The Huffington Post Media Group, AOL’s fast-moving content unit, is launching a celebrity site called HuffPost Celebrity today, as well as another called HuffPost Culture.

HuffPost Celebrity, which ate AOL’s former celeb-focused site PopEater, is described as “an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters.”

While the Huffington Post has always had a huge dollop of celebrity news and blogs, it puts the much more focused site into a very crowded arena online, with competitors such as Yahoo’s omg!, Time Warner’s People magazine Web site, as well as AOL-owned TMZ.com.

That means a major focus on the news site’s mix of short and juicy items, blogs of the famous (and infamous) and lots and lot of videos and photos.

And, indeed, the new site, which can be viewed here, has that. The main feature now is a big photo with the title, “PHOTOS: Gaga Arrives Down Under” and blogs by Jon Favreau and Tracey Ullman and slide shows of “Kardashian Bikini Show & Tell” and “Child Stars That Avoided ‘The Curse.’”

The move is another of a series of them in an aggressive expansion of AOL’s content offerings under its chief, Arianna Huffington (pictured right), who now has the money and staff she has obviously long wanted to blow her online media empire out.

And it is clearly yet another sign of the reliance AOL now has on the media group’s platform, since it bought the Huffington Post for $315 million in January.

She recently launched a U.K. edition of the site, for example, and has pushed out a number of new categories as the HuffPost has subsumed all of AOL’s previous content efforts.

Here’s the official press release on the latest launches:

AOL HUFFINGTON POST MEDIA GROUP ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF TWO SITES: HUFFPOST CELEBRITY AND HUFFPOST CULTURE

Entertainment News Site Goes Live Today, Arts Destination on Wednesday;

Both With HuffPost’s Real-Time News and Opinion, and Leading Edge User Engagement

“HuffPost Celebrity Network” Syndication Feed Launches Today

New York, NY (July 11, 2011) — The AOL Huffington Post Media Group, a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information, announces today the launch of two destination sites: HuffPost Celebrity (huffingtonpost.com/celebrity), a lively mix of real-time entertainment news, opinion and gossip, and HuffPost Culture (huffingtonpost.com/culture), covering a wide span of the arts, from theatre and film to music and dance. HuffPost Celebrity goes live today and HuffPost Culture launches Wednesday.

Both sites offer The Huffington Post’s unique combination of real-time news and opinion, and a passionate and engaged community powered by the latest social engagement tools. HuffPost Celebrity also features a syndication platform offering the latest entertainment news and blog posts to partner sites. HuffPost Celebrity is edited by Katy Hall, Managing Editor of Entertainment of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; HuffPost Culture is edited by Gazelle Emami, Culture Editor of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; and both sites are being overseen by John Montorio, Editorial Director, Entertainment, Culture & Lifestyle of AOL Huffington Post Media Group. Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group, made the announcement.

“We’ve always offered a take on celebrity and culture that is a fun, high/low mix that reflects our users’ diverse range of interests and desire for comprehensive entertainment news delivered in real-time. Creating these two new destination sites will allow us to both expand and deepen our coverage,” said Arianna Huffington. “Our goal is to give our readers everything from buzzy items to thought-provoking opinion pieces delivered with a style and a voice that’s uniquely HuffPost. We want to inform and entertain, while engaging our community around these subjects and serving as a starting point for compelling ‘digital watercooler’ conversations.”

HuffPost Celebrity is an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters. The site is accessible, fresh, and filled with the kinds of stories our readers love to share. HuffPost Celebrity encourages users to engage with stories and features the most up-to-the-minute photos, videos, slide shows, and blog posts from industry executives to celebrities, all weighing in in real-time. Among the talent that has blogged on The Huffington Post are Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney, Madonna, Ryan Reynolds, Larry David, Bill Maher, Rob Lowe, Russell Simmons, Natalie Portman and more.

HuffPost Culture will complement our entertainment coverage, delivering a one-stop-shop for all that’s happening in the performing arts, visual and broadcast arts, including dance, opera, music, architecture, film, TV, photography and more. The site will have visually arresting images of performances and art pieces with HuffPost’s singular style of coverage, including original reporting, artist profiles, reviews, interactive infographics, sneak peeks, slide shows, videos and more. HuffPost Culture will be a forum for discussion of arts and culture, and serves as a guide for users wanting to stay abreast of cultural news and events.

The site will offer a number of ongoing features meant to explore the arts from all angles. For example, as part of a “Strange Bedfellows” series — following unexpected collaborations between artists — HuffPost Culture will offer an exclusive video collaboration between David Lynch and the band Interpol; “On Our Radar” will highlight emerging talent; and profiles of artists include an “Architects in America” series. HuffPost Culture will feature exclusive playlists from musicians and DJs, starting off with a summer playlist from Chromeo. The weekly “Culture Forecast” will serve as a handy guide to what’s happening in arts and culture. At launch, HuffPost Culture will offer different best-of-the-year-so-far picks, from music to art exhibitions. In addition, HuffPost Culture will present curated content from AOL sites such as Moviefone and HuffPost Celebrity, as well as the best arts coverage from around the web.

The launch of the HuffPost Celebrity Network today offers media partners syndicated, constantly updating entertainment content available for use across a wide variety of platforms. Participating partners include SFGate, Tribune’s Zap2It, and Russell Simmons’ Global Grind. “HuffPost Celebrity demonstrates our ability to combine compelling content with a platform centered around user engagement, while our new feed, the HuffPost Celebrity Network, shows how we can most effectively leverage our unique assets,” said Kerry Trainor, Senior Vice President/General Manager, AOL Entertainment. “We make it turnkey for our partners to offer their users the highest quality entertainment news, whether it’s for the latest tablet or a long-standing website. We want to offer a vibrant distribution feed that reaches a wide audience for our content, while enabling our partners to engage their users around it as well –- it’s a classic win-win.”

With its annual meeting this coming Thursday, you’d think Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz would be taking a rest.

Not so!

She has been a regular Carmen Sandiego, in fact, jetting to Yahoo hotspots around the globe from Dubai to Milan to New York and then back to Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ.

As do Yahoos, I get most of the Friday emails she sends out, but I usually don’t bother to post them.

That said, I liked the can-do tone of this one, shades of Bartz early in her term, even in the face of a stock price that’s dropped almost eight percent this month to close at $14.69 on Friday.

(To be fair, the shares of Google are down by a little more in the same time, although its CEO Larry Page seems to prefer to remain holed up in his digital cave in Mountain View and lick his stock wounds.)

No matter, as Bartz writes, it’s nothing a little retail therapy can’t fix!

I myself am off on an international biking vacation in Ireland next week, so while I am gone, please enjoy Carol’s letter to Yahoos:

Last week was a crazy one -– Dubai and Milan in five days! You may not know it, but the Middle East and Italy are two of our hottest markets in the EMEA region (and I do mean hot — it was 114 Fahrenheit and very humid in Dubai — I thought I was going to melt!).

First on the itinerary was Dubai, where I met with government officials, advertisers, the media, and our awesome Yahoos there.

I kicked things off Monday with the Deputy Ruler of Dubai, Shaikh Maktoum Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. Turns out he is a BIG Yahoo! fan. He told me that he’s on our sites every day to check the latest news and sports headlines. It makes sense — we’re huge in the Middle East and North Africa. Since we acquired Maktoob a year and a half ago, we’ve grown from 30 million to 53 million users. That’s impressive in a region with more than 70 million people online today.

We’re tops in entertainment with omg! Arabic, and with our women’s lifestyle site, Helwa. And we’re a strong #2 in News, thanks in part to our new Arabic homepage that launched six months ago. Already, it’s our fourth most popular homepage in the world — right behind the U.S., India and Taiwan. Meanwhile, Yahoo! is #1 in the Middle East and North Africa for display advertising with 40% market share.

Then on Wednesday it was off to Milan, where I visited with advertisers and our passionate Yahoos there. (I love that our Italian headquarters also happens to be located in one of the fashion capitals of the world — so convenient! An hour of retail therapy goes a long way).

We are winning it Italy. In a business review, our folks called themselves the Yahoo! “Italian Racing Team,” and I believe it. They’re firing on all cylinders. The country boasts some of the highest engagement numbers for us in the EU. We reach 66% of the online population in Italy. We’re top three in seven content categories, and #1 in four of them: Mail, News, Answers and Flickr. Plus, these #1 sites are growing faster than the market. And on the ad side, May was a record month for our display advertising in Italy — we’re taking share while growing revenue.

Throughout my trip to Italy and the Middle East, one thing came through loud and clear: Our local teams are able to execute and grow user engagement more quickly than ever before. This is thanks, in large part, to the great work of our Products org.

Take, for instance, our new Yahoo! Publishing Platform (aka LEGO). Our editors have put it to good use on our Italian Movies site. We’ve seen a 90% increase in page views, and a 60% increase in users. And that’s just in the first three weeks! This is exactly what we’ve been working so hard on for the past two years. We’ve completely re-architected our infrastructure, and it’s incredibly satisfying to see it pay off in so many parts of the world.

After all that fun, I headed back across the Atlantic and spent two good, solid days covering a lot of business in the Big Apple — press, investors, agencies and Yahoo! Sales leaders. Then it was back here to Sunnyvale for CEO staff meetings and a great “Coffee with Carol” with 30+ Yahoos.

I’m off to have a good weekend, hope you do too — especially you Dads on Father’s Day!

Carol

In fact, Bartz practically sounded like a gushy “Entertainment Tonight” flunky when talking to Wall Street analysts about Yahoo’s Oscar news, games and other offerings. She proudly noted the site’s efforts generated more than a billion pages views.

There will be more of that, it seems, with the elevation of Yahoo exec Sam Silverstein (pictured here) as head of its special events coverage. Sources said it will be a major area of emphasis, given obvious advertiser interest.

It’s all part of a lot of dramatic changes being made in the media unit at Yahoo, which is run by its newish Audience head Mickie Rosen.

Previous to his new duties, Silverstein has been mostly focused on major sports events for Yahoo, but has also been managing content on its front page and in tech and green arenas.

The move to taking over more comes after Lawrence Yee–who led Yahoo entertainment efforts and was once the managing editor of its omg! celebrity site–headed to TMZ.com, the competing and much sassier celebrity site, owned by AOL. His new job is as managing editor of its TooFab site, TMZ overlord Harvey Levin confirmed to me.

Also gone recently is Annette Cardwell, who was managing editor of Yahoo’s Shine women’s site, who is now working as director of digital content and games at Future US, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Now it will be up to Silverstein, who is well-regarded at Yahoo, to run the upcoming Royal Wedding coverage by himself.

William and Kate, as well as Bartz, will be watching.

Designed to offer consumers content based on their interests, Livestand is a sort of personalized digital newsstand for tablets. It will feature content from Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! News, Flickr and celebrity gossip site OMG, and it will customize that content according to user preference as well as time of day. “Tablets are great for a laid-back experience, but most magazine content remains trapped online,” Irving said this morning . “But consumers don’t want a digitized magazine. They want rich media, they want connections beyond just commenting.”

Which is what Yahoo is trying to give them in Livestand. The platform will be integrated with Yahoo! Finance as well as Yahoo! Mail, and it will support content sharing and commenting. “We see this as the next generation of Yahoo and we’re putting the full force of Yahoo behind it,” Irving said.

The hope here, of course, is that this will play well with advertisers dissapointed by shallow digital experiences. “You don’t exactly curl up with your PC, the way you do with a magazine,” said Irving. “With Livestand, brands can finally match the intimacy that magazines once brought to their audiences.” That means offering them ads that adapt and respond to user interaction and the tools to create “a TV-like ad experience.”

Yahoo Livestand will debut on iOS and Android in the first half of 2011. No word yet on subscription pricing.

The login page is prime real estate. ComScore (SCOR) says it attracts 26 million U.S. uniques per day, and Yahoo (YHOO) says the page is its third-most popular, after the homepage and Yahoo Mail page. But the Yahoo login has been ad-free–just a white page with a login box and some technical/privacy verbiage–for some 15 years.

Now Yahoo is renting out the page as a “takeover.” That is, everyone who visits the site on a given day sees the same thing.

How much is that worth? Yahoo won’t say. But note that the company is selling takeover spots for its OMG property for $80,000 a day. And OMG gets about 20 million uniques a month, a tiny slice of the login page’s reach.

The new ad units are supposed to cover your entire screen, and run 1,400 pixels wide; by comparison, the column of text you’re looking at now is 350 pixels wide. They’re supposed to be a canvas for “custom, gorgeous, beautiful engagements for an advertiser, that are really meant to be art,” says Yahoo ad VP Mitch Spolan.

Okay. So describing these initial Chevy ads as “art” is a bit of puffery. But they are big:

HP has taken over the gossip site’s home page for the day with an ad that manages to mash up the upcoming SATC film with some sort-of blingy laptops.

Home page takeovers are standard practice for the Web, but Yahoo is particularly proud of this one, because it’s the first time it’s rolled out this particular ad unit, which it built in-house.

Visitors to the site will notice some messaging for HP and SATC (oh – and Windows 7, too) at the top of the screen and in one of the 15 headline boxes that dominate the page, but they won’t see the full-page ad unless they click through.

Yahoo (YHOO) won’t say what it’s charging for its prime real estate, which attracts around 20 million uniques a month. But a good bet would be something in the $80,000 range for the day.

Here’s what OMG visitors will see when the page loads the first time:

And what they’ll see with the ad turned on:

The execution is a little confusing: If you click on most parts of the square, the ad will open up a new window in your browser that takes you to this HP-hosted page. If you want to stay on OMG and see the ad, you’d have to make sure you clicked on the “engage” button.

I’m also not sure how many OMG readers will be enticed to click on any part of the square, period. But Yahoo says that future iterations of the unit will offer advertisers the option to take over the screen for a few seconds without any prompting from users, like some other ads already do.

And repetition is the real point of this exercise: Yahoo is trying to create ad units that seem novel and fresh for visitors (and ad buyers), but are designed to be stamped out over and over again. Interesting to see if this one works.

BoomTown liveblogged Yahoo’s first-quarter earnings call with analysts today, which started at 2 pm PT.

Earlier today, Yahoo said its net income spiked to $310 million, or 22 cents a share, in the period.

Revenue, after subtracting what Yahoo (YHOO) pays in advertising commissions, was $1.13 billion.

Wall Street was expecting earnings of nine cents per share and net revenue of $1.17 billion.

Here we go:

2:02 pm PT: Investor lady said stuff. But, yay, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was on the call, so–not that I don’t enjoy CFO Tim Morse, also on the call–it promised to be much livelier.

Bartz got on first and called it a “solid” quarter. Nothing fancy, but pretty accurate.

She quickly turned it over to Morse for the numbers.

It’s all in the charts and slides here, but Morse did stress the importance of the search and advertising partnership with moneybags Microsoft (MSFT).

It is like cost-savings manna from heaven–$78 million in this quarter alone–for Yahoo. In fact, it’s the gift that will keep on giving, noted Morse, although not in those words.

Also, advertising, especially display, is back! Search, not so much. Revenue per search down, share down–a true weakness for the No. 2 search player.

More numbers from Morse, who began to lull me into an afternoon nap, so there was joy on my part when he said: “On a final note…”

Overall, Morse said that things are looking up.

2:21 pm: Bartz is back, noting first that the ad market is looking up and that marketers are looking to get creative with Yahoo’s “digital canvas.”

“Science, art and scale,” said Bartz.

I had no idea Yahoo was Rembrandt!

She used examples of work the Silicon Valley Internet giant is doing with retail giant Walmart (WMT).

Search is not so pretty: “I don’t think it is any secret that we have had a hard row to hoe in search,” Bartz said.

The bad crops metaphor is right!

2:27 pm: Microsoft deal stuff, though Bartz gave few details.

Suddenly, she threw a bit of a tantrum about those who focus too much on Yahoo executive talent, or–actually–the departure of executive talent from the company, which she called “borderline” obsessive.

I think she just took a smack at my reporting and called me the Vincent Van Gogh of the Internet, since All Things Digital breaks most of those stories.

Memo to Carol: I have covered both goings and comings. Did you miss the Blake Irving piece just this week?

And, frankly, when you lose your chief ad sales person and CTO in a month, it’s kind of a big story.

I am a bit obsessed with Yahoo, it is true, but I still have both ears. (Unless Judy comes at me with some scissors for giving you a hard time!)

End of my tantrum.

Bartz then moved onto details about programming and other features at Yahoo–sports, mobile, Facebook integration–and the company’s recent content deal with Hollywood producer Ben Silverman.

She called what he makes for Yahoo “video snacks.”

Smacks and snacks!

2:37 pm: Q&A time!

First up, a question about search and display.

Morse answered: Display great, search not.

Next: Flat page views and how do you increase engagement?

Bartz will “take a whack at that,” since she is clearly in a whacking mood.

Engagement is a big focus and Yahoo is working on it: More interactivity, social networking, better targeting.

Bartz said she has been getting a lot of diet recipes in that targeting, although she has no idea why. I think she looks great!

Next: What’s up with search declines again?

Morse: We are working on it!

Bartz: “We’re not a long-tail buy.”

Now, a tax guidance question (which means I headed to the bathroom at this point).

Next: What up with international? Also, another question about search decline trends–there has to be a morning after!

“We’re not fighting comScore (SCOR) on this,” said Bartz. Good idea.

“We have a lot of effort going into this,” she added. Stabilization is apparently the new up.

2:50 pm: I missed the last question because I had been looking at an OMG! story about actress Sandra Bullock not wearing her wedding ring. What can I say, except that Yahoo content is a lot more interesting than this earnings call.

But essentially, Bartz was talking about making Yahoo’s internal operations more consistent, which has been one of her favorite memes.

There was also a China question, but Yahoo is not running the show there.

More about the search alliance with Microsoft and its costs.

“There are a lot of moving pieces on this,” said Morse, which means he does not know yet.

He added that Yahoo might buy back some stock, but did not give specifics.

More search questions, this time about how Yahoo sells it. Bartz sounded weary of the questions about this key arena.

I can almost hear the internal dialogue in her head: “WHY THE #@&%*# ARE THEY SO BORDERLINE OBSESSED!?!”

Face it, Carol, we can’t get enough of your search non-answers.

Bartz moved onto Yahoo’s strength in the content space. She is right about this, which is Yahoo’s major differentiation.

And again she stressed the artistic canvas metaphor, for both content and advertising.

Yahoo is the Da Vinci of Digital! The Michelangelo of Microchips! The Picasso of Pixels!

I am borderline choked up at the thought of it.

Last week, Yahoo (YHOO) unveiled the results of its latest makeover: the revamped home page. Carol Bartz, the company’s relatively new CEO, has said that Yahoo’s home page needed just such a makeover. After not changing significantly since 2006, the home page fits the role of a fashion don’t. And consumers, like family and friend observing the aftermath of a makeover, will either be overjoyed or nonplussed by the finished product.

Yahoo’s cleaner, streamlined home page emphasizes its ability to view content from other Web sites.

I’ve been using this new home page for over a week now and I can report that Yahoo followed one of the most important makeover rules by doing more with less. Gone is the busy screen saturated with advertisements and clutter. The new home page is clean and easier to absorb.

Favorite ‘Apps’

Yahoo’s home-page makeover goes beyond surface improvements. Its most useful feature is a list called My Favorites, which contains a variety of Web sites from within and outside of Yahoo. When your cursor hovers over one of these entries, which Yahoo calls “apps,” a pane opens with a preview of content from that site. This turns your Yahoo home page into an aggregator of information, bringing glimpses of information to you in one place so you don’t have to waste time navigating to other sites.

But if a greater number of these apps were more robust, you would be able to do more right within the hover pane, like watch videos or play a game. Currently, the hover preview pane only lets you see content, update social-network statuses and enter search terms, the results of which are shown on a new Web page.

This makeover comes at an interesting time in the world of online news aggregation. Competitors like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) incorporate data from all over the Web into iGoogle.com and MSN.com, respectively. And the concept of the home page as a starting point isn’t as popular as it once was: Many people now start browsing the Web by first clicking on a link in an email or in one of many social-networking sites, like Twitter.

Traffic Driver

Of course, Yahoo plans to use this redesigned home page to drive traffic to the company’s own sites like Shine, Answers, Health and OMG (a celebrity gossip site). These Yahoo sites make up half of the 65 apps designed especially for My Favorites. Yahoo says that its apps for other sites, including WSJ.com, were made by Yahoo and the outside company running the Web site. An ad runs on the hover preview page of each app and the revenue for this ad goes to Yahoo, not the content provider.

Yahoo will use your list of My Favorites apps to learn about what sites you use so as to target ads at users. This proved true for most of the ads I saw on my home page, but strangely, the AllThingsD.com app displayed ads for Mars chocolate and Del Monte fruit snacks rather than technology products.

Module Thinking

My Favorites is fixed on the far left of the Yahoo home page and a large search box sits prominently at the top of the home screen.

The top middle section of the screen shows a carousel of images and current news that Yahoo calls the Today Module; below this is the News Module, which houses tabs labeled News, World, Local, and Finance. The Local and Finance tabs can be customized by entering a ZIP Code and stock tickers, respectively. The Today and News Modules can switch positions if you click on a small arrow.

The revamped home page will serve as a starting point for the Yahoo Application Platform, or YAP. Sometime around late September, Yahoo will open its YAP (no pun intended) to software developers so they can make all kinds of apps with a variety of functions for the home page, not just apps that are tied to Web sites.

You can customize the home page for style or content changes if you sign on using a user ID and password. Changes should appear the next time you log in. But this didn’t work as well as it should. I set my page to display in a tangerine color, one of six colors offered for customizing the page, but the home page wasn’t tangerine-colored the next time I logged in.

Some Problems

I had trouble logging into my Gmail account using a special Gmail app, but this and the color problem were fixed by the time this column went to press.

Some apps didn’t work at all, like the Facebook app, which couldn’t connect to my Facebook account. Yahoo said the problem should be fixed this week.

The home page seemed to have a longer memory when it came to the list of My Favorites. I edited my list, adding more pre-made apps and creating some of my own using a built-in tool that lets you enter a Web site. Yahoo has preloaded icons for some popular Web sites such as cnn.com; otherwise, it will use a generic star.

Permanent Apps

Two apps are permanent fixtures at the top of the My Favorites list: One shows a list of all Yahoo sites and the other shows Yahoo Mail. Everything else can be deleted, added and moved around in the list. One of my favorite apps was for Epicurious.com, the food and recipe site. When I hovered over the Epicurious app, images of food with recipe names appeared in the hover preview pane. One click on an image sent me to the Web site for the full version of the recipe.

After adding many of my own apps to My Favorites, I wished Yahoo had a one-click tool for converting my browser bookmarks into apps. Yahoo says this is something it hopes to introduce in the future.

Mobile Rollout

This week, Yahoo started rolling out a mobile Web site made to run on the iPhone’s Safari browser that coordinates with the more robust version of the home page. I used this Yahoo home page on the iPhone and liked that it immediately pulled up the My Favorites list I had carefully constructed on my computer. Similar offerings will soon be available for other mobile devices.

The new Yahoo home page is a refreshing way of bringing content to you rather than you chasing around the Web looking for it. The My Favorites apps need a little more power to be truly useful and to encourage people to use the Yahoo home page every day, but Yahoo hopes to solve some of that problem in a couple of months when it opens the site to developers.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com edited by Walter S. Mossberg

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090728/yahoo-renovates-its-home-page/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090210/newly-re-minted-microsoft-exec-scott-moore-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20090210/newly-re-minted-microsoft-exec-scott-moore-speaks/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:00:52 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=9329

Just after he got the job 10 days ago, BoomTown got the chance to chitty-chat a bit with Scott Moore (pictured here), the former Yahoo media chief, who is returning to Microsoft, where he will lead online content efforts in the U.S for its MSN online service.

Apparently, you can go home again!

It’s a touché tale because it feels like Moore was pretty much rehired by MSN exec Greg Nelson (also in on the conversation with Moore) to give Yahoo a wallop where it really will hurt–its powerful content business, one of Yahoo’s few bright spots.

And to add another layer of irony, Moore replaced Jeff Dossett, who replaced Moore at Yahoo (YHOO) after Moore suddenly left the troubled online company late last year.

In our conversation, Nelson began talking first about the continued commitment of Microsoft (MSFT) to compete in the online media business despite its lackluster record over the years.

“We are making a big bet with Scott because he understands the key themes for us, which is that this is a scale business,” said Nelson (pictured here). “We all have a conviction that Microsoft has what it takes to compete in that arena.”

Moore agreed, noting that “very few companies have the scale that Microsoft has and you look at the size of the audience and the tools and great assets we can weave in and you realize the possibilities as the market is changing.”

But that scale has not helped Microsoft so far, although Moore argued that it still has a chance as the online content landscape changes.

By change, Moore posits that the Internet is now shifting from being a place to get news and information to becoming a primary entertainment medium.

“You can see that phenomena is somewhat in social media, the idea that it is not only about entertainment, but about making all kinds of choices through the Internet,” he said.

Because of Microsoft’s large audience, which still lags behind Yahoo and Time Warner (TWX) online service AOL, Moore thinks it has the opportunity to leverage the distribution strength with a variety of entertainment partners.

But he said he is not ruling out more original content from Microsoft.

“Most of it is still aggregated content, but MSN also has to think about having stuff no one else has,” Moore said. “You can make it, license it or partner.”

Both Moore and Nelson said it is important that the small amount of premium content is special, such as Microsoft’s deal with NBC during the Olympics.

“It’s a pyramid with the original and premium content on top,” said Nelson.

That does not mean going too far afield though. “I think we have to choose a spot where we already have a large audience and then program to keep them coming back,” said Moore. “It’s not doing something out of whole cloth–that’s not the idea.”

That’s presumably the exact idea behind MSN’s launch of Wonderwall last week, a slick, standalone celebrity Web site (pictured here), designed to compete with AOL and Yahoo offerings.

Moore, who was involved with the creation of Yahoo’s top-ranked omg! pop culture site, was not part of the Wonderwall effort and he did try to tamp down the idea of going head-to-head with former colleagues at Yahoo.

“I have a lot of friends and a lot of great memories there, but it is also great to go back to my roots,” said Moore.

Nonetheless, he still managed to add that he wanted to get MSN sites to top status as soon as possible. “When I got to Yahoo it was not No. 1,” he said.

Nelson said Microsoft was committed to content, even after a history of less-than-stellar results.

“Ideas are free, and so it is all about execution,” said Nelson. “What is our level of conviction? How committed is Microsoft? Very committed, because it’s the future of the company.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090210/newly-re-minted-microsoft-exec-scott-moore-speaks/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090205/is-wonderwall-gonna-be-the-one-that-saves-msn/ http://allthingsd.com/20090205/is-wonderwall-gonna-be-the-one-that-saves-msn/#comments Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:28:15 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=9421

In an interesting and innovative move compared to what has typically been less-than-hip online programming over the years, Microsoft’s MSN service is debuting a slick new celebrity site called Wonderwall today–created, designed and produced by a Hollywood company run by former Yahoo media chief and well-known television exec Lloyd Braun.

Using an unusual horizontal design with a scrolling “wall,” a plethora of pictures and a deeply visual sensibility, it’s definitely a laudable risk for Microsoft as the company seeks to continue to push itself into the online content business, despite a lackluster record.

The site, by BermanBraun Interactive, which is being launched right before the Grammy Awards, will aggregate content from a variety of partners, but also use a small staff of editors to differentiate it and give it “voice.” BermanBraun will operate Wonderwall for MSN.

Last week, in yet another sign that it is upping the content ante at MSN, Microsoft hired Yahoo’s most recent media head Scott Moore, who used to work at Microsoft (MSFT).

“We are investing more than ever in content,” said MSN GM Rob Bennett. “With Wonderwall, we are creating an offering to attract and retain new audiences, using content that is already at the core of MSN.”

But unlike other MSN sites, there is more subtle MSN branding on Wonderwall, although Microsoft’s search will be an important part of the site. MSN will promote Wonderwall across the service and will also give it an external marketing push.

To make money, Microsoft and BermanBraun are jointly selling the advertising for Wonderwall, which also has a partnership with MediaVest, to bring major brands to the site.

One obstacle is the huge amount of competition in the Internet space, from AOL-backed TMZ to Perez Hilton to omg! from Yahoo (YHOO), which is currently the most-trafficked celebrity site (and, ironically, was pushed through Yahoo by Braun and Moore).

But the interest in this pop culture category is obvious–celeb-focused online programming has grown strongly.

Celeb news-obsessed BoomTown accounts for much of that traffic (How much do we love following the hijinks of Britney? Much!).

So, I hightailed it to the Santa Monica offices of BermanBraun yesterday to have a look-see at Wonderwall and do some video interviews.

Overall, I was struck by the site’s arresting visual design, particularly the easily interactive wall, which has what I can only call an “iPhone” feel combined with a flipping-through-a-magazine tone (see above; click on image to make it larger).

With more touchscreen technology moving to personal computers, you can easily see Wonderwall being manipulated by hand.

And it makes great use of linking out, another plus, without excessively pointing to only Microsoft sites.

One problem: No true ability for users to interact on Wonderwall, via comments or other social-networking tools, which Braun said are coming soon, along with videos being able to be played in the main wall.

But overall, it raises the stakes in the celeb market and gives users a new interface without straying too far.

Here’s my video interview with Braun, along with another below it with his partner, former Fox and Paramount exec Gail Berman, and also Wonderwall’s top creators–all talking about Wonderwall.

(And, as an added bonus at the bottom, Oasis singing their hit, “Wonderwall.”)

Lloyd Braun:

[ See post to watch video ]

Gail Berman and Wonderwall Staff:

Oasis:

Oasis – Wonderwall (Music Video)
Uploaded by shrinky

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090205/is-wonderwall-gonna-be-the-one-that-saves-msn/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20080724/celeb-editor-bonnie-fuller-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20080724/celeb-editor-bonnie-fuller-speaks/#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:18:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=2406

Yesterday, BoomTown was hanging in Hollywood at ContentNext’s EconCeleb’s conference, where I did an onstage interview with legendary editor Bonnie Fuller about the massive impact of the Internet on celebrity journalism.

With its instant ability to deliver news, video and more, sites like TMZ, PerezHilton, The Superficial and Yahoo’s (YHOO) omg! have become massive drivers of traffic on the Internet and–despite the saturation–the arena is still growing fast, especially among women users.

But for those not in the know about Fuller’s impact on how celebrity journalism has developed to its current power, she is the reason–more than any other modern editor–humanity now knows every move made by the unholy trio of Paris, Lindsay and, most of all, Britney.

As founding editor of US Weekly (with stints at Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and other mags), and as the editorial director of the parent company of Star magazine, Fuller’s various editorial innovations–celebrities are just like us!–are now commonplace.

And like a lot of old media stars, Fuller is now working on her own new celeb-focused digital and media company, which she says is aimed at women 20 to 40 years old, plunging headlong into the Web arena.

Here’s my video interview with her in an alcove of the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, where we discuss what she is up to and where online celebrity coverage is going (Britney 24-7!):

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080724/celeb-editor-bonnie-fuller-speaks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080602/bermanbraun-will-make-both-msn-celeb-site-and-also-yahoo-lunacy-report/ http://allthingsd.com/20080602/bermanbraun-will-make-both-msn-celeb-site-and-also-yahoo-lunacy-report/#comments Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:45:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080602/bermanbraun-will-make-both-msn-celeb-site-and-also-yahoo-lunacy-report/

Lloyd Braun–the former Hollywood super-programmer turned Yahoo entertainment czar turned Hollywood and online programmer–has signed a multimillion-dollar deal to make an original destination site for Microsoft’s MSN portal, aimed at aggregating celebrity, entertainment and pop culture news, according to several sources.

With the still-unnamed site, MSN plants its own Paris Hilton flag in a very crowded field, which has numerous competitors such as People.com, PerezHilton.com, AOL’s TMZ.com, PopSugar.com and Yahoo’s OMG.

It is also interesting that Microsoft (MSFT), which has focused its efforts of late on its technology, especially related to online advertising and search, is making another foray into the content arena via MSN, where it has had mixed results in the past.

Ironically, Braun (pictured here) was the exec who green-lighted the OMG site, which aggregates celebrity-oriented content and has since become a big traffic success for Yahoo (YHOO).

The deal, which will be announced tomorrow, will be a joint venture with Microsoft and BermanBraun Media–an independent multimedia production company headed by Braun and also former Hollywood studio exec Gail Berman.

Braun left Yahoo under a cloud, after clashing with his superiors who had brought him in to make new online programming, as he is doing now.

But that has not stopped Yahoo from making its own deal with Braun, sources said, a much smaller effort to produce a daily “Lunacy Report.” The deal has not yet been announced, although it has been signed.

That online project will be focused on “weird news,” which is an amazingly huge driver of page views on Yahoo’s news site–almost 7%–featuring stories like one today about a man who was jailed for faking his own death.

The video-heavy “Lunacy Report” will have Vance DeGeneres, who is the executive producer of the HardlyNews online parody site and also brother of Ellen DeGeneres, as its host.

But the MSN deal is a much larger one, requiring BermanBraun to staff up, and it already has many former Yahoo employees involved in the project, sources said.

That’s because, akin to a regular Hollywood production studio, BermanBraun will be building both the front and back end using Microsoft technology. Both BermanBraun and Microsoft will be selling ads for the site.

But it is Microsoft that will be footing much of the multimillion budget for the site–to launch in early 2009–and will own it outright. It will get support on the main MSN page and also throughout the service.

Advertisers briefed on the project said the site is aiming for higher integration of branding than just simple display ads, looking for innovative ways in which marketing messages are integrated into content.

And it will be designed to be much more interactive to spur more engagement. In fact, the new site does not look like a typical MSN site, said sources who have seen it, with a highly stylized design and a wide range of applications.

Braun was reportedly pitching advertisers last week in New York, who said he described it as focused on the wider pop culture scene and not just on celebrities, which is an area of much user interest online.

It is not clear if PepsiCo (PEP) will be a major advertiser yet. BermanBraun announced a deal last July with Pepsi to support original entertainment content developed for online platforms.

The entertainment and marketing arm of the beverage giant has a “first-look” at BermanBraun online projects and has a chance to fund and sponsor original online content it produces.

What will be most interesting will be what happens to the new MSN site and OMG, if Microsoft and Yahoo do manage to strike a merger deal at some point, despite a failure to do so thus far.

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