Take one Silicon Valley exec. Who is rich. Who is a woman. Who seems, on the superficial surface at least, to have it all. Mix with high-profile book she has penned about gender issues in the workplace and a social networking effort to organize around. Sprinkle in some fear, some loathing and a generous dollop of startlingly ignorant assertions about how new media works. Bake in the spotlight for a millisecond.

Voila: Sheryl Sandberg Flambé.

Indeed, at this early point in the marketing game of the well-known Facebook COO’s new book, “Lean In,” the unusual level of vitriol aimed at her is, frankly, is eye-opening. While there is plenty that smart people can disagree with in her tome — after all, this is a very hot-button issue — the fact that it has ratcheted up this far before the March 11 publication date says a lot about a lot of things.

Not the least of which is that the relationship between old media and new media is, in the parlance of the huge Silicon Valley social networking company, complicated.

Consider Jodi Kantor’s New York Times article, titled “A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling,” which appeared at the end of last week.

As it was crafted, it immediately went right after Sandberg’s “carefully orchestrated media campaign” — leaving aside the pertinent fact that in this noisy day and age, every big media launch is carefully orchestrated — and then immediately took issue with her effort to start “Lean In Circles”

Oddly described by Kantor, the site is one on “which women can share experiences and follow a Sandberg-crafted curriculum for career success.” Actually, it was a little more complex than that, with major contributions from the highly regarded Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University to this effort.

Then, Kantor uses a sensationally arrogant-sounding Sandberg quote — “I always thought I would run a social movement” — from a recent video interview. As it turns out, though, it’s only a partial lift and almost totally out of context.

In full, it is about how Sandberg thought she would be a do-gooder who would doubtlessly not make much money: “I always thought I would run a social movement, which meant basically work in a nonprofit. I never thought I would work in the corporate sector.”

Then comes my favorite part from the Times piece: “With less than three weeks until launch — which will include a spread in Time magazine and splashy events like a book party at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s home — organizers cannot say how many more groups may sprout up.”

Hmm. Hmm. They can’t say. Wow. Perhaps that’s because Lean In Circles have not started yet? You know, the service has not opened and therefore no one is using it.

Could Instagram have said how that piles of would use it before it started, especially since its first iteration was a dud? Nope! Could YouTube have known “Oppa Gangnam Style” was going to be a ginormous hit? Nope! Could the New York Times have known that it might have wanted to get ahead of this Internet thing before it decimated their business? Nope!

Here’s the thing — you can’t really fail before you start, but perhaps that’s just a Silicon Valley thing.

Let’s be clear, the “Lean In Circles” might turn out to be a big zero and perhaps Sandberg cannot compel women to use them. It could be an online ghost town. Or it could be very popular.

Who knows? All I am certain of is that it will — as the success of most online products depend on — be about whether people find whatever Sandberg is offering useful.

Also wrong is an account of Lean In essays that Sandberg has requested from some prominent women, which Kantor underscored asks for happy endings. True, but not quite if you read the whole document, which also says in part:

“Leaning in means pushing through the challenges and going down a path with an uncertain outcome. The path often leads to a positive internal result (newfound confidence, strength or determination) and often an external
reward (promotion, raise or goal achieved.) Leaning back means choosing to stay in a known or comfortable situation. This often leads to an internal
realization (desire to grow, change, consider leaning in the next time) and possibly a negative external result (stagnation, missed opportunities, loss of income.)”

After that, like many pieces so far, the article is all about how rich ladies with big houses and nannies should not lecture to other ladies without them. Perhaps that is so in some contexts and there is no question that her own massive success might be Sandberg’s most potent Achilles heel in trying to get her message out.

But in my reading, book as a whole is less grand and tsk-tsk than I expected and more about the plethora of depressing stats about women in the workplace, as well as some advice that has vaunted her to the top.

Lots of high-profile male execs have done this without the same level of anger directed at them. Thus, even though Sandberg is not the bilious and appalling as Donald Trump, she does not get to pontificate in any way that seems like, you know, she’s had some traction in the workplace — the Treasury Department, Google, Facebook — and might have some good tips to share.

Interesting, though it was not the only media account like this, the Times then followed today with one of the more bizarre and hyperactive columns I have seen of late by Maureen Dowd, who never met a pun she did not abuse mercilessly (and I love a good pun!).

“She has a grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots reigniting the women’s revolution — Betty Friedan for the digital age,” Dowd wrote, also using the out-of-context Sandberg quote again to make her obtuse point. “She seems to think she can remedy social paradigms with a new kind of club — a combo gabfest, Oprah session and corporate pep talk. (Where’s the yoga?).”

Unpacking all those disparate images is a task for someone else with more energy than I have, but it becomes less comical when she goes all digital media expert.

“People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down,” wrote Dowd. “Just because digital technology makes connecting possible doesn’t mean you’re actually reaching people.”

Um, no, it does not — and I am not sure who said it did. Although I am certain Sandberg knows more than Dowd about reaching people online and the potential for getting them to act.

Still, it is just a start and Sandberg does not seem to be saying otherwise. And perhaps it is a good thing to debate whether book is pushing women meet goals they perhaps cannot.

Or — maybe, just maybe — it is a little more complicated. In fact, it is a lot more complicated — the issue of women at work is a thorny issue –which is why it will be interesting to see if Sandberg’s book and social network will have an impact or not.

To be clear, I have no idea if it will and neither does anyone else. No one thought Facebook would have a billion users (I definitely did not!).

That answer is to come, of course, after what will doubtlessly be a rollout where the turbulence is just beginning.

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” wrote Sandberg in her book.

True that. That’s because, as it turns out, leaning in turns out to mean a very bumpy ride for those who do.

“I’ve never been so excited about anything we’ve funded,” Y Combinator chief Paul Graham wrote in a post about Watsi today.

Watsi is a peer-to-peer platform that connects medical patients to donors and sends 100 percent of donations through. The organization’s own costs are covered by separate donors.

Graham said he first found the site on the YC-run news aggregator Hacker News, where Watsi pitched itself to readers last August and received much acclaim.

Watsi co-founder Chase Adam said he didn’t think to apply for Y Combinator, but was approached directly by Graham and his partner Jessica Livingston. His team is currently participating in the winter 2013 batch, which began earlier this month.

Because Watsi is a registered nonprofit, it couldn’t offer Y Combinator any startup equity, so Y Combinator made a charitable donation instead of an investment.

Watsi has funded 70 treatments over the past six months, based on $55,000 in donations from 1,300 donors. Donations are currently growing 28 percent per week, Adam said.

There’s obviously not going to be an IPO down the road for Watsi, but, as Adam put it, Y Combinator is looking for a “social return on investment,” rather than a financial one.

In most ways, Watsi has more in common with Web startups than with nonprofits, Adam argued. It’s not like Watsi is the first nonprofit to put a picture of a person in need next to their request.

But rather, “We’re structured like a startup, and we take lean startup methodology,” Adam said. “We focus on transparency, which is really important to donors. And user experience is really important to us, something a lot of nonprofits don’t invest in.”

Here’s how it works: Anyone can already start a Crowdtilt group with a funding goal. Now they can select a 501(c)(3) organization from Crowdtilt’s index to receive that money. If the campaign “tilts” — a.k.a. reaches its goal — that money goes directly to the nonprofit, minus Crowdtilt’s regular 2.5 percent fee.

With the massive amounts of crowdfunding sites launching these days, it’s hard to believe that none of them have gone through the process to facilitate nonprofit donations. What’s particularly notable is that these Crowdtilt donations are tax-deductible, and the company takes a relatively small fee.

For comparison, Crowdtilt co-founder James Beshara pointed out that Kickstarter prohibits charity and cause fundraising, Indiegogo nonprofit donations are not tax-deductible, and Movember takes a 17.7 percent fee.

Supporting nonprofits was a personal mission for Beshara, who had initially envisioned them to be at the center of Crowdtilt. Instead, many users take to the site to raise money to rent a party bus or buy bottle service at a club. That’s fine, but it doesn’t have the same sort of gravitas.

Beshara said he personally spent much of the past three months and more than $20,000 to deal with all the regulatory issues around nonprofits.

Beshara said that 28 percent of Crowdtilt projects are already nonprofit. The site waived all fees for Hurricane Sandy projects, and users raised $180,000 for those campaigns over the past few weeks.

Crowdtilt is an all-or-nothing platform, a la Kickstarter, where groups must reach their goal for it to be funded. The secret sauce is that people who participate become advocates for a project because they want it to go through. Beshara noted that the average Crowdtilt project raises 188 percent of its goal.

Crowdtilt has itself raised $2.1 million in funding from investors including Y Combinator, SV Angel and CrunchFund.

RIM was at that point at the zenith of its power. Its share price earlier that summer had hit a historic peak of $144.56 — or about 19 times the price it was trading at today — that it would never see again. Apple’s iPhone had been on the market for a little more than a year, and Google’s Android was barely on the scene. RIM’s co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, both of whom I interviewed, seemed in utter denial to the threat the iPhone and Android so clearly represented, even then.

With the shares trading at $7.39 as of the close of market today, the devastating slide in RIM’s share price has done incredible damage to the personal fortunes of the two founders: As of April, Lazaridis and Balsillie together still owned nearly 11 percent of the outstanding shares of RIM. As of today’s closing share price, the paper fortunes of RIM’s two founders, once about $4 billion each, has declined to $219.2 million for Lazaridis and $198.8 million for Balsillie, according to Canadian regulatory filings.

So it goes. RIM’s survival as a going concern is now officially in doubt. Investors now value the company as being worth less than $4 billion, and of that more than half is its $2.2 billion in cash. With operating expenses at their current level running at about $307 million per month, RIM has enough cash on hand to fund operations for another seven months or so.

The company will be firing people and restructuring its operations to lower those costs and buy time. But time is not on its side. Its options are dwindling, and it will either end up in the hands of another company, be chopped up into pieces in a bankruptcy proceeding, or cease to exist.

But time is on the side of the two nonprofit foundations that the two RIM co-founders started when they were at the height of their wealth. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that they will outlive the company that generated the wealth that funded their creation.

By far the most well-known nonprofit linked to RIM is the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an institution founded in 1999 primarily with $170 million in donations from Lazaridis’s personal fortune. Its mission is to provide a place where some of the world’s smartest people come together to try to unlock the secrets of the nature of the universe.

I toured its impressive facility (pictured) in 2008, and while I was in Waterloo, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Brian Greene, a professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia University. He’s the author of “The Elegant Universe,” which was adapted into a PBS TV series of the same name. What surprised me most was that on a hot August evening, there wasn’t a single open seat at the local high school’s stuffy auditorium. (I wrote about the lecture, and published an audio recording of it on my rarely-updated personal blog.)

Greene is not the only superstar lecturer who has given talks in Waterloo under the auspices of the Perimeter Institute. In 2008, Stephen Hawking was named the institute’s distinguished research chair, and has regularly visited to give lectures like this one in 2010.

In short, the Perimeter Institute has, in its brief life, become a heavy hitter in the field of theoretical physics. It’s also living well within its means. According to its annual report for the 2011 fiscal year, the institute exited the year with nearly $272 million on its books, and reported $18.6 million in operating expenses, more than half of which was spent on research.

Aside from the gift from Lazaridis, the institute has secured $50 million in grants from the federal government of Canada through 2017, and another $50 million from the provincial government of Ontario through 2021. It raised an additional $5 million in private donations. Its spokesman, John Matlock, told me that its fortunes aren’t directly linked with those of its founding benefactor: “Perimeter was founded through the vision and personal philanthropy of Mike Lazaridis, and the institute continues to grow its research, training and outreach activities via a successful public-private partnership involving a wide variety of members who equally value the importance of theoretical physics,” he told me via email.

It’s a similar situation at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a global policy think tank founded by Balsillie in 2001. Its mission is to suss out through research the complicated questions about how world governments can do their jobs better, and it aims to have some influence over actual policies that get enacted. One bit of credit it claims is the research that led to the creation of the G20 group of major economies.

It appears to be similarly well-funded; it exited the year with about $203 million in its endowment, according its 2011 annual report, and reported operating expenses of $38.4 million. CIGI began with a combined $30 million gift from Balsillie, who gave $20 million; and Lazaridis, who gave $10 million. Another $30 million in matching funds came from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Its $69 million campus was built with $50 million in federal and provincial aid, and sits on land leased for 99 years rent-free from the City of Waterloo.

Regardless of how they’re funded, these institutions will, by all appearances, live on long after RIM as we know it today becomes a memory.

While online donations account for only 7.6% of total charitable giving, according to Blackbaud’s 2010 Online Giving Report, it is the fastest-growing segment, increasing 40% in 2010 from the year before, according to a report from fund-raising software provider Convio.

That has helped juice the growth of online “giving platforms” with names like CauseVox, Razoo, Network for Good and GlobalGiving. These websites — some nonprofit and some for-profit — serve as gateways, making it easier for donors to give money and offering additional services such as website design and campaign promotion.

But those extras come with a price.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

There’s an old maxim in fundraising: It’s better to get one dollar from 100 supporters than it is to get $100 from one supporter. Or you can just get Justin Bieber to tweet about you.

Assuming you can’t trap yourself a Bieber, a new online fundraising start-up called Rally is available to take advantage of the network effects of your real supporters.

Rally CEO Tom Seres was quick to point out that social online fundraising isn’t new, but says that “most organizations see the Red Cross’ success and think that putting a Twitter button on their site will make them more money.”

According to Seres, they are wrong.

“The reality is, those few campaigns that succeed in social do so because of huge networks,” he said. “[But] not everyone … has Will Smith tweeting about their fundraising.”

Rally’s recent growth got it a chunk of funding from a prominent string of investors, including Mike Maples, Reid Hoffman and Ron Conway. Seres would only describe it as a “fairly large seed round.”

The cash is being spent on turning an existing white-label product called Piryx, built by Seres and his co-founders, into the more consumer-focused Rally, which is both the name of the new platform and the pivoted company.

Why the consumer focus?

The most significant way Rally’s model differs from other fundraising sites such as Kickstarter, Seres said, is that Rally is the payment processor as well as the fundraising platform. Kickstarter farms its payments out to Amazon.

The four percent Rally charges on most transactions — which covers the credit card fees, as well as Rally’s profits — leaves a pretty slim margin. Therefore, massive profitability for Rally will only come at massive scale.

The reborn Rally’s main focus is to make online fundraising “more social” — or more annoying, depending on your take.

Its platform allows for two layers of supporters, Seres said: “One who just wants to donate … and another who can actually start [his or her] own fundraiser associated with an existing Rally campaign.”

This model isn’t new for fundraising, and Seres said it has been successful for events such as walks for charity, partially because “People respond better to requests from people they know. It is about leveraging that closer network connection.”

Just as interesting as Rally’s “better mousetrap” model for the online fundraising space is the type of data it will gather about what works with donors online.

If it can reach scale, Seres said, Rally would “be able to tell fundraisers what the value of a piece of content they post is, and on the larger scale, what people actually care about online and what makes them act.”

Here is a video interview of Seres talking about all that and more:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110715/start-up-rally-wants-your-cause-to-raise-money-online-even-if-justin-beiber-isnt-tweeting-about-it/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110224/video-mozilla-ceo-gary-kovacs-talks-firefox-4-competition-with-googles-chrome-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20110224/video-mozilla-ceo-gary-kovacs-talks-firefox-4-competition-with-googles-chrome-and-more/#comments Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:12:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41020

Yesterday, BoomTown paid a long overdue visit on the Mountain View, Calif., HQ of Mozilla, the unusual public-private company that makes the Firefox browser, to chat with its (relatively) new CEO Gary Kovacs (pictured here).

There is a lot to talk about with the new exec, especially the near-to-official launch of Firefox 4, the increasing coopetition with Google and its Chrome efforts and where Mozilla goes next (mobile).

Kovacs, in fact, has a deep mobile background, having arrived in the late fall of 2010 to take over from John Lilly, who moved on to a stint as a venture capitalist.

Before Mozilla, Kovacs worked on a range of products at Sybase–until after its purchase by SAP–and also on mobile and devices at Adobe. Before that, he played a key role at Zi Corporation, a company specializing in embedded software and services for mobile and consumer devices.

He’ll need all that expertise if Firefox is to do as well on mobile devices as it has in gaining market share on the desktop, an effort that has been challenged by a continual and intense effort at upgrade and improvement by No. 3 Google especially.

According to a recent poll, for example, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer holds the dominant 56 percent share, with Mozilla’s Firefox at almost 23 percent and Google at just above 10 percent. Apple’s Safari and Opera follow.

Of course, Firefox has been playing nicer with Chrome cousin Android, which is beginning to dominate the smartphone market and is moving aggressively into the tablet arena. In fact, Mozilla just released a new beta in the marketplace for Google’s mobile operating system.

Still, some have fretted as Mozilla delayed its official release of Firefox 4 several times since last fall.

Nonetheless, by dislodging IE from its dominant market position, Firefox has proved not only that open-source projects can provide better software, but that it’s possible for a particularly well done one to become an everyday consumer application.

Despite its success, Mozilla still has to keep up its innovation and technical prowess. But given its unusual status as both a profit and nonprofit, it is hindered in that it is not likely to go public and shower its Silicon Valley employees with giant gobs of overhyped stock.

In the video below, Kovacs talks about Mozilla’s relationship with Google (not easy!), feature improvements in Firefox 4 (a new Chromish user interface!), how to hold onto talent in Silicon Valley (also not easy!) and what it’s like to deal with Apple (definitely not easy!).

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110224/video-mozilla-ceo-gary-kovacs-talks-firefox-4-competition-with-googles-chrome-and-more/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101029/demand-medias-ipo-is-on-deck-with-amended-filing/ http://allthingsd.com/20101029/demand-medias-ipo-is-on-deck-with-amended-filing/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:18:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36475

Demand Media, which posted its S-1 regulatory filing August, filed an amended version today that is likely to allow it to move quickly to an initial public offering.

The new version for the online content company has updated financial information for the third quarter.

Demand now must now wait for the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve the filing, after which the execs of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand will immediately to go on a road show for several weeks to try to convince investors to jump on board.

Then, if there’s enough interest, the IPO is likely to come before the holidays.

Demand’s initial filing was to raise $125 million at a reported $1.5 billion valuation.

You can read the whole filing here, which shows an improved performance from Demand.

In its latest filing, Demand said it had generated revenue–from advertising and a domain business–of $179.4 million for the first nine months this year and had a net loss of $6.4 million.

In the same period a year ago, revenue was $102.3 with a net loss of $5.6 million.

Losses in the third quarter itself narrowed, to $305,000 from $4.2 million in the previous quarter and $1.9 million a year ago.

But Demand points in its filing to its “Adjusted OIBDA,” using less stringent non-GAAP financial rules, which shows a much improved $41.9 million profit compared to $18.9 million last year.

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

Some investors may balk at these non-GAAP numbers, but Demand, Goldman Sachs and its other underwriters clearly think there’s a market for them. And there’s certainly a hunger in the tech world for a big, brand-name IPO to break the dry spell. You can feel people willing this thing to work.

If Demand did, say, $55 million in OIBDA this year, it would need a multiple of 18 times trailing 12 months earnings to get to a $1 billion valuation. It would need 27x to get the $1.5 billion number that people are whispering to reporters.

Another way to get to $1.5 billion: Project OIBDA of $100 million for 2011, and ask for 15x on that number.

Demand is definitely growing smartly from $170.3 million in annual revenue in 2008 to $198.5 in 2009 to possibly reaching–based on six months of 2010 results–well above $230 million in 2010.

That’s due to its increasing growth in traffic, largely via Demand’s popular eHow site and a network of others.

Almost all of the money is coming from traffic, and advertising, that it generates from Yahoo and Google–Google in particular.

Demand has done this using $355 million in funding it has raised since its founding in 2006. The company said it has only $29.2 million in cash and cash equivalents left, but there is also a $100 million untouched line of credit.

Hence, the IPO, which will give it both cash and stock to use to grow its content business, either organically or via acquisition, all while keeping the costs of content creation increasingly lower via innovative technology.

From Demand’s filings, it is clear such an effort is slow going, as it seeks to carve out any entirely new business model for content.

Now, it must find Wall Street investors who agree.

In its filing, Demand said it will sell 4.5 million shares in the IPO and current shareholders will sell another three million. It hopes to have DMD as its ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.

But there is no price range yet for the offering, which is being led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101029/demand-medias-ipo-is-on-deck-with-amended-filing/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101008/from-the-department-of-the-obvious-poll-finds-parents-are-worried-about-privacy-on-social-networks/ http://allthingsd.com/20101008/from-the-department-of-the-obvious-poll-finds-parents-are-worried-about-privacy-on-social-networks/#comments Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:10:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35149

A national poll released today by Common Sense Media asking how well social networks protect kids online produced an answer that should come as a shock to exactly no one:

Not very well, at least according to parents.

A full 75 percent of them gave social networking sites such as Facebook a negative rating for the task.

About 2,000 parents were polled by the nonprofit media organization, as well as 400 teens, who also gave thumbs down to social networks’ ability to police themselves.

There will be a big roundtable discussion on the topic in Washington, D.C., this morning, which will include Common Sense Media head Jim Steyer, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Deputy Secretary of Education Anthony Miller.

Along with the poll results, San Francisco-based Common Sense Media said it will also announce the launch of the “Protect Our Privacy–Protect Our Kids” campaign to help parents protect kids’ reputations and personal information online.

I love the smell of impending privacy legislation in the morning!

Already from Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts: “As the House author of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, I remain intently interested in ensuring that children are not targeted online and their privacy is strictly protected. Twelve years after the bill was signed into law, entire new technologies and industries have emerged that could put children’s safety at risk, making a legislative update necessary. I look forward to introducing such legislation to bring COPPA into the 21st century.”

Thus, here is more for pols to chew on: The bulk of those surveyed are more concerned with online privacy than they were five year ago (another obvious one); parents do not believe Web sites, including search engines such as Google (GOOG), should share the location of kids (count me in on that one too!); and teens think their friends overshare (you think?).

But instead of me telling you, just read it all here in top-line results for adults and teens, as well as in the official press release:

Final CSM adults topline

Final CSM teen topline

Privacy Poll Results and Campaign Launch

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101008/from-the-department-of-the-obvious-poll-finds-parents-are-worried-about-privacy-on-social-networks/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100624/full-d8-video-demand-medias-richard-rosenblatt-and-propublicas-paul-steiger/ http://allthingsd.com/20100624/full-d8-video-demand-medias-richard-rosenblatt-and-propublicas-paul-steiger/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:07:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29722

As promised, All Things Digital is posting the full videos from our eighth D: All Things Digital conference, held earlier this month.

Here’s one of the most interesting pairings at D8: Richard Rosenblatt of Demand Media, the search-savvy content engine, and former Wall Street Journal edit chief Paul Steiger of ProPublica, a nonprofit that produces hefty investigative pieces online and off.

The debate over the future of journalism is a key one over the next several years, as new content models emerge and old ones wither.

Here’s the full video of the session, in which I interviewed the pair:

Want to see it bigger? Click here.

Note: We’ll be posting full D8 videos on Mondays and Thursdays. Next up: Dreamworks Animation SKG (DWA) CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100624/full-d8-video-demand-medias-richard-rosenblatt-and-propublicas-paul-steiger/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/ http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:10:32 +0000 Peter Kafka http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=486

What’s the future of the media business? Demand Media, the Google-savvy “content farm” that generates thousands of computer-assigned, low-cost Web items a day? Or ProPublica, a nonprofit that produces deep-dive investigative pieces and publishes them on its own site and in the pages of high-profile partners?

Good guess: Some of both. But let’s allow both parties to make their own case.

Brief background: Demand Media is Richard Rosenblatt’s follow-up to MySpace, which he sold to News Corp. (NWS); Paul Steiger founded ProPublica after a long career at The Wall Street Journal.

Below is the full video of the interview, followed by the liveblog:

Liveblog

9:41 am: Kara asks Paul Steiger to explain what he’s up to.

Steiger: Stories are aimed at abuse of power and empowering people to make change. I started there because when I was leaving the Journal in 2007, the traditional news business was collapsing. We had $10 million in funding and that wasn’t something I could turn down in that environment. I didn’t have time to be worried–I had to leave the Journal because of mandatory retirement age, and my wife said I couldn’t wear sweatpants during the weekday.

9:44 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Please explain the controversy regarding Demand.

[WARNING: Rosenblatt speaks very quickly. It's unlikely that I'll be able to get more than impressionistic stabs at what he's saying.]

“We only write content that people want….We’re not journalists, all right? The only people that call us journalists are journalists.” That said, what we do is “more like service journalism….There’s no piece of content made that we think is good” because we only make content that people tell us they think is good.

9:46 am: Rosenblatt–We do no marketing. All traffic comes from organic search.

I don’t know why people call this “dreck.” When you do something 6,000 times a day, it always looks like it’s of low-quality. We’re okay with that; we’re continually trying to prove to people that we’re doing good stuff.

We have a deal with USA Today and others that we’ll be announcing.

9:47 am: Kara to Steiger–What do you think of all this?

Steiger: I see this as a reordering of the environment that we’re all going to have to live in. You [Demand] make stuff people want; you control costs, and it’s working. Another model is the Politico model, with a combination of tightly controlled print plus a big Web site. We do the most expensive, the most important journalism for democracy.

Kara: Example?

Steiger: A story we did with the Los Angeles Times about nurses getting bogus licenses. A story about police in New Orleans killing people. There are five or six things like that in the past year where we can point to changes that have taken place because of our stories. These things can cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands to produce.

In the old days, that could be a loss leader for for-profit newspapers. Can’t do that anymore, so we need philanthropy. “Silicon Valley, come on in!”

9:50 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Will you do “Top 10 nurses that beat people up”?

Rosenblatt: No

Kara: Wait a minute! People may want it!

Rosenblatt: I think journalism is important, and the problem is trying to pay for it. We can help publications like USA Today, where we generate content and revenue for them, and they can take that money to fund other reporting. We’re not going to save journalism, but we can help it.

Kara to Rosenblatt: You employ a lot of journalists.

Rosenblatt: Not journalists.

Kara: Former journalists?

Rosenblatt: They may have been former journalists, and they may do journalism somewhere else. We call them freelancers, content creators.

9:53 am: Kara asks Rosenblatt to explain editing/oversight.

Rosenblatt: Eleven people touch this stuff before it gets published, etc. Anyway, let’s say we do 7,000 pieces of content a day. That’s 77,000 individual touches per day, with 10,000 freelancers around the Web. That’s amazing. That’s what the Web is made for.

9:54 am: Kara–How do they get paid?

Rosenblatt: They can get paid by piece or by revenue-share. But most of them prefer to get paid by content, because it’s guaranteed.

9:55 am: Kara–at The Wall Street Journal, we had people who worked for months on a single story. Is that done?

Steiger: The Journal, the New York Times and Washington Post are still vertically integrated and have powerful enough brands and talent that I think they can make it into the next generation.

Kara: Two of those are in dicey shape.

Steiger: Remember that there are two things going on right now. There is a secular shift, with the business model being destroyed. But there’s also a recession. So as that eases, we’ll have a better sense of who can survive.

9:58 am: Steiger–I’d love to go back to 10 years ago, or longer, to the golden age of journalism. But not even Silicon Valley can produce a time machine.

Kara: So do you think even the big newspapers that survive will switch to audience-driven content creation? That’s not what journalism is about.

Steiger: No matter what you’re doing, you’re still making stuff with an idea of what the people who are reading you want. It’s a broader way of thinking about it than Demand, but there’s a common thread.

9:59 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–Where is your actual business? Is it domains?

Rosenblatt: We have two main businesses: Registrar/domains. It’s steady, recurring revenue, and it generates a lot of data. Almost 10 percent of the Web hits our servers via these domains. It’s an exciting source of data.

Then we have the media business. That’s 50 percent bigger, in revenue, than other business and growing fast.

Of that business, less than 10 percent is domain advertising business. Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) stick ads on tenniselbow.com, etc. We think that’s a great business also.

Kara: Is your media business profitable?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

Kara: Does that mean it’s not profitable?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

Kara: But you’re going public, right?

Rosenblatt: Can’t talk about that.

10:03 am: Kara–you’re dependent on Google, right?

Rosenblatt: In the way that everyone is dependent on Google. Or that the iPhone is dependent on AT&T (T). But everyone searches on the Web. So some of our sites, like eHow, are getting traffic from Google. But others aren’t.

If Google changes their algorithm, we think about that. But we spend a lot of care on what we do, and we think there’s a move to quality long-tail content that Google values.

10:05 am: Kara to Rosenblatt–AOL is doing what you’re doing. Yahoo just bought Associated Content. It has more distribution than you do. What does that mean for you?

Rosenblatt: We love that AOL (AOL) and Yahoo are validating what we’re doing. “In a market this big, that’s in the first inning, there’s plenty of room for all of us.”

10:05 am: Kara to Steiger–How do you feel about the kind of journalism you do becoming nonprofit work? Does that depress you?

Steiger: “I’m the opposite of disheartened. I’m very excited.” Yes, the business is shrinking and people are losing jobs, and I don’t want to make light of that. But we’re attracting great people; we’ve won a Pulitzer Prize. The work will get done. The work is crucial to our society, and it needs philanthropic support. But so do orchestras and clinics and universities.

10:07 am: Kara–Is there a way to actually make money doing this?

Steiger: “Conceivably, but I can’t think of what it is.” If you’re focused entirely on this, “at this stage, you need philanthropic help.”

Kara to Rosenblatt: Can you think of how to do this?

Rosenblatt: You can hold a conference and charge people $5,000 a head. [Applause in conference room and in D8 cave.]

Q&A

For Rosenblatt: Why won’t you call your people “journalists”? Steve Jobs was full of venom for “bloggers,” too. Why not call people who write for money “journalists”?

Rosenblatt: If our writers want to call themselves journalists, great. But they’re not doing reporting from Afghanistan. We’re content creators, making things that people want.

Steiger: I just think that the labels get in the way.

Q: Who are those 11 people that touch Demand Media’s content? What do they do?

Rosenblatt: Some people are involved in “titling.” For SEO or social media purposes. Three people are involved in checking each title. Then people involved in each property select stories, depending on the voice. Then copy editors, copy chiefs, writers. We’re actually going to be adding more. We can make it so efficient, that we can add more roles, and everyone can keep making the same amount of money.

Q: What about rolling out content on the domains you run?

A: Not yet. Maybe in coming years. It’s not a focus right now. We do think the assets that you own and we own, we think those assets “have great optionality later” to put content on.

Q for Steiger: Do you share Steve Jobs’s distaste for bloggers?

Steiger: I sleep with a blogger! My wife blogs from 11 pm to 2 am. I’m an enthusiastic supporter of blogging. They bring a lot of audience to ProPublica’s Web site. I think what Steve was getting at is that there’s a danger of too many people commenting and not enough people finding out what’s going on. [I don't think that's entirely what Jobs was complaining about, btw.]

This content-creation session is now over.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100603/richard-rosenblatt-paul-steiger-session/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100511/exclusive-mozilla-ceo-john-lilly-to-step-down-replacement-search-underway/ http://allthingsd.com/20100511/exclusive-mozilla-ceo-john-lilly-to-step-down-replacement-search-underway/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 22:22:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28317

John Lilly, the well-regarded CEO of Mozilla, is preparing to give up his post at the open-source software nonprofit foundation, which is also a for-profit start-up.

[UPDATE: Lilly confirmed the move in an email to Mozilla employees, which you can read below in its entirety.]

Lilly (pictured here) is moving to Greylock Partners as a venture partner, sources added, although the affable entrepreneur could eventually end up doing a start-up.

In a post on his personal blog about the change, Lilly said:

“Venture investing is what I’ve wanted to do for quite a long time–I’ve been involved in many startups, even building an incubator a decade ago, and have interests that span enterprise, open source, and the broader web, among others. I’m incredibly excited to join an amazing team there, and the firm that I’ve noted to be incredibly strongly oriented towards entrepreneurs–it really matches my sensibilities as an operator quite well.”

Lilly became CEO of Mozilla in early 2008, after serving as its COO. He took over from Mitchell Baker, who remained the company’s chairman.

A search is on to find Lilly’s replacement in what will be gradual transition that will last many months. Lilly will stay involved at Mozilla and continue to serve on its board of directors.

While Mozilla makes a number of products, it is best known for its Firefox browser, whose share has steadily increased since it debuted in late 2004.

According to a recent survey, Firefox had a 24.6 percent share, well up from its 11 percent share in 2006.

Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer still holds the lead place in software to navigate the Web with a share that just dipped below 60 percent. The Chrome browser from Google (GOOG) is in a distant third place.

Mozilla just announced that it will ship a beta of Firefox 4 next month, with a finished version coming out in November. The new version is slated to have a slicker interface and speed improvements.

By dislodging Internet Explorer from its dominant market position, Firefox has proved not only that open-source projects can provide better software but that it’s possible for a particularly well done one to become an everyday consumer application.

Despite its success, Mozilla still has to keep up its innovation and technical prowess. But given its unusual status as both a profit and nonprofit, it is hindered in that it is not likely to go public and shower its Silicon Valley employees with giant gobs of overhyped stock.

Here’s Lilly’s email to Mozilla staff (he also has a post on his own Web site):

Everyone,

As my five year anniversary at Mozilla approaches, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to move on to my next role sometime later this year. This won’t happen today or tomorrow–I expect to be here and working for several months yet, and I’m planning to stay on the Board of Directors.

This is a tough note for me to write–I feel so incredibly lucky and humbled to have worked on such an amazing project, with such spectacular people, for the last few years.

But I’ve always been a startup guy at heart–Mozilla was originally going to be a quick volunteer effort for me, but quickly turned into a full time job, and at the beginning of 2008 turned into the CEO job that I have now. I’ve really been missing working with startups, and want to learn how to invest in and build great new startups, so am planning to join Greylock Partners as a Venture Partner once we transition here.

I’m in no rush, and the most important thing to me is to build the strongest Mozilla we can, with the best leadership possible. So my plan is to stay through that transition–we’re starting a CEO search now, and plan to do it in as transparent a way as possible–which means I’ll continue in my CEO role as normal for several more months, at least.

I’ll have more to say on the transition as we figure things out more clearly, but for now, business as usual. We’ve got Firefox 4 to ship, and Firefox on multiple mobile platforms. We’ve got our web services like Weave to stand up and make available to millions of users.

For now, though, I really want to communicate a deep gratitude to each of you–over the past few years we’ve done an amazing amount together, and changed the world in so many meaningful ways. 400 million users are directly touched every day by the work we’ve done so far, and many, many more are using better browsers because of our work. There are many more contributions and victories to come.

John

Lilly appeared onstage at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last year, with Baker.

Here is the full video of their interview with Walt Mossberg at D7:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100511/exclusive-mozilla-ceo-john-lilly-to-step-down-replacement-search-underway/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20100420/demands-rosenblatt-in-ipo-and-also-ma-spotlight/ http://allthingsd.com/20100420/demands-rosenblatt-in-ipo-and-also-ma-spotlight/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:30:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27192

This seems to have been a busy week for Demand Media CEO and founder Richard Rosenblatt (pictured here), with news of a big-banker hiring in a pending IPO of his social media start-up and the possible sale of a digital marketing company where he serves as chairman.

Indeed, Demand has hired Goldman Sachs (GS) to prep its initial public offering, sources told BoomTown, which the company is expected to file in August at a valuation of about $1.5 billion.

This confirms an earlier report in the Financial Times.

The price has to be high, given that Rosenblatt has managed to raise an eye-popping $355 million from a slate of high-profile backers, including Goldman Sachs, Oak Investment Partners and well-known media investor Gordon Crawford.

Rosenblatt essentially signaled his intent to move to the public markets with the recent nabbing of high-profile advertising exec Joanne Bradford from Yahoo (YHOO).

Her job: To quickly turbocharge Demand’s business as chief revenue officer. The company now does about $250 million in annual revenue, mostly from advertising.

Rosenblatt, who was part of the team that sold MySpace to News Corp. (NWS) for $650 million, could also be about to score another big-time sale.

This time, it is digital marketing firm iCrossing, sources said, in a deal with media giant Hearst Corp., which could close in the next two weeks, if all goes well.

First reported in The Wall Street Journal, the price for the large Scottsdale, Ariz.-based firm is hovering at about $375 million.

Not coincidentally, with Rosenblatt in common, iCrossing shares investors with Demand, including Goldman Sachs and Oak.

Here’s hoping Rosenblatt will be able to talk about all this and more in an onstage interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference this June.

He will appear in a session at D8 with former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger, who is trying to save investigative journalism at a nonprofit called ProPublica.

The less lofty content created by Demand and others, such as AOL (AOL), using algorithms and other means, has attracted controversy, with worries about its impact on the traditional media business.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100420/demands-rosenblatt-in-ipo-and-also-ma-spotlight/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100420/richard-rosenblatt-at-d8/ http://allthingsd.com/20100420/richard-rosenblatt-at-d8/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:30:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=295

This seems to have been a busy week for Demand Media CEO and founder Richard Rosenblatt (pictured here), with news of a big-banker hiring in a pending IPO of his social media start-up and the possible sale of a digital marketing company where he serves as chairman.

Indeed, Demand has hired Goldman Sachs (GS) to prep its initial public offering, sources told BoomTown, which the company is expected to file in August at a valuation of about $1.5 billion.

This confirms an earlier report in the Financial Times.

The price has to be high, given that Rosenblatt has managed to raise an eye-popping $355 million from a slate of high-profile backers, including Goldman Sachs, Oak Investment Partners and well-known media investor Gordon Crawford.

Rosenblatt essentially signaled his intent to move to the public markets with the recent nabbing of high-profile advertising exec Joanne Bradford from Yahoo (YHOO).

Her job: To quickly turbocharge Demand’s business as chief revenue officer. The company now does about $250 million in annual revenue, mostly from advertising.

Rosenblatt, who was part of the team that sold MySpace to News Corp. (NWS) for $650 million, could also be about to score another big-time sale.

This time, it is digital marketing firm iCrossing, sources said, in a deal with media giant Hearst Corp., which could close in the next two weeks, if all goes well.

First reported in The Wall Street Journal, the price for the large Scottsdale, Ariz.-based firm is hovering at about $375 million.

Not coincidentally, with Rosenblatt in common, iCrossing shares investors with Demand, including Goldman Sachs and Oak.

Here’s hoping Rosenblatt will be able to talk about all this and more in an onstage interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference this June.

He will appear in a session at D8 with former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger, who is trying to save investigative journalism at a nonprofit called ProPublica.

The less lofty content created by Demand and others, such as AOL (AOL), using algorithms and other means, has attracted controversy, with worries about its impact on the traditional media business.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100420/richard-rosenblatt-at-d8/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100315/exclusive-yahoos-top-ad-money-maker-bradford-leaving-for-new-job-at-demand-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20100315/exclusive-yahoos-top-ad-money-maker-bradford-leaving-for-new-job-at-demand-media/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:15:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25581

According to several sources, Yahoo’s SVP of U.S. Revenue and Market Development Joanne Bradford (pictured here) is planning on leaving the Internet giant to take a new position as chief revenue officer of online content upstart Demand Media.

The surprise move is sure to have reverberations throughout the online advertising arena, but more so at Yahoo (YHOO), where Bradford’s job encompasses a wide range of key revenue-generating duties.

She has also been tapped as one of the execs to play a key role in the recently approved search and online ad partnership with Microsoft (MSFT).

Yahoo declined to comment. BoomTown has also contacted Demand and is awaiting comment.

Bradford had actually once been a Microsoft exec, serving as VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network. She had worked at BusinessWeek before that.

Bradford came to Yahoo in the fall of 2008, at the tail end of the tenure of Co-founder Jerry Yang, who stepped in as CEO after the previous CEO Terry Semel departed.

Immediately previous to her job at Yahoo, she had been helming national ad sales at then-trendy Los Angeles-based ad services company Spot Runner.

Demand will be her second time going from a large company to more of a start-up.

But–unlike the troubled Spot Runner where Bradford worked for only six months–Demand has been on a growth tear of late with a social media strategy that is also being pursued by AOL (AOL) and others.

It owns heavily trafficked sites, such as how-to juggernaut eHow and the health- and fitness-focused Livestrong.com, putting Demand in the list of the top 20 Web properties.

It reportedly has about $200 million in annual revenue–mostly from advertising, but also from a domain registration business–and is profitable with several hundred employees.

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company is headed by serial entrepreneur Richard Rosenblatt (pictured here), former chairman of Intermix Media. Intermix was the parent company of MySpace, which was sold to News Corp. (NWS).

Armed with an astonishing $355 million in funding from a range of prominent investors, he has been trying to fight some mainstream media depictions of his social media content company, especially one report that called Demand a “content mill.”

Via its Demand Studios, the company uses an army of freelancers to produce all kinds of content for its sites and others, using a complex automated system, but which also includes vetting and editing.

In fact, irked at the characterization of Demand as a content spammer, Rosenblatt even issued a manifesto for Demand in January.

“There has been so much misinformation about our model and what we actually do, that I thought it was a good idea for our company and those who work for us to lay out our principles,” said Rosenblatt in an interview with me at the time. “We are so different from traditional journalism, which I have nothing but admiration for, so it was time to make people understand that.”

The role of Demand Media, said Rosenblatt, was to help readers solve problems, laugh and get good advice, while figuring out how to create a profitable media business in the digital age.

(Walt Mossberg and I have invited Rosenblatt to share the stage at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference this June, along with former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger, who is trying to save investigative journalism at a nonprofit called ProPublica, to talk about it all.)

If Rosenblatt is successful, Demand appears to be aiming for an IPO or merger with another company. Ironically, Demand has also been eyed by Yahoo in the past, as a possible acquisition.

Nabbing a top Web exec like Bradford from Yahoo is obviously a definite step in raising the stakes for Demand with big, established advertisers.

That’s because Bradford is well-regarded in the industry and is a prominent player. She recently signed a high-profile deal with Hollywood producer Ben Silverman to create premium content for Yahoo.

Bradford’s departure will be seen, both internally and externally, as a definite blow to turnaround efforts by CEO Carol Bartz. Bradford currently reports to Hilary Schneider, EVP of Yahoo’s U.S unit.

My reporting does not indicate that Yahoo’s top brass know about Bradford’s expected move, so it is not clear who would replace her at the Silicon Valley icon, which has been hard hit by an exodus of talent over the last two years.

Internal candidates could include 11-year Yahoo veteran Mitch Spolan, VP of North American sales, or Seth Dallaire, a former Microsoft exec whom Bradford brought to the company last fall as VP of mid-market sales, a newly-created role responsible for all mid-market sales efforts across search and display advertising.

More to come, obviously…

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100315/exclusive-yahoos-top-ad-money-maker-bradford-leaving-for-new-job-at-demand-media/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20100224/media-consultant-michael-wolf-not-that-michael-wolff-is-a-media-consultant-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20100224/media-consultant-michael-wolf-not-that-michael-wolff-is-a-media-consultant-again/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:01:30 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=16703 It must be “hang out your shingle week” for big media vets.

First, CBS (CBS) digital dealmaker Quincy Smith and crew formally unveiled Code Advisors, the M&A shop they’ve been assembling for nearly a year. Now comes Michael Wolf, last seen in the halls of MTV Networks, where he was COO for a bit more than a year.

That was all the way back in 2007, but Wolf’s contract with Viacom (VIA) kept him more or less tied up until 2010. Now he’s opening up his own shop: Activate, a boutique media and tech consulting firm.

That’s a return to form for Wolf, who made his reputation as a tech-savvy media consultant at both Booz Allen and McKinsey (for a time capsule that’s also 100 percent up to date, see Kurt Andersen’s 1997 New Yorker profile of Wolf). He says he’s self-funding the operation, and won’t need to take on investors, as he already has paying clients (whom he won’t name).

He also has a co-worker: Anil Dash, the longtime veteran of blogging software pioneer Six Apart, who is now a director at Expert Labs. Dash says he’ll keep his job at the nonprofit, which is a sort of tech/good government mashup, and split his time between that and Wolf’s shop.

And yes, just because people still mix them up–Wolf is not Michael Wolff, the bomb-throwing media agitator/aggregator. That’s this guy.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100224/media-consultant-michael-wolf-not-that-michael-wolff-is-a-media-consultant-again/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100210/boomtown-heads-to-ted-and-promises-no-pretentious-tweets/ http://allthingsd.com/20100210/boomtown-heads-to-ted-and-promises-no-pretentious-tweets/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:09:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24239

What is it about TED, the iconic conference founded an astonishing 25 years ago, that gets so many people who don’t go in a lather?

Read one tweet from Mathew Ingram of GigaOm, for example: “and so it begins–all the pretentious and annoying tweets from people at TED, just to prove that they are that special :-)”

Yes, that’s it! Maybe because they did not get enough hugs as kids! (Personally, I would tweet from, like, a fist-pumping party with the “Jersey Shore” cast to prove I was special.)

All kidding aside and back to TED, I suppose it could be the high cost of the ticket or the fact that it is hard to get in at all for any price, since it sells out so quickly, or that the presentations from the stage by some of the world’s top thinkers are so incredibly highbrow.

All true. Nonetheless, TED still represents one of the best venues for deep and varied thinking on a wide range of important issues, even if there are moments that might seem twee and elitist to some.

TED2010 officially opens tomorrow morning in Long Beach, Calif., although events at the conference actually began last night. Speakers run the gamut and will talk on a wide range of topics, from poverty to clean tech to global warming to ukulele playing.

There are celebrities and billionaires in the crowd too, which also includes a lot of Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers. All that Davos-in-California vibe is what probably irks people, but it is a lot less annoying than you might imagine.

In fact, as someone who runs another conference–D: All Things Digital–with Walt Mossberg, I can appreciate how well TED is managed, run and presented.

To the naysayers, I would also have to point out this: The entire content of TED–as well as other TED events across the globe–pretty quickly gets put up on the Web, on one of the better designed and more innovative Web sites out there, for all to experience. Embeddable and free.

While it might not be the same as schmoozing real time, if it is quality content you care about–and I do–then anyone with Internet access can eventually see it.

And it is indeed well worth exploring that nonprofit conference–originally created by Richard Saul Wurman, using the acronym for “Technology, Entertainment and Design,” and now run by Chris Anderson–digitally.

So even if you are overly annoyed that you aren’t there–Chris, you might want to invite Sarah stat anyway to stop her from writing another heartbreaking diatribe next year–see it for yourself online from the TEDTalks site.

Here is one video of activist Eve Ensler, for example, talking about “girl cells” at TEDIndia, which is just amazing to hear–and there are plenty like it to choose from:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/boomtown-heads-to-ted-and-promises-no-pretentious-tweets/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091221/propublicas-paul-steiger-talks-about-the-future-of-journalism-and-more-plus-a-tour/ http://allthingsd.com/20091221/propublicas-paul-steiger-talks-about-the-future-of-journalism-and-more-plus-a-tour/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:30:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22151

Without a doubt, one of the more compelling stories of the last year has been about the dicey fate traditional journalism and, of course, how it gets paid for (or not).

So, on a recent trip to New York, BoomTown dropped in on Paul Steiger, who used to be my boss as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal for many years and, more to the point, is one of the profession’s finest.

It was both a privilege and an honor to work for him (and also career-changing, as Steiger was one of the main backers of this All Things Digital Web site and our D: All Things Digital conference).

Today, Steiger is trying to succeed at what probably is a much more important venture–ProPublica–a nonprofit and independent newsroom that focuses on investigative journalism.

Its motto: “Journalism in the public interest.”

Remember that?

The organization–packed full with award-winning reporters–works in tandem with other media partners and gives them investigative stories its reporters do too.

The project, which started up almost two years ago, is backed by a $10 million multiyear grant from the Sandler family, which made its money from Golden West Financial Corporation (GDW).

Notes ProPublica on its site:

Investigative journalism is at risk. Many news organizations have increasingly come to see it as a luxury. Today’s investigative reporters lack resources: Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated “investigative” to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats. This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy.

Here’s my video interview with Steiger about all that and more, as well as a short tour of the office in Manhattan:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091221/propublicas-paul-steiger-talks-about-the-future-of-journalism-and-more-plus-a-tour/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091214/turnabout-is-fair-play-boomtown-decodes-rupes-journalism-is-not-a-free-cow-op-ed/ http://allthingsd.com/20091214/turnabout-is-fair-play-boomtown-decodes-rupes-journalism-is-not-a-free-cow-op-ed/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:05:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21729

Last week, BoomTown translated an opinion piece written by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and published in The Wall Street Journal that focused on defending the search giant from criticism that it was, well, killing journalism.

One of the louder critics, in fact, has been Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp. (NWS), who has been loaded for bear in regard to Google (GOOG), leveling a series of high-profile verbal attacks on the company.

Last week, Murdoch published his own piece in The Journal, which he owns (along with this Web site), on the topic of the wrenching changes in the news business and in which he never mentioned Google by name.

But the company was there anyway, so, in the interests of equal opportunity balloon-pricking, I must also render Murdoch’s post through my decoding machine, because it’s only sporting!

His op-ed, The Journal noted, “has been adapted from his Dec. 1 remarks before the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop on journalism and the Internet.”

What Murdoch wrote: Journalism and Freedom

Government assistance is a greater threat to the press than any new technology.

By RUPERT MURDOCH

Translation: Crikey, as they say in Australia, I have been getting a little wobbly over Google’s growing power, but those bludgers in government will always make me go more troppo.

And, unlike Eric Schmidt, I didn’t need to be called Emperor Palpatine to scare people. Plain old “Rupe” works just fine to give most people the shakes.

What Murdoch wrote: We are at a time when many news enterprises are shutting down or scaling back. No doubt you will hear some tell you that journalism is in dire shape, and the triumph of digital is to blame.

My message is just the opposite. The future of journalism is more promising than ever–limited only by editors and producers unwilling to fight for their readers and viewers, or government using its heavy hand either to overregulate or subsidize us.

Translation: Please try to ignore the salient fact that it was actually Rupert Murdoch–me!–who has been loudly clanging the bell of late about how Google is laying waste to journalism, much as Sean Hannity did to that poor Alan Colmes nightly for a dozen years.

Also, please ignore that I am saying my message is just the opposite, because–really–I hate government more than I hate Google, so this makes perfect sense if you really think about it.

But don’t think about it, mate!

Murdoch wrote: From the beginning, newspapers have prospered for one reason: The trust that comes from representing their readers’ interests and giving them the news that’s important to them. That means covering the communities where they live, exposing government or business corruption, and standing up to the rich and powerful.

Technology now allows us to do this on a much greater scale. That means we have the means to reach billions of people who until now have had no honest or independent sources of the information they need to rise in society, hold their governments accountable, and pursue their needs and dreams.

Does this mean we are all going to succeed? Of course not. Some newspapers and news organizations will not adapt to the digital realities of our day–and they will fail. We should not blame technology for these failures. The future of journalism belongs to the bold, and the companies that prosper will be those that find new and better ways to meet the needs of their viewers, listeners, and readers.

Translation: Teri: Cue the speech about what journalism means for the little people! But also make sure we get in how News Corp. gets all this digital hoo-ha too and how we are not going to let those pointy-heads of Silicon Valley think we are not ready to rumble!

What Murdoch wrote: First, media companies need to give people the news they want. I can’t tell you how many papers I have visited where they have a wall of journalism prizes–and a rapidly declining circulation. This tells me the editors are producing news for themselves–instead of news that is relevant to their customers. A news organization’s most important asset is the trust it has with its readers, a bond that reflects the readers’ confidence that editors are looking out for their needs and interests.

Translation: There was a trophy cabinet and award wall just like that at The Wall Street Journal before I bought it. I ate it it for breakfast.

What Murdoch wrote: At News Corp., we have been working for two years on a project that would use a portion of our broadcast spectrum to bring our TV offerings–and maybe even our newspaper content–to mobile devices. Today’s news consumers do not want to be chained to a box in their homes or offices to get their favorite news and entertainment–and our plan includes the needs of the next wave of TV viewing by going mobile.

The same is true with newspapers. More and more, our readers are using different technologies to access our papers during different parts of the day. For example, they might read some of their Wall Street Journal on their BlackBerries while commuting into the office, read it on the computer when they arrive, and read it on a larger and clearer e-reader wherever they may be.

Translation: Teri: Tell Jon Miller to get on a plane stat and start chit-chatting with those Asian manufacturers asap. I am not going to let Amazon (AMZN) head Jeff Bezos guffaw me into oblivion with his Kindle or have “American Idol” get hijacked by Apple (AAPL) or have those Google (GOOG) twins shine me on, even as they are developing some magic mobile phone.

What Murdoch wrote: My second point follows from my first: Quality content is not free. In the future, good journalism will depend on the ability of a news organization to attract customers by providing news and information they are willing to pay for.

The old business model based mainly on advertising is dead. Let’s face it: A business model that relies primarily on online advertising cannot sustain newspapers over the long term. The reason is simple arithmetic. Though online advertising is increasing, that increase is only a fraction of what is being lost with print advertising.

That’s not going to change, even in a boom. The reason is that the old model was founded on quasimonopolies, such as classified advertising, which has been decimated by new and cheaper competitors such as Craigslist, Monster.com, and so on.

Translation: My second point follows from the first: We can’t charge for milk when we have been giving away the cow for free.

And, frankly, the old media have been lending out Bessie to every Web site that comes looking for a gallon, free of charge, in abject fear that no one likes milk anymore.

In the good old days, when we were the only beverage around–I like to call it a “quasiMOOnopoly”–we could set any price we wanted.

Now, unfortunately, everybody’s got milk.

What Murdoch wrote: In the new business model, we will be charging consumers for the news we provide on our Internet sites. The critics say people won’t pay. I believe they will, but only if we give them something of good and useful value. Our customers are smart enough to know that you don’t get something for nothing.

Translation: People will pay, once we de-index our sites from Google and they can’t get their daily dose of the New York Post’s Page Six for free. Where else will they get the latest online tidbits on the Tiger Woods scandal, for example?

Okay, from everywhere. But Page Six names at least 46 percent more mistresses than TMZ, and that’s worth something.

What Murdoch wrote: That goes for some of our friends online too. And yet there are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production. Some rewrite, at times without attribution, the news stories of expensive and distinguished journalists who invested days, weeks or even months in their stories–all under the tattered veil of “fair use.”

These people are not investing in journalism. They are feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others. And their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not “fair use.” To be impolite, it’s theft.

Right now, content creators bear all the costs, while aggregators enjoy many of the benefits. In the long term, this is untenable. We are open to different pay models. But the principle is clear: To paraphrase a famous economist, there’s no such thing as a free news story, and we are going to ensure that we get a fair but modest price for the value we provide.

Translation: By “friends,” I mean “sworn enemies,” also known as “Google.” (Until it meets with me to do a deal and then it is “friends” again.)

By “tattered veil of ‘fair use,’” I mean “the law I am going to get gutted by my 1,473 lobbyists in Washington, D.C.”

By “to be impolite, it’s theft,” I mean “to be impolite, it’s theft by Larry and Sergey.” (Until they meet with me to do a deal and fork over the moolah, and then it will be a “business arrangement.”)

By “there’s no such thing as a free news story,” I mean “I hope to trick those Google-obsessed Bing boys at Microsoft (MSFT) into paying me that boatload of money they aren’t sending Carol Bartz of Yahoo (YHOO).”

What Murdoch wrote: Finally, a few words about government. In the last two or three decades, we have seen the emergence of new platforms and opportunities that no one could have predicted–from social networking sites and iPhones and BlackBerries, to Internet sites for newspapers, radio and television. And we are only at the beginning.

The government has a role here. Unfortunately, too many of the mechanisms government uses to regulate the news and information business in this new century are based on 20th-century assumptions and business models. If we are really concerned about the survival of newspapers and other journalistic enterprises, the best thing government can do is to get rid of the arbitrary and contradictory regulations that actually prevent people from investing in these businesses.

One example of outdated thinking is the FCC’s cross-ownership rule that prevents people from owning, say, a television station and a newspaper in the same market. Many of these rules were written when competition was limited because of the huge up-front costs. If you are a newspaper today, your competition is not necessarily the TV station in the same city. It can be a Web site on the other side of the world, or even an icon on someone’s cell phone.

These developments mean increased competition, and that is good for consumers. But just as businesses are adapting to new realities, the government needs to adapt too. In this new and more globally competitive news world, restricting cross-ownership between television and newspapers makes as little sense as would banning newspapers from having Web sites.

Translation: Oh, I do not like Silicon Valley, but I dislike government even more!

And now that Google is its bogeyman instead of me, I really hope to finally be able to gut all those annoying cross-ownership rules that prevented me from owning the entire media landscape of every major city in America.

This must be done immediately, because those icons on people’s cellphones–especially that dangerous iFart app–are poised for attack!

What Murdoch wrote: In my view, the growing drumbeat for government assistance for newspapers is as alarming as overregulation. One idea gaining in popularity is providing taxpayer funds for journalists. Or giving newspapers “nonprofit” status–in exchange, of course, for papers giving up their right to endorse political candidates. The most damning problem with government “help” is what we saw with the bailout of the U.S. auto industry: Help props up those who are producing things that customers do not want.

The prospect of the U.S. government becoming directly involved in commercial journalism ought to be chilling for anyone who cares about freedom of speech. The Founding Fathers knew that the key to independence was to allow enterprises to prosper and serve as a counterweight to government power. It is precisely because newspapers make profits and do not depend on the government for their livelihood that they have the resources and wherewithal to hold the government accountable.

Translation: You bailin’ out me? You bailin’ out me? You bailin’ out me? Then who the hell else are you bailin’ out? You bailin’ out me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the %*#! do you think you’re bailin’ out?”

What Murdoch wrote: When the representatives of 13 former British colonies established a new order for the ages, they built it on a sturdy foundation: a free and informed citizenry. They understood that an informed citizenry requires news that is independent from government. That is one reason they put the First Amendment first.

Translation: Teri: Please insert the clarion cry of the First Amendment here, as it always stirs the heartstrings.

What Murdoch wrote: Our modern world is faster moving and far more complex than theirs. But the basic truth remains: To make informed decisions, free men and women require honest and reliable news about events affecting their countries and their lives. Whether the newspaper of the future is delivered with electrons or dead trees is ultimately not that important. What is most important is that the news industry remains free, independent–and competitive.

Translation: Believe me, if we could push a button and get rid of the whole Internet, News Corp. and Time Warner (TWX) and Viacom (VIA) and CBS (CBS) and the whole lot of us old media players would.

Barring that, whether the newspaper of the future is delivered with electrons or dead trees is ultimately not that important.

What is most important is that the news industry shake down big piles of dough from those Silicon Valley moneybags–whether they be Google or that Mark Zuckerberg kid, whenever Facebook goes public, or those Twitter dudes (if they figure out a way to make any money outside of fund raising)–in order to remain free, independent–and competitive.

It is, after all, the American way.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091214/turnabout-is-fair-play-boomtown-decodes-rupes-journalism-is-not-a-free-cow-op-ed/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20091118/center-for-digital-democracys-jeff-chester-talks-about-microhoo-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20091118/center-for-digital-democracys-jeff-chester-talks-about-microhoo-and-more/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:55:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20741 While in Washington, D.C., BoomTown can’t just visit the policy wonks from Internet companies (such as my Facebook how-do-you-do here), so I hightailed it several hundred feet and directly across Connecticut Avenue NW to visit with Jeff Chester.

For those who don’t know him, Chester is the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that works to promote privacy and protection online.

In other words, a professional–and much needed–thorn in the side of Facebook, Google (GOOG) and these days, MicroHoo.

That’s because, while advertisers and publishers are supportive of the massive search and online advertising deal between Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO)–which now looks close to being launched–Chester has a more whoa-nelly attitude.

“There are questions that must be answered regarding the collection and sharing of consumer data by the two companies,” said Chester right after the deal was announced. “While the rationale for the deal is to provide some much needed competition to Google (and income for Yahoo), the further consolidation of the global digital advertising system should be a concern to Internet users, privacy advocates, online marketers, and competition regulators.”

Violations of consumer privacy by such unions or by Facebook’s efforts to use data to better deliver online ads or by any of the myriad ways such companies are honing their behavioral targeting skills worries Chester.

Thus, in patented D.C.-style, he hectors government agencies, politicians and the media to look more closely at such practices.

Here is my video interview with him about all this, which is well worth listening to, especially in an era when online powerhouses like Google are learning more and more about you, and not in a good way:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091118/center-for-digital-democracys-jeff-chester-talks-about-microhoo-and-more/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090924/newspapers-to-congress-please-dont-give-us-a-bailout/ http://allthingsd.com/20090924/newspapers-to-congress-please-dont-give-us-a-bailout/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:59:01 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=11353 The newspaper bailout proposal you may have heard about over the last few months? The newspapers want no part of it, says an industry spokesman.

That said, the industry wouldn’t turn down some help from Congress, says John Sturm, CEO of the Newspaper Association of America.

Testifying at a House hearing this morning, Sturm says his group does like proposals that would let newspapers–and other businesses–change some of their accounting practices related to tax refunds (via net operating-loss provisions) and pension plans. Oh, and he’s in favor of a proposed law that would let papers operate as nonprofits while still generating advertising revenue.

The complete text of Sturm’s opening statement is embedded at the bottom of this post, and if you want to watch the hearing, organized by Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, it was streamed live (albeit choppily) here.

My political handicapping skills are nonexistent, but that said, I think there’s no chance of Congress passing a bill that singles out newspapers for aid. Local papers are still vitally important to local lawmakers, but many of those lawmakers’ constituents hate their papers, for all manner of offenses, real and imagined. I just can’t imagine what they’d do if they were told their tax dollars were going to support their local rag.

Still, I wouldn’t rule out some politically motivated pressure being applied to bogeymen like Craigslist and Google (GOOG), in the form of antitrust scrutiny or other arm-twisting.

JFS-Statement-Joint-Economic-Committee-092409-Hearing –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090924/newspapers-to-congress-please-dont-give-us-a-bailout/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090831/only-13-percent-of-wikipedia-contributors-are-women-study-says/ http://allthingsd.com/20090831/only-13-percent-of-wikipedia-contributors-are-women-study-says/#comments Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:17:28 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=14884 A broad new survey of Wikipedia users found that only 13 percent of the online encyclopedia’s contributors are women.

The November survey, which had some 175,000 valid responses, was conducted in multiple languages by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the site, and United Nations University’s tech-research program MERIT. They presented the initial findings last week at Wikimania, an annual conference held this year in Buenos Aires. A comprehensive report is scheduled for November.

Of the 53,888 respondents who said they contribute to Wikipedia, only 6,814 were women. The male/female ratio is closer among those who read entries but don’t write or edit them: 69 percent men to 31 percent women.

The average respondent age hovers in the twentysomethings. Men tend to be a few years older, at 26, while women were 24 on average.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090831/only-13-percent-of-wikipedia-contributors-are-women-study-says/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090828/facebook-to-nonprofits-more-pages-fewer-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20090828/facebook-to-nonprofits-more-pages-fewer-apps/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:40:59 +0000 Andrew LaVallee http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=14847 Nonprofit organizations seeking to harness Facebook can get the most bang for their buck by using fan pages in addition to groups, streamlining their app usage and livening things up, one of its marketing execs said Friday.

Pages operate like profiles for organizations or businesses, can only be created by official representatives and can add applications, while groups are unofficial and can be created by any user. Relying on groups, which have been available longer, is one of the biggest mistakes nonprofits make, said Randi Zuckerberg, who works on marketing and nonprofit initiatives and is co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister. “You lose a lot of the incredible viral power.”

Because fan pages are official, it’s also easier for Facebook to take down fake ones, she said, as opposed to groups, which can be run by enthusiasts.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090828/facebook-to-nonprofits-more-pages-fewer-apps/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090828/a-google-guy-keeps-his-charity-in-the-family/ http://allthingsd.com/20090828/a-google-guy-keeps-his-charity-in-the-family/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:15:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=10440 Google guy Sergey Brin and his wife, 23andme CEO Anne Wojcicki, have donated $500,000 to Creative Commons, the nonprofit that’s trying to reinvent copyright.

If you’re a media mogul, you might note the symbolism of a Google (GOOG) co-founder boosting a group dedicated to overhauling intellectual property law.

If you’re a cold-hearted cynic, you might note that at least this is a bonafide donation made by private individuals, as opposed to the $6.5 million that Brin’s company has invested in his wife’s “personal genetics” start-up.

But since I don’t fall under either category, I’ll just make this note, directed at other nonprofits looking for a billionaire’s donation: It helps if you can leverage family ties.

In this case, very close ties–Wojcicki’s mother, Esther Wojcicki, chairs the Creative Commons board of directors.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090828/a-google-guy-keeps-his-charity-in-the-family/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090825/wikipedia-free-as-in-thanks-for-your-2-million-donation-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20090825/wikipedia-free-as-in-thanks-for-your-2-million-donation-2/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:44:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=23666 August has been a lucrative month for the Wikimedia Foundation. Last week, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia received a $500,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Now it has been given a $2 million grant from the Omidyar Network, eBay (EBAY) founder Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropic investment group. Like those donated by the Hewlett Foundation, these funds will be used to support Wikimedia’s goal of bringing free educational content to every person on the planet.

Former-eBay-exec-turned-Omidyar-partner Matt Halprin will become the ninth member of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees as part of the deal.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090825/wikipedia-free-as-in-thanks-for-your-2-million-donation-2/feed/ 0