Most young people here don’t have the opportunity to interact with other nationalities. Gaming can be a bridge.

– Alameen A. Layas, a Libyan gamer who co-founded Tripoli Electronic Sports Clubs Association and traveled to Paris in November for the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC)

Reed Midem, an international trade show organizer, has bought a majority stake in the well-known European Internet conference, LeWeb.

The event, which now has two annual gatherings, recently attracted 3,500 people in Paris, hosting such Silicon Valley speakers as Instagram’s Kevin Systrom and Nest’s Tony Fadell, as well as a range of European execs and others. LeWeb also has a London-based conference.

In an interview this morning, LeWeb’s co-founder Loïc Le Meur said that the sale will allow the business to expand.

“We want to keep the growth going, being in more places and more countries,” said Le Meur, who started LeWeb with his wife, Geraldine Le Meur, in 2004 with just 200 attendees. “We needed a partner that could help us do this.”

The Le Meurs will continue to run LeWeb, although it is not clear for how long. Le Meur also declined to say how much Reed paid for the large stake in the conference.

Reed, which did not have a tech-focused event, runs well-known shows such as Mipcom for the television industry and Midem for the music sector.

“LeWeb fits very well with Reed MIDEM. We share the same ambition for developing premium international events where participants network and build relationships, do business, launch new products and discover the latest innovations,” said Reed Midem CEO Paul Zilk in a statement.

Here is a video message from the Le Meurs, as well as the official press release:

LeWeb Reed MIDEM Press release US

Criteo, the performance display advertising company, just nabbed about $40 million in additional venture funding.

The Series D round, led by SoftBank Capital, gives the Paris-based company an $800 million valuation, according to sources, although Criteo declined to comment on the figure.

Previously, Criteo had raised just over $23 million from investors that include Bessemer Venture Partners and Index Ventures.

In an interview, CEO J.B. Rudelle said the money would be used for growing its footprint in the U.S., as well as Japan and Asia, more quickly.

The company has seen quick growth here and the market has already become profitable. But Rudelle said, “This funding is obviously a big step. We are going to use it to accelerate our efforts in key markets.”

Criteo now operates in 32 countries, he said, and it hopes to extend its global footprint as more companies are looking for better performance from online advertising.

“The need for performance to drive display advertising is enormous,” said Criteo president Greg Coleman, referring to “personalized retargeting,” which delivers highly targeted ads to consumers.

Ad tech such as Criteo has become a hot arena of late with larger companies such as Yahoo and Facebook interested in acquiring assets in the space.

For now, at least, it looks like Criteo filled its kitty to stay independent.

Here’s the official press release from Criteo:

Criteo completes €30 million Series D led by SoftBank Capital
Syndicate of investors includes Yahoo! JAPAN, SAP Ventures, Adams Street and Bessemer

NEW YORK — 26 SEPTEMBER 2012 – Criteo, the global leader in performance display advertising, today announced a €30 million round of financing led by SoftBank Capital to support the company’s hyper-growth trajectory.

Profitable since 2009, Criteo has continuously delivered growth, exceeding all forecasts since the company’s founding. The company now serves more than 3,000 advertisers worldwide, with the US being the number one revenue generating market. This new investment will help Criteo to continue reinventing the online display advertising market, with a goal of making it as efficient as search marketing.

JB Rudelle, CEO and Co-Founder of Criteo said: “In a period of high-growth for Criteo, this new financing enables us to invest substantially in innovation, technology and people. In addition, we are very excited to leverage the knowhow and footprint of SoftBank and Yahoo! JAPAN for our expansion in Asia, a very strategic region for us. Overall, the fact that such a sophisticated syndicate of investors has decided to join us is a powerful validation of our unique model.”

Matt Krna, Principal at SoftBank Capital added: “We are delighted to partner with Criteo and help the company extend its leadership in the cost-per-click performance display advertising sector, particularly in Japan and throughout Asia. In speaking with Criteo’s clients and partners, it became clear to us that the company’s analytical, performance-based model offers clear advantages to the entire online ad ecosystem, including consumers.” Mr. Krna will join Criteo’s board as an observer.

Recently Criteo announced an exclusive partnership with Yahoo! JAPAN — in terms of cost-per-click personalized display advertising, it is the first time that a third party technology company has had access to its inventory. To support its growth, Criteo has also recently invested in a state-of-the-art 100,000 square foot R&D centre in Paris, France.

Here is a very cool — if slightly creepy — video that debuted at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco.

Made by the Paris-based Quantic Dream, developers of the groundbreaking Heavy Rain game, the “Kara” concept video is a look at the future of gaming, using full-body motion capture and a new computer-graphics engine. It is running in real time on Sony’s PlayStation 3 platform.

Mostly, it is just heartbreaking, as a robot comes to life and is quickly scared by the idea of how precious that can be.

Enjoy:

Complaints arose on Twitter about the high price of Uber car rides due to so-called surge prices that were put into effect across multiple cities. One user, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur named Brendan Mulligan, described in a blog post how a two-minute, half-mile Uber ride cost him $75. He also offered some tips for improving the app.

Here’s a sampling of complaints from irate Uber customers on Twitter:

Got charged $150 for 2.4 mile ride from @Uber last night.

January 1, 2012 6:08 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@peternudo

Peter Nudo

While I’m glad I’m home safely, the $107 charge for my @Uber to drive 1.5 miles last night seems insanely excessive. :(

January 1, 2012 10:46 am via Tweetbot for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@Aubs

Aubrey Sabala

A total of 97 complaints have been logged since Saturday night about surge pricing, Uber says. That does not include the 15 users the company believes may not have gotten the surge-pricing notifications through their apps when requesting cars. The company declined to say exactly how many customers requested cars via Uber on Saturday night, but founder and CEO Travis Kalanick says the total number of rides was in the five figures. Overall, he says, the evening was a success despite the complaints.

The company is reversing charges for some unhappy customers on a “case by case basis,” Kalanick says.

Uber, which launched in 2010, currently dispatches car services in seven cities, including San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C. and Paris.

Uber doesn’t dispatch its own cars, but acts as a marketplace through which users can connect with drivers. Kalanick says the surge pricing is to ensure there are drivers available for Uber customers, since those drivers could theoretically make money elsewhere during holidays and other high-demand days.

Since Uber doesn’t dispatch taxi cabs, rates are generally higher than regular cab rides to begin with. Users get a direct-dial option for calling the driver as he or she approaches them, and the cars that arrive are usually high-end town cars. Uber rides also include a base fare of between $7 and $8 depending on the city, and the tip is automatically factored into the final price per ride.

The company has been known to put surge pricing into effect on nights when it anticipates demand to outpace the supply of car services available. The company did this on New Year’s Eve last year, and also on Halloween. When prices are about to surge, Uber sends a mass email out to its users, puts up a blog post detailing the pricing changes, and, barring technical issues, users should also get notifications through the app during times that surge pricing is in effect.

Dynamic pricing — especially when it comes to the travel industry — is not a new concept. Kalanick says Uber faces a unique challenge when it comes to changing expectations that come with decades of fixed pricing in car transportation.

“If you look at a club that charges a $20 cover on a normal night and then charges $100 on New Year’s Eve — that’s just what happens,” he told me. “But with Uber, we understand there are some people who feel the pain of that transition and we take some responsibility for making it as smooth a transition as possible.”

He said the company will still put variable pricing into effect during holidays in the future, and is currently considering whether to do the same during weekend nights.

The tool will be similar to the “Like” button plugin, which connects users to Facebook fan and brand pages from around the Web. It’s also close to Twitter’s follow button, and for that matter it could be an alternative to the standard Web format of RSS feeds.

Of course, the reporters and public figures actually have to write the updates they send to subscribers. That part is not necessarily automatic.

Until recently, Facebook had allowed users to create “Notes” (the Facebook version of blogs) automatically by importing posts from RSS feeds. It removed support for that feature last month.

(Image credit: Flickr user tlillis4)

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

In a post tonight, he announced his engagement to fellow Google exec Irene Au, complete with a photo of the ring in a pretty dish. Horowitz asked her last week in Paris.

Both also worked at Yahoo.

In the status update — which begins “She said yes!” — Horowitz noted, “Having gotten through the trivial details of launching Google+ (!), I recently turned my attention to more important matters…”

And, in an email to me about it, Horowitz wrote (judiciously for both Google and Au): “And just to be clear…I got her *permission* to make it public. (So I’m off to a good start, eh?)”

Like I said, adorkable.

Your move, Facebook!

In an event ahead of the G8 summit this week, France’s power brokers are hosting a new event–called e-G8 and with the motto, “Internet: Accelerating Growth”–that starts tomorrow in Paris.

Set to be held at the Tuileries Garden in the capital, the conference has been pushed and will be opened by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who is also president of the G8.

Recently, Sarkozy has advocated the idea of a “civilized Internet”–a decidedly tin-eared concept, since the e-G8 event is chock full of often noisy and always disruption-loving U.S. Web stars.

That includes Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, the social networking site’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Groupon CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Sean Parker.

In fact, Mason and Zuckerberg have the two big keynote spots for the two-day event, putting the American point of view on the Internet’s future on front and center.

In other words: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!

Greg Coleman, the online advertising sales exec who keeps making bank after bouncing from top Web jobs, has a new one.

The former Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post sales leader has just taken over as president of Criteo, a “personalized retargeting” company–essentially, it delivers highly targeted ads to consumers.

Coleman said in an interview with BoomTown last night that he will be focused on expanding Criteo’s U.S. business.

“Performance advertising is a huge opportunity in a high-growth arena,” he said. “I couldn’t pass it up.”

While the 300-person company has offices in Silicon Valley and New York, its HQ is in Paris.

So, Coleman (pictured here)–who has grabbed huge sums of exit cash, first when AOL management changed and then when AOL bought the HuffPo–now gets to visit the City of Lights all the time.

Zut alors! As I have previously written, I’ll have what Coleman’s having.

Toby Coppel, an investor in Criteo who is also on its board, worked with Coleman at Yahoo.

Criteo has raised almost $24 million from Coppel and other investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners and Index Ventures.

Its competitors are other start-ups, such as MyThings.

Here’s the official press release on Coleman’s new job:

CRITEO TAPS GREG COLEMAN AS PRESIDENT

Former Huffington Post president and Yahoo! sales chief will take retargeting leader to the “next phase of phenomenal expansion”

PALO ALTO, CA – (April 7, 2011)–Criteo, the global leader in personalized retargeting, today announced that Greg Coleman, former president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post and EVP global sales for Yahoo!, will join the company as president. Coleman will oversee global operations and lead the U.S. expansion of the company, whose platform for delivering personally relevant ads to Internet users has enabled the largest e-commerce marketers to post significant incremental sales for the past three years.

“Greg is a visionary who raises the bar,” said JB Rudelle, CEO of Criteo. “With his experience and relationships, we will extend our e-commerce solutions to new clients, deepen our engagement with existing customers, and bring industry appreciation of retargeting to new levels.”

Coleman has caused explosive sales growth for several of the world’s most influential media and technology companies. As the president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post, he built a $30 million ad business in one year. As EVP global sales at Yahoo!, he assembled a pre-eminent sales team that grew ad revenues from $600 million to more than $6 billion. As president of U.S. Magazine publishing for Reader’s Digest Association, he turned advertising from an afterthought to more than 25% of corporate profit. Coleman’s experience has translated to the top-ranked class for three years running at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

“Performance advertising is marketing’s new frontier, and it’s still wide open,” said Coleman. “Technology and sales will determine leadership. Criteo has the premier technology for personalizing the advertising experience. The company originated the worldwide market, is the leader in Europe, and has a secure foothold in the U.S., because the technology is the most reliable and scalable. I’m here to spur the next phase of phenomenal expansion.”

Criteo tripled operations in 2010, grew to 300 employees and served more than 50 billion personalized ads on behalf of more than 1,000 e-commerce companies across 20 countries globally–driving an 11x increase in incremental post-click revenues for clients. Criteo technology enables merchants to win back the consumers who leave their websites before completing purchases, and gives advertisers a single source for complete retargeting campaigns–design, buying, serving, optimization and reporting.

By colleagues’ accounts, Coleman has the assets to increase Criteo’s momentum. Former Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau calls him “a true innovator” and says he “created the model for selling social marketing.” And former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel calls him “the most wired, successful and liked sales executive in Internet marketing.”

“Greg creates unique partnerships with advertisers and merchants,” added investor and Criteo board member Toby Coppel. “He can make Criteo the industry standard.”

Former Google international exec Adam Freed (pictured here) has taken a job as COO of Etsy, the crafts e-commerce site, which just raised another $20 million in venture funding.

Index Ventures is part of the new round, which also includes previous investor Accel Partners.

Union Square Partners and Hubert Burda Media are also investors, as well as Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.

Etsy has raised almost $52 million overall since its 2005 founding, which gives it a valuation of more than $300 million.

Etsy’s CEO is founder Rob Kalin, who took over again as CEO at the start-up last year.

But Freed brings more solid management with a global flavor to Etsy, having been a director of international product management at Google (GOOG). He left the company two years ago.

In that job, he focused on the localization and development of the search giant’s international products and had also worked in international online sales and operations, including setting up Google’s online advertising operations in London, Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo and Sydney.

He also established Google’s multilingual online operations center in Dublin.

Oh, yes, Freed speaks nine languages, which will come in handy at Etsy, since it helps craftspeople globally sell handmade items online.

Reviewers are falling all over themselves to praise a new videogame called “Heavy Rain,” which was released last week Sony (SNE) for its PlayStation 3.

Developed by the Paris-based Quantic Dream, using a 2,000-page script, it’s a murder mystery in the film noir genre, with a deep and complex plot.

The New York Times’s Seth Schiesel, for example, wrote on Friday, in what was a typical rave review of the “Heavy Rain”:

“In terms of eye-hand coordination or ‘gamer skills,’ Heavy Rain is negligible, even trivial, in its challenge, which will offend twitch fiends. Yet this is no simplistic Choose Your Own Adventure for children. This is a wrenching, often disturbing, almost entirely gripping experience for grown-ups.”

In other words, it goes without saying: Something with soul and creativity, unlike most of the shoot-em-up videogames now available.

But it is not without wrenching violence, concerning itself with catching the Origami Killer, a serial killer who drowns young boys in rain water.

There are four characters to play in the game, which can last up to a dozen hours, with the outcome changing depending on your actions.

While a few think the game feels too much like a straight-to-DVD movie, it might also be just the kind of change that the weak games market needs to reinvigorate itself.

Decide for yourself–here are videos of two of the many trailers for the innovative game, which seems deeply creepy:

A few of these will be what Apple (AAPL) refers to as “significant stores,” outlets that are striking in both appearance and location. With its 45-foot tall stone walls, vast glass ceiling and beacon that some say is “brighter than anything on Broadway,” the Upper West Side store certainly qualifies as that–as does Apple’s newly opened store at the Louvre in Paris.

Given their architecture and locales, these “significant stores” come with some equally significant expenses. But evidently, they’re worth it. According to Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, annual revenue per store is now around $26 million. Altogether, Apple’s stores posted revenue of $1.87 billion in the September quarter, nine percent more than last year and their highest level ever.

[Image Credit: Matt Buchanan/Gizmodo, Flickr]

Even when the M&A market was shut down, Wall Street couldn’t stop speculating about GE’s intentions for its NBC Universal unit. And now that it’s deal-making time again, the chatter is getting very noisy.

Hence the flurry of coverage over yesterday’s remarks by Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy, in which he said…not very much.

But even Levy’s noncomments are important, since his company may have a good deal to say about the fate of NBCU. That’s because Vivendi owns a 20 percent stake in the company, and it looks increasingly likely to sell this year. And that could trigger a whole series of moves. The Wall Street Journal:

Vivendi, the Paris-based entertainment conglomerate, has an annual option to unload its NBCU stake which it is allowed to exercise beginning each November. The option was part of a deal made in 2003 when Vivendi sold its theme parks and television assets in the U.S. to GE for cash and stock.

If Vivendi exercises the option this year, Mr. Levy said, it will plan to offer the shares in the public stock market unless GE exercises its right to buy the stake.

If Vivendi says it will exercise the option this year, GE would have nine months to pony up an estimated $4 billion to $5 billion if it chooses to buy Vivendi’s stake at a time when it already is struggling to shore up its financial position. Otherwise, Vivendi’s minority stake in NBCU could be put in play, raising a host of potential complications for GE’s ownership of the media company.

Yet another option: GE (GE) and Vivendi work together to sell off all of NBC via a direct sale–Comcast (CMCSA) and Time Warner (TWX) are the names you always hear as obvious strategic buyers, though I’m not sure that’s the case–or even via an IPO.

Finke moved Deadline Hollywood Daily, her one-woman operation, from LA Weekly to Penske’s burgeoning Web empire in June. At the time, she promised to hire a “senior” journalist, based in New York City, within three months.

Now Penske tells me that the new hire, whom he describes as a “well-known figure from established media,” has been locked up, is finishing paperwork, and will be on board within two weeks. Finke also promises to have hires in “London, Paris, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Sydney” within the next year.

Not that long ago, it would have been inconceivable to see a big-name media macher go to work for a one-woman blog owned by a white-label email services provider. But now that Web publishing has lost most (but not all) of its reputation as a backwater for second-raters, wannabes and has-beens, and now that traditional publishing is on life support, it’s a whole lot more believable.

So. Who’s making the leap and jumping into the digital pool with the rest of us? (It’s great fun! You’ll love it! Unless you hate it!) A few of us have been guessing at names for a bit, but there’s no reason to keep our parlor game to ourselves.

Feel free to speculate in comments below, though you’ll have to use your real name if you do. If you’re feeling shy, you can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com. And if you want to be completely anonymous, which is understandable but less useful to me (I won’t have any way of reaching you for follow-up) you can use the blind tip box here.

Back on April 7, Tim Armstrong sent a memo to the long-battered troops of AOL about a 100-day vision quest the new CEO and chairman was going on to find out “how to bring back the magic of AOL.”

It is now Day 86, and Armstrong is closing in on the end of a Where’s-Waldo commitment that he made then to visit all of the far-flung offices of the Time Warner (TWX) online unit globally.

More importantly, as it is almost over, Armstrong also has to make good on another promise he made in that memo he sent to the staff on his first day:

“The culmination of the 100-day process will end in Dulles with an All-Hands meeting in mid-July. At that meeting, we’ll review the feedback we’ve received–both internal and external. We’ll also discuss our strategic direction for the coming years, and highlight areas that will bring AOL and AOL properties into the next decade of digital leadership. Most importantly, we will set a course and focus all of our resources to make that course a success.”

BoomTown is eager to see what Armstrong has found out on his trip and what path it will ultimately put AOL on.

So far, the broad outlines of his strategy seem to center on expanding AOL’s content assets, strengthening its advertising network and getting out of businesses the company cannot compete well in, such as social networking.

What other pearls of wisdom Armstrong has gleaned are to still to be revealed, presumably.

His corporate version of “The Amazing Race” is certainly a novel idea, born at his first all-hands meeting in Dulles, Va., which used to be the world-wide HQ of AOL and remains its heart.

There, Armstrong (pictured here) joked to the crowd:

“I know that work goes on across the globe and, in the first 90 days, I’m going to try to visit every office we have and sit down and talk to every employee and that will be something that my wife has actually agreed to let me do so.”

Thus, spouse-approved, the former Google (GOOG) exec has circumnavigated the globe and has held meeting with employees in a wide range of places: Dulles; New York; Baltimore; San Francisco; Mountain View, Calif.; Toronto, Lancaster, Pa.; Denver; Hamburg; London; Paris; Bangalore; Dublin and, this week, Tel Aviv.

But it has not been all tourism, in search of innovation.

During this time, Armstrong has also dispatched employees and top execs, such as advertising head Greg Coleman and communications and communities head Joanna Shields, and hired a few key staffers of his own; announced a pending spinoff of the company; and bought some stuff (including a company he funded).

It will be interesting to see what comes next–after the 100-day gathering in Dulles, which should come sometime after Armstrong’s July 15 deadline, of course.

Party on, Tim.

“Search and advertising, we are a small share….It’s all about Google. They have share, we don’t have share.” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that back in February, and according to the latest metrics from comScore (SCOR), it’s as true today as it was then. Google (GOOG) grew its share of the search market once again in April, and once again, Microsoft (MSFT) did not. The search sovereign’s share rose to 64.2 percent in April from 63.7 percent in March and 61.6 percent from a year ago, according to new data from comScore. Its April query volume grew 45.5 percent, the fastest growth rate since October 2007. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s market share for the month topped out at 8.2 percent, down from 8.3 percent in March and 9.1 percent a year ago.

They have share, we don’t have share. Truer words. How much longer will Ballmer have to utter them? We may find out today when he debuts Microsoft’s newest search offering from the D7 stage.

Live Blog

• After another song from Jill Sobule and some introductory remarks, Walt welcomes Steve Ballmer to the stage. He’s drinking a massive iced-coffee, as if he really needs the caffeine …
• Walt kicks things off with a question about the souring economy. Ballmer’s opinion of it is apparently more sober than most. Ballmer says this is a “different recession. A recession implies that you sort of go down and go up. In this case, I think this is money that’s just got to come out of the economy….We’re really resetting the economy. Maybe we should think of today as normal and yesterday as the bluebird.” So how long will this continue, asks Walt. Ballmer says to think things will return to the good old days quickly is naive….“Is this a 50-year phenomenon? I don’t think so. But it’s not going to be over in three months, either.”
• So how does this affect your business? Ballmer says Microsoft (MSFT) is doing a lot of soul-searching and flattening out its business and cost base. “We’re shaking up the future product investment stream.” That said, he notes that the company continues to invest aggressively in R&D. “We’re investing in areas where there’s room for improvement.” Interesting euphemism.
• Referring to poll data, Walt notes Microsoft’s paltry share of the search market. “There’s a lot of distance between you and Google,” he says. “Is search the most important thing to you as CEO or are you more concerned with Windows, etc.?” “Our foremost concern is great people,” says Ballmer. “I spend more of my time on talent than trying to be ‘the search guy.’” He refers to Microsoft’s “seven big things.” What are they? “I’ve got seven children, I love,” says Ballmer, referring to Microsoft’s various businesses. “Look, we’re obviously where we are in search and we want to do better….We’re hoping to be one of the companies that moves the industry forward….The PC business continues to be big, we’re going through an economic reset, but there’s still vibrance there.”

• Ha. Walt convinces Ballmer to refer to Google (GOOG) as Google, rather than “the market leader” as he has in years past. “Goo… Google,” he says.
• Walt refers to another slide about search–how consumers choose search. He notes that most choose search out of habit and because of the brand. Given that, how can Microsoft compete? We’re about to find out apparently. But first a video…
• It’s a “Star Trek” parody– “Search: the final frontier. To boldly go where someone had gone before.” “A bold search for a new name.” Video runs over Microsoft’s chronic renaming of its search engine.
• And there it is: the new name is “Bing.”

• Referring to Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, Ballmer jokes that the name might have been Boom–“We should have named it ‘BOOM!’”
• Why Bing? Obviously we needed a better name, says Ballmer. “We needed a name that says this is all about search.” Ballmer doesn’t seem to really know. “I’m not the creative guy, here…short mattered…people like to ‘verb up’…works globally, doesn’t have negative connotations.” Walt: So everyone is going to walk out of here and say “Bing me”? Clearly that’s Ballmer’s hope. “This is a very important step…it’s not a substitute for innovation, but we need to build brand equity in addition to technology equity.”
• Was securing the trademark problematic? Ballmer says there were a few challenges. Bing Crosby, apparently, was not an issue. In any case, Ballmer seems to enjoy saying the word of his new search service. Maybe Microsoft should consider a new name for Zune. “Zing”?
• Ballmer brings out Yusuf Mehdi to demo Bing. It’s going live on June 3. From a UI perspective, it’s a box and a button format with screensaver-esque background. Demoing basic Web searches. Best Match denotes an official or definitive site–the site we know to be authoritative. Instant Answer–answers to obvious questions delivered along with search returns; a search for Oscars immediately returns a result for who won an Academy Award. A search for UPS (UPS) automatically returns a customer service number at the top of the page. Walt asks to search on “Microsoft.” Much laughter, but the search return does feature a customer service number.
• Bing also returns real-time flight data. Handy. Mehdi notes that Bing includes the technology Microsoft acquired when it purchased Powerset. Using it to “understand” pages, mine data. Walt notes that returns from Encarta, Microsoft’s now-defunct encyclopedia, appear along with material from Wikipedia. “Encarta? What’s that?” he jokes. Ballmer chuckles: “Encarta is an encyclopedia…that is not getting much ongoing investment.”

• Demoing media searches now. Video searches pull up a nice screen of thumbnails that play in the search pane when clicked. On to weather. Bing gives a full five-day forecast, as opposed to what Google offers–a single day, I think. Search for a city returns, weather, events, sports games, video mentions of the area.
• On to shopping. A search for a Canon (CAJ) camera returns a hybrid search shopping page. Price comparisons, user reviews. Also, Cashback, which rewards people for purchases made through the site. Here’s a nice feature: Farecast. Flight search–issues a query across airlines by price, hops, etc. Also tracks flight pricing trends. Tells you if your fare is likely to go up.
• Bing seems to be designed specifically to keep people on its search pages as opposed to sending them off to other sites. Is that what Microsoft is trying to do? Won’t this annoy content owners? Ballmer says no and adds that content deals are possible. “We’re not trying to get in the way of copyright holders,” he says. “If value should be redivided somehow between content providers, advertisers and search engines, let’s have that conversation….We’re not trying to profit off of anyone else’s work.”
• Recalling Ask’s big redesign and it’s subsequent rise and fall, Walt asks if the same thing might happen to Bing. “No,” says Ballmer. Bing is too tremendous a stride. It differentiates itself from Google. It might not appeal to everyone, but if it appeals to 20 percent of them, that’s a success. Ask wasn’t able to do that.
• Ballmer: “Search has not been a dynamic category in terms of innovation.”
• Not at Microsoft, anyway …

• Walt circles back and notes that Ask spent an enormous amount of money on a rebranding campaign that ultimately failed despite some good buzz. How much money is Microsoft dedicating to the Bing branding campaign? “Lots,” says Ballmer. “When I approved the budget, I gulped, and a gulp in a $60 billion company, well, that’s a big gulp.”
• Walt asks Ballmer about the overhaul of Windows and how important it is in an era when we’re moving to cloud-based services and from PCs to netbooks and mobile devices. Ballmer seems puzzled by the question. Smartphones are PCs. Netbooks are PCS. “The Web is designed for the PC….Most of these mobile apps are substituting for the fact that the original app wasn’t designed for the PC,” he says.
• Walt refers to some survey data again. Notes that many consumers say they don’t plan to purchase a netbook in the near future. How do you interpret that? Ballmer: “I just think netbook is a funny brand….What is a netbook? Is it defined by its operating system, its memory, its screen size? They’re really just PCs. I bet if you asked people if they planned to buy a portable computer you’d get a much better response….It’s a little hard to know what the heck the difference is between the netbook and the PC.”
• Walt: Windows 7 is on track? Ballmer: “I’m not sure what ‘track’ it is, but whatever it is, it’s on it.”
• On to the Q&A. First question: How is Microsoft going to convince users to learn the new Windows 7 and Office UI? Ballmer says change is difficult. Notes that he hates whenever The Wall Street Journal changes its format. He says Microsoft’s internal testing has determined that the changes the company has made to the OS and Office suite are good ones that will be embraced. That said, there will always be some difficulties.
• Questioner asks about natural-language search, wondering how Bing would deal with a search for a Hilton hotel in Paris, when there’s the possibility that it might return a list of results for Paris Hilton. He asks for a demo, but Ballmer declines. He can try it for himself on June 3.
• Question about Microsoft’s efforts in the medical arena. Ballmer: “Health’s a tough business. People who make IT decisions in the medical industry don’t make them quickly.” That said, Microsoft is “full speed ahead” in the area.
• How is Microsoft differentiating sponsored searches in Bing? Cashback is obviously differentiated, Ballmer says. Paid side is tougher though.
• Final question from Walt: Does Bing mean that your interest in Yahoo (YHOO) is waning? Ballmer jokingly recites the standard bullet points. “I think there’s a lot that can make sense in terms of a search partnership, not an acquisition,” he says in a monotone. “Whether such a thing will happen I don’t know.” Walt presses him further about a meeting between Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Ballmer jokes that the meeting was actually a note that Bartz left for him in the Green Room. According to Ballmer, it read: “The makeup couldn’t fix me if it tried.”
• Quick update: we managed to get our hands on the actual note: It was left next to the makeup in the Green Room and reads:

Steve,

Forget it

Won’t help

Ha

Carol

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 we were able. It was not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090528/d7-interview-steve-ballmer/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20081223/how-to-dupe-the-new-york-times-a-letter-to-the-editor/ http://allthingsd.com/20081223/how-to-dupe-the-new-york-times-a-letter-to-the-editor/#comments Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:13:35 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2393 The New York Times (NYT) admits that it has been duped by someone who pretended to be the mayor of Paris. How did the duper ever get one over on The Paper Of Record? By writing a letter to the editor. NYT:

Editors’ Note: December 22, 2008
Earlier this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.

This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.

Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers.

We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë’s office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.

This letter, like most Letters to the Editor these days, arrived by email. It is Times procedure to verify the authenticity of every letter. In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë’s office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.

We are reviewing our procedures for verifying letters to avoid such an incident in the future.”

Expect this story to generate a lot of new media rulz! from the blogosphere. But you can file that in the same place you put the “Twitter is like a news wire, only better!” arguments. I’m just glad the Times can afford to have a staff big enough to verify the authenticity of every letter it prints. And I worry that this won’t be the case in the near future.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081223/how-to-dupe-the-new-york-times-a-letter-to-the-editor/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081216/apples-last-macworld/ http://allthingsd.com/20081216/apples-last-macworld/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:41:04 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=9772 Disappointing news for the Mac faithful and anyone who’s ever seen Apple CEO Steve Jobs masterfully deliver his annual Macworld keynote address. Jobs will not do so this year. Instead, the keynote will be given by Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. And Macworld Expo 2009 will be the last such event Apple attends (full statement below).

The unexpected announcement is already playing hell with Apple’s share price, no doubt fueled by further morbid speculation about Jobs’s health. AAPL slipped more that five percent to $90.44 in after-hours trading.

Wow. End of an era. Is this the set-up for Schiller as new iCEO? After all, he’ll be delivering the keynote address at Apple’s marquee event. Or is it simply an acknowledgment that Apple prefers to handle its own events on its own schedule?

Either way it’s a nasty blow to IDG, the publishing company that runs Macworld. Right now they’ve got to be chugging Mylanta by the gallon at IDG corporate.

———-

Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld

CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081216/apples-last-macworld/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20081216/apples-last-macworld-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20081216/apples-last-macworld-2/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:41:04 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=9772 Disappointing news for the Mac faithful and anyone who’s ever seen Apple CEO Steve Jobs masterfully deliver his annual Macworld keynote address. Jobs will not do so this year. Instead, the keynote will be given by Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. And Macworld Expo 2009 will be the last such event Apple attends (full statement below).

The unexpected announcement is already playing hell with Apple’s share price, no doubt fueled by further morbid speculation about Jobs’s health. AAPL slipped more that five percent to $90.44 in after-hours trading.

Wow. End of an era. Is this the set-up for Schiller as new iCEO? After all, he’ll be delivering the keynote address at Apple’s marquee event. Or is it simply an acknowledgment that Apple prefers to handle its own events on its own schedule?

Either way it’s a nasty blow to IDG, the publishing company that runs Macworld. Right now they’ve got to be chugging Mylanta by the gallon at IDG corporate.

———-

Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld

CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081216/apples-last-macworld-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081210/more-not-bad-news-from-time-inc-peoplecom-booming/ http://allthingsd.com/20081210/more-not-bad-news-from-time-inc-peoplecom-booming/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:39:07 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=1939 That was fun writing not-bad news from Time Inc. yesterday. Let’s try it again:

While it’s true that Time Warner’s (TWX) magazine unit is embattled, there are bright spots in the portfolio. Take People.com: The gossip magazine has always been one of Time’s strongest performers (good luck trying to find a discounted subscription). Now its companion Web site is, too.

The site boasts 8.6 million unique monthly visitors, per comScore (SCOR), up 36 percent in the last year, and generates a staggering 700 million page views per month–per Omniture (OMTR). Meanwhile, once-hot sites like TMZ.com (another Time Warner property) have tailed off.

Much of the credit for that goes to Mark Golin, the awesomely sharp and frumpy editor best known as the man behind Maxim magazine’s rise, way back in the late 1990s. He’s successfully broadened the site beyond just Britney/Paris/Lindsay news by adding features like a game channel, a shopping channel and the like.

One of the most successful expansions came via acquisition: When People.com bought Celebrity Baby Blog back in May, it was generating 6.9 million page views per month. Now it’s doing 30 million, Time execs say. And before my fellow journobloggers dismiss the work that the people at Celebrity Baby Blog do, ask yourself this: Did you know that Ashlee Simpson has named her kid Bronx Mowgli? Aren’t you glad you know now?

In any case, all those page views are translating into actual dollars–not digital pennies, as NBC’s Jeff Zucker would say. Time Inc. says People.com is now one of its 10 most profitable titles–that’s out of all of the company’s 174 properties, on or offline.

The company won’t attach numbers to that claim, of course. But given that Time Inc. generated $162 million in operating profit during a very lousy third quarter, you can get some sense of the property’s success. Now Time just needs many more just like it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081210/more-not-bad-news-from-time-inc-peoplecom-booming/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081210/advice-for-fired-yahoos-how-to-build-your-own-business-that-doesnt-suck/ http://allthingsd.com/20081210/advice-for-fired-yahoos-how-to-build-your-own-business-that-doesnt-suck/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:30:18 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=1921 I don’t know if the timing is intentional, but it is fortuitous: On the same day that Yahoo (YHOO) is firing a couple thousand people, entrepreneur John Buckman is offering up a how-to guide for building your own business, over at LeWeb in Paris.

This won’t help former Yahoos who don’t have a nest egg, health insurance, and/or the drive or inclination to do their own thing. But it’s free advice, and it’s relatively sound advice for those who do want to strike out on their own.

Don’t be alarmed by the fact that there are 119 slides here–most of them have just a few words each. Around slide 79, Buckman slips into mini-pitch mode for Magnatune, his indie music distribution company. But that doesn’t last long–just power through. Oh–and don’t be alarmed by the title. Buckman’s point is that you’ll be happier working for yourself than you were working for Jerry Yang and co.

Employees Suck

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: bookmooch magnatune)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081210/advice-for-fired-yahoos-how-to-build-your-own-business-that-doesnt-suck/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081208/an-american-well-lots-of-them-in-paris-for-le-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20081208/an-american-well-lots-of-them-in-paris-for-le-web/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:00:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=7421

BoomTown just got to Paris, as in France, to attend and moderate sessions for the third annual Le Web conference.

Le Web is organized by Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur, with 1,500 people signed up to hear a range of Internet players, many of whom are from the U.S., tomorrow and Wednesday.

U.S. speakers include TED’s Chris Anderson, News Corp. (NWS) social-networking site MySpace’s Amit Kapur, Marissa Mayer of Google (GOOG), Linda Avey of 23andMe, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, and Dan’l Lewin of Microsoft (MSFT).

And some interesting European execs include France Telecom Orange Chairman and CEO Didier Lombard, and Jacques-Antoine Granjon, CEO and co-founder of a very interesting fashion sale site, Vente-Privee.com.

Of course, there’s a passel of bloggers here like BoomTown. I’ll be interviewing Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon (AMZN) and well-known Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi.

Besides this conference, Loïc Le Meur has been trying to make a go of it with his San Francisco-based start-up Seesmic, which–like a lot of Web 2.0 companies–has recently made cutbacks. See my video interview below with him in better times, when I visited Seesmic in February.

You can also watch the conference streamed live from its site. More shaky–but Frenchtastic, although no lip-synching extravaganzas for me!–videos from me at Le Web to come, of course.

[Full disclosure: My partner, Google exec Megan Smith (you can read all about it here in detail), is judging a start-up competition at Le Web on Wednesday. But I am trying to find an excuse not to go to that panel, because I always nod off at those things, even if the crazy version of Britney Spears were a judge. Instead, I hopefully will be enjoying the lovely artwork at the Louvre right then.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081208/an-american-well-lots-of-them-in-paris-for-le-web/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081027/a-pictures-worth-a-thousand-words-so-what-does-a-big-smile-in-a-layoff-story-mean/ http://allthingsd.com/20081027/a-pictures-worth-a-thousand-words-so-what-does-a-big-smile-in-a-layoff-story-mean/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:42:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=5653 Maybe: Happy days aren’t here again?

BoomTown always enjoys chatting with the always sunny Loïc Le Meur of Seesmic (and will, in fact, be appearing at his Paris-based digital conference in December, called Le Web).

But I am not quite sure what to make of his big, happy smile that was in this picture above (click in the image to make it larger), which went with a story in the New York Times about start-ups cutting costs.

In fact, the whole Seesmic crew is grinning awfully hard, putting a very game face on recent layoffs that cut the staff at the video blog service by more than a third.

Money–or, more accurately, non-money–quote from the Times piece:

“To preserve cash, many tech start-ups are rushing to lay off employees and cut expenses. They are shelving their dreams of Google-size riches and getting small, humble and thrifty, all with the more modest goal of surviving the coming economic winter.”

In a less puritan mode, Seesmic raised $6 million in May from a bunch of high-profile angels, of $12 million total.

They include LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, former AOL head Steve Case, SoftTech VC Jeff Clavier, entrepreneur Mark Pincus, former Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Parekh, entrepreneur Ariel Poler, investor Ron Conway, FON founder Martin Varsavsky and an investment group called Atomico founded by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Tech bloggers Jeff Pulver, Michael Arrington and Dan Gillmor have also invested.

Now, Le Meur is trying to stretch his dollars in the economic downturn, spurred by venture capitalists who have been pressing entrepreneurs like him to do so.

“If I can’t make this work in three years it will be a failure,” Mr. Le Meur said to the Times. “If I can and I get through this, it will be much stronger.”

In other words, what doesn’t kill us …

C’est la vie in Silicon Valley!

But in more bon-vivant times, back in February, I did a video post on my happier visit to Seesmic’s San Francisco HQ.

(Note: Many in the video are no longer at Seesmic and neither are the shows discussed, as well as the now-defunct Web 2.0 sentiments about growth without revenue.)

Here’s the video:

Image Credit: Jim Wilson/New York Times

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081027/a-pictures-worth-a-thousand-words-so-what-does-a-big-smile-in-a-layoff-story-mean/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20080815/comverse-plunges-as-business-slows-filings-delayed/ http://allthingsd.com/20080815/comverse-plunges-as-business-slows-filings-delayed/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:36:27 +0000 Tiernan Ray http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=2698 Shares of telecom software provider Comverse Technology are plunging today, down over 20 percent, or $3.42, at $13.50, after the company last night filed a form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission that indicates … business is slowing. The company said in its filings that “slower momentum, in particular at Netcentrex, along with some delayed purchasing decisions in the core business … along with the foreign exchange headwinds relating to expenses we have experienced, has put pressure on our business performance.” Comverse bought Paris-based Netcentrex in April 2006 for $164 million in cash. The product is a telephone switch for transmitting phone calls over the Internet.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080815/comverse-plunges-as-business-slows-filings-delayed/feed/ 0 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!):

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