? That $380 million spend wasn’t for nothing. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Sony is indeed expected to offer cloud-based gaming components with the new console (in addition to playing good old-fashioned optical discs). There’s a chance that Sony will make older games available only through streaming if the discs aren’t forward compatible with the new console. But there could be new streaming content in there, as well.

This is notable mostly because it underscores the shift toward casual, Web- and mobile-based games that has been impacting the hard-core gaming industry. But cloud-based gaming can be technically difficult, as the story points out, so it will be interesting to see how Sony manages this.

Mobile, mobile, mobile. Even videogame consoles aren’t immune to the mobile craze. There are a couple of ways Sony could go here — and maybe it will do both — when it comes to mobile: More integration between the console and the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s not-exactly-best-selling handheld device, or with complimentary mobile apps that work with games on the PS4 console and network. This would allow for enhanced play both in the living room and, potentially, on the go, too, where consumers generally fire up their casual (free!) games.

Briefly consider, as an example, the Wii U from Nintendo, which recently had to cut its sales forecast for the new console, and might not have aimed right when it made a proprietary tablet-like controller. But take away “proprietary” and “controller” and you’ve got a tablet — which has proved it has a place in gaming.

Here we are now, entertain us. Most people who watch Web videos and movies on their TV sets don’t have “smart” TVs. In fact, most aren’t even using Apple TV or Roku. They’re using videogame consoles. And in that arena Sony faces formidable competition in Microsoft’s Xbox console, which in the past claimed the Most-Popular, Non-PC Video-Streaming Gadget superlative.

But here’s an interesting tidbit, reported by my colleague Peter Kafka late last year: Sony’s PS3 is Netflix’s biggest platform for connected-TV viewing, due in part to the fact that Sony doesn’t slap an additional subscription fee on Netflix-watching on the console. There’s a good chance that Sony will tout additional home streaming options or features as a way to bolster its brand as a multimedia platform — if not tonight, then in the near future.

AllThingsD will be at the event, bringing you up-to-date coverage, so check back here later this evening.

About two weeks ago, I heard about a restructuring under HBO SVP of consumer technology Otto Berkes, who also takes over the job of CTO in March from longtime vet Bob Zitter. The former Microsoft exec and Xbox co-founder was named the top tech figure at the premium cable network at the end of last year, after being the primary developer of its popular HBO Go and MAX Go streaming video offerings.

As part of the changes, the memo of the Time Warner unit said, product strategy and development exec Hans Deutmeyer is leaving HBO.

HBO has been very active in the digital space, increasingly offering its shows on a variety of mobile devices. Earlier this week, at our D: Dive Into Media conference, HBO said its subscribers will be able to stream programming from an Apple iPhone or iPad onto their television via AirPlay.

All the various details are below, in a memo HBO sent to its employees at the end of January:

HBO GO has established HBO as a company that understands the value of technology as a tool for delivering great content and experiences to consumers, and HBO.com has become a primary means of driving broad consumer engagement and awareness of our offerings. We are proud of these achievements and also recognize that we have more ahead of us to accomplish. Over the course of the next several years, our mission is to build best-in-class technology execution capabilities. That mission is central to ensuring that HBO has the tools available to support our business through the ongoing technology-based disruption of media and to support new areas of growth. Like other leading Internet-based video service providers, we will design, build, and deploy scalable products with global reach.

Achieving these goals will require focus and a disciplined approach. Roles and responsibilities must be clear and well-defined to ensure efficient distribution of work and smooth collaboration between groups and people. In order to provide the organizational framework needed to achieve our goals, I am restructuring Digital Products around four functional groups (listed alphabetically):

1. Infrastructure Operations & QA,
2. Program Management,
3. Software Engineering,
4. User Experience & Product Design.

Each of these groups will have responsibilities for both HBO GO and HBO.com as appropriate for the functional areas of each group. This will enable more efficient end-to-end integration and coordination of our design, platform architecture, and infrastructure development.

The attached “Digital Products Organizational Pillars” slide illustrates the roles and responsibilities of each of these four functional groups in greater detail. The leaders of these groups will report directly to me and will continue to do so after my transition to the CTO role.

Donna Stalworth will continue to head up the infrastructure operations and QA efforts in Digital Products. She will also add build and release management to her responsibilities.

Rebekah Calabrese will be stepping into the role of VP of Program Management for Digital Products. She and her team will be responsible for cross-group coordination, project management, budget management, technology vendor relationships, and overall status communication for Digital Products. Rebekah will also continue to provide contract support for Digital Products as well as the other technology groups. Her team will consist of the existing Digital Products program and project management staff and her current reports.

Drew Angeloff will lead all of Digital Products’ software engineering activities in New York as well as in Seattle. Centralizing consumer software engineering in one group under one leader will maximize coordination and the flow of information, and will help ensure a consistent and robust software architecture. This is especially important given geographic distance between the New York and Seattle teams. The engineering staff working on device application development and the GO service currently on Rob Caruso’s team will now report to Drew.

Rob Caruso and the workflow team led by Jason Kui will transition to Diane Tryneski’s organization; Rob will report to Diane. Rob’s new charter is to build software engineering capabilities to optimize digital asset creation, management, and security, and to create technologies that unlock the full potential of software in the digital content area. Rob and his team will collaborate closely with Digital Products to ensure that our digital content technologies and our consumer-facing products inform each other to enable unique and innovative content-driven user experiences. This new role and group will be critical to achieving end-to-end software technology excellence.

Dina Juliano will lead the User Experience & Product Design organization. Her team’s responsibilities will include HBO GO, HBO.com, and HBO On Demand. Dina’s team will conceive, design, and realize new digital experiences in partnership with key stakeholders across HBO. She and her team will incorporate consumer and market insights to create a coherent product vision and roadmap that engages our users. Dina’s team will consist of her existing team and the groups formerly in Hans Deutmeyer’s organization.

Hans has decided to leave HBO to pursue opportunities that better align with his future interests. Hans has been a part of the HBO GO story since its genesis and has played a key role in bringing it to the market successfully. Given the new organizational direction, he has decided that this is the right time for him to pursue other opportunities. I want to thank Hans for his contributions and wish him success in his new endeavors.

Please welcome Donna, Rebekah, Drew, Rob, and Dina in their new roles. The changes in their teams and roles are effective immediately.

I am very excited about the new organization and am confident that we have the right the structure, leadership, passion, talent, and creativity needed to deliver best-in-class digital products to our users.

Please let your manager or me know if you have any questions.

Thank you-

— Otto —

Background image copyright kentoh

For the uninitiated, the former president is referring to the fact that there are few to no American communities that are hubs of the kind of world-leading bandwidth sufficient to drive next-generation innovation in our economy. He’s referring to the fact that, though international studies differ, the United States does not enjoy bandwidth that is nearly as fast as our peer countries. He’s referring to the fact that, for the first time since American ingenuity birthed the commercial Internet, we do not have a single national wireline provider with plans to deploy a better, faster and bigger network. For most Americans, five years from now, the best network available to them will be the same network they have today. As a result, the best networks — along with the innovations and economic power they enable — will live in other countries as well.

But we should not give up on American ingenuity; as Tom Friedman detailed in a recent New York Times op-ed, upgrading the broadband network in Chattanooga, Tenn., to world-leading gigabit speeds has transformed the community from a “slowly declining and deflating urban balloon” to the fastest growing city in Tennessee, attracting “a beehive of tech startups that all thrive on big data and super-high-speed Internet.” That’s what Gangnam bandwidth can do in America.

That’s why a recent announcement about big bandwidth from Seattle is also big news. The city just announced a plan to bring gigabit service to a dozen of its neighborhoods. Over 100,000 Seattle residents, as well as health care and educational institutions, will have access to world-leading speeds. Not only is the scale of Seattle’s effort impressive, the path it took — smart policies involving rights of way management and dark fiber — can be replicated by other communities that wish to control their own bandwidth destiny.

As America’s National Broadband Plan concluded in 2010, our country needs a critical mass of communities with world-leading networks for us to continue to have the kind of environment that fosters the cutting edge innovations necessary to develop the next generation of world-leading broadband applications. Seattle is not alone in recognizing that bigger bandwidth is an economic development tool. Just as in decades past, when communities had to learn how to benefit from new modes of power or transportation — with electrical, train or air terminal facilities — so it is now with bandwidth. Officials in Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri worked with Google, offering streamlined processes and regulatory efficiencies. Mayor Emanuel in Chicago and Mayor Bloomberg in New York have both recently launched initiatives to enhance their cities’ digital future. Thanks to efforts by their local leadership and a commitment to next-generation networks, residents in Bristol, Virginia; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Lafayette, Louisiana can already get gigabit speeds. And Gig.U, a consortium of universities and communities looking to accelerate next-generation connectivity in their regions, has, in addition to the Seattle project, helped catalyze ultra-high-speed broadband projects in the past few months: in Orono and Old Town, Maine; Cleveland, Ohio; Gainesville, Florida; East Lansing, Michigan and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

Not every community has Seattle’s assets, particularly the strong information, communications, apps development economy and committed local leaders like Mayor McGinn. But Seattle has created a model that every community can follow in improving the environment for the private investment necessary to create a new generation of American broadband leadership. Mr. Friedman proposed a $20 billion fund to bring gigabit connectivity to 200 American cities, arguing that these networks would lead to “a ‘melt-up’ in the United States economy.” While, unfortunately in our view, such a program may not be in the realm of the politically achievable, ironically, it might be the actions of individual cities to catalyze such networks that leads to the kind of growth, debt reduction and surplus that could enable the federal government to once again consider big programs to drive growth and American economic leadership. And this is the kind of policy innovation America deserves.

Blair Levin became Communications & Society Fellow with the Aspen Institute after serving as Executive Director of the National Broadband Planning effort. He is currently Executive Director of Gig.U, a project within the Institute that seeks to accelerate the deployment of next generation networks and services by using university communities as test-beds.

The University Community Next Generation Innovation Project, or Gig.U, is a broad-based group of over 30 leading research universities from across the United States. Drawing on America’s rich history of community-led innovation in research and entrepreneurship, Gig.U seeks to accelerate the deployment of gigabit-speed networks to leading U. S. universities and their surrounding communities. Improvements to these networks drive economic growth and stimulate a new generation of innovations addressing critical needs, such as health care and education. Visit Gig.U online at www.gig-u.org.

Longtime digital exec Jeff Berman is joining Hollywood production company BermanBraun as its first president.

Berman — who is no relation to BermanBraun co-founder Gail Berman — comes to the firm from the National Football League where he has been in charge of its Web, mobile, social and non-console gaming efforts. While there, he worked on several new initiatives, such as its multi-party video chat for Fantasy Football.

Several years before that, he was a top exec at social networking site Myspace, finally ending up as president of sales and marketing, where he was in charge of branded advertising, sales operations, entertainment, content and marketing. Efforts there by Berman included the now defunct Web-only series “Quarterlife,” which also had a very short life on a major network.

The Yale Law School grad was also on the board of Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com last year.

He’s an interesting person, then, for BermanBraun, which focuses on content across multiple screens, including big branded Web sites such as Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN and also more traditional entertainment shows. Its juicy-looking television series “Deception,” for example, is set to appear on NBC this week. It now has about 130 employees, mostly working at its Santa Monica, Calif., HQ.

“We needed an exceptional leader to manage the company,” said BermanBraun co-founder Lloyd Braun, who was once a top media exec at Yahoo. “And Jeff is someone who has skillsets in a whole bunch of areas and an emotional intelligence that is as important to what we do.”

Braun said Berman would initially focus on his area of expertise — digital — but that he would become more involved in the television and movie arenas over time.

BermanBraun — which considered raising funding last year — is at an interesting juncture in its development, trying to form a new kind of independent Hollywood media company that straddles analog and digital.

Berman said he was attracted to the opportunity there.

“I had a great job, since there is nothing bigger than the NFL,” he said in an interview yesterday. “But Lloyd and Gail have an incredible vision across platforms for entertainment.”

He added that content was just at the beginning of development online, but was finally poised to explode with the popularity of tablets, smartphones, interactive TV and other such devices, as well as social and e-commerce tools.

“The mind reels, there is so much that has happened and can happen,” said Berman. “I don’t know if there is a better time to be at such a place to create these new franchises — [BermanBraun] is a laboratory, where stuff is actually working.”

“What was missing? It’s very clear,” said John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile U.S.A., at a conference on Thursday. “A certain number of customers wouldn’t come to the store if we didn’t have the iPhone. … We worked very hard for a deal that makes sense for us.”

Legere didn’t nail down an exact date, instead saying the device will be offered to customers at some point next year.

Part of the problem T-Mobile has had in getting the deal done was in the carrier’s very infrastructure. The company uses a different spectrum band for its high-speed data network, which would have required Apple to do more heavy lifting to accomodate T-Mobile’s network.

Instead, T-Mobile has made strides in rejiggering its entire U.S. network, which will make it better suited to host the iPhone. Cellular tower by cellular tower, T-Mobile has been systematically upgrading their network to work with the iPhone’s spectrum.

As recently as September, T-Mobile made a push to onboard owners of unlocked iPhones to the company’s network, pairing the phones with a recently announced “Unlimited” data plan.

T-Mobile also plans to make major changes in its pricing structure in 2013, eliminating the subsidy model long used in the cellular industry. So instead of getting a $400 price cut on your handset when buying the phone, T-Mobile asks that you pay the full price. That’s not exactly cheap — often upwards of $400 to $600 for high-end devices — but it’s cheaper than the current industry standard, which lets you buy the subsidized phone up front, but locks you into a contract with higher monthly rates.

Legere didn’t get into the nitty-gritty on how the company would get around offering unsubsidized phones come 2013, a challenge considering customers often don’t recognize the value in paying more money up front for cheaper rates over the long term.

But he did drop a few hints. “You may pay $99 for the most iconic device in the world,” Legere said, likely alluding to Apple’s iPhone, “and then you may [pay] $15 to $20 a month” thereafter with your monthly bill. So in essence, it’s a sort of layaway program, eventually paying the full cost of the hardware but over time rather than all at once.

T-Mobile already offers this kind of pricing with its current “value plans” — one of two types of plans it offers to contract customers.

According to sources close to the situation, Facebook is looking seriously at purchasing Microsoft’s Atlas Solutions ad-serving platform.

Sources said the social networking giant has been conducting due diligence on the media measurement platform, part of its efforts to create its own advertising network for third-party Web sites to compete with Google’s DoubleClick offering.

Atlas has been quietly on the market for some time and has been looked at by a number of companies, such as Adobe, said sources. But the effort to sell it got a jumpstart with recent interest from Facebook, which had been debating buy-versus-build options.

While there are some technological issues in taking over Atlas, sources said the prospect of starting from scratch was more daunting than picking up a platform that already delivers billions of ad impressions a day.

Atlas was acquired by Microsoft as part of its 2007 purchase of aQuantive for $6 billion. The new price for Atlas will be substantially lower, said sources, but could involve a more complex advertising agreement between Facebook and Microsoft.

Facebook declined comment and I am awaiting a response from Microsoft.

(Business Insider is also reporting that the pair are in talks.)

The technology advocacy group surveyed the states to compare indicators on broadband adoption, network quality and the degree to which the economic structure encourages development and makes use of broadband, and it massaged that data into a ranked list.

The state of Washington, home to Microsoft and Amazon, came out on top, and while California checked in at No. 5 and Utah made No. 9, the Top 10 was dominated by states in the Northeast, led by Massachusetts, with its dense cluster of tech companies and universities.

You can read the full report here or see the infographic below for the highlights.

Former Yahoo exec Ross Levinsohn, who has laid pretty low since he left there earlier this year, will be joining the board of the Venice, Calif.-based video start-up, Zefr.

“Ross is a perfect intersection of everything we are in media and technology,” said Zefr co-founder Zach James. “He understands both sides natively, and we need that kind of expertise.”

Indeed — the company raised $18.5 million in additional funding this summer to turbocharge its offerings.

At the time, Zefr changed its name from Movieclips, and added sports, television and music videos to its film efforts. Zefr launched in 2009 as a niche video catalog site, focusing on helping movie studios collect and monetize fan and professional postings on YouTube, and offering advertisers a large network of premium movie clips.

The company said then that it had 600 million monthly views, 25,000 movie clips, and three billion total lifetime views on YouTube. It is about to celebrate one billion monthly views.

“Zefr has all the ingredients for success — dynamic, inspiring management, the ability to marry technology and content, and a business model that can scale,” said Levinsohn. “I’m thrilled to be part of the team.”

In what has become an annual holiday tradition, those who keep track of these things have started in on touting just how digital the holiday shopper has become, whipping out all manner of buzzwords to do so.

Last year, it was Cyber Monday — this year, it’s turned out to be Mobile Thursday. What’s next? Social Network Saturday? Self-Driving Car Sunday? (We still have Black Friday, by the way, which is today.)

And, indeed, the Mobile Thursday phrase got some big laps around the track, with numerous online shopping surveys — coming out faster than you can buy that new tablet — using it in their flash reports yesterday and today.

This year’s anecdotal meme: Apple iPads go well with pumpkin pie.

What isn’t said so much is that it is still a very small number — though fast-growing — over the last few years, with overall sales reaching $500 million for Thursday, compared to about $1.2 billion on Monday, according to comScore.

Still, for now, no one seems to break out actual mobile sales figures, which are clearly still a fraction of the totals. But they are more than happy to tell you that people are certainly browsing on their mobile devices, which should come as a surprise to exactly no one who is tired of talking to the relatives about three hours into the day.

According to IBM’s Benchmark report, for example, online sales were up 17.4 percent over 2011 on Thanksgiving Day, noting that “big winners were retailers who connected customers with personalized deals across multiple screens including PCs, smartphones and tablets.”

Some stats from IBM about Thursday:

Mobile Traffic: The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached 25.3 percent, up from 66.2 percent over 2011.

Mobile Shopping: The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase increased to 18.3 percent, up 65.3 percent from 2011.

Mobile Email: Smartphone and tablet shoppers responded to email deals from retailers, with emails opened on mobile devices jumping 23 percent on Thanksgiving Day over 2011.

Couch Commerce: In the evening hours, consumers shifted from shopping through their smartphones at the dinner table to buying through their iPad on the couch. At the end of the day the iPad drove more retail traffic than any other device with traffic reaching 10.7 percent versus the iPhone at 9.1 percent and Android at 5.8 percent.

Social Shopping: Shoppers referred from Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter increased in evening hours generating .63 percent of all online sales on Thanksgiving.

And today, Black Friday, IBM slightly upped those figures, noting that the iPhone was the preferred device to bring into a store to shop with — presumably irritating sales clerks everywhere.

Over at Fab, CEO Jason Goldberg was touting in a Betashop blog post that his mobile app sales were 40 percent of the retail site’s total for the day. It’s usually 33 percent, so it’s a small jump, which Goldberg attributed to a tweet by Apple promoting it. But how much did he sell? He’s not saying.

And eBay said it launched 20 mobile-only e-commerce promotions over its app, as did many other retailers.

Also, no surprise, the New York Times weighed in with the classic trend piece: “The Shrewd Shopper Carries a Smartphone.” Um, everyone carries a smartphone now, but it apparently gets more magical when you take it to Macy’s.

We’ll see if Mobile Thursday becomes Mobile Holiday Season, which would be a big deal — but it’s winning so far in the pundit stakes.

Until we get actual numbers, here’s a chart about the whole thing from eBay:

On Wednesday the social network announced several updates to its governing policy that may ultimately limit the community’s ability to overturn future policy decisions. In a blog post authored by Elliot Schrage, its head of communications, Facebook said it will remove a voting system that gives its users the opportunity to strike down a policy change if a change prompts more than 7,000 comments and if more than 30% of people on Facebook participate in a vote.

Read the rest of its post on its original site »

When you test the Internet speed of devices, what software do you use? I just got a new tablet and want to test it.

A:

I and some other reviewers use a free product called Speedtest.net, made by a company called Ookla. On Windows PCs and Macs, I use the Web version of the product, at speedtest.net. On Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, I use the company’s free apps, available from those platforms’ app stores. The product works on Wi-Fi and cellular networks, displays a list of your results over time, and lets you export those results in a format that can be used in a spreadsheet.

Q:

I will be traveling to Antarctica on a cruise and will fly home, with strict luggage size and weight restrictions. I would like to keep a log about my trip, download and sort pictures from my camera, and e-read during the trip. Any suggestions what computer equipment best covers these options?

A:

An iPad would do all this, if you buy the $29 optional Camera Connection Kit. I used this combination, with a digital camera, on a trip to Paris, and it worked well. You can plug in your camera via the connection kit, or just pop in its SD memory card, and the iPad will import the photos. You can create albums, and move individual photos among those albums. And, of course, the iPad weighs very little, especially the new Mini, and is a good e-reader.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo is among the companies taking a serious gander at TVGuide.com, the online entertainment listings, video and news site and mobile app.

Earlier today, Deadline Hollywood reported that its owner, Lionsgate, was in “advanced negotiations” to sell the site for about $20 million to one strategic bidder.

That’s the approximate price, my sources said too, who noted that Yahoo is only kicking the tires to determine if the site would add to its online media efforts and that such a deal is not in a final state.

But TVGuide.com is right in the wheelhouse of Yahoo’s acquisition efforts under CEO Marissa Mayer. She said the Silicon Valley Internet giant was looking at smaller purchases to round out its product line, especially in the mobile area.

Thus, its M&A point person, Jackie Reses, has been looking at “everything in the world,” according to numerous sources, across a large spectrum of arenas. TVGuide.com is in the media space, obviously — another she’s looked at is Los Angeles-based Maker Studios.

Hollywood studio Lionsgate last reported that TVGuide.com has upward of 24 million unique monthly visitors, and also has almost seven million mobile app users.

Lionsgate bought the site and television network in 2009, which also is owned in part by J.P. Morgan’s One Equity Partners.

The folks at Renesys, the market research firm that keeps constant tabs on the health and operations of the Internet, watched networks in and around New York fail in real time as the hurricane swept across the region.

You’ll remember that the fundamental design principle of the Internet is that it routes traffic around failure automatically — supposedly, the legend goes, to enable it to keep running after a nuclear war. Well, the folks at Renesys watched that happen in real time, too. In its latest corporate blog post, it shows via a handful of colorful graphics how the traffic that would normally have run through New York took a different route, say from Paris to Washington D.C., or via Dallas to Palo Alto to get to India.

So what does it all prove? That the people who keep the Internet running do a pretty good job of it, even when a critical hub like New York takes on a lot of water.

Big management shifts at Apple are now taking place.

Scott Forstall, the man in charge of its iOS mobile software efforts and a major and longtime executive at the tech giant, is leaving next year and will remain an adviser to CEO Tim Cook until then.

In addition, new retail head John Browett is headed out the door.

As part of the move, Apple noted that four key execs — Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi — would “add responsibilities to their roles.”

Ive gets “Human Interface”; Cue will take over Maps and Siri voice recognition responsibilities; Mansfield will run a new unit called Technologies, “which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization”; and Federighi gets the big job of iOS and OS X.

More to come on what happened, but Forstall’s departure is very big news and a drastic move for such an important player in the tech space.

He had big fans and also many detractors for his sharp-edged personality, as well as what some described as exhibiting “growing open challenges” to Cook himself. Forstall had previously been called “CEO-in-waiting” in one media account in Fortune.

In addition, numerous sources noted persistent tension between Forstall and several other key execs, especially the powerful design chief Ive.

Veiled internal politics at Apple aside, Forstall has been a key part of Apple’s success over the last decade, especially in the development iPad and the iPhone.

Recently, there has been some level of ire at Apple over the troubled rollout of its own mapping software and the replacement of Google’s popular service, which was Forstall’s responsibility. (No, this move does not mean everyone gets Google mapping back, as one person asked me.)

Browett’s leaving is a little less of a surprise. Since he got the job, he has alienated many within the highly successful retail organization at Apple, many sources said.

His departure comes less than one year after the former Dixons CEO was hired by Apple to succeed Ron Johnson, who left for J.C. Penney in November 2011. Recently he’s been criticized by some Apple Store employees for unfriendly policy changes aimed at increasing Apple’s retail profit margins.

More to come, obvi, but here is the official press release from Apple, which it put out with the most understated title of all time:

Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services

Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Add Responsibilities to Their Roles

CUPERTINO, California — October 29, 2012 — Apple® today announced executive management changes that will encourage even more collaboration between the Company’s world-class hardware, software and services teams. As part of these changes, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi will add more responsibilities to their roles. Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.

“We are in one of the most prolific periods of innovation and new products in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The amazing products that we’ve introduced in September and October, iPhone 5, iOS 6, iPad mini, iPad, iMac, MacBook Pro, iPod touch, iPod nano and many of our applications, could only have been created at Apple and are the direct result of our relentless focus on tightly integrating world-class hardware, software and services.”

Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design. His incredible design aesthetic has been the driving force behind the look and feel of Apple’s products for more than a decade.

Eddy Cue will take on the additional responsibility of Siri® and Maps, placing all of our online services in one group. This organization has overseen major successes such as the iTunes Store®, the App Store℠, the iBookstore℠ and iCloud®. This group has an excellent track record of building and strengthening Apple’s online services to meet and exceed the high expectations of our customers.

Craig Federighi will lead both iOS and OS X®. Apple has the most advanced mobile and desktop operating systems, and this move brings together the OS teams to make it even easier to deliver the best technology and user experience innovations to both platforms.

Bob Mansfield will lead a new group, Technologies, which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization, fostering innovation in this area at an even higher level. This organization will also include the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future.

Additionally, John Browett is leaving Apple. A search for a new head of Retail is underway and in the interim, the Retail team will report directly to Tim Cook. Apple’s Retail organization has an incredibly strong network of leaders at the store and regional level who will continue the excellent work that has been done over the past decade to revolutionize retailing with unique, innovative services for customers.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

In a post today on its policy blog, Yahoo took aim at Microsoft’s controversial “Do Not Track” default in its Internet Explorer 10 browser.

Said Yahoo in a post titled “In Support of Personal Experience”:

“Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.”

Thus, Yahoo “will not recognize IE10’s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.”

Such a move should make Yahoo very popular with advertisers, most of which are publicly and privately decrying the Microsoft effort for their browser having advertising targeting and tracking turned off by default.

In fact, Yahoo’s statement of no-default-respect pretty much tracks on what the Digital Advertising Alliance, which represents thousands of major marketers, said recently, as well as the Association of National Advertisers.

Both those groups and many others are seeking to kill DNT.

According to sources, the impetus for the Yahoo decision was CEO Marissa Mayer, a former Google exec.

Interestingly, Google recently added DNT support to the latest version of its increasingly popular Chrome browser developer build.

And the third major browser, Mozilla’s Firefox, also offers a DNT product as a key feature.

Right now, Mayer is in discussions with the software giant about improving the weak results of its search advertising partnership, too. This should make those talks much more interesting.

In fact, in a longer privacy post today, titled “Privacy and Technology in Balance,” Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith noted:

“Just because the signal is turned on doesn’t mean that a consumer wants no services that involve tracking. It means instead that consumers are empowered to make their own choices, including selecting services that involve tracking from advertisers and ad networks they trust.”

Here’s the whole post, and here is a really good New York Times piece on the controversy, including talks taking place via an international group working on global DNT standards, called the World Wide Web Consortium:

In Support of a Personalized User Experience

Friday, October 26th, 2012

At Yahoo!, we aspire to make the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining. Our users have come to expect a personalized Yahoo! experience tailor-made for their lives — whether they’re checking local weather, sports scores, stock quotes, daily news, or viewing ads on our site. We fundamentally believe that the online experience is better when it is personalized.

That said, we also believe that there should be an easy and transparent way for users to express their privacy preferences to Yahoo!. That’s why we offer our own tools and resources such as Ad Interest Manager, to give users more control over personalized advertising on Yahoo!, and why we participate in industry-wide programs such as AdChoices, which allows users to learn why they’ve been shown an ad.

Yahoo! has been working with our partners in the Internet industry to come up with a standard that allows users to opt out of certain website analytics and ad targeting. In principle, we support “Do Not Track” (DNT). Unfortunately, because discussions have not yet resulted in a final standard for how to implement DNT, the current DNT signal can easily be abused. Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.

Ultimately, we believe that DNT must map to user intent — not to the intent of one browser creator, plug-in writer, or third-party software service. Therefore, although Yahoo! will continue to offer Ad Interest Manager and other tools, we will not recognize IE10′s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.

Yahoo! is committed to working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to reach a DNT standard that both satisfies user expectations and provides the best Internet experience possible. We will closely evaluate our support for DNT as the industry makes progress in reaching a meaningful, transparent standard to promote choice, reduce signal abuse, and deliver great personalized experiences for our users.

NBCUniversal’s digital unit has hired well-regarded HBO exec Alison Moore to be EVP and GM for its women-focused online property DailyCandy.

The move is an interesting one for Moore, who has been a key player in the premium cable channel’s aggressive efforts in digital, including its much-praised HBO Go offering. Moore, a longtime HBO exec, has most recently been the Time Warner unit’s SVP of digital products.

At DailyCandy, the longtime online newsletter and Web site focused on fashion, food and lifestyle, she will report to Nick Lehman, president of digital for NBCU’s Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media group. (NBCU is owned by Comcast.)

Moore’s job will be to turbocharge DailyCandy’s efforts on a range of platforms, and expand its user base of six million women, especially its video offerings.

She also will be working on various multiplatform programming partnerships with NBCU’s many television and digital assets, such as the Style Network.

Moore has worked for HBO since 1995, although at two different times. She left in 1999 to work on two Internet start-ups — Flooz.com and DatSat — and also at Cablevision. She returned to HBO in 2003.

“From my end, it is a huge opportunity to do something new and run a business,” said Moore in an interview yesterday. “At the same time, the user base is passionate and engaged, so it is not unlike HBO in that way.”

Moore said mobile was obviously a top priority, along with more app development and experiments with geolocation. DailyCandy already serves up a wide range of consumer information to women from cities across the U.S., including San Francisco and New York.

“I think the trick to any successful product is how do you create something with an authentic voice that consumers see value in,” said Moore. “This area is ripe for explosion, because great content is king.”

Speaking of great content, here’s a video interview I did with the charming Moore at an HBO event in San Francisco in the spring: