Like many a geek–and after a decade away–I’m headed to South by Southwest later this week.

To get in the mood for the well-known multimedia festival in Austin, here’s one of the films making its debut this coming weekend.

It’s called “Attack the Block,” and is about a teen gang fighting an alien invasion. Plus, it has the best tag line ever: “Inner City Versus Outer Space.”

Which is just about how I am feeling about SXSW!

In any case, despite my lack of hipster cred, I will be there for a party hosted by WordPress with drinks by The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and All Things Digital on Friday, as well as to interview Flipboard Co-founder and CEO Mike McCue on Saturday in an afternoon session with the subtitle: “Game-Changer or Passing Fad?”

NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes and The Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret will also be at SXSW, so expect plenty of coverage from Texas.

Until then, enjoy this movie trailer, y’all:

In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news and opinion sites.

As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–who was derided by some when she co-founded the left-leaning site in 2005 with investor and well-known communications exec Kenneth Lerer–will become president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group within AOL.

The deal was signed late this afternoon, and the board of directors of each company and shareholders of the privately held Huffington Post have approved the transaction.

In an exclusive video interview BoomTown conducted earlier today in Dallas, just before Super Bowl XLV, both Armstrong and Huffington were jovial that the whirlwind deal, begun in November, actually worked out so quickly.

Perhaps giddy, they hit upon a common motto:

“One plus one equals 11.”

Get it? One and one next to each other is the number 11!

Let’s move on, shall we?

AOL said it is expected to close in the late-first or early-second quarter of 2011.

Once culminated, it will put Huffington in charge of all AOL content and other properties, including well-known names such as Engadget, Moviefone, MapQuest and TechCrunch.

She said she plans to move to New York from Los Angeles, although she will also maintain her longtime Brentwood home there.

And content for all these sites will be integrated deeply into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.

More to the point, the flashy acquisition–which essentially came together in less than two weeks in January–will become the linchpin of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse.

For AOL, the deal gives it a popular branded site that is very good at generating lots of page views and impressions very efficiently–which is the company’s whole thrust these days.

That means lots more ad inventory to sell and an injection of content talent, giving AOL the scale it desperately needs.

The move also obviously gives AOL a much-needed editorial identity and cohesion, which it doesn’t really have.

In fact, many think AOL needs a rallying point to bring clarity to its hodgepodge of recent acquisitions that all center on the notion that a strong company has yet to emerge in the premium content space.

Here is a mock-up of the front page of AOL tonight (click on it to make it larger):

While it all makes for a riveting narrative by the charming Armstrong, AOL still has not delivered the business turnaround promised after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009.

Wall Street, which has given Armstrong a lot of rope, has become more impatient of late to see results–especially more robust increases in its display advertising business, as its access business dies off–after AOL spun off from Time Warner in 2009.

In its quarterly report last week, AOL reported earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $596 million.

But, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

The bigger picture is that Armstrong’s turnaround is still in progress. Ad revenue was down 29 percent in the last quarter, although that number is worse than it looks. A big chunk of the decline comes from moves AOL has intentionally made that will cut revenue in the short run in return for more profitable sales down the road.

A more representative data set for Armstrong are his display ad sales, which are down 14 percent overall and eight percent in the U.S..

The bad news is that the rest of the Web ad industry is well into rebound mode; the good news is that AOL has trained Wall Street to expect numbers like these. If you’re waiting to see positive sales numbers, Armstrong said during AOL’s earnings call this morning, wait until the second half of this year.

In any case, the move is a good one for the Huffington Post since it will vault it to the next level of growth.

Other companies, such as Yahoo and NBC Universal, had looked at the company as a purchase target, and many expected it to eventually sell out to a larger company.

Sources close to the Huffington Post said that that outcome seemed the most likely, and the recent expansion of the site and its audience made it a good time to do a deal now.

Talks with Yahoo last year went nowhere, sources said, but Armstrong was not as slow to act.

Indeed, the actual deal happened quickly, said Armstrong and Huffington in a video interview with BoomTown earlier today (which you can see here).

The pair started talking in early November of last year at the Quadrangle Conference in New York and continued their discussions through the holidays.

Armstrong made the official offer to Huffington by phone in January, while she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he was snowed in in New York.

Five time multiple to the Huffington Post’s upward of $60 million in expected revenue for the coming year, and nearly 10 times the $31 million for 2010, the offer was accepted quickly.

AOL used cash for $300 million of the purchase and $15 million in stock for the rest.

“The idea of turning a fire hose of traffic onto our content made enormous sense,” said one person close to the situation. “Everything is changing so fast, it seemed like the time was right.”

An IPO was also considered for the Huffington Post, sources said. But since the site only recently moved into profitability–although barely–such an event would have been farther out.

That’s despite the fact that the Huffington Post has seen fast-growing traffic and influence, spurred in part by Huffington’s larger-than-life persona in both the mainstream media and blogosphere.

The wide-ranging site–which has added a number of content areas in recent years beyond its flagship political offering–currently has almost 26 million unique monthly visitors, according to recent stats, moving in close range to established news organizations such as the New York Times.

That kind of success seemed unlikely when the Huffington Post launched on May 9, 2005, positioning itself as as a liberal counterweight to the popular right-leaning Drudge Report.

But the Huffington Post’s heady mix of celebrity bloggers, personality and voice, as well as aggressive curation of links from other sites, quickly caught on.

To fund its efforts, the New York-based online media company has raised $37 million from angel investors such as Lerer–the largest individual shareholder, followed closely by Huffington–and venture firms such as Greycroft Partners, Softbank Capital and Oak Investment Partners.

The growth has not been without controversy around issues such as lack of payments to bloggers who contribute and accusations that the site uses too much content from other Web sources when linking.

And Huffington herself has also been a lightning rod, which has been both positive and negative for the site.

But, there is no question she is one of the Web’s most prominent players, along with writing books, appearing on television frequently and being a fixture at high-profile events in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

That includes a never-ending panoply of parties that feature a potent mix of movie stars, corporate poo-bahs, glad-handing politicians and lots of journalists from all over the media.

In fact, full disclosure, I was at one of those parties this past weekend for actor Colin Firth and others involved in the making of the Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech.” (Apropos of nothing, actor Helena Bonham Carter is as smart as you would expect, but much more delicate.)

As part of the AOL deal, CEO Eric Hippeau–who has been integral to professionalizing the business and will be joining Lerer Ventures–and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman will leave the Huffington Post.

Ironically, Coleman was replaced by Armstrong as head of ad sales at AOL after he took over as CEO. Coleman got a big payout and will now apparently get another.

But the rest of the 200 Huffington Post employees are moving over to AOL with Huffington, who Armstrong hopes will be the company’s ace in the content hole going forward.

There are likely to be changes to come too at AOL, within weeks, especially in its content-side management and site staffs.

AOL provided some quotes in support of the deal from prominent Internet figures who know Huffington well.

“Arianna is one of the preeminent authors and editors of our time, and Tim has a remarkable track record of business success,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “Bringing them together creates tremendous potential for AOL.”

And Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said:

“Editorial vision and leadership are essential in order to transmute our shared cacophony of voices into a valuable dialogue. Arianna’s expertise, empathy, and entrepreneurial enthusiasm forms a kind of alchemy turning mere words and phrases into powerful expressions of humanity.”

Inter-Internet harmony: How sweet!

Here is the official press release, with all the details, but there is also an 8 am ET AOL conference call tomorrow:

AOL AGREES TO ACQUIRE THE HUFFINGTON POST

Acquisition Will Solidify AOL’s Strategy of Creating a Premier Content Network With Local, National and International Reach

Arianna Huffington To Lead Newly Formed The Huffington Post Media Group Which Will Integrate All Huffington Post and AOL Content, Including News, Tech, Women, Local, Multicultural, Entertainment, Video, Community, and More

The New Combined Media Group Will Reach 117 Million Americans and 270 Million Globally

Group Uniquely Positioned To Redefine the Future of Brand Advertising and Marketing For an Engaged and Influential Audience

New York, NY–February 7, 2011–AOL Inc. [NYSE:AOL] announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.

The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age–leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.

The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.

As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

“The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.”

Armstrong continued, “Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company.”

“This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us,” said Huffington. “The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years–though now at light speed–by combining with AOL. Our readers will still be able to come to the Huffington Post at the same URL, and find all the same content they’ve grown to love, plus a lot more–more local, more tech, more entertainment, more finance, and lots more video. We are fusing a legendary and powerful new media brand with a vibrant, innovative news organization, known for its distinctive voice, a highly engaged audience, an expertise in community-building, and a track record for demystifying the news and putting flesh and blood on the data while drawing our audience into the conversation.”

Huffington continued, “By uniting AOL and The Huffington Post, we are creating one of the largest destinations for smart content and community on the Internet. And we intend to keep making it better and better.”

Kenneth Lerer, The Huffington Post’s Co-Founder and Chairman, said, “The Huffington Post team has created a potent brand with the proven track record of knowing how to grow traffic, inform and entertain its readers and build a one-of-a-kind online community. Add that to the powerful scale and resources of AOL and you have the perfect combination for today and the future. Together these two companies will be a premier online content provider. From local citizen reporting through AOL’s Patch, to The Huffington Post’s national reporting on politics, business and culture, consumers will have access to everything they want whenever they want it.”

AOL has agreed to purchase The Huffington Post for $315 million, approximately $300 million of which will be paid in cash funded from cash on hand. The Huffington Post is privately owned by its two cofounders, as well as a group of investors. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of government approvals. The boards of directors of each company and shareholders of The Huffington Post have approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter 2011.

The Huffington Post over-indexes on educated, affluent users, reaching the key decision makers in C-suites around the globe. The Huffington Post speaks to this influential audience via a host of prominent voices on its group blog. Among those who have blogged on The Huffington Post are: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Larry Page, Diane Sawyer, Buzz Aldrin, Nora Ephron, Bill Maher, Madeleine Albright, Robert Redford, Katie Couric, Neil Young, Rahm Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Al Franken, Ari Emanuel, Harry Shearer, Senator John Kerry, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Madonna, Lawrence Summers, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Craig Newmark, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Russell Simmons, Sean Penn, Bill Gates, Norman Lear, Charlie Rose, Elizabeth Warren, Tavis Smiley, Sheryl Sandberg, George Clooney, and former President Bill Clinton. And the audience speaks back, generating four million comments a month***.

The Huffington Post’s affluent, influential audience, that is growing at a rate of 22 percent (December 2009 vs. December 2010)****, when combined with AOL’s massive scale, video offerings and local expertise, will represent an incredibly desirable demographic for a broad range of advertising partners across the board.

And here is Armstrong’s internal memo to the AOL staff:

AOLers,

We are taking another major step in the comeback of AOL. Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet. We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world–The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet.

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader–one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information. Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience. By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable–social, local, video, mobile and tablet.

The Huffington Post is core to our strategy and our 80:80:80 focus–80% of domestic spending is done by women, 80% of commerce happens locally and 80% of considered purchases are driven by influencers. The influencer part of the strategy is important and will be potent.

The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women’s content. In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone. Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people–the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information. Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space.

Arianna Huffington is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Internet space and someone that is even more successful in building communities and relationships in every corner of the globe. The Huffington Post and Arianna have created a company that has partnered with the most successful and well-known leaders in all aspects of society that touch important topics to give consumers direct access to the most influential decision makers and community leaders.

This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more. This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post. Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market:

* Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

* The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet. It grew 22% last year–that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% – and 15x as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

* Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.

* AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

* Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way.

To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group. Within this group will be AOL Media, AOL Local & Mapping, AOL Search and our new friends at The Huffington Post. We will continue operating the towns structure, AOL.com and HuffingtonPost.com.

I’m thrilled to announce that Arianna Huffington will join AOL’s executive team as President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. We have asked Jon Brod to lead the overall operational integration on the AOL side of the combined entities. Jon will lead the local group integration and work closely with David Eun and the teams in AOL Media. We will work quickly with The Huffington Post to create a combined organizational design to coincide with the deal closing. While we wait for the required regulatory reviews to be completed and the transaction to close before implementing the design, we will move very quickly to plan the details of the integration of the two companies. To this end, we will announce the new organizational structure as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we will continue creating great content and products for our consumers within the town structure and stay laser-focused on the aggressive goals we have set for our winter luge. We are on the right track and will continue our weekly operating cadence and town structure to drive successful results against our company goals.

Here’s a special message for all of you we taped to welcome The Huffington Post and Arianna to our AOL Family:

http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2011/02/aol-agrees-buy-huffington-post

And of course we wanted to welcome Arianna to our “You’ve Got” video of the day–check her out on AOL.com.

We will be holding a company all hands meeting to address your questions related to today’s exciting news. We will video conference from our New York office on the 6th Floor at 9:30 AM ET and will be joined by Arianna Huffington and key executives from her organization. We will also be holding a call for our west coast offices at 2:00 PM ET and for our Patch offices at 2:45 PM ET. See below for meeting info (conference rooms will be sent out shortly).

AOL is playing to win…and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet. Let’s go get it done.

–TA

(More full disclosure: As has been previously reported by MediaMemo, All Things Digital had the briefest and most preliminary of discussions with Armstrong about moving to AOL last year, while exploring several other options. All’s well that ended well: We stayed at Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.)

It was vintage Parker, who always tries to paint himself as more of a geek than the multicolored life of the digital party. In truth, he is very much both.

In these clips, he talks about the fabrications in the movie “The Social Network,” in which Justin Timberlake played him as a hyperactive version of Falstaff.

Parker thought the character was “morally reprehensible,” although that’s what made him so fun to watch.

Parker also took issue with other creative liberties about the social networking site in the movie and noted that the film was “a complete work of fiction.”

As an example, he pointed out how there are “no Victoria’s Secret models in Silicon Valley” as there were in “The Social Network.”

You’re kidding! Hollywood glamorized the nerdtastic tech scene in order to make it more exciting to audiences? I cannot believe it!

(And, frankly, Parker seems to be enjoying the attention as much as he does tweaking the film.)

Parker also talked about Facebook being a neutral platform, making a much more interesting observation about what the true power of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg really is.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/video-sean-parker-on-no-victoria-secret-models-in-silicon-valley-what/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110114/dces-highlights-video-nvidias-jen-hsun-huang/ http://allthingsd.com/20110114/dces-highlights-video-nvidias-jen-hsun-huang/#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:01:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39510

Our next highlights video from our D@CES event last week is of Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

The event, which we did in cooperation with the Consumer Electronics Show, was only three sessions in one afternoon. It was followed by a lovely party, all at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Huang talked about how mobile is about to see super-duper-duper smartphones and also touched on the chipmaker’s legal battle with Intel, which was settled earlier this week.

Here’s a longish highlights video of Huang’s interview with Mobilized’s Ina Fried:

I’ll be posting the full videos of this interview, as well as with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Dean Hachamovitch, who is in charge of Microsoft’s Interet Explorer browser from D@CES next week.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110114/dces-highlights-video-nvidias-jen-hsun-huang/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110112/dces-highlights-video-microsoft-ies-dean-hachamovitch/ http://allthingsd.com/20110112/dces-highlights-video-microsoft-ies-dean-hachamovitch/#comments Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:01:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39437

Our next highlights video from our D@CES event last week is of Microsoft Internet Explorer chief Dean Hachamovitch.

The event, which we did in cooperation with the Consumer Electronics Show, was only three sessions in one afternoon. It was followed by a lovely party, all at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Here’s a longish highlights video of Walt Mossberg’s interview with Hachamovitch, during which they focused a lot on privacy issues on the browser and the Web (check out his shirt):

I’ll be posting the third highlights video D@CES of Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on Friday and all full videos from the event next week.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110112/dces-highlights-video-microsoft-ies-dean-hachamovitch/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110103/exclusive-news-corp-online-gaming-head-sean-ryan-to-head-facebooks-gaming-platform/ http://allthingsd.com/20110103/exclusive-news-corp-online-gaming-head-sean-ryan-to-head-facebooks-gaming-platform/#comments Mon, 03 Jan 2011 19:47:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39067

Sean Ryan (pictured here), who arrived at News Corp. mid-year to set up a new online gaming unit, is moving to Facebook to head partnerships at its key gaming platform, according to sources.

Currently, Facebook does not create social games, but hosts third-party publishers of them on its king-making platform. Its most stunning success has been Zynga, maker of Farmville and CityVille.

The move seems sudden, since he just got his latest position. But sources said Ryan and execs at the Silicon Valley social networking giant had been talking about a job there before he went to News Corp.

Thus, at this point at least, Ryan’s main job will be a high-profile developer relations dude–in essence, keeping Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in line and also, presumably, happy.

Translation: Adventures in babysitting former Facebook COO and now Zynga COO Owen Van Natta!

Ryan, whose title will be director of gaming partnerships, will report to Ethan Beard, director of the Facebook Developer Network.

Facebook is clearly building out its gaming talent bench.

Ryan will work closely with Cory Ondrejka and Bruce Rogers–who joined Facebook after the acquisition of their social gaming start-up Walletin in November to head platform games engineering efforts.

Sources said that News Corp.’s efforts will now be taken over by John Welch, who came to the media giant after Ryan acquired his casual games company Making Fun.

At the time, Ryan said he was working on a platform designed to support games on Facebook, Apple’s iPhone Google’s Android mobile operating system and News Corp.-owned Myspace.

Ryan got to News Corp. a little after it acquired Irata Labs, a social gaming developer. He had the title of EVP and GM of Games at News Corp. Digital.

Ryan is well known in the gaming and monetization space. He was acting CEO of Live Journal and also CEO of Meez, a virtual world and also Listen.com.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

BoomTown is awaiting comment from Facebook and News Corp.

But Ryan and George Kliavkoff throw their 17th Annual “After-After” Party at the Consumers Electronics Show in Las Vegas at 11:59 PM Thursday, so come by and say congrats!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110103/exclusive-news-corp-online-gaming-head-sean-ryan-to-head-facebooks-gaming-platform/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101109/more-yahoo-deal-scenarios-keep-the-goat-rodeo-going-strong/ http://allthingsd.com/20101109/more-yahoo-deal-scenarios-keep-the-goat-rodeo-going-strong/#comments Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:29:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36998

If wishes were horses, as the old proverb goes, all beggars would ride.

Or, in the case of the incessant corporate drama around Yahoo: If wishes were deals, all bankers would get big fat fees.

Even BoomTown has been harboring a big wish that there were some new scenario–instead of the same retreads that have been bandied about for more than a month–that was at least possible.

But because making up scenarios about the fate of Yahoo is all fun and games, it goes on and on and on.

Today’s latest intrigue is from Reuters, which reports that the Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma is considering entreaties by moneybags private equity folks to give him the many billions of dollars needed to buy back Yahoo’s 40 percent stake in the Chinese Internet giant and perhaps even participate in a takeover of Yahoo itself.

As has been reported here and in many places many times already, private equity and other investor interest has centered for a while on working with Ma to unlock critical financial value for anyone interested in doing any kind of buyout of Yahoo.

And, as it turns out, Ma has long been explicit about wanting to rid himself of Yahoo and to take back control of Alibaba completely.

There’s no doubt the government of China would also look kindly on that result too, many sources say, given the huge size of the vexing foreign ownership of one of the country’s brightest Internet stars.

But, as most also know, wishing–and even offering a giant pile of money–doesn’t make it so, unless Ma can convince Yahoo to sell to him.

And, of course, he also does not have to do anything either, since Yahoo management has little say over his actions at Alibaba, in spite of the large stake Yahoo holds.

As you can see, you can spin these ideas all day long, which is what bankers apparently get paid so much for.

Luckily, I will do it for free.

You could, for example, add Microsoft into the Yahoo mix once again. Would it engage, in order to get the search business in China from Alibaba? Or to finally unload its pricey MSN unit?

And what of News Corp., with its extensive ties in Asia and interest in trading its weak digital properties, such as Myspace, for something better? Wasn’t CEO Rupert Murdoch sniffing around before?

There is also a renewed scenario for Demand Media to become involved.

Of course, let’s not leave out the old faithful plots about how tiny AOL, with its high-Q-quotient CEO Tim Armstrong, could still be a contender.

Just for fun, I will add another interesting idea I recently heard: Comcast. Could the cable and now media giant swoop in at some point and pick up a lot of digital assets it might need going forward?

Don’t forget Disney either–the Hollywood entertainment giant, which has a key interest in moving into the digital space even more boldly.

On consolation: Google is probably out, having been burned before, because of all the antitrust issue inherent in any hookup with Yahoo.

Of course, it will not be a party until Twitter gets here, with its date Zynga.

Finally: Where, oh, where is the holy union of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Steve Jobs when you need them to knock this corporate drama into the stratosphere?

Until it is all sorted out for real, here is a reprint of some of the many similar scenarios I cooked up way back in late September–most of which were investor fantasies, but now are being taken more seriously–in a post titled “Could AOL Merge With Yahoo? Could News Corp. Make a Play? Takeover 2.0 With a Little Help From China’s Alibaba?”

Enjoy–although, as you will see, it’s the same scenarios floated then as now:

Today, as news of the departure of Yahoo’s U.S. head Hilary Schneider and two other top execs got around Wall Street, investors and dealmakers were actually thinking of things other than executive turmoil.

As in: Does the uncertainty, along with a naggingly lackluster stock price and weak growth, create pressure on its CEO Carol Bartz and its board to do something dramatic?

In addition, does the messy public situation even provide an opportunity to put Yahoo into play, despite its market cap of $19 billion?

These and many more are the scenarios being debated in boardrooms of big media and Internet companies today, as well as at private equity firms, investment banks and even in Asia.

That’s because many are focusing on Yahoo’s Asian investments. Yahoo itself owns almost 35 percent of Yahoo Japan and a 40 percent stake in China’s Alibaba Group, assets that now make up–along with cash on hand–most of the company’s valuation.

Alibaba and Yahoo have recently gotten into an ugly public tussle over the Chinese firm’s desire to buy back the shares now, with Bartz holding out for more appreciation.

Now, she might have to do a deal with Alibaba, according to one theory, because a sale of its stake would give Yahoo’s stock a significant boost.

One problem: Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has made it known to anyone who will listen that he loathes Bartz personally, after a series of awkward encounters. That said, he has a close relationship with former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang, who is on both companies’ boards.

That puts Ma in an interesting position, according to another theory, because other U.S. companies with an interest in Yahoo might try to make a deal with him to do some kind of deal with Yahoo.

Most frequently mentioned by big investors in Yahoo: AOL and its CEO Tim Armstrong.

Armstrong, said sources, has not shied away from the idea of Yahoo acquiring AOL and installing him as CEO with Bartz as chairman. AOL’s valuation is just $2.65 billion.

Although AOL has also been trying to turn itself around and is in a much less powerful position than Yahoo, Wall Street likes Armstrong’s story for AOL as a modern-day media and media distribution company.

“At least he has a narrative that is believable,” said one big investor in both companies. “Bartz has no vision.”

Another plus for Armstrong: His friendly and Don Draper-smooth demeanor, in contrast to Bartz’s tough-talking and now too-often curse-laden patter.

And while, Armstrong has assembled an experienced staff. And he himself has deep online advertising sales experience, given his last job as head of U.S. sales at Google.

Also likely to be interested: News Corp. The reason is that its own digital efforts, especially at the MySpace social networking site, have gone sideways.

And there’s history: News Corp. tried to facilitate a merger of MySpace, MSN and Yahoo into a company codenamed “TrafficCo” at the time Microsoft was attempting a takeover of Yahoo.

It was supposed to be headed by former Microsoft exec and now Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson, another possible Yahoo CEO candidate.

That plot did not pan out and News Corp. has been trying mightily to revive MySpace ever since. It certainly would trade it into Yahoo for some stake.

Another hook: Its digital head Jon Miller, who used to be CEO of AOL, almost was CEO of Yahoo, during that same takeover fight. But a noncompete agreement with Time Warner was enforced by CEO Jeff Bewkes at the time.

Both AOL and News Corp. could certainly make approaches to Ma or Yahoo Japan’s Masayoshi Son to agree to help them get back their Yahoo stakes.

Son was the one who made the move recently to switch out Yahoo search for Google in Japan.

And, by the way, Son was one of Yahoo’s earliest investors.

Confused? Well, it is certainly shaping up to be a lively Silicon Valley goat rodeo, as there are also all kinds of private equity companies with spreadsheets already figured if Yahoo shares decline enough.

And there are other ideas spinning on spins into Yahoo, such as Demand Media, which is prepping an IPO, and its perpetually enthusiastic CEO Richard Rosenblatt.

One unlikely player is Microsoft. The once hostile suitor is now a partner to Yahoo in search and online advertising.

Of course, the last and biggest question is what happens between Bartz and the board. While they seem to have backed her this far, she has not performed as she has promised and now seems to have gotten publicly grumpy about all the pressure to do so.

Will the directors, who proved themselves pretty ineffectual in the past, continue to support her? Or will they find some self-protecting way to ease her out?

Some directors are definitely unhappy, sources said, but no one seems to be in charge or particularly influential.

Which could mean even more confusion as Yahoo moves unsteadily forward.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101109/more-yahoo-deal-scenarios-keep-the-goat-rodeo-going-strong/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101022/a-nerd-by-any-other-name-would-be-as-geek-bing-gordon-waxes-poetic-and-more-at-the-sfund-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20101022/a-nerd-by-any-other-name-would-be-as-geek-bing-gordon-waxes-poetic-and-more-at-the-sfund-launch/#comments Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:32:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36077

BoomTown will admit it: I am a social party pooper.

In any case, here is a lovely video I did yesterday while at the launch of the sFund.

The sFund is a $250 million fund for social start-ups, whose partners include Kleiner Perkins, Amazon, Facebook, Comcast, Liberty Media, Zynga and Allen & Co.

The event participants included, as you can see above, Silicon Valley power VC John Doerr, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, and VC Bing Gordon.

All are also below.

At the end of the presentation to the press, the sFund’s new majordomo, Gordon (who looks like a clean-shaven version of Hagrid from “Harry Potter”), took to the stage and read a very unusual poem about entrepreneurs, which I recorded for posterity. After which, he took on a video interview.

Here’s the result:

[Photo credit: Richard Morgenstein]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101022/a-nerd-by-any-other-name-would-be-as-geek-bing-gordon-waxes-poetic-and-more-at-the-sfund-launch/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:44:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35998

BoomTown had to park a badillion miles away from Facebook’s suburban HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. and hoofed it there for a press event that unveiled the sFund.

What’s that? A $250 million fund for social start-ups.

10:40 am PT: The excitement was building–well, not really…well, not at all, in fact–at the Facebook cafeteria, as the Silicon Valley press got to see the name of the sFund on screens throughout the room.

Kleiner Perkins power VC John Doerr started off the proceedings with some microphone snafus, when he tried to get out from behind the podium.

“John, sometimes you have to stay in the box,” joked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was sitting onstage in what appears to be an Internet Hall of Fame group.

The others would be Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and Founder Mark Pincus, and giant-man-about-Web Bing Gordon.

Doerr talked on about the importance of social, related to the Internet.

Then, he introed Zuckerberg, hoodie-less, who agreed with him, talking about photos and how social made them hot on Facebook.

Apparently, everything is going social. Personally, I am now contemplating becoming a hermit.

Doerr went full Oprah on him, asking what would inspire him to innovate, if he were starting out today (and presumably there were no Winklevii around to “borrow” an idea from).

“If you take any passion and map it to an industry,” said Zuckerberg, it will result in disruption.

Then Doerr channeled Barbara Walters at Pincus, tossing him a softball query about the fabulousness of it all.

For example: “What’s inspired you to be a CEO at this amazing company?” (Note to Walt Mossberg: Let’s file that tough one away for D9!)

11:01 am:Thank goodness then for Bezos, who simply said he hoped these new companies will take some of that $250 million and use Amazon Web Services.

He talked about how these trends grow virally and “sometimes violently.”

Ouch!

Speaking of pinchy, Bezos moved on to some chemical explosion metaphor, and I am now certain I want to be a hermit crab.

Then, after a question about what he would do now, he veered to bioengineering! Doerr wanted a social answer, but Bezos was talking test tubes and “engineered and synthetic life.”

But Gordon behaved for John “Diane Sawyer” Doerr and talked about how social is the only place to be for the cool kids.

He reeled off the other partners, including Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co.

One more question from Doerr: Five years from now, what is going to make you “delighted” about and for the customers you service.

Gordon: He could see the family.

Pincus: He has 12-week twins, not the Winklevii, who are still too young to use Facebook. He was excited it is all getting wired.

“When everyone is always connected to one another, rather than connected to the Web,” he said, that’s the bomb.

He called the big social companies “dial tones,” as in Zynga was the gaming dial tone, Amazon was the shopping dial tone and Facebook was the dial tone.

Zuckerberg: I was not sure he was actually answering the question. But I believed his wish was about these social networks getting to scale.

He went on though, talking about how some companies were building a “light” social layer versus companies where social was “built fundamentally into the product.”

These, of course, have an advantage, according to the gospel of Zuckerberg.

Bezos: He talked about Amazon’s Web services some more–this dude is a retailer, so he was sure good at selling.

Gordon, who is apparently like Ed McMahon to Doerr’s Johnny Carson, rounded up the feel-good session.

11:17 am: Q&A.

Go Miguel Helft, from the New York Times, who asked a good question, about what took so long for Doerr to do this fund, since social–i.e., Facebook–has been around for seven years or more.

Doerr joked, “Next question.” Ha.

But really. Doerr did not answer except to say that Zynga only exploded a year ago, so back off, Miguel.

There were two other dullish questions, about new partners.

“It’s a quarter-billion-dollar party,” said Gordon, which I was not quite wanting to attend. Which made me a social party pooper.

Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.

Then, there ws a question about whether this is not simply the “fbFund,” as in Facebook, since the social networking site was going to benefit the most from all this.

No, it was not, declares Doerr.

More questions–about monetization, advertising, free versus paid and an off-topic one about rumors of Amazon launching an app store (of course it is!).

Zuckerberg took the monetization one. All of the above, it’s great, money for all.

The event finished with a very odd poem by Gordon, which ended with a decent joke about the possibility that entrepreneurs, if they are lucky, get a movie “made about you.”

He was referring to “The Social Network,” which trashed Zuckerberg.

In any case, quarter-billion-dollar party on, Mark.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100812/viral-video-quayle-hunting-for-office/ http://allthingsd.com/20100812/viral-video-quayle-hunting-for-office/#comments Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:11:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=31928

BoomTown loves political dynasties from any party with about as much enthusiasm as I have for tossing sheep on Facebook.

Which is to say, none at all.

Nonetheless, it was an odd blast from the past to see this offspring spring into the public eye–as in Ben Quayle, former VP Dan Quayle’s son, who is running for Congress in Arizona.

Here is a somewhat awkward campaign video by Quayle the younger, in which the candidate declares he is going to beat up Washington, D.C. and then walks right off at the end like he is heading there immediately, just as he is approving the ad:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100812/viral-video-quayle-hunting-for-office/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100527/scott-mcnealys-top-15-reasons-hes-surprised-were-celebrating-of-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-web/ http://allthingsd.com/20100527/scott-mcnealys-top-15-reasons-hes-surprised-were-celebrating-of-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-web/#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 14:30:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28945

Last night, BoomTown headed to San Francisco’s wedding-cake City Hall to attend “The 25 Years of .Com Gala,” which is honoring a quarter-century that I have been jacked into the matrix.

Actually, it’s the 25th anniversary of the .com Internet domain name.

VeriSign (VRSN), which administers the .com registry, sponsored the party, as well as a recent confab in Washington, D.C.

While the growth of .com was slow until the browser became popularized–numbering under 15,000 addresses in 1992–there are now close to 85 million .com domains. This innovative commercial designation is clearly the most important one, both financially and perceptually.

Thus, time to party at an event emceed by Web 1.0 comic favorite Dana Carvey.

He was funny, but perhaps the most enjoyable blast from the past was the appearance of jeans-clad former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who most definitely retains the title of Clown Prince of Silicon Valley as the needler-in-chief of then-dominant Microsoft (MSFT).

After being one of the superstars of Web 1.0, the wise-cracking McNealy has been missing in action in tech of late, as Sun’s influence waned. The company was sold to Oracle (ORCL) recently.

Ironically, given all the hubbub over Facebook’s privacy screw-ups this week, it was McNealy who famously said in a 1999 interview: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”

For last night’s crowd, he rendered a very adorkable list of the many reasons he was surprised that the .com was getting feted.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100527/scott-mcnealys-top-15-reasons-hes-surprised-were-celebrating-of-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-web/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100525/happy-25th-birthday-aol-love-snarky-boomtown/ http://allthingsd.com/20100525/happy-25th-birthday-aol-love-snarky-boomtown/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 16:15:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28805

Here’s a video BoomTown did in honor of the 25th anniversary of the founding of AOL.

I had to miss the party back East yesterday, as I am prepping for the eighth D: All Things Digital conference–where, in fact, both AOL’s first CEO, Steve Case, and its current one, Tim Armstrong, will be interviewed onstage.

Instead, I did this video, which is inspired from an email Case sent to me recently calling me “Miss Snarky.”

While that’s completely accurate, I decided to have a little fun, all with the goal of feting AOL–which really does deserve much praise for its pioneering and innovative efforts to introduce the Internet to mainstream consumers without the snobbery so typical of Silicon Valley techies toward regular people.

The video aired yesterday during the events on the Dulles, Va., campus of AOL. Original execs Steve Case, Jim Kimsey and Ted Leonsis were there, along with about 500 AOL alumni.

AOL also dedicated three campus buildings: Dulles Main is now known as the Steve Case Center; CC2 is now known as the James Kimsey Center; and CC1 is now known as the Ted Leonsis Center.

Birthday events for AOL continue this week in New York.

So, here’s my video, as well as another video of an odd gathering of musical artists wishing AOL (AOL) happy birthday:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100525/happy-25th-birthday-aol-love-snarky-boomtown/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100511/party-on-tim-aol-hooks-up-with-chuck-close-for-25th-anniversary/ http://allthingsd.com/20100511/party-on-tim-aol-hooks-up-with-chuck-close-for-25th-anniversary/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 23:33:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28344 What in the world is AOL CEO Tim Armstrong up to now?

A “Project on Creativity With American Artist Chuck Close,” according to a party invite for the iconic online service’s 25th anniversary that the company just sent out, which you can see below.

I have calls in to the chiseled-cheekbone exec find out what that means.

But extra points for putting AOL and creativity in the same sentence without even a trace of irony!

Indeed, after getting busy hiring the best management team in online history to run the digital equivalent–compared with Internet giants like Google and even Yahoo (YHOO)–of a lemonade stand, it’s nice to know that Armstrong is still thinking big.

And BoomTown loves a big thinker! In fact, that’s why we’ve invited the former Google (GOOG) advertising exec to the eighth D: All Things Digital conference, taking place in just a few weeks near Los Angeles.

We’ll be inquiring about how AOL (AOL) is doing at 25 years old, how Armstrong’s going to lift it back to innovative relevance and get is ad revenue back, its nascent content effort, how it feels to go from a Goliath to a David, and much more.

Until then, check out Tim’s party (click on it to make it larger):

And here is an interview I did with Armstrong right before AOL spun off as an independent public company last year:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100511/party-on-tim-aol-hooks-up-with-chuck-close-for-25th-anniversary/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100108/yahoos-bradford-and-pitaro-talk-about-content-deal-with-silvermans-electus/ http://allthingsd.com/20100108/yahoos-bradford-and-pitaro-talk-about-content-deal-with-silvermans-electus/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:18:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22757 As luck would have it, BoomTown was at a dinner at the Consumer Electronics Show where both Yahoo’s Jimmy Pitaro, who heads its Vertical Audiences Experience, and SVP of North American Revenue Joanne Bradford were also in attendance.

The pair played key roles in a deal Yahoo unveiled last night to partner with former NBC entertainment programming head Ben Silverman, in which his new Electus studio in Hollywood will create content for the Internet portal.

(Ironically, the party in Las Vegas was thrown by former ABC television and Yahoo exec Lloyd Braun, who runs a multiplatform production company similar to Silverman’s.)

Thus, I took the opportunity to talk to Pitaro and Bradford about the deal and what is means for Yahoo (YHOO), which is seeking to differentiate itself by stressing its strengths in premium content and advertising.

Yahoo and Electus are holding a press conference about the partnership this morning at CES.

Here’s the video interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100108/yahoos-bradford-and-pitaro-talk-about-content-deal-with-silvermans-electus/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091221/the-iphone-cheese-block-dock-pix-no-explanation-necessary/ http://allthingsd.com/20091221/the-iphone-cheese-block-dock-pix-no-explanation-necessary/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:40:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22227 The very crafty folks at iPhone Savior told a most excellent holiday tale with a post on the Fontaines, who made an “Santa Baby Cheese Dock” for a party centerpiece.

You can read all about the hows and whys in the excellent Ray Basile piece.

My only question: If there is cheese, why no apple as an accompaniment? Get it? Apple (AAPL)!

Please ignore me completely and enjoy the photos:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091221/the-iphone-cheese-block-dock-pix-no-explanation-necessary/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091209/boomtown-visits-aols-nyc-hq-on-eve-of-spin-off-ceo-armstrongs-fabulous-cheekbones-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20091209/boomtown-visits-aols-nyc-hq-on-eve-of-spin-off-ceo-armstrongs-fabulous-cheekbones-and-more/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:38:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21751

BoomTown is in Manhattan today and my No. 1 stop had to be the AOL HQ downtown.

The iconic Internet company–which has gone through more lives than a dozen cats–is poised tomorrow to officially spin off from Time Warner (TWX) in yet another episode of the longest running corporate soap opera on the Web.

Less than a decade ago, AOL was the most powerful Internet property in the world, its dominance culminating in a merger with the media giant that was touted as the next big thing.

Well, it was certainly a thing.

As everyone knows, the union did not turn out well, and now, after years of struggling within Time Warner, AOL is being let free to resume its journey alone.

It will start trading tomorrow on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “AOL.”

I am about to head out to a party for AOL on Wall Street tonight and will also be there when AOL rings the opening bell in the morning, after which investors will cast their vote on its fate. (I’ll post on all that next.)

Until then, here is a video tour I did this afternoon at AOL HQ on Broadway, including an interview with CEO Tim Armstrong–whose Don Draper executive cheekbones are admired by partners and rivals alike–as the former Google (GOOG) exec heads into the big day:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091209/boomtown-visits-aols-nyc-hq-on-eve-of-spin-off-ceo-armstrongs-fabulous-cheekbones-and-more/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091209/why-vevos-first-day-flub-isnt-a-total-disaster/ http://allthingsd.com/20091209/why-vevos-first-day-flub-isnt-a-total-disaster/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:44:43 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13791 Vevo, big music’s new video site, had a big party last night. Today it has a hangover. Visitors to the site are encountering all sorts of problems, the most serious being that it doesn’t seem to work.

The Vevo team studiously took notes from Hulu leading up to the launch. That’s why, for instance, the company made the antitrust-appeasing move of bringing in a financial investor alongside content owners Universal Music and Sony (SNE).

But it got this part all wrong. Hulu had a (high-profile) alpha launch for months before it opened to the masses. Vevo opened for business on a single day, and promptly broke.

The relationship between Vevo and Schematic, the shop that built much of the site, wasn’t great to begin with–earlier this fall, there was some internal fingerpointing about cost overruns and/or delays–and I can’t imagine that this will make things any better.

But for the record, here’s Vevo’s “Hey! Chill out! We’re working on it!” message:

The traffic VEVO.com is experiencing right now has exceeded even our largest expectations and is multiple orders of magnitude above what any other online video service has generated at its launch. The VEVO team is working diligently to enhance the infrastructure required to more than meet the demands of the tens of millions of users who are trying to access the site on day one.

Still, this isn’t a total wipeout for Vevo. Because while everyone has rightly been flocking to Vevo.com itself for a look-see, it’s not the most important Web site for the joint venture. That would be YouTube, where most Vevo users are actually going to encounter–and watch–Vevo videos, without even knowing that they’re watching a Vevo video.

To be clear: When Google’s (GOOG) video site agreed to help Universal Music Group (and later Sony) launch a new hub for music videos, it didn’t mean it would be sending its users away from YouTube.

When you read about Vevo launching with 400 million video views in the first month, understand that the majority of those aren’t coming from the new site but from YouTubers who are watching music clips the same way they always do, on YouTube. But Vevo will get credit for those eyeballs and any ad dollars they generate.

So for now, the advice I offered would-be Vevo-watchers yesterday in advance of the launch remains useful today: If you want to watch a Vevo video, head to YouTube. Vevo won’t mind. Really.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091209/why-vevos-first-day-flub-isnt-a-total-disaster/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091209/aol-puff-daddy-parties-and-cockroaches-on-npr/ http://allthingsd.com/20091209/aol-puff-daddy-parties-and-cockroaches-on-npr/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:11:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21721

BoomTown is winging across the country right now to New York City to attend, among other things, the analog version of the AOL spinoff from Time Warner (TWX).

Videos to come, of course!

A ringing of the opening bell for AOL and trading will officially take place on Thursday morning at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in Manhattan.

This will be preceded by a party there tonigh, which will apparently feature an appearance by Diddy, who was sporting the Puff Daddy name the last time I was at the exchange for an AOL/NYSE event.

How investors will like AOL is the billions-of-dollars question, of course.

AOL went public on Nasdaq on March 19, 1992, under the ticker “AMER,” and moved to the NYSE on Sept. 16, 1996 trading as “AOL.”

While working on my first of two books on AOL–one on the company’s upward ride and the other going down–I actually attended both the fancy dinner the night before AOL moved to the NYSE from Nasdaq and the AOL party on Wall Street the next day.

And since I spent an ungodly amount of time writing that pair of tomes on AOL, the iconic once and–it’s hoping–future Internet giant, I get to be a loud-mouthed pundit on a variety of television and radio news shows this week.

Yesterday, for example, I appeared on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” where I used a term that has long been used to describe the hardy AOL: The “cockroach of the Internet.”

Here is the audio clip of the interview with Steve Inskeep:

And here is the transcript (you can also listen to it here):

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

A divorce becomes final this week. Time Warner finishes spinning off AOL as an independent company. That will end the story for what was just eight years ago the largest merger in history. Time Warner was supposed to provide content from its movies and magazines. AOL, the giant Web company, would distribute it and together they would own the world. That’s what was supposed to happen.

Author Kara Swisher has chronicled what really happened, and she’s on the line.

Good morning.

Ms. KARA SWISHER (All Things Digital): How do you do?

INSKEEP: So they, through this merger, were going to be were going to be the gigantic company. They were even bigger than Time Warner at the time, the gigantic company that was going to bring Time Warner’s content to the masses. What happened?

Ms. SWISHER: What happened? Humanity happened. There’s people involved and a lot of people didn’t like the merger at Time Warner and dragged their feet and didn’t do the necessary synergies that were necessary to make it work.

Secondly, it was part of a big bubble here in Silicon Valley. AOL was at the top of that bubble and when it burst, and it turned out there weren’t quite so many revenues attached to it as people thought, you know, that sort of changed things.

And the third thing was, it just, you know, people weren’t really ready. The Internet was well used at the turn-of-the-century…but Google actually just hardly existed.

INSKEEP: So were AOL and Time Warner just ahead of their time?

Ms. SWISHER: No. I think it was probably too big. I mean it was trying to combine these companies, media and the Internet, and just as today there’s struggles over, you know, over the music industry digitally, over movies, they’re still fighting these fights, so it was still a very difficult marriage for media–traditional media, I guess–and digital media.

INSKEEP: So Time Warner now kicks AOL out the door. AOL is a much smaller company than it used to be in terms of customers and revenues and everything else. What’s the next step for AOL?

Ms. SWISHER: Well, it’s tough because its main business, the dial-up [and access] business, it’s declining drastically, and every year it goes down by hundreds of millions more. And they’re relying everything right now on content. That’s their big play, is the idea of creating content on the Internet and selling premium advertising against it. And we’ll see what happens, but it’s definitely not the size and influence it was before.

INSKEEP: So does AOL in their ideal world basically become a USA Today for the 21st century?

Ms. SWISHER: Kind of like that. They’re kind of being like Time Warner a little bit, if you think about it. You know, Time Warner has all those magazines doing that stuff and not every bit of it’s, you know, high level journalism. A lot of it’s People Magazine and Sports Illustrated, so it’s a question of how much money you can make at this when a company, say, like Google is just manufacturing money in the basement there over these little search terms.

INSKEEP: How on earth can AOL make money creating its own content and selling it when they apparently couldn’t find a way to mine and sell all the content they had access to when they were part of Time Warner?

Ms. SWISHER: Well, that’s a good question also. But you know, they didn’t get a lot of access to it. That took forever. You know, Time Warner really is run like a separate kingdom and the magazine people at Time didn’t really hand over the goods, and so AOL was never able to take advantage of them in a really substantive way.

Same thing happened with the cable business. There was supposed to be a lot mergers of AOL distributed over cable, over broadband, which is a great idea, but the cable people resisted. The movie people, you know, it just went on and on and on.

INSKEEP: Sounds like you don’t entirely blame AOL for this failure.

Ms. SWISHER: Oh, I do. They were arrogant and rude and they came in telling people what to do and they, you know, they had all sorts of questionable issues around their revenues that sort of fell apart. So I think they created a situation where they promised a great deal of things and delivered almost nothing.

INSKEEP: Are they in better position now or with better management now?

Ms. SWISHER: Yes. Now they have an executive from Google, actually. Tim Armstrong is a very well regarded executive and he’s really changed the–he has brought in new managers–many of them from Google, fascinatingly enough. And they’ve laid off a lot of people and they’re going to sell off assets. They’re doing all the right things. It’s just a question of what’s left once they’re finished doing that.

INSKEEP: So do you think there’s going to be an AOL in five years?

Ms. SWISHER: You know what? Everyone’s always counting AOL out and they still manage. They used to be called the cockroach of the Internet and they kind of still are in a lot of ways. You know, they never die. They always fall down. And it was their image that they constantly reinvented itself. And so we’ll see. I mean they have survived multiple changes in their business.

Even–I mean before they got huge they were almost out of business a million times, and so we’ll see if they–if, you know, cockroaches, whether you like them or not, probably will survive the nuclear holocaust, so we’ll see. You know, we’ll see what happens if they can turn this into something. It’s not going to be the glory days of AOL before, but it could be something interesting.

INSKEEP: Kara Swisher is co-executive editor of All Things Digital, a tech and media blog owned by Dow Jones.

Thanks very much.

Ms. SWISHER: Thanks a lot.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091209/aol-puff-daddy-parties-and-cockroaches-on-npr/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20091203/boomtown-can-count-on-scooby-dooby-dont-for-laughs-the-roast-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20091203/boomtown-can-count-on-scooby-dooby-dont-for-laughs-the-roast-video/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:48:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21391

Sadly, due to the sniffles and some minor hacking (thanks, kids!), BoomTown had to miss the roast of well-known blogger Robert Scoble that Startup2Startup hosted at its holiday party last night on Pier 38 in San Francisco.

I was skedded to be one of the roasters, though, so I sent along a video of all my video encounters over the years at various tech events with the man I like to call Scooby-Don’t.

As you will see below from our geek version of Seinfeld-Newman faceoffs, I like to poke fun at the gooney enthusiasm of Scoobs–who never met a wacky gadget he did not squeal over, a social whatever start-up he did not proselytize or a line for a new iPhone he did not sit in all day and night.

In all seriousness, the blogosphere could use a lot more of Robert, who is big-hearted and infectiously warm, loyal and funny, in his own goofy way, and never cruel. Plus, he knows how to make fun of himself.

But most of all, Robert truly cares about innovation in tech, even if he also likes to tweet every time he has an errant thought about just about anything.

You can watch videos of the event here–the proceeds of which went to charity–or search #scobleroast on Twitter for more.

Here are my video interviews of Scoobs:

And here is Web Strategy’s Jeremiah Owyang’s slide presentation roast too:

Roasting Scoble

View more presentations from jeremiah_owyang.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091203/boomtown-can-count-on-scooby-dooby-dont-for-laughs-the-roast-video/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20091112/is-google-scary-not-to-silicon-valley-even-at-a-party-for-a-book-about-how-scary-it-could-be/ http://allthingsd.com/20091112/is-google-scary-not-to-silicon-valley-even-at-a-party-for-a-book-about-how-scary-it-could-be/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:21:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20552

While at a book party for author Ken Auletta in San Francisco last night, BoomTown took the opportunity to ask those gathered whether they were scared or not of Google and its growing power.

The Auletta book covers a lot about the search giant, but also drills in on how traditional media and advertising, as well as the government, have all become increasingly wary of Google’s hegemony over key businesses on the Web.

But as it turned out, the Silicon Valley types I queried had nothing but attaboys for Google (GOOG). Oddly enough, many mentioned how they love the food served up at the Googleplex.

Here’s the video of the interviews, with scary up-close shots, with investor–including in Google–Ron Conway, almost-not CBS (CBS) Web dude/almost investment dude Quincy Smith, online classified czar Craig Newmark, Slide CEO Max Levchin and Google PR honcho David “I love my Soylent Green” Krane (see pertinent movie video clip below):

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091112/is-google-scary-not-to-silicon-valley-even-at-a-party-for-a-book-about-how-scary-it-could-be/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091112/author-ken-auletta-talks-about-google-and-its-lack-of-emotional-intelligence/ http://allthingsd.com/20091112/author-ken-auletta-talks-about-google-and-its-lack-of-emotional-intelligence/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:50:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20548

Guess what? Google has too many Spocks and not enough Captain Kirks.

This is one of the many interesting insights BoomTown gleaned from a video interview last night–which you can see below–with well-known New Yorker scribe Ken Auletta, who has just written a new book, “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

This “lack of emotional intelligence” at the search giant, said Auletta, reminded him a lot of the subject of one of his previous books: Microsoft (MSFT).

Oh, the delicious irony!

Auletta was feted at a lovely party last night at the San Francisco house of Common Sense Media’s Jim Steyer, where a range of Google (GOOG) execs, Internet folks and fans gathered to talk about the book.

It’s all about Google, its history and, most important, its impact on the world. And how you look at the powerful search giant depends entirely on whether you are the changer or the changed, as Auletta stresses in multiple anecdotes in the book.

Traditional media, for example, have certainly been mucho irked of late about the impact of digital technologies on their businesses and have not been shy about casting blame most heapingly on Google’s Silicon Valley plate.

And government regulators are also giving the company the hairy eyeball, much as they had previously done to Microsoft.

Auletta and I talked about all of this and more in the video interview below, in which he notes that he told Googlers at a talk at their adorkable Googleplex HQ in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday that they need to focus less on being engineering brainiacs and more on trying to understand how to deal with fears of their growing power.

Here’s my interview with Auletta about this, as well as what old media needs to do to deal with all the change Google has wrought. (And you can see interviews I did with guests at the party, too).

And below that is one of the disturbing number of mash-up music videos about “Star Trek” buddies, the highly illogical Kirk and the Vulcanish Spock, the geek bromance of all time.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091112/author-ken-auletta-talks-about-google-and-its-lack-of-emotional-intelligence/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20091027/boomtown-visits-the-womens-conference-questions-for-ashton-kutcher-please/ http://allthingsd.com/20091027/boomtown-visits-the-womens-conference-questions-for-ashton-kutcher-please/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:57:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=19961

This morning, BoomTown will be onstage at California First Lady Maria Shriver’s well-known Women’s Conference in Long Beach, to moderate a panel titled “Changing the World Through the Web” for a crowd of 1,800 people.

The panelists for my session at what has become one of the top forums for women’s issues include Hollywood actor/producer, Katalyst co-founder and Twitter demigod Ashton Kutcher (pictured above, of course); Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg, who leads the social networking site’s elections, breaking news and social change initiatives; Premal Shah, president of online microloan site Kiva.org; and Joe Rospars, founder and creative director of Blue State Digital and new media director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

In other words, as a group, they are all either prettier, smarter or better for the planet than anything I have ginned up so far.

But, to be safe, send some question suggestions quick that you think I should ask in the interview–via Twitter @karaswisher.

In any case, I shall press on and try to conduct myself with some kind of tech dignity, as I query the group on how the Web–especially social media–can empower people to change the world and be more than just one big pool of mundanities, meaningless status updates, silly apps and online gossip.

Speaking of which, it was a minor shock to run smack into reality show whatever-she-is Kate Gosselin at a speaker party last night, who is here to flack a book about–of course–her kids, titled “Eight Little Faces.”

No, I did not make that title up and I suppose it takes all kinds.

But it was especially surreal, since other speakers include–how shall I put this delicately?–much more serious and substantial women, such as primatology legend Dr. Jane Goodall, women’s rights activist Eve Ensler, Obama Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, a spate of women news legends such as Katie Couric, and even–my personal favorite, for her cheery butter-loving nature–celebrity chef Paula Deen.

For those interested in seeing some of the all-day event online, there’s a live Webcast from the Web site, which you can access here (the Twitter hashtag is #wc09

I will, natch, post a video report later.

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