According to numerous sources close to the situation, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently met with top execs at Hulu, the premium video service whose big media company owners have been considering selling it for some months.

Sources said Yahoo is “in the process,” although the Silicon Valley Internet giant has not made any kind of formal bid. Other players whom sources said are considering purchasing all or parts of Hulu include: Former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, who now has a successful and well-funded multimedia and investment company called the Chernin Group; Guggenheim Partners digital arm, which is led by former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn; and Amazon.

Sources said Mayer also had an extensive getting-to-know-you meeting, which was apparently not held at Hulu’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif., along with COO Henrique De Castro. The discussion is taking place in the wake of Yahoo’s failed bid — largely engineered by De Castro — to purchase a majority stake in France Télécom’s Dailymotion video service, after a top French government official said Yahoo could not own 75 percent of the company.

Had the deal — which was reportedly valued at $300 million — gone through, it would have been the most significant by Mayer since she took over at the company last July. Thus far, she has limited her purchases to small mobile startup.

While the meetings with Hulu are only preliminary, Yahoo has been to this video rodeo before, having seriously considering buying Hulu when it was previously being shopped by its owners, News Corp., Disney and Comcast. (News Corp. also owns this site.)

Of course, if Yahoo’s interest becomes more serious, Mayer will have to make important visits to top execs at those media giants, since they control the rights to critical content, and thus Hulu’s value.

As Peter Kafka noted in a previous post about Hulu’s possible sale, “much hinges on the licensing rights News Corp., Disney and Comcast would provide for the money-losing site, as well as what happens to the $300 million debt its owners have taken on in the last year.”

Without those rights, Hulu by itself is a very pretty Web site and video platform, but not worth the billions it would be with very long-term television rights, content that attracts users. Currently, sources said its media owners are offering two to three years of rights, with a lot of flexibility over removing content from the site, which is not quite as attractive a deal (to say the least).

But video is a key component of Yahoo’s strategy going forward. Along with mobile efforts, Mayer has explicitly told investors that video was a key to company under her tenure.

Coincidentally, today in an onstage interview at a Wired conference in New York, Mayer broadly addressed the video issue when asked a question about the topic, noting it was important across all of Yahoo’s properties.

“I think video is really important … video is something that we’re all innately designed and born to experience, everyone is born being able to watch and to hear,” she said. “Video is just this amazing format.”

Mayer would know that well, having been at Google when the search giant bought YouTube, ironically snatching it at the last minute from a competing bid by Yahoo, which was then led by Terry Semel. Since then, YouTube has become the most important and powerful player in the space by far.

Yahoo, despite being one of the largest video players on the Web, has mostly been a lackluster competitor in the arena, pinging over the years from creating original content to doing branded deals with media companies, but never establishing a major beachhead with consumers as Hulu did from scratch.

Short of a full acquisition, there may be a way for Yahoo to partner and invest in Hulu, instead of buying it outright that works for all sides — owners get a new owner to foot part of the bill and also increase distribution, and Yahoo can claim that it’s providing users with exponentially more content that would help Yahoo’s long-declining engagement problem.

Sources said News Corp. and Disney have mulled scenarios where one or both companies hang on to the site, while Comcast has no control over Hulu’s fate, having given up its management rights to the site as a concession to federal regulators.

But the strength of the Hulu brand is clear and it has had some success in building a more significant business. While a lot of its video offerings are free, about four million people are paying for a Hulu Plus subscription.

Still, Hulu’s strength might be lagging, especially given after talented founding leader Jason Kilar recently left. Last year, Hulu was a top 10 video site, according to comScore. No longer — in a report in March, it had dropped out of the top 10.

While this likely has more to do with methodology than real decline in Hulu ratings, it does show that while it’s the biggest thing Yahoo could buy or invest in, Yahoo itself has plenty of video views, many more than Hulu.

The question for Mayer then is how much of Yahoo’s multi-billon-dollar cash kitty she wants to bet on a big video play. She might also be considering buying several smaller ones, said sources, with Yahoo having also looked at some smaller video sites, including Blip and Grab Media.

A spokeswoman for Hulu declined to comment and Yahoo PR has not responded to a query for comment (if ever).

Today, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the body for New York City’s arteries of public transit, had completed the first phase of a citywide project to install Wi-Fi and voice-calling service in its subway stations.

Service is now expanded to 36 subway stations, including the six that were tested last year. Major stations, including Times Square and Rockefeller Center, are included in the expansion.

The project allows for voice calling, text messaging and Internet browsing from the station platforms — not on the trains themselves. And you’ll have to be a customer of participating wireless services to access voice and data.

Carriers AT&T and T-Mobile have already signed on to provide service for wireless voice and data for their customers. Executives from Verizon and Sprint were also in attendance at Gov. Cuomo’s press conference, as the two carriers say they plan to be a part of the network down under.

Wi-Fi is available through Boingo, and Transit Wireless is providing the infrastructure for the five-year project. Currently, the Wi-Fi is free through a sponsorship by HTC, which requires that the user watch an ad for the company’s new flagship smartphone before accessing the Wi-Fi.

The original plan to have the major stations wired by the end of 2012 was delayed in part by Hurricane Sandy.

New York City already offers free Wi-Fi service in 20 parks across five boroughs. And Google earlier this year brought free Wi-Fi to the Chelsea neighborhood (where the search giant has offices, marked by a giant sign), spanning a 13-block coverage zone.

So how does New York City stack up to other major metro areas? Surprisingly, it lags behind some in terms of underground Wi-Fi installation. Last year, London’s transportation authority introduced Wi-Fi service to 120 Tube stations, powered by Virgin Media, although it is mostly pay-as-you-go service and doesn’t include wireless calling.

In Asia, the JR East line in Tokyo is dotted with Wi-Fi hotspots, although, again, many require a prepaid pass; Hong Kong currently offers limited daily sessions of free Wi-Fi in 14 MTR stations. Indian Railways also just launched a pilot for free Wi-Fi Internet service on trains on the New Delhi-Howrah Rajdhani line.

But it’s often better to get it right than to get it first, as evidenced by the Wi-Fi service in San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system. BART commuters were promised that Wi-Fi would be widely available three years ago, but service is still notoriously unreliable.

(Feature photo courtesy of Leone Fabre/Flickr Creative Commons. Photo of girl in subway station courtesy of Hernan Seoane/Flickr Creative Commons.)

SoftBank Capital and Yahoo Japan said they had created an unusual $20 million fund to help U.S. startups break into the Japanese market, while also upping a presence in the U.S.

The partnership between Japan’s largest Internet company — which is also a joint venture with Yahoo — and the venture arm of the giant SoftBank Corp. will invest in companies from early-stage funding to later-stage expansion and focus on mobile applications, social media, e-commerce, online advertising, gaming and cloud computing.

The new funds for that are being put into SoftBank Capital’s $100 million Technology Fund ’10. As part of the deal, Toshiaki Chiku will become head of U.S. operations in Manhattan. SoftBank Capital also recently announced a $250 million PrinceVille Fund, aimed at growth-stage startups in Asia.

Among the firm’s recent exits: Bluefin Labs went to Twitter, Buddy Media to Salesforce.com, Huffington Post to AOL, Hyperpublic to Groupon and OMGPOP to Zynga.

Now, it will be focusing even more on helping U.S. startups in Asia.

“Japan can be challenging for many U.S. companies, and given our scale and affiliation with SoftBank Corp., we’re in a great position to help them grow and succeed,” said Chiku in a statement.

SoftBank Capital and Yahoo Japan used performance display advertising company Criteo as an example of a successful investment, in which it also helped the company enter the Asian market (although, technically, Criteo is HQed in France).

It was his administration that came up with a plan to get Amazon.com and other out-of-state online retailers to start collecting state and local sales taxes from New York customers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

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.

The changes will close an office in New York, two in Texas, and one in Baltimore, Md. However, employees at three of the locations will be moved to other existing offices nearby, consolidating the workforce across fewer offices nationwide.

“In an effort to leverage resources as we focus on creating franchises and driving profitability, Zynga has made changes to four of our U.S. offices,” Zynga COO David Ko said in a statement. “We are closing the McKinney, Texas, and downtown Austin offices and relocating those teams nearby to our existing Dallas and North Austin offices. And, we will be consolidating our NYC offices to move staff to our NYC mobile studio.”

Only the Baltimore office will face employee layoffs. Half of the staff were able to be moved to other Zynga offices, while approximately 30 Zynga employees will be laid off.

“While these decisions are always difficult, these steps will affect approximately 1 percent of our workforce and enable us to focus our resources on the most significant growth opportunities,” Ko said.

The moves come on the heels of remarks Ko made during Zynga’s most recent earnings call, where the new COO spoke about focusing the company’s efforts on its best-performing franchises, with an obvious aim in stepping up overall profitability. It’s likely one in a series of moves to trim the excess fat in terms of superfluous real estate.

And though layoffs are always a bummer, these in particular weren’t a surprise. Zynga recently shut down Cityville 2, the game that studio in particular was focused on. Not to mention that chief game designer and Baltimore studio leader Brian Reynolds recently resigned.

Shares of Zynga were trading up 10 percent on the news at $3.51 per share, a bump of about 32 cents.

Members of the Dorm Room Fund Philadelphia team

That’s what First Round Capital has already done with its Dorm Room Fund in Philadelphia, and the firm’s Phin Barnes said it was working well enough that this week the second Dorm Room Fund will launch in New York at Columbia, NYU, Princeton and the Cornell Tech campus.

And there are more programs to come, said Barnes, describing Dorm Room Fund as “a way to delay making a choice” between dropping out of school to start a company and staying in school while pursuing entrepreneurship.

First Round Capital doesn’t take a proprietary interest in the startups, though it hopes to see a financial return as the sole investor in the fund.

The Philadelphia-based Dorm Room Fund has made four investments since late last year, with one of them announced so far: A screen-sharing customer service tool called Firefly.

The agreement brings an end to an unusual lawsuit brought last month by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli on behalf of the New York State Common Retirement Fund. The lawsuit sought to force the wireless-technology company to disclose what it spends on political causes.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Sitting in front of a spectacular view of San Francisco at his home this afternoon, former Square COO Keith Rabois looks spent.

He is just recovering from a bout of pneumonia, which would be bad enough, but it’s clear from his tense and unusually — for him — disheveled appearance that the sexual harassment claim made by a current male employee at the San Francisco payments startup has taken its toll on the typically hard-charging exec who is not known for suffering fools.

But, now, given a judgement he made to continue in a personal and physical relationship with that unnamed junior staffer after he was hired at Square, Rabois feels both foolish and also angry.

“At the end of the day, this is personally embarrassing to me, because when anyone’s life is exposed to a public forum, it creates quite a damaging situation,” said Rabois. “As we looked at it, it was going to become a distraction that was going to hurt the company.”

It appears as if he wanted to stay — he shrugs when directly asked about it, though he will not say so explicitly. But, Rabois finally agreed with Square’s top management, including CEO and founder Jack Dorsey, that is was better that he leave.

“It was very clear once this outrageous demand was made, instead of building great products, it would be all about that,” he said.

That said, after an internal investigation, the company is backing him in the expected filing of a lawsuit from the employee, who has threatened a panoply of explosive allegations against him and the company that Rabois said again are a “fiction.”

He declined to show me any texts or emails between the two, but did recount the relationship in a blog post on Tumblr earlier today.

Richard Curiale, outside counsel for Square and also Rabois, said that the company had been approached about two weeks ago by New York lawyer Steven Berger, claiming the company knew of and did nothing to stop sexual harassment by Rabois and demanding a multi-million dollar settlement.

Curiale said he found no evidence in his investigation so far of anything except a “welcome” relationship that ended. He had even agreed to make Rabois available for a deposition with Berger, but the offer was refused.

I have an email into Berger for comment, which has thus far been unanswered. But Square has said it will fight any lawsuit filed and is currently supporting Rabois.

“I have not as yet found any conduct that is illegal and therefore there is no adverse relationship between Keith and Square,” said Curiale. “We don’t pay for claims that have no merit to them, because it amounts to extortion.”

Perhaps so, but it also amounts to a very juicy story — the second such major blowup in Silicon Valley in a year. The other — now a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination and retaliation, and a countersuit — between the well-known venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and former partner Ellen Pao, is ongoing.

The particulars of the Rabois situation, per his side of the story, which he claims is supported by much evidence, is of a social and physical relationship with a man he met several years ago.

While he would not call their relationship dating, it was close and personal, including taking this man out with him to social events.

The problem came when he recommended this man for a job at Square and he was hired. The company was much smaller then, about 30 people, but as it grew Rabois insists he had no direct oversight of the employee and also did not treat him differently from others he managed at the company.

Rabois claims he gave him advice, as he did other employees, but neither helped or hindered the man in his efforts to advance.

The man and Rabois were still seeing each other socially until December, when the relationship cooled.

And then came the lawsuit threat two weeks ago, which Rabois said “stunned” him.

Square says that it was not aware of the personal relationship until the threat of the lawsuit; the employee has never made any complaints about Rabois to management.

Spokesman Ricardo Reyes said that “what we have here at most is bad judgement and we will defend ourselves.”

In this Rabois agrees, as he fields emails of support from his wide range of friends and colleagues in tech, where he is well known as an entrepreneur and angel investor.

“I have several good ideas of what I want to do next,” he said.

I am meeting with former COO Keith Rabois right now about the developing situation at Square, which involves a sexual harassment claim from a male employee still at the payments company.

The issue was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, just as Rabois posted his own account on the situation.

I’ll have more in a bit, but here is a pretty stunning statement he just gave me that also just published on his Tumblr blog, describing a personal relationship with an employee that went badly awry.

Rabois resigned yesterday as COO of the high-profile and heavily funded San Francisco startup:

The past few days have been the toughest, saddest, most frightening, and emotionally draining of my life. They have deeply affected me, both personally and professionally.

In May 2010, I met someone via mutual friends. With increasing frequency, we hung out, drank wine, and I helped prepare him for interviews with tech startups. As our friendship deepened, we spent more time together, and our relationship became physical. We regularly worked out at the gym, occasionally hung out at my home, and exchanged intimate, personal information, as people in similar relationships often do.

Several months after our relationship began, I recommended that he interview at Square. He went through the interview process and was ultimately hired. I did not interview him. I had no impact on his potential success at the company. At no point did he ever report directly to me, and I have seen his work product less than a handful of times.

Last week, a New York-based attorney threatened Square and myself with a lawsuit. I am told this lawsuit would allege that the relationship was not consensual, and would go on to accuse me of some pretty horrible things. I was told that only a payment of millions of dollars will make this go away, and that my career, my reputation, and my livelihood will be threatened if Square and I don’t pay up.

I realize that continuing any physical relationship after he began working at Square was poor judgment on my part. But let me be unequivocal with the facts: (1) The relationship was welcome. (2) Square did not know of the relationship before a lawsuit was threatened; it came as a complete surprise to the company. (3) He never received nor was denied any reward or benefits based on our relationship. And (4), I did not do the horrendous things I am told I may be accused of. While I have certainly made mistakes, this threat feels like a shakedown, and I will defend myself to the full extent of the law.

I decided to resign from Square so my colleagues could continue to do great work without the distraction that a lawsuit would most certainly bring. I deeply regret that I let my personal and professional lives to become intertwined, and I apologize to my colleagues and friends (at Square and elsewhere) who I’ve let down, and who will bear the brunt of some of the unnecessary, negative attention this situation will likely bring.

I am already working on something new and hope to announce that in February.

Here is a statement from Square about the developing situation:

“The first we heard of any of these allegations was when we received the threat of a lawsuit two weeks ago. We took these allegations very seriously and we immediately launched a full investigation to ascertain the facts. While we have not found evidence to support any claims, Keith exercised poor judgment that ultimately undermined his ability to remain an effective leader at Square. We accepted his resignation.”

In mid-November, longtime entrepreneur, active angel investor, iconoclastic blogger and hardcore New Yorker Chris Dixon told the tech world something it least expected — that he had taken a job as a venture capitalist at one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful firms, Andreessen Horowitz.

Well, he’s arrived finally, and moved himself to San Francisco and his office to Sand Hill Road for real — even though he is still keeping his apartment back East.

It’s been a long and winding road to here for Dixon, who was CEO and co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, as well as recommendations engine Hunch, which was bought by eBay a year ago.

He is one of the founding members of Founder Collective, an East Coast-based seed-stage venture firm run by entrepreneurs, making a lot of investments in companies such as Skype, Invite Media and OMGPOP. Previously, he programmed financial algorithms at a high-speed options trading firm, and has also worked at Bessemer Venture Partners.

And, perhaps most intriguingly, Dixon has also blogged a lot about what needs fixing in the VC industry (a lot, according to him).

Yesterday, I motored the Mazda 5 down to Andreessen Horowitz’s office to talk about the move with the always clever Dixon, who is hoping to focus on a range of consumer-focused investments, and perhaps cast his freshly monied net more widely.

Here’s the video of the interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130125/go-west-young-geek-chris-dixon-on-why-he-became-a-silicon-valley-vc-at-andreessen-horowitz-and-more-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130125/viral-video-girls-as-a-horror-movie/ http://allthingsd.com/20130125/viral-video-girls-as-a-horror-movie/#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:38:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=288592 This video from Now This News — which mashes up various comic scenes from the hit HBO cable television series “Girls” into a horror movie — just cracks me up.

That said, being in your twenties in Brooklyn as a hipster seems even scarier.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130125/viral-video-girls-as-a-horror-movie/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130117/yelp-to-add-health-inspection-data-to-restaurant-listings-in-san-francisco-new-york/ http://allthingsd.com/20130117/yelp-to-add-health-inspection-data-to-restaurant-listings-in-san-francisco-new-york/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:00:25 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=286406 In a partnership with the San Francisco mayor’s office, Yelp will soon include health score information to restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The move is part of a broader initiative by Mayor Ed Lee, who has angled for better ways to put publicly available government-collected data in front of consumers. The initiative will also expand to New York City in the coming weeks, and Yelp expects Philadelphia to follow suit, as well.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130117/yelp-to-add-health-inspection-data-to-restaurant-listings-in-san-francisco-new-york/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130115/former-yahoo-ad-exec-and-interclick-founder-katz-joins-adaptly-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20130115/former-yahoo-ad-exec-and-interclick-founder-katz-joins-adaptly-board/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:00:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=285401 Social advertising technology company Adaptly has added Interclick founder Michael Katz to its board. Katz recently left Yahoo under tense circumstances, as part of a larger company advertising reorganization. That aside, Katz is a well-regarded entrepreneur and innovator in the ad tech space; he took Interclick public and sold it to Yahoo for $270 million in late 2011. Adaptly works with a range of big brands, using a consolidated platform to complete a social media ad buys across multiple social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The New York-based startup has raised about $13 million in funding so far.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130115/former-yahoo-ad-exec-and-interclick-founder-katz-joins-adaptly-board/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130114/purewow-hires-new-editor-from-real-simple/ http://allthingsd.com/20130114/purewow-hires-new-editor-from-real-simple/#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:00:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=285049 PureWow, a New York-based lifestyle email and website aimed at GenX women, has hired Real Simple magazine editor Mary Kate McGrath as its first editor in chief. She will be responsible for content strategy for PureWow, which launched in September 2010 with funding from Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group and the founders of the website wowOwow. The site has about 1.5 million subscriptions across its eight editions, and plans to expand to several more U.S. cities this year, as well as topical sites.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130114/purewow-hires-new-editor-from-real-simple/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121228/new-york-makes-subway-arrival-times-available-to-mobile-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20121228/new-york-makes-subway-arrival-times-available-to-mobile-apps/#comments Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:26:37 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=281188 There are plenty of apps that offer up info on New York’s popular subways. But, until today, none offered exact train arrival times.

New York is now serving up that information via mobile apps for seven of its lines, with plans to add more lines over time.

The Metropolitan Transit Agency on Friday offered up an iOS test app for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and S shuttle lines. The data will also be on its Web site and in a feed that can be used by other app developers.

“This is what generations of dreamers and futurists have waited for,” said MTA Chairman and CEO Joseph J. Lhota, in a statement.

Well, I’m not sure about that. Those in San Francisco and other places have long had that data, but it’s still useful that it is coming to one of America’s busiest public transit systems.

“The ability to get subway arrival time at street level is here,” Lhota said. “The days of rushing to a subway station only to find yourself waiting motionless in a state of uncertainty are coming to an end. Now, you can know from the comfort of your home or office whether to hasten to the station, or grab a cup of coffee as part of a leisurely walk.”

MTA says its Subway Time app can handle 5,000 requests per second, and builds on the countdown clocks that are already in place inside many subway stations.

But, as The Wall Street Journal explains, the task of expanding this feature to cover the entire system is formidable. The real-time train location information comes from new computer-connected sensors that were installed along the first set of lines at a cost of more than $228 million over 11 years. Adding such sensors across the remaining two-thirds of the system will take years and hundreds of millions more. And a separate project to extend cell service to underground stations won’t be completed until 2016.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121228/new-york-makes-subway-arrival-times-available-to-mobile-apps/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121226/taking-stock-of-internet-stocks-in-2012-and-the-winner-is-aol/ http://allthingsd.com/20121226/taking-stock-of-internet-stocks-in-2012-and-the-winner-is-aol/#comments Wed, 26 Dec 2012 13:15:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=280598

Back at the beginning of 2012, very few people would have picked AOL as the hottest Internet stock of the year.

And yet with only four trading days left, the New York-based portal is up 99.8 percent for the year, which is more than double the 49.4 percent rise in Amazon’s shares for the year to date and slightly less than four times more than Apple’s 28.4 percent.

I included AOL — which got its big lift via a series of deft financial transactions and other rejiggering of the business by CEO Tim Armstrong — in a group of 10 Web stocks, most of which saw decent rises since January 3, 2012.

After AOL and Apple, Netflix saw a 30.2 percent rise, followed by a 21.8 gain by Yahoo, which has only recently risen due to increased investor confidence in new CEO Marissa Mayer.

In contrast, Google — one of the Internet’s most powerful players — only managed a 9.8 percent increase, which was still about double Microsoft’s at a 4.2 percent bump.

That’s a whole lot better than the trio of laggards that tanked in 2012. The best of the worst has been Facebook, which is down just 29 percent. That’s a lot better than earlier this year, mostly due to increased investor confidence about its mobile prospects.

But nothing has been able to lift either Zynga (down 75.2 percent) or Groupon (down 77.6 percent) from the stock doldrums they have been caught in since their IPOs.

It’s the mirror image to AOL’s performance — a situation which could well change. After all, AOL dropped from $23.78 to $15.10 in 2011.

Here’s a pretty comparison chart to look at:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121226/taking-stock-of-internet-stocks-in-2012-and-the-winner-is-aol/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121219/spogo-app-lets-you-bet-on-live-sports-sort-of/ http://allthingsd.com/20121219/spogo-app-lets-you-bet-on-live-sports-sort-of/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:31:27 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=279044

Sometimes, it seems like sports are impervious to the Internet.

Long before anyone had heard of social media, sports — both in the stadium and on TV — has been a social experience. That holds true today, even when “live” events can be anything but.

Still, “second-screen” apps, which aim to supplement live television for smartphone and tablet users, could yet have value for sports.

Case in point: Spogo.

The Boston start-up is awkwardly named, but clever in execution. Users download an app to their iPhones (Spogo plans to release an Android app after it finishes a round of seed funding) and use it to wager on what’s going to happen throughout the live game. But instead of betting money — a tricky affair in the U.S. — they bet points that can be exchanged for prizes.

Co-founder Andrew Vassallo said Spogo has a total of 50 prize-awarding partners in its two launch cities, New York and Boston. Most of those partners are sports bars, paying for both exposure through the app’s prizes (e.g. free beer or half-off a hamburger) and for data on the users who redeem those rewards.

It’s a simple gamification-lite twist that seems likely to get new people in the doors … if Spogo can attract an audience, of course.

To that end, Vassallo said he and his partner, David Shack, want to expand into other cities with the “big four” sports of football, basketball, baseball and hockey, starting on the East Coast and eventually moving west.

Right now, the app only covers football and offers rewards in those two Northeastern cities, so here in San Francisco, my betting on the 49ers-Pats game over the weekend didn’t do me much good.

On a broader scale, Vassallo and Shack also plan to branch out into betting on the outcomes of non-sports entertainment like the Oscars. And, of course, the prizes would be tailored for that decidedly different audience.

“Something like movie tickets through a partnership with AMC or a subscription to Netflix,” Vassallo said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121219/spogo-app-lets-you-bet-on-live-sports-sort-of/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20121219/demand-a-plan-tech-leaders-sign-onto-mayors-effort-to-end-gun-violence/ http://allthingsd.com/20121219/demand-a-plan-tech-leaders-sign-onto-mayors-effort-to-end-gun-violence/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:35:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=279245 This morning, a large group of Silicon Valley and New York tech leaders signed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times for Demand A Plan, a mayor’s organization pressing for gun safety in the wake of the recent tragic school shooting in Connecticut.

“It’s Time. Demand a Plan to End Gun Violence,” reads the ad, which was signed by a plethora of major digital players.

They include, in part: Lerer Venture’s Ken Lerer (who organized the effort); SV Angel’s Ron Conway, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Skype President Tony Bates, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, adviser Bill Campbell, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, Findery’s Caterina Fake, Emerson Collective’s Laurene Jobs, Code Advisors’ Quincy Smith, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Zuckerberg Media’s Randi Zuckerberg.

In addition, there is a large-scale social media effort under way for Demand a Plan, which signee and venture capitalist Fred Wilson likens on his blog to other Internet-wide campaigns.

“Like the PIPA/SOPA efforts last year, this effort is diverse, distributed, chaotic, and hopefully effective and powerful,” he wrote.

Here’s the ad itself:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121219/demand-a-plan-tech-leaders-sign-onto-mayors-effort-to-end-gun-violence/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121217/tasty-foodydirects-gets-3m-as-former-goldman-banker-turns-entrepreneur/ http://allthingsd.com/20121217/tasty-foodydirects-gets-3m-as-former-goldman-banker-turns-entrepreneur/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 19:01:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=278386

For a long time in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, Brad Koenig was one of Silicon Valley’s top investment bankers, shepherding deals such as Yahoo’s IPO and a plethora of others.

That’s no surprise, given that he was the managing director and head of global technology investment banking at Goldman Sachs. Goldman, as well as Morgan Stanley, led many of the big-name, big-money transactions for the digerati.

But no matter how you slice it, Koenig’s job was on the sidelines as a facilitator rather than as a participant.

No longer. After retiring in 2005 from Goldman and doing a bunch of advising work, Koenig decided to jump into the fray, putting his money into a new start-up called FoodyDirect.

Simply put, the service ships food from iconic restaurants, bakeries and other specialty food outlets, adding in a variety of information about the products and also making it easier for those businesses to ship.

Some of the offers being coordinated include well-known — among foodies, at least — fare from places such as Anderson’s Frozen Custard in Buffalo, N.Y.; Black’s Barbecue in Lockhart, Texas; Sable’s Smoked Fish in New York City; and Hancock Gourmet Lobster in Cundy’s Harbor, Maine.

I tried both Anderson’s and Sable’s and they arrived on time and fresh — as well as delicious — which is presumably the selling point that FoodyDirect pitches to merchants.

While many of these restaurants do this on their own, Koenig is hoping that the systems FoodyDirect creates are easier and more efficient, from packaging to shipping.

Of course, FoodyDirect faces a lot of competition — from big online retailers like Amazon to smaller ones like Gilt Taste — as well as an uphill battle to acquire frequent customers.

But Koenig believes in the concept so much — which he is doing with his brother, who has been in the restaurant biz for 25 years — that he invested his own money in the initial effort.

Now, along with more money from him, a bunch of angel investors and venture interest, FoodyDirect is getting $3 million more to see if the concept pans out.

Here’s Koenig talking about his new life on the other side of the table:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121217/tasty-foodydirects-gets-3m-as-former-goldman-banker-turns-entrepreneur/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121127/liveblogging-yahoo-marissa-mayer-first-live-interview-which-atd-had-to-virtually-sneak-into/ http://allthingsd.com/20121127/liveblogging-yahoo-marissa-mayer-first-live-interview-which-atd-had-to-virtually-sneak-into/#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2012 04:06:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=273246

Tonight, new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer gave her first public interview since becoming the leader of the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Not to cranky me, of course, but to the much more amenable Fortune magazine writer and editor Pattie Sellers, who hosted the former Google exec at a dinner in Palo Alto, Calif., as part of the magazine’s Most Powerful Women franchise.

Fortune recently put a glamour shot of Mayer on the cover, and Sellers also did a profile. Now, Mayer was ready to sit down to talk about Yahoo and more.

(I wish I could have reported from the event, and almost did. I had initially been invited to the dinner at the Garden Court Hotel for about 100 guests, mostly women. But I was then waitlisted, and then told by Sellers directly that I could not attend, as the editors had decided to close out outside media and only have Fortune staffers covering it.)

Whatever! I have my ways to liveblog it and do it faster than any magazine writer can — and none involve disguising myself as a cater-waiter or solely using the Twitter feed from Fortune. As if!

Here goes:

7:50 pm: After some lovely cocktails, the audience sits down at about 10 tables of nine people and starts in on the salad course.

Soon enough, the night starts off with a speech by a McKinsey partner (and presumable sponsor of the dinner), delivering some stats as part of a study of some sort about how businesses are using — or should be using — social tools.

More than 60 percent of knowledge workers spend time exchanging information … Social can deliver an estimated $1 trillion in value.

Big news! Not! Even! Slightly! Oh dear, please get to the opening act!

Finally, Sellers gives her intro of Mayer.

8:04 pm: Sellers notes that her conference had hosted Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in 2010 (she was ousted in 2011), and in 2011 had Mayer when she was an exec at Google (she became Yahoo CEO this year).

Now, in 2012, Mayer is top dog at Yahoo, and the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500.

“Why don’t we just call this ‘the most powerful Yahoo dinner,’” jokes Sellers.

Why not!

Mayer — for those who care, and forgive me, since I am fashion-stupid — is wearing a black frock and some heeled Mary Janes. She gets big applause when Sellers notes that Yahoo stock is up 18 percent since Mayer became CEO.

Note: It did go down when she made a shareholder misstep early in her tenure, but has gone up since she repeated mobilemobilemobile with confidence on a recent earnings call that got investors excited about her tenure.

8:08 pm: By the way, Mayer put in a call for people to vote for her as Time magazine’s Person of the Year (she is on the list of nominees — more kudos from a Time Inc. property).

Mayer starts off with basic PR messaging that she trotted out previously on the recent earnings call, around how she wants Yahoo to be focused on “delighting and engaging users” and how it is a brand that touches people every day.

Therefore, its products need to be inspiring and delightful.

Daily delight! This is the buzzword.

Also, she notes, Yahoo should be the bestest place to work.

As apparent proof of that, Mayer says that all Research In Motion BlackBerry smartphones have been banished, and that Yahoos will be using Apple’s iPhones, Google’s Android phones and Microsoft’s Windows phones.

This has been endlessly reported, even though most other Internet companies do this, but it’s a good line, anyway.

8:12 pm: By the way, iPhones are the most popular with Yahoo employees.

News at 11! (I will add that iPhones are the most popular with the Swisher boys, too, and — irony alert — one of their moms works at Google.)

Sellers then asks about what makes a good product, which is precisely why the product-savvy Mayer was brought in to fix Yahoo.

Says Mayer: “Acute user need.”

I acutely need doughnuts. Does this count?

Also, says Mayer, products have to be created in a way that is “frictionless and beautiful,” and that the offering cannot get in the consumer’s way.

Sellers asks her to name a great product. Mayer notes that she was not talking acquisitions, but quickly namechecks the iPhone and Google.

Since those companies’ market caps are a billionty times bigger than Yahoo’s, she def cannot acquire anything there.

8:17 pm: Mayer also apparently likes some kind of luxury paper made in Germany that looks like velvet. It’s Gmund, by the way.

The topic moves on to Flickr, the once hip photo-sharing service that Yahoo bought and proceeded to ignore. Meanwhile, Instagram.

Mayer says that Yahoo needs to focus on the “global suite” services that are excellent, and on executing them well.

She points out Yahoo’s fantasy football service, mentioning its recent breakdown on game day that sent fans into a tizzy.

It’s a they-love-us-so-much-they-hate-us point.

Yahoo will not do things like online maps, though, Mayer says, noting that where Yahoo cannot compete, it should partner.

Sellers asked about acquisitions.

Mayer: Mobilemobilemobile! (It worked before!)

8:22 pm: Mayer then mentions the importance of small teams that work together, such as its recent Stamped purchase.

She notes that the bigger and more strategic opportunities are around advertising technology. Calling the Rubicon Project!

Mayer veers away from a question about layoffs, a sad Yahoo tradition. I have reported previously that she will make cuts via performance reviews.

At Yahoo, she says, it’s now about performance, not potential: “No offense to potential, but what we really care about now is performance.”

No offense taken!

Also, everyone’s goals will be posted on the Yahoo Web site for everyone to see.

Oh, wait, there will surely be offense taken by those lazy potential people at Yahoo.

Mayer does add that Yahoo should be a “growth company,” and not one defined by cuts.

8:28 pm: “The consumer Internet is growing, and we need to invest,” she says.

To achieve this will be a hard job, and will take multiple years, she adds.

Sellers asks about the Disney turnaround, which Mayer is apparently fascinated with. Mayer does indeed love Disney.

Who doesn’t? (Well, me, but I am an outlier.)

Speaking of Disney, one of its directors, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, sent regrets, but has emailed a question from its board meeting in New York.

Sandberg once worked at Google with Mayer, though the pair is still not working on a search engine together.

Sandberg asks what was most surprising to Mayer about taking over at Yahoo.

Mayer says she thought the job would be hard, and her new baby would be fun. Mayer had her first child at the end of September.

“The job is fun, and the baby is easy,” says Mayer.

Sellers wants to know how Mayer gets it all done. The answer: “Ruthlessly prioritize.”

She notes that that’s why she has not talked to the media at all, and why she will not be talking after this event.

(Well, I guess I will go back to not waiting by the phone for Yahoo PR to call back. Hi Anne! — also looking forward to not getting the holiday media party invite, which is no prob as the Googlers are throwing one the same night and they usually have organic arugula picked by elves they employ that’s acutely delicious.)

Then, as a Wisconsin Green Bay Packers fan, Mayer does her version of the famous Vince Lombardi quote: “God. Family. Yahoo.”

Cheesehead moment! And Mayer and I have so much in common! Mine is: Dog. Family. Yahoo.

8:33 pm: Sellers throws in one more question from famed investor Warren Buffett, who apparently wants to know what, if Mayer was not CEO of Yahoo, would she want to run?

Not Berkshire Hathaway! Mayer says she would build something herself.

It seems as if that is what she is doing at Yahoo, so we await the result.

Until then, Mayer’s mum. So to speak.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121127/liveblogging-yahoo-marissa-mayer-first-live-interview-which-atd-had-to-virtually-sneak-into/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121127/exclusive-is-andrew-mason-on-the-bubble-as-ceo-of-groupon/ http://allthingsd.com/20121127/exclusive-is-andrew-mason-on-the-bubble-as-ceo-of-groupon/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:04:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=273033

According to sources close to the situation, several Groupon board members have been seriously discussing making major leadership changes at the Chicago-based daily deals company, including bringing in a more experienced CEO to take over for co-founder Andrew Mason.

The board of Groupon has a regularly scheduled meeting later this week; sources said such management issues are likely to be discussed there, due to increasing frustration by some directors about the novice CEO’s performance so far.

To be clear, a move to replace Mason is not likely to happen immediately, if at all. And, in any case, any changes are likely to be done with his involvement. In addition, Mason also has support on the eight-member board — director and former AOL exec Ted Leonsis has always been a key mentor to him, for example.

But it has become obvious over the last months that a substantive rift has been developing between Groupon’s key players.

That has centered on Mason’s co-founder and Groupon executive chairman, Eric Lefkofsky, and board member and co-founder Brad Keywell. They, as well as several other directors, have been urging Mason to be more aggressive and public about the company’s turnaround efforts, sources said.

“The question is not whether Andrew is a good guy, but whether Groupon needs an Eric Schmidt,” said one person close to the situation, referring to the former Google CEO who was brought in to work closely with the company’s two founders. “And there’s been a lot more pressure now on the board to consider this seriously.”

The thoughtful and affable Mason — who has been the heart and soul of Groupon’s quirky culture and innovative product strategy — has indeed sometimes seemed to be in over his head in terms of leadership once the stakes got higher and the pressure increased after its IPO was announced last June.

While the company’s struggles have been well known for a while now, discussions about Mason’s tenure as CEO have increased as its stock has dropped precipitously. That has prompted its directors and management to seek to find a way to get the company on more stable footing as a business and, perhaps more importantly, with investors.

That has included the promotion of former Amazon exec Kal Raman to COO recently to give Mason more support. Raman is now, in effect, in charge of many operational aspects of the company, although not product, marketing or technology.

Another bright light recently has been a major investment by Tiger Global Management, a well-regarded hedge fund and private equity firm, which bought up close to 10 percent of Groupon. The move sent its shares up 24 percent in the last week, to $3.88, with a $2.5 billion valuation.

But that’s still 85 percent below its public offering price a year ago, and a far cry from the hype around the company when it exploded on the scene several years ago. Once the darling of the start-up space, with its innovative new social e-commerce model and lightning-fast growth, Groupon attracted huge funding from a panoply of top-tier Silicon Valley investors.

With that came a stunning $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and, later, an even huger valuation of more than $10 billion.

All that goodwill changed immediately after the company announced its IPO last June, with continued controversy around everything from Groupon’s accounting to management turmoil to its business model to rocky relations with merchants.

And while Mason has labored to affect a more professional tone in his own style, and seemed to have created a more stable management team, continued issues in Europe and getting enough traction for a number of new promising product initiatives has been tougher to solve.

Therefore, Mason’s performance is naturally under increased scrutiny, said sources. He will surely get questions on his record tomorrow, when he is scheduled to appear onstage at Business Insider’s Ignition conference in New York.

Charles Sipkins, a spokesman for the board, declined to comment, as did Groupon spokesman Paul Taaffe.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121127/exclusive-is-andrew-mason-on-the-bubble-as-ceo-of-groupon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121126/small-is-beautiful-greycroft-partners-raises-175-million-in-third-fund/ http://allthingsd.com/20121126/small-is-beautiful-greycroft-partners-raises-175-million-in-third-fund/#comments Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:54:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=272463

Greycroft Partners has closed a $175 million fund, its third since it began investing in consumer Internet and media companies in mid-2000.

In a press release, the New York- and Los Angeles-based venture firm said the fund was oversubscribed. But general partner Alan Patricof noted that Greycroft capped the amount and kept it small compared to other VCs, in order to maintain its focus on investing in early-stage capital-efficient start-ups.

“It’s always been our philosophy not to overfund the companies we invest in,” Patricof said in an interview. “It’s sometimes been hard in an environment where there is a lot of money available to entrepreneurs, but we are looking for start-ups that understand that it’s important to maintain the right balance of funding.”

The concept of a small fund is important to Greycroft, which has only three general partners and three venture partners, said general partner Dana Settle. The firm typically invests from $500,000 to $5 million, with more of a focus on online media, mobile and video, and also has a small seed fund.

“I think we are very hands-on helping our companies, but you don’t have to always do that in the traditional way most VCs do,” Settle said. “We want to maintain focus on giving our companies the right kind of advice, and let the entrepreneur take the lead.”

In fact, Patricof and Settle stressed, Greycroft does not often take board seats on the start-ups it invests in, and typically invests with other VCs in syndicates, which sometimes means the firm has less equity.

So far, Greycroft maintains that its system has worked. Its first fund of $75 million was raised in 2006 and has invested in 34 companies, with 11 sold and 130 percent of committed capital returned to partners; its second fund of $131 million, in 2010, put investments in 32 companies, several with valuations over $100 million.

Patricof noted that “the sale of our companies is usually our goal,” rather than an IPO event.

Exits include Vizu, acquired by Nielsen Holdings, Huffington Post (AOL), Babble (Walt Disney) and Buddy Media (Salesforce.com). More recent investments include Klout, Pulse and Maker Studios.

Most previous Greycroft investors have re-upped in the latest fund, the firm said, including J.P. Morgan, BlackRock Private Equity Partners, Fairview Capital and Invesco Private Capital. It also added new investors including Hall Capital, Hamilton Lane, Greenspring Associates and Cambridge Associates.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121126/small-is-beautiful-greycroft-partners-raises-175-million-in-third-fund/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121122/not-so-happy-thanksgiving-from-larry-david-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20121122/not-so-happy-thanksgiving-from-larry-david-video/#comments Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:07:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=271334

The staff of AllThingsD is taking the day off today to test postprandial somnolence with the turkey-and-tryptophan thing, but we leave you with this very funny video from Funny Or Die by the grumptastic Larry David, about his Thanksgiving in Brooklyn.

Enjoy, and see you Friday:

Larry David's Thanksgiving Special from Larry David

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121122/not-so-happy-thanksgiving-from-larry-david-video/feed/ 0