But he will be followed, and in force — Tuesday’s guests include Hearst Magazines’ David Carey, Intel’s Erik Huggers, Google’s Nikesh Arora, Will Arnett, and Interscope Geffen’s Jimmy Iovine. So stay tuned!

Image copyright Vicki France

In spite of a soft economy, with about 14.5 million unemployed Americans and 8.2 million under-employed, people are still holding onto paid television, and actually consuming more video than ever before. Netflix has crossed over 30 million subscribers in the U.S., Hulu is approaching three million, but only 2.65 million people in the country “cut the cord” from traditional paid TV service. In fact, Americans are still spending about 33 hours a week watching traditional TV (that’s 4.5 hours a day!), compared to 27 minutes a week of streaming video. So where is this TV revolution the pundits have been blogging about??

Maybe we need to stop thinking of cable TV the way we think of phone service. It’s easy for technologists to predict that streaming video will do to cable companies what Skype did to the telcos, but I propose a new lens to filter TV technologies: an App that replaces broadcast television is like saying Yelp should replace Taco Bell.

My contention is that a “TV revolution,” as some are calling it, is not in the cards. Instead, I see a “transformation” of TV taking place, and while transformations are far less sexy to blog about than revolutions, I think this one could be pretty fun and pretty lucrative for tech companies that get it right. First, let’s clarify “transformation” versus “revolution,” in the context of Web services and Internet Apps:

• Revolutionary apps fundamentally overthrow an analog provider with a digital alternative. Examples: Skype is a substitute for your landline. iTunes is a substitute for Virgin Megastore. LinkedIn is a substitute for schmoozing. Match.com is a substitute for my pushy (but well-intentioned) auntie in India.
• Transformative Apps make analog providers a more pleasing or user-friendly experience. Examples: Fandango makes going to movies easy and predictable. Foodspotting makes finding the perfect entree a delightful experience. Mint makes banking more manageable and transparent. Driving from San Francisco to a cabin in Tahoe is a breeze thanks to Google Maps. None of these technologies replace the desired outcome, but they greatly enhance the experience to achieve it.

All evidence and viewership data suggests that YouTube, Hulu or Netflix isn’t a substitute for the experience of gathering around a big-screen to watch the Super Bowl or the latest episode of American Idol. Apps that make the offline experience of watching traditional television better, more fun and more social will be far more successful than those that try to overthrow TV. The Twitter app on my phone, for example, is the perfect TV companion and primary beneficiary of this phenomenon.

There is no question that on-demand, instant access to great shows on the iPad or laptop is one of the coolest things ever, but this is proving to be additive and incremental to traditional TV viewership at the moment. Most consumers still love the experience of watching TV on the TV.

In 2012, the Olympics provided the perfect case study for the transformation that’s taking place. Between the live streams on NBC.com, real-time access to event scoring and the medal count, we have never had this much access to the Olympics in history. Nearly every major event was available online, and usage was tremendous. But what pundits failed to point out this past summer is that we did not give up big screen, traditional television. NBC’s primetime broadcast, which was all taped coverage, averaged 31.1 million viewers per night, which was up 12 percent from the Beijing Olympics in 2008! According to NBC, many people who watched events, streaming live to a Web browser, also watched them again on television.

We have 70 years of consumer behavior patterns established and burned into the American psyche. And on top of that, television is big business. It exists on $65 billion of advertising spending and $60 billion of subscription revenue, and that’s 125 billion reasons why the industry will resist this revolution. In stark contrast to my friends in Silicon Valley who have said that they want to “destroy television,” I strongly believe that television should be transformed. And those of us inspired by the opportunity to innovate in the TV industry should be thinking about the opportunity in a transformational way if we hope to succeed.

Ashwin Navin is the CEO and co-founder of Flingo, the largest publisher of Smart TV software including apps from FOX, A+E Networks, Showtime, the WB, Transworld and TMZ.

Synacor, the behind-the-scenes tech company that provides authentication services to television companies, will be launching a new identification platform for pay-TV services that will allow users to use social IDs rather than passwords across multiple devices.

While it is common for consumers to do so for a range of Web services, Synacor Cloud ID will be the first to allow customers to use social logins from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for cable TV authorization.

The Buffalo-based Synacor is a leader in white-label authentication services for many “TV Everywhere” events, including 2012 March Madness, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and, most recently, the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

To do so, the company has worked with many pay-TV providers, as well as channels, including Dish Network, Charter, HBO Go, CNN and the Cartoon Network.

It has not announced any done deals as yet, said a spokesman, but the goal is obviously to work with the big ones, such as Comcast, Dish and Time Warner Cable.

Such a move is an important one, as Peter Kafka wrote recently:

“That’s one of the fundamental precepts of the ‘TV Everywhere’ plan that the cable guys are using to hold off disruption, and in practice it’s a hassle. It requires digging up your cable bill so you can find your account number, and starting up yet another online account and password. Not rocket science, but certainly not one-click easy.”

Here’s the full press Synacor release:

Pay-TV Industry First: “Social Login with TVE Authorization” — Consumers Login Using Their Favorite Social Account and Simultaneously Authorize with Their Pay-TV Billing Account

BUFFALO, NY (PRWEB — September 6, 2012) — Synacor, Inc. (NASDAQ: SYNC), leading provider of next-gen startpages, TV Everywhere solutions and cloud-based services, today announced an expanded Cloud Identity Management platform, broadening its cloud-based services suite for consumer electronics companies, wireless carriers, programmers and app developers in addition to Pay-TV providers. Synacor’s Cloud ID works whenever and wherever consumers must be authenticated, authorized and/or registered, and on any device.

Synacor’s Cloud ID offering features an industry first: Social Login with Pay-TV Authorization. To authenticate for access to online Pay-TV content, consumers can now login with their favorite social account like Facebook, Twitter or Google, while simultaneously authorizing with their pay-TV provider or billing account. Synacor Cloud ID brings the convenience of social login to TV Everywhere consumers with the trust of entitlement verification for TV authorization.

“Synacor’s experience and scale providing web authentication and identity integrations is a strategic advantage over other cloud identity providers,” said Michael Bishara, Synacor GM for TV Everywhere. “Synacor successfully provided authentication for NBC Universal’s TV Everywhere 2012 Summer Olympics on behalf of nearly 40 pay-TV customers, spanning all 50 states, reaching 25 million subscribers — the largest TVE Olympics footprint. Synacor is now leveraging our experience to provide cloud identity services for additional customer verticals that require registration, authentication and authorization capabilities.”

Synacor’s Cloud ID Management Platform already provides authentication services for TV Everywhere, Messaging and Value Added Services, but has been expanded to provide a full suite of Identity Management Services. These expanded capabilities will enable consumer electronics companies, app developers and programmers to provide a Secure and Trusted Identity Management solution to their end-consumers.

“Synacor provides end-consumers a seamless authentication, authorization and registration experience while providing our customers all their administrative needs such as Account Management, Auditing and Reporting,” said Synacor co-founder and EVP George Chamoun. “As identity management moves from the enterprise to a distributed model, companies such as pay-TV, consumer electronics and app developers need a trusted and tested partner to serve as their conduit for ID services. With more than a decade behind us, innumerable integrations and millions of authentications across hundreds of devices, Synacor is that Cloud ID partner.”

Synacor Cloud ID spans the entire ecosystem, offering an end-to-end or distributed component solution, and existing in Synacor’s cloud or the customer’s. Synacor’s key advantages include the following:

Scale — Delivering millions of authentications, including authentication for Synacor’s pay-TV customers’ 25 million subscriber footprint for the 2012 Summer Olympics and on an ongoing basis for TV Everywhere, Synacor is the scale player in Cloud ID management.

Gateway — Synacor is the bridge connecting hundreds of identity systems for authentication, authorization and user profile information while leveraging industry-standard technologies such as SAML, OAuth, OpenID, and Social IDs, creating a multipronged gateway that both identifies as well as entitles based on a consumer’s rights profile, and integrated with the preferred ID technologies of Synacor’s customers.

Social Login — An industry first. Synacor’s Social Login feature creates a trusted connection among content providers and pay-TV providers, allowing consumers to bind their pay-TV credentials to their favorite and frequented social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and Google, allowing for a seamless sign-on process, and using the credentials most consumers remember.

Multi-Platform and Multi-Language — Synacor Cloud ID is accessible on desktop, mobile, tablet and across a range of connected devices, as well as being fully localized for user interfaces in multiple languages.

Trusted Framework — With a decade of success, Synacor is a tested and trusted connection in the distributed, cloud-based model of Identity Management and Services. Synacor’s fraud prevention technology monitors for suspicious account activity across multiple devices, streams and providers. Synacor delivers its solution from three data centers in the United States and in Europe. Synacor customers are in full control over their data, yet can leverage Synacor’s experience.

Synacor has provided authentication services for key TV Everywhere events including 2012 March Madness, 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and most recently the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Synacor has completed integrations with numerous pay-TV providers, as well as many pay-TV channels. Pay-TV providers include DISH Network, Charter, CenturyLink, Mediacom, Suddenlink and WOW! among others. Integrations include HBO GO, Max GO, CNN, TBS, TNT, tru TV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Epix, Comcast Entertainment Group (E!, Style, G4), Fox, Speed2, BigTen and a number of other TV channels.

For more information on Synacor’s cloud-based services including Cloud ID, TV Everywhere and Cloud Messaging Services, please visit synacor.com or email sales@synacor.com. Synacor reaches over 23 million households, tallying a monthly average of 20 million unique visitors and 3.7 billion ad impressions.

Vanity Fair magazine published its annual “The New Establishment” list, out now in its October issue, and Silicon Valley disruptors dominate again over media mavens.

In fact, the top 10 selections of the 50 overall are all from tech, with Apple CEO Tim Cook and head product design guru Jonathan Ive in the No. 1 slot, up from No. 4 last year.

In 2011, that first slot was held by Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who this year was moved to No. 4, which is certainly not as bad a drop as the stock of his social networking site of late.

In the other slots: No. 2 is Google’s twin search engine founders, Sergey Brin and CEO Larry Page; No. 3 is Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos; No. 5 is Twitter and Square impresario Jack Dorsey; No. 6 is venture capital’s Batman and Robin, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz; No. 7, on the list for the first time, is former Googler and new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer; No. 8 is Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann, also new; No. 9 is SpaceX and Tesla Motors kingpin Elon Musk; and No. 10 are LinkedIn’s dynamic duo, Chairman Reid Hoffman and CEO Jeff Weiner.

Singer extraordinaire Adele clocks in at No. 11, the first media appearance on the list.

The rest of the list is chock full of the usual tech suspects, including my All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg and me at No. 34. (There is also a very nice portrait photo of me with a group of much more accomplished tech women, photographed at Buck’s in Woodside — in which I appear to be oddly staring at something besides the camera lens, while all the rest behave.)

You can peruse the whole list here.

(Full disclosure: Readers who look closely at the list will notice that ATD senior editor Peter Kafka is listed as a contributor, as he was last year. This is true! Also true: Peter wrote biographical entries for several people on the list, and had some input on its composition, although not about us. In addition, I have been asked to write some freelance articles for Vanity Fair going forward, but have not started as yet.)

We’re continuing our series of focused conferences with two events in the coming months. First up is D: Dive Into Mobile, The Global Edition, on Oct. 29 and 30 in New York co-chaired by AllThingsD Senior Editors Liz Gannes and Ina Fried.

Following our fantastic 2010 Dive Into Mobile conference, the 2012 version will explore the concept of “mobile first.” For billions of people, the first computing device they own — and perhaps the only — will be a smartphone. Even in the developed world, where computers are ubiquitous, the phone is taking on an increasingly important role as the device people have at their side nearly 24 hours a day. Once an afterthought, companies are now focusing on designing their mobile services first and only later translating them for a PC.

Among the great lineup of speakers are Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Android chief Andy Rubin of Google and Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs. We’ll have many more speakers to announce in the coming months.

Next up will be the second edition of D: Dive Into Media, which is again being produced by Senior Editor Peter Kafka.

The first Dive Into Media conference featured entertaining, insightful interviews with leaders from old and new media companies, from Viacom’s Philippe Dauman to Twitter’s Dick Costolo, along with media creators like Neil Young. They’re all trying to figure out how to respond to, grapple with and harness the changes that technology brings to the media business every day, and they’ve all got different answers.

We’ll ask a different star-studded cast to tackle the topics this time around, but we’ll come back to the same sparkling location: The amazing Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in southern California, on Feb. 11 and 12. More information here.

And, of course, if you want to know about everything you are missing at D10, this week we’ll have complete coverage here at AllThingsD including blogs, photos, videos and stories.

Earlier this year, Peter Kafka wrote an update about Los Angeles-based Frequency, which is essentially a social TV Guide for online video.

I stopped by Frequency’s HQ — on a recent visit there to check out SoCal start-ups — to chat with its founder and CEO, Blair Harrison, who created and sold iFilm to Viacom several years ago, and to talk about how the Web video hub is doing, even in the face of a range of video-recommending competitors. That includes big-dog Google, which is both a rival and a partner via YouTube and its niche channels.

But, with a slick interface, which Harrison has compared to Flipboard for online video, Frequency is an interesting effort. Here’s the interview I did with him:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120409/l-a-stories-whats-the-frequency-for-web-video-discovery/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120208/gigaom-buys-paidcontent-like-peter-kafka-said/ http://allthingsd.com/20120208/gigaom-buys-paidcontent-like-peter-kafka-said/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:19:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=172658

GigaOM finally fessed up and said that it had bought tech and media news site paidContent, as AllThingsD.com media ninja Peter Kafka had reported earlier this week it would.

The price is reportedly low, according to sources, but we’ll find out for you, since neither GigaOM nor the former paidContent owner, Britain’s Guardian News & Media, is talking. As part of the deal, though, the Guardian has gotten some sort of stake in GigaOM, and someone there is joining its board as an observer.

PaidContent founder Rafat Ali left his company a couple years after selling to the Guardian in 2008. The Guardian put it up for sale in the fall.

Malik has sold off chunks of his own business — one of the pioneering tech and media news blogs — to venture capitalists such as True Ventures (where he is now a venture partner) and Reed Elsevier Ventures, who have invested a total of $15 million.

In a blast from the past, here is a video interview I did with Ali in mid-2007 in Santa Monica, Calif., at what was then its new offices, talking about the bright future ahead for paidContent (sorry about the quality, but whatevs!):

Here is Om Malik’s blog post on the subject, which goes into all (or almost all) the deets:

First the news: Yes, the rumors are true. We are indeed buying the assets of ContentNext Media from Guardian News & Media Limited. And no, we are not disclosing the terms of the deal, except that we are buying the entire group of properties — paidContent.org, mocoNews.net, contentSutra and paidContent:UK and that a representative of Guardian News & Media will join our board of directors as an observer.

A few weeks ago when Paul Walborsky, CEO of GigaOM, came to the board and suggested that we should try and acquire paidContent, my fellow board members — Jon Callaghan (True Ventures), Ammar Hanafi (Alloy Ventures) and Kevin Brown (Reed Elsevier Ventures) — didn’t hesitate for a minute. The ethos of paidContent and our company are in sync. GigaOM’s core belief is that as connectivity becomes ubiquitous, it changes everything from society to business to we the people. paidContent from the very beginning has been built on the idea that connectedness is and will change media. It makes perfect sense for us to team up. Since then, Paul and his team worked tirelessly to make it happen.

OK, now you know what. Let me tell you why.

Now, why are we doing this deal, clearly the biggest of our five-and-a-half-year history? Two simple but equally powerful reasons — the first and perhaps most important reason: people. I have been an admirer of paidContent’s editorial team from the very beginning of its journey. Rafat Ali and Staci Kramer were two of my favorite writers in the early days of professional blogging. And while Rafat (who is on our board of advisers) has moved on to new things, I am glad to have Staci join us. She has been instrumental in building ContentNext from the ground up, and in addition to writing, she has been building the company’s event business. I am thrilled to announce that she will remain the editor of paidContent.

Ernie Sander who spearheads the ContentNext editorial operations is the kind of veteran everyone on our team, including me, can learn from. And for that precise reason, Ernie is going to become the executive editor of our sprawling online editorial operations. Our managing editor, Nicole Solis, is being promoted to VP of Editorial Operations. And then there is the most awesome team of journalists — Robert Andrews, Tom Krazit, Daniel Frankel, Laura Hazard Owen, Jeff Roberts and Amanda Natividad. In addition there are a wonderful group of technology, business and sales people who are joining our company. I welcome them all to our growing family and can’t wait to break bread with them in weeks to come.

Location, location, location

These fine folks are actually going to help bolster our presence in New York and help increase our footprint in Europe, a region of key strategic focus for GigaOM. (We will be hosting Structure:Europe in Amsterdam, October 16-17.) With this deal, we are really pleased that one of the most forward-looking media outlets around, Guardian News & Media, will become a shareholder in our business.

As you all know, I am (and will always be) a displaced New Yorker; New York City is my spiritual home. By increasing our footprint in the capital of the world, I would get a chance to go back more often. But it’s not an emotional tug that is driving us to this decision. New York is fast becoming a major technology hub, as Ryan Kim outlined in his recent post. And we want to expand our coverage to Boston — thanks to Barb Darrow who joined us several months ago — and the Washington DC corridor as well. paidContent’s New York City offices are now GigaOM East.

Media is the new Wild West

We are quite strategic about our acquisitions — we acquire media entities only if we love the people and believe that we are at the starting phase of a trend. In 2008, we acquired jkOnTheRun as our tip of the hat to the growing demand for mobile devices and the changes it would bring into society. Later that year, we brought in The Apple Blog because we knew the best was yet to come for Apple. Both of those acquisitions have helped GigaOM cover the issues that matter most to our ultimate customers — you, the reader — in a smart, sensible fashion.

“The question that mass amateurization poses to traditional media is ‘What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away? What happens when there is nothing unique about publishing anymore because users can do it for themselves?” We are now starting to see that question being answered.” — Clay Shirky

Shirky’s observation means that we are in a time of chaos where the very idea of media is being questioned. And as a Chinese proverb says, from chaos emerges opportunity. I believe the best is yet to come for media.

Over the past few years we have started to see the transformation of media by new technologies, new methods of distribution and newer ways to consume information. Mathew Ingram has been writing about these disruptions on a regular basis, and now we are going to double down on what we think is a great new chapter in the media industry.

I have always believed that we’ve got to stop thinking of media as what it was and focus on more of what it could be. In the world of plenty, the only currency is attention and attention is what defines “media.” Zynga is fighting Hollywood for attention (and winning). Instagram is taking moments away from other media. They have attention. There are old companies that are dying and new ones that are being invented. We’re eager to expand our coverage of social and digital media editorially, in our research and at our events. paidContent is the best chronicler of the media industry, and by blending their coverage with ours, we hope to watch this fast-changing industry ever more closely.

Please join me in welcoming the ContentNext team!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120208/gigaom-buys-paidcontent-like-peter-kafka-said/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120131/jason-kilar-is-not-surprised-hes-still-at-hulu-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120131/jason-kilar-is-not-surprised-hes-still-at-hulu-video/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:55:06 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=169566 Hulu’s Jason Kilar opened D: Dive Into Media this morning, saying he’s totally okay with the turn of events that left Hulu ownership intact after a failed attempt to sell last year. It also left him in his CEO job a year after he wrote an incendiary blog post about the future of television.

Here’s a video from his interview with AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120131/jason-kilar-is-not-surprised-hes-still-at-hulu-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120130/live-at-dive-twitters-dick-costolo-says-twitters-future-is-you/ http://allthingsd.com/20120130/live-at-dive-twitters-dick-costolo-says-twitters-future-is-you/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:50:15 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=169004

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is warming up the hot seat tonight at our D:Dive Into Media conference in Dana Point, Calif. A liveblog of his interview with Peter Kafka will be here, starting at 6 pm PT.

While you’re waiting, watch:

6:12 pm: We’re just about to get started.

6:15 pm: Here’s a photo from inside the Ritz-Carlton Ballroom, where D: Dive Into Media is about to get under way.

6:18 pm: Here’s a photo of Dick Costolo and Kara Swisher backstage in the Green Room.

Okay, now that our live attendees have gotten a drink and a bite in them, we’re ready to start for real. Sorry for the delay! Feel free to drink along at home.

“Don’t worry if you have to go to the bathroom,” says Kara. “Rupert is in the back, tweeting the entire event.”

She’s kidding, but we’ll be here liveblogging and posting news stories until our fingers go numb.

Right now, we’re showing a video expose, made with Funny or Die, on the excesses of D conferences. Big takeaway: Jason Kilar is a fantastic actor. Will post this online as soon as I get the code.

Also, Martha Stewart is a great sport.

And now, the man we made you wait for (sorry!): Dick Costolo. (Consider the comments paraphrased unless they’re in quotes.)

Peter Kafka: You had a partnership with Google, and now you’re having a public fight [over inclusion of social data in search results]. What happened?

Costolo: There are about 900 people working at Twitter now, and it’s just a matter of fact that Google happens to be the company from which more Twitter employees are drawn than any other. About 80 or 90 came from Google, including myself. And we look to Google as the shining light on the hill.

We think that when people are searching for things like @itunes or if they see a hashtag on a billboard, people are going to go to Google to look for them, and we think they should go where they want to.

Regarding access to data, Google crawls us over 100 million times per day; the Googlebot has more than three billion pages. They have the data, I think, that they need.

We just weren’t able to come to an agreement on the details.

Kafka: Are you guys going to end up in the same war with Google as Facebook?

Costolo: No, it’s not a zero-sum game. He compares it to dealing with people in the Twitter ecosystem. We’re growing faster than we’ve ever grown before, irrespective of anything Facebook or Google is doing. All these companies can coexist.

Kafka: What’s the deal with this selective tweeting policy?

Costolo: There’s been no change in our policy. What we were announcing was a capability we now have to leave the content up for as many people around the world as possible while adhering to the local law.

“This is purely a reactive capability. We don’t proactively do anything.”

Costolo says Twitter is already blocked in Iran and China, and he doesn’t see a way under the current system that Twitter would ever operate in China.

The point is: This capability isn’t a prelude to trying to go into China.

Kafka asks for some more hypotheticals, and Costolo gets more emphatic, calling Twitter’s policy “the most honest, transparent and forward-looking way.”

“When we get a legal order that is valid, we will try to make sure that all the tweets are viewable in as many parts of the world as possible.”

6:42 pm: Kafka moves on to SOPA and PIPA. Costolo proposes a summit in San Luis Obispo for Northern and Southern California to meet. He says, less in jest: “It’s certainly the case that piracy is an issue for content creators. However, the SOPA and PIPA legislation we view as flawed legislation that wasn’t written with the perspective of both sides of the debate.”

Costolo adds that Twitter has more than 45 people working in its trust and safety department, and it abides by copyright laws.

Kafka: What could you have done instead of blacking out your site to protest SOPA?

Costolo: There were 3.9 million tweets that day, Wednesday, about SOPA and PIPA. When you’ve got an amplifier like that, you don’t pull the batteries out of the microphone.

Kafka: You’re a media company — are you comfortable with that assessment?

Costolo: We’re not a media company. We’re in the media business. We distribute traffic. We’re one of the largest drivers of traffic to all sorts of other media property.

For more on Costolo’s comments about Twitter and censorship, check out this post.

By the way, this might be hard to convey via liveblog, but Costolo is continually giving Kafka a really hard time about everything — his voice, the chair, the microphone. He is determined not to do a straight Q&A.

Costolo is now talking about whether Twitter would do other forms of business besides ads. He says analytics and commerce are options.

As for the advertising business itself, “It’s growing incredibly well.” Ad units are: Promoted tweets in timelines, promoted accounts and promoted trends. “They perform up and down the stack for brand advertisers; display advertisers, they work well,” Costolo says. Now it’s all about scaling.

Ads first came out in April 2010, Costolo notes. An ad with Barclays a couple of weeks ago, he says, had over 50 percent engagement and continues to. Ads are rolled out to 100 percent of users of Twitter.com.

Kafka: There doesn’t seem to have been any outcry about that.

Costolo: No, our ad quality is good. Plus, people learned about how to market and promote on Twitter before we had advertising, so they already “understand its real-time nature.” We think we can create a lasting company if we just scale this business.

Kafka asks about profits; Costolo says “no comment” a bunch of times.

Kafka: Let’s talk politics.

Costolo: “I really think 2012 is going to be the Twitter election.”

The fascinating thing about 2012 — we really saw this during the State of the Union address. When Obama made the spilled-milk joke, there was this collective groan, and we didn’t have to wait for the pundits to tell us that. Republicans live-tweeted. “Tomorrow morning it will be too late to react to what was said the day before.”

Twitter gives people a human element, from Chad Ochocinco tweeting about the Premiere League, to politicians.

Kafka turns to talking about how Twitter works with TV.

“Twitter is the focal point for this shared experience,” Costolo says.

Costolo: Twitter is extending the runway of the conversation. If you look at the trajectory of conversations about “Glee,” it starts before the East Coast airing, then goes to 1,000 percent, then extends across the country.

Now they’re talking about Howard Stern live-tweeting “Private Parts.” Kafka says he tuned in after seeing the tweets, but isn’t sure he would tune in if Stern did it again. Costolo says it’s just the first inning. There are lots of possibilities for how to use Twitter, with new ones coming from Simon Cowell, Republican debates, etc.

Kafka asks about Twitter taking revenue from TV, and Costolo reverts to his everybody-can-happily-coexist thesis. “It’s more about value creation, not value extraction,” he says.

Kafka asks what Costolo thinks of check-in services (I think he means things like GetGlue for checking into TV shows). Costolo says he doesn’t think an overt check-in is necessary; these conversations will just happen naturally.

Kafka: What are you doing on discovery?

Costolo: We just introduced this “Discover” tab. We have so much content now, we need to surface it to people, especially new users.

Costolo says “Discover” should be more personalized based on the accounts you follow, etc. Sounds like something Twitter is working on.

Some challenges for Twitter include finding tweets that end up being world-changing, even though that’s not clear when they first are tweeted. Like the guy in Abottabad who tweeted about a helicopter overhead when the Osama Bin Laden raid was happening.

For more on Costolo’s comments on how Twitter is changing politics, check out this post.

Costolo is now addressing people who use Twitter for consumption only. “That’s great, and we need to encourage more of that,” he says, noting that 99 percent of the people who watch TV don’t also create it. He wants to make Twitter “like checking your watch,” where people glance and then go away.

Integration with Apple has increased engagement, usage, etc., on iOS devices, Costolo says. “They’re kind of a mentor company for us,” Costolo says of Apple, noting Twitter’s inventor, Jack Dorsey, is focused on simplification and clarity, just like Apple.

Kafka: How did Facebook not get that deal?

Costolo: You’d have to ask them. Our conversation with Apple was quick and efficient. We thought it was a fantastic idea.

Kafka: Who’s really in charge, you or Jack?

Costolo: Jack’s focus is on three specific things: Product vision, brand and identity, and representing the company externally. “The fascinating thing about Jack is he’s got all these people out there in the world telling him you’re the next great thing, you’re the next Steve Jobs, and it’s pretty amazing for him to be as open-minded and humble about the product as he is. He is just as likely to come in in the morning and say, ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that, let’s do it your way.’”

Costolo says Evan Williams and Biz Stone are the same way, very humble.

Costolo and Dorsey meet twice a week, once at the beginning, once at the end.

First audience question comes from none other than Kara Swisher. She asks about Facebook’s IPO.

Costolo replies: Mark and Sheryl are doing a great job running that company. It’s a really big company and they’ve had amazing success. I tell our company we need to focus on our own goals. We don’t care about the market window for going public, or whether there is a window. It will be fascinating to see what happens. I’m sure everyone will stay up Wednesday night reading the S-1, but I have to run my own company.

Twitter will probably go public, says Costolo, because the cap table can’t include more than 500 shareholders.

Next audience question comes from a woman who says she’s from Qualcomm, asking about mobile.

Costolo says he thinks Twitter lacks a compelling feature-phone experience, and that’s something it’s working on.

Next question from a Rogers Ventures VC. He asks about analytics.

Costolo says Twitter is trying to be clear that it will provide the core-user experience of Twitter.

Costolo: I’d rather provide a baseline of data, and then other companies can add UI and other things. I think companies try to ascribe too much value to data. It’s not that easy to be in the data business. It’s hard to scale across verticals. So we’re happy for other people to do that.

Now Costolo is asked about PandoDaily’s report about board changes and his “cojones.”

“It’s nice to ascribe to this stuff that I did some crazy ninja move. The reality is much more boring than that.”

Now a question about the rationale for Twitter acquisitions. Costolo talks about adding TweetDeck for prosumer users, and Summify for summarizing what you’ve missed in the past few days. He says he walked into the New York Times newsroom and saw TweetDeck on every monitor, and “thought it was important that we own it.”

Question about enhanced brand profiles (these last few questions have been from other reporters in the audience, but I didn’t catch all their names). Costolo says the idea is to allow brands to use Twitter as a customer relationship management tool, but not have those reply tweets highlighted at the top of their streams.

Last question is about “mobile-first” design, and second-screen mobile users versus people who are truly mobile.

Costolo says Twitter starts with iPhone and Android designs when it works on new products, then moves to everything else. This is a change, he says — Twitter used to go the other direction. It doesn’t design specifically for the “second-screen” experience.

And that’s it! Time to go back to watching television, tweeting and working on your ninja moves.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120130/live-at-dive-twitters-dick-costolo-says-twitters-future-is-you/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/viral-video-secret-code-about-apples-new-york-media-event/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/viral-video-secret-code-about-apples-new-york-media-event/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:14:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159496

Yesterday, on WSJ.com’s “Digits” online tech show, host Simon Constable asked me if some parts of my scoop on Apple holding a media-focused event in New York at the end of this month were secretly implying anything.

Simon apparently read “The Da Vinci Code” one too many times! I don’t know from clandestine signals, but here I am talking about the event, along with AllThingsD.com media ace Peter Kafka.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/viral-video-secret-code-about-apples-new-york-media-event/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111227/survey-sez-consumers-still-miffed-at-netflix-but-give-even-bigger-kiss-to-amazon/ http://allthingsd.com/20111227/survey-sez-consumers-still-miffed-at-netflix-but-give-even-bigger-kiss-to-amazon/#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 05:00:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=157523

It’s not clear if Netflix’s recent series of snafus are Amazon’s gain or not. But in a just-released report by ForeSee, one went up and one went down.

It’s an easy guess which was which.

In the well-known customer satisfaction survey of the Top 40 online retailers during the holiday season — which ForeSee has been conducting twice a year for the last seven years — Amazon rose to its highest spot ever, while Netflix’s score dropped significantly.

Amazon got an 88 out of 100, up two points, while Netflix dropped seven points to 79. The survey noted that “Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices.”

Ooops.

(Netflix fared better with customers in another poll last week, conducted by Citigroup. As Peter Kafka noted: “They’re less happy than they used to be. But they don’t seem to be going anywhere.”)

But in the ForeSee survey, Netflix moved from being a consumer darling to just another face in the crowd. It garnered the average score, which is also 79, a number that has risen from 74 since 2005.

But Netflix was not the only online retailer hit. Also down: Gap.com (down 6 percent to 73), and Overstock.com (down 5 percent to 72).

But on the up: TigerDirect.com (up 8 percent to 79) and J.C. Penney (up 6 percent to 83).

In general, ForeSee concluded that consumers are starting to get the hang of this e-commerce thing, and have become less price-sensitive, too.

And here’s a pretty chart explaining it all (click on the image to make it larger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111227/survey-sez-consumers-still-miffed-at-netflix-but-give-even-bigger-kiss-to-amazon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:34:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=145420

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Hollywood mogul Peter Chernin.

The much-respected entertainment exec, who was the longtime president of News Corp. (which owns this Web site), now runs his own production company in Santa Monica, Calif.

Chernin Entertainment has had some big early successes, including the hit movie “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and the adorkable television show “New Girl.”

But Chernin has always been much more Internet-curious than the average Hollywood mogul. He was deeply involved in the creation of the Hulu premium video service, and now serves on the board of the Pandora online music site. He’s also been giving the troubled situation at Yahoo a look-see with some private equity firms.

Chernin declined to talk about this deal in an onstage interview with Peter Kafka, but he does discuss the prospects for the old media world in the digital age, and the giant opportunities in Asia:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111114/googles-bradley-horowitz-talks-facebook-social-networking-and-that-memo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/googles-bradley-horowitz-talks-facebook-social-networking-and-that-memo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:39:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=143649 We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Google+ exec Bradley Horowitz.

In an onstage interview with Peter Kafka, Horowitz talks about the progress being made in the search giant’s attempts to compete against social networking giant Facebook, the concept behind its organization and also the recent controversial internal memo by a Google engineer dissing the company.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/googles-bradley-horowitz-talks-facebook-social-networking-and-that-memo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111108/surveymonkeys-goldberg-joyuss-cassidy-and-airbnbs-chesky-on-silicon-valley-innovation-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111108/surveymonkeys-goldberg-joyuss-cassidy-and-airbnbs-chesky-on-silicon-valley-innovation-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:01:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=141651

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: A trio of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs — SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg, Joyus’s Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky.

In the onstage interview with Peter Kafka, they give their take on the Valley’s culture and commerce, and how they’re trying to export that as they venture into Asian markets.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111108/surveymonkeys-goldberg-joyuss-cassidy-and-airbnbs-chesky-on-silicon-valley-innovation-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111103/alibabas-jack-ma-on-yahoo-and-more-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111103/alibabas-jack-ma-on-yahoo-and-more-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:00:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=140152

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Alibaba Group’s voluble CEO and co-founder Jack Ma.

Ma has cut quite a colorful path through the Internet space, both in China and, more recently, in the U.S. — mostly due to his high-profile wrangling with partner and major shareholder Yahoo.

And, in the midst of the Silicon Valley Internet company’s endless agonizing over what to do with itself, Ma has thrown Alibaba into the mix prominently as a self-described kingmaker to any deal. Also, he has said he wants to buy Yahoo too.

Ma talks about all this, as well as his thoughts on the Asian markets, his goals for Alibaba and more, in an onstage interview with Peter Kafka.

As he told the audience at the AsiaD event:

“We’ve been working with Yahoo for years to buy a portion of them or buy them out. Money is not the problem. The problem is what Yahoo wants to do.”

Indeed, so watch Ma in action:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111103/alibabas-jack-ma-on-yahoo-and-more-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111020/bradley-horowitz-highlights-from-asiad-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111020/bradley-horowitz-highlights-from-asiad-video/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:11:07 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://allthingsd.com/?p=134956 Google+ project manager Bradley Horowitz joined Peter Kafka on the AsiaD stage today to talk about Larry Page’s leadership, privacy and the lessons Google has learned.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111020/bradley-horowitz-highlights-from-asiad-video/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20111020/surveymonkey%e2%80%99s-dave-goldberg-joyus%e2%80%99-sukhinder-singh-cassidy-and-airbnb%e2%80%99s-brian-chesky-video-highlights-from-asiad-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111020/surveymonkey%e2%80%99s-dave-goldberg-joyus%e2%80%99-sukhinder-singh-cassidy-and-airbnb%e2%80%99s-brian-chesky-video-highlights-from-asiad-video/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:24:58 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://allthingsd.com/?p=134794 Three Silicon Valley founders formed AllThingsD’s first-ever panel of entrepreneurs today at AsiaD. Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Dave Goldberg of SurveyMonkey and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy of Joyus joined Peter Kafka onstage for a discussion of the issues surrounding expanding their businesses into Asian markets. Video highlights below:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111020/surveymonkey%e2%80%99s-dave-goldberg-joyus%e2%80%99-sukhinder-singh-cassidy-and-airbnb%e2%80%99s-brian-chesky-video-highlights-from-asiad-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111020/jack-ma-video-highlights-from-asiad/ http://allthingsd.com/20111020/jack-ma-video-highlights-from-asiad/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:30:45 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://allthingsd.com/?p=134659 Alibaba’s Jack Ma sat down with Peter Kafka this morning at AsiaD, our inaugural international conference, for a broad conversation that touched on philanthropy, pricing and, of course, Yahoo. Video highlights below:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111020/jack-ma-video-highlights-from-asiad/feed/ 0