Good thing AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega is so certain the end of the carrier’s iPhone exclusivity deal doesn’t portend a mass subscriber exodus, otherwise you might look at AT&T’s latest earnings and the degree to which they were driven by the device and (cough) worry.

Reporting third quarter financials largely in line with Wall Street’s forecasts, AT&T said today it activated 5.2 million iPhones in the quarter–62 percent more than the record 3.2 million it activated earlier this year. Odd then that the device is notably absent from the “Mobile Broadband Leadership” slide in AT&T’s investor presentation. A passive-aggressive jab back at that “rumored” Verizon deal, perhaps?

Anyway…

The company posted a profit of 55 cents per share, up 3.8 percent from the 53 cents per share it managed in the third quarter of 2009 and in line with what analysts had been expecting. Revenue rose to $31.58 billion from $30.73 billion in the same period a year earlier and slightly exceeded the average analyst expectation of $31.25 billion.

So a strong quarter, but one overshadowed by that long-rumored loss of iPhone exclusivity. As Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett observed in a note to investors this morning, the heavy subsidies AT&T offers for the iPhone cut deeply into its bottom line.

“In anticipation of losing exclusivity, AT&T has rapidly served up its own inoculation–a massive campaign to upgrade existing iPhone subscribers to new two year contracts that will lock them in as new options emerge,” he wrote. “The cost of this strategy, of course, is subsidies, and that cost was front and center in AT&T’s 3Q results. In total, Wireless margins were light, but Wireline cost cutting was better-than-expected, and overall earnings were therefore in line at $0.55.”

Here’s the official video from Yahoo about its new search upgrades, which include an “accordion” information presentation paradigm.

Yahoo (YHOO) unveiled a series of new search features last night, and the video explains how it’s going to compete against Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) Bing.

Enjoy:

The new features include an innovative, if odd, vertical “accordion” tab.

“We have been actively working on the algorithmic transition of search, which was completed in August, and we are already releasing new features to the search experience,” said Shashi Seth, SVP of Yahoo Search and Marketplaces, in an interview with BoomTown today. “Since we are not actively spending a lot of energy on back-end stuff, we can focus our efforts on new things.”

Among the new enhancements to Yahoo (YHOO) search: A vertical “accordion” paradigm with shortcuts on search results that allow for new kinds of information presentation; “quick apps,” beginning with one for Netflix (NFLX) that lets its members add movies to their queue directly from the search results page; slideshows within search from the “Trending Now” lists on Yahoo; more immersive and theater-style photo and video search, as well as “the ability for people to view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends,” when they sign in to Facebook; and a new mobile search experience for Apple (AAPL) iPhone and Google Android smartphones, as well as feature phones, that uses HTML5 technology.

“We wanted users to see that things had changed dramatically,” said Seth. “Consumer needs for search engines have changed.”

He said that in testing so far, engagement–an increasingly important measure for advertisers–had spiked with the new features, especially in “taking search from an information need to action at an end.”

Seth promised a “huge pipeline of stuff” to come in search, where the Silicon Valley Internet giant holds the No. 2 position in market share, well behind Google (GOOG) and ahead of the Microsoft (MSFT) Bing service.

Both Google and Microsoft have been adding a series of search upgrades over the last year, such as Google Instant, while Yahoo has not.

Yahoo has a blog post up about it here.

And here are some screenshots, as well as the official press release and an overview by Yahoo of the new search features (click on the images to make them bigger):

Yahoo! Makes Searching More Relevant, Productive and Fun

New features help people explore their interests and do more

SUNNYVALE, Calif., October 7, 2010–Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) today introduced new Search enhancements that will help millions of people be entertained, productive, and informed anywhere they are across Yahoo!. Leveraging Yahoo!’s rich content and robust technology platforms, these new Yahoo! Search features will help people get to the entertainment and news content they care about on all connected devices–and do more with the things they find.

“Our goal is to understand what people care about and to make it fun for them to explore the most personally relevant, interesting, and informative content so that they can get things done faster and stay in the know,” said Shashi Seth, senior vice president, Yahoo! Search and Marketplaces. “Yahoo!’s new immersive Search is a cornerstone of the overall Yahoo! experience, creating more ways to connect people with whatever and whoever interests them.”

To start using the new enhancements, go to Yahoo.com and search for topics such as “Lady Gaga” or “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” The features include 3D multifaceted results and tools that let people:

• Cut to the chase–Intelligent shortcuts for movies, musical artists, celebrities and news topics conveniently organize the most important details such as images, articles, videos, tweets, event listings, and ratings. They also provide quick and easy ways to purchase movie or concert tickets while searching.

• Find favorite flicks–The first in a series of unique “quick apps” from Yahoo! Search, a new Web app for Netflix provides an easy way for Netflix members to add movies to their Queue right from the Search results page. In the coming months, Yahoo! plans to launch additional apps that change the search paradigm from finding to doing.

• Watch what’s happening now–Continuing to bring Search to more people in more places across Yahoo!, the company is helping people feed their curiosity by displaying image slideshows right above the standard results for interesting topics from Yahoo!’s Trending Now lists on Yahoo.com and elsewhere.

• Lean back and browse more pictures–An immersive new Yahoo! Image Search delivers engaging slideshows with public photos from Flickr and Yahoo!’s leading content sites, as well as the ability for people to view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends when they sign-in and connect their Yahoo! accounts to Facebook.

• Search on the go–Android and iPhone users can now get faster, more sophisticated Search results, thanks to the latest HTML5 technology. Rich content on entertainment, finance, and local topics is surfaced in more unique and compelling ways for high-end mobile devices.

Working toward its vision to be the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo! is dedicated to re-imagining Search by creating new ways to bring people closer to what they need and want on the Web. Today’s visually stunning new Search experiences throughout the Yahoo! network, along with innovative technology enhancements and quality improvements for rich local and shopping searches, all supplement organic algorithmic Search listings from the recently transitioned Microsoft search platform. Yahoo! expects current and future innovations to redefine Yahoo! Search and drive greater consumer engagement and loyalty.

New features began rolling out to Search users across the U.S. today, and Yahoo! expects to launch them for additional global markets in 2011.

Search Launch Overview Oct 2010

It’s Labor Day weekend, so let’s stop zinging Apple’s (AAPL) Ping, wondering how many regulators are eyeballing Google (GOOG) and trying to grok incessant exec departures at Yahoo (YHOO).

Instead, it’s time to chillax.

(The picture of me here with that very motto was sent to me by Chris Carmichael, who liked my tweet using the word, and made a lovely presentation–which you can see here.)

So, sit back and enjoy these Labor Day-related videos:

Chad Vader

Mud Bogging

Betty’s Labor Day Cheesecake with Cherry Pie Topping Recipe

Yesterday, at the Apple music event in San Francisco, I had a short chat with Apple CEO Steve Jobs as he strolled through the demo room for the media, just after he had announced various updates for the iPod, Apple TV and iTunes onstage.

One of the those was the introduction of a new social network for music called Ping that Apple (AAPL) has integrated within iTunes 10 and which looks an awful lot like the experience you get on Facebook.

Essentially, it is a vertical version–in this case for music–of the powerful social networking site.

Facebook has noodled for years about creating its own social music offering, including doing a partnership with Lala, which was bought by Apple last year and shuttered in June.

But its efforts have largely gone nowhere.

And Facebook is nowhere on Ping, either. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebook–or Twitter or MySpace–on Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions went nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted “onerous terms that we could not agree to,” related to connecting with Facebook friends on Ping.

For those who are struck by the word, the definition of onerous, according to an online dictionary: “Involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome; Involving heavy obligations.”

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate connecting with Facebook or even using Facebook Connect–which would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

“We could, I guess,” he shrugged.

And when I asked how to find friends, Jobs offered, noting iTunes had 160 million users across the globe: “You can type their names into search or send them emails inviting them to join.”

Okay, although being more open would work too!

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka noted:

“Maybe Apple plans on joining the rest of the Web, via an open API that will let Facebook, Twitter et al–maybe even the to-be-launched Google (GOOG) music service–play nicely with Ping. We’ll see.”

Facebook–including some execs who are definitely irked about how closely Ping resembles Facebook, right down to the blue color scheme–hopes so.

Consider the statement issued by Facebook to me–after attempts to get it verbally failed, due ironically to several dropped connections on the iPhone of the exec I spoke to:

“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

In other words: Zing, Ping.

UPDATE: Oddly enough, a Facebook connection feature appeared to be in Ping when some signed up–not for me–as noted by Cult of Mac. And Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer even spotted the wording in Jobs’s stage presentation. I have an email into Apple PR asking for a comment on the change.

In any case, at the Apple event, Jobs told me he had great hopes for the social music service, adding that Ping could be the most significant thing to come out of yesterday’s announcements.

But soon enough he moved right on to the new iPods, declaring enthusiastically: “Isn’t the nano amazing?”

During his introduction of Facebook’s Places geo-location offering yesterday afternoon, like any good geek on launch day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hopping excitedly onstage about the rollout and promised more to come in the months ahead.

“We have a lot of other interesting launch nights coming out this summer,” he said to the crowd of media gathered in the decked-out cafeteria of the social networking behemoth’s HQ in Palo Alto, Calif.

Since summer is ending in a few weeks, he and I had a short chat after the presentation about exactly what that meant.

“This is just the start of a lot more to come, because I think it’s important that we bring out as many features and innovations as quickly as we can,” said Zuckerberg, whose kinetic demeanor appeared to be channeling a 12-pack of energy drinks.

He talked about a start-up night, as well as one devoted to Facebook’s recently released beta Questions product, which he said he thinks could be massive.

The feature, like Yahoo Answers or Quora, gives users the ability to get answers to their questions from friends and even the larger community.

“The way we do search right now doesn’t address exactly what people might be looking for,” said Zuckerberg. “Instead of messing around on Web pages, someday, you should put a request into a phone and have it beep with the right answer.”

I don’t think Zuckerberg was meaning to delivering a specific smack upside the head to Google (GOOG)–he must like the search giant a little since he has hired so many of its employees–although that’s the market that Facebook is aiming at, of course.

And, indeed, it’s aimed changing how search is done, using a smart melding of people knowledge and deep troves of data to deliver more than the brute-force results consumers get now via search.

Zuckerberg declined to name what else was up–”We have not made that public yet”–but it’s good to see a founder so engaged, in the style of Steve Jobs of Apple (AAPL), Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN) and also, of course, the Google twins, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

While Facebook was clearly riding in the wake of the innovation of others in geo-location–such as Foursquare–with its Places entry, the race might not always be to the swift.

In fact, Zuckerberg seems to be hoping it is to the pretty fast and very steady.

Microsoft had its annual Financial Analyst Meeting at its Redmond, Wash., campus yesterday, where BoomTown liveblogged the morning and afternoon sessions with the software giant’s top execs.

That included CEO Steve Ballmer, who talked about how a tablet device to compete with the Apple (AAPL) iPad was coming from Microsoft “soon” and also the company’s efforts in its eight “core” businesses.

And, because it is Microsoft (MSFT), there were lots and lots of slides to look at, which are all below from its panoply of execs on everything from finances to robotics to Facebook on the Windows Phone 7.

Here they all are for your data-crunching pleasure (and you can also read transcripts of the day’s events on Microsoft’s newly refreshed investor site.

CEO Steve Ballmer:

Ballmer_FAM_2010_Part1

COO Kevin Turner:

Turner_FAM_2010

CFO Peter Klein:

Klein_FAM_2010

Bill Koefoed, General Manager, Investor Relations:

Koefoed_FAM_2010

Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer:

Mundie_FAM_2010

After BoomTown complained at December’s search summit held by Bing about the lack of the finest pastry known to man–namely, donuts!–minions were dispatched by top Microsoft geek general Satya Nadella to fix the dire situation.

And, happily, at Search Summit 2010, there on the lovely snack table were a small pile of them–which looked like Krispy Kreme to me.

There were lacking the key sprinkles feature, but carb crisis averted!

Speaking of features, top Bing execs were on hand in San Francisco to show off all the work they have been doing over the last year in the software giant’s efforts to topple mean old Google (GOOG) via an innovative offering.

Even the plain-speaking Nadella acknowledged in his opening it was still a bit of a children’s crusade, since Bing had barely broken into double digits in search market share and Google was hovering around 70 percent.

But the most recent report released this week by comScore (SCOR) showed continued promise, so Microsoft (MSFT) presses on its long and pricey road!

Here’s my liveblog of this morning’s event at the software giant’s San Francisco office:

10 am PT: Nadella opened with the donuts news. Nice move.

Then, it was onto some promising stats of growth, which have surely been promising, despite the high price tag (Microsoft’s online division lost $700 million in the last quarter, to give you an idea of the sticker shock).

Still, as search exec Brian MacDonald said, as he was presenting all the many new features–such as cards–added over the last year: “We’re in it to win it.”

At the end of his presentation, in a slide title “Future,” he said reporters could not take pictures or video. Sure, hop us up on sugar and then tell us something interesting and bar us from taking snaps!

But MacDonald clicked through the images so fast, it was hard to tell what Bing would be up to. Essentially, it looks like a more blocky, image-heavy design, with more differing fonts and contextual info.

10:40 am PT: A smart search geek Harry Shum was then on with a lecture about search intent and all kinds of insider tweakery that made me confused, since I do not understand terms such as “page-level dialog.” There is also apparently “session-level dialog.”

Harry knows what it all means, which is pretty much all that counts.

My take: It has to do with some sort of digital conversation Bing search dudes are having with the users that users have no idea is actually going on.

Simply put: They’re watching you.

11 am PT: Next search guy talked about search intent and such.

That means adding features such as a link to search history or instant weather on the opening page. It’s the little touches that count.

In fact, they do, as Bing tries to differentiate itself from what Google offers, via a series of neat tricks and clever design.

That includes, for example, easy access to lyrics and song classifiers, when searching in music.

Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” was used as an example, since Lady Gaga seems to be the go-to gal on seeming cool these days.

(But is it time to check Bing search trends to see if she is peaked?)

11:19 am: Next, top Online Services Division exec Erik Jorgensen came on to discuss mobile and mapping. He compared himself with “Edward Scissorhands” when talking about how hard it is to have a good experience on a small device.

“Type less, do more,” is the internal mantra at Bing, he said. Coincidentally, my mantra is type more, do less.

Jorgensen showed off Bing mobile stats: 23 million users, 160 percent growth and four million downloads of its iPhone app. Yes, it has come to this–Microsoft using Apple (AAPL) to tout its success.

Then it was onto mapping, which is a pretty good arena for Bing. Stats: 41 percent growth in U.S. unique users, 43 percent rise in searches using enhanced maps, a huge boost in map apps.

11:29 am: Bing Maps guru Blaise Aguera y Arcas–who has the single most sexy name in all of geekdom–said the focus is now on social location.

As in Foursquare!

In fact, he showed off a map in which Foursquare check-ins pour in and pop up in a bit of a freaky way, as in: You can stalk in real-time.

Then it was onto cool mapping eye-candy, which I always fall for since the whole zoom-in-zoom-out thing is mesmerizing. Aguera y Arcas showed off clickable geographic names and embedded maps within maps from, in this case, a zoo or a museum.

11:50 am: Q&A Time!

The first question is about gaming. It’s hot said Nadella, and Bing wants to provide discovery and search more than games themselves.

I asked a question about the status of the Yahoo (YHOO) search partnership deal, which is in process. It is a very complex process, in fact.

And, though they were supposed to be in tandem, Nadella said that algorithm would move faster than advertising technology handover.

“If there were a drop of of advertisers [due to the new deal], that would be problematic,” he said.

Yes, which segued into the next obvious topic: When would Bing make some dough?

Thus. I asked about the high costs of competing in the search space, which Nadella said would continue, including distribution deals and in the aggressive marketing of Bing.

“For sure, we had to ante up,” he said. “But the product has to be able to stand on its own…ultimately, the product has to carry the day.”

More questions about distribution, social search, churn, product differentiation and whether Bing is growing from a more passive user to building a “fan base.”

BoomTown brainstorm: If they handed out delicious donuts with each search, I’d leave Google in a New York minute.

But, like a skunk at a garden party, I asked another question about when Bing is going to break even.

Nadella was too smart to answer this digital hot potato.

“It’s a big market where money can we made, and we are making progress,” he said, saying I should ask his bosses about specifics.

I shall!

In this vein, someone then asked a question about whether Bing would ever become a verb as Google has become.

Shum joked that in the future six letters would be too many for people to say, so things were looking up for four-letter search brands!

More questions included whether Google was tweaked by Bing yet (yep!), and whether Bing should try to win in an international market to show some muscle (U.S. is still top focus).

Finally, it was “time to deploy the cream puffs,” said a Microsoft PR honcho.

Long past time, I’d say.