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Survey Says: Despite Yahoo Ban, Most Tech Companies Support Work-From-Home for Employees

Kara Swisher — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:29:42 +0000

Last week, a fierce debate erupted over a range of social networks and in the media about a story we posted on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s new decree that employees at the Silicon Valley Internet company would no longer be able to work from home.

In a sometimes awkwardly worded internal memo I posted from Yahoo HR head Jackie Reses, the company rolled out the new rule — pushed through by Mayer — which requires that Yahoo employees who work remotely relocate to company facilities by June 1.

“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo to employees. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

The goal of Mayer to cure what ails Yahoo: Reviving a moribund and enervated workforce that has struggled to innovate and excel over many years. One of the many problems has been the liberal use of work-from-home policies that have been woefully mismanaged to create a culture that is simply not energized.

But, unless I am reading the memo wrong, the ban is not just limited to those who have arrangements to work from home full time — which number in the hundreds — but also employees who take one or two days a week at home.

Top sources told me that Mayer has been particularly irked about Yahoo parking lots that are slow to fill in the morning and quick to empty by 5 pm — which is atypical at other tech companies such as Google. (Mayer was a longtime exec at the search giant.)

At first, she tried to change culture in ways that rained down tasty perks on employees — such as free food and smartphones. Mayer has also been practical, instituting please-be-here Friday afternoon FYI weekly meetings and stricter performance reviews.

But she is now inevitably doling out more unpleasant medicine to the troops, starting with the banning of work from home, which has caused a big ruckus both internally and externally.

Some inside the company are clearly appalled, especially since it might more severely impact working mothers.

“When a working mother is standing behind this, you know we are a long way from a culture that will honor the thankless sacrifices that women too often make,” read one email I got from an internal source, referring to the recent birth of Mayer’s baby.

Many others at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ pointed to the nursery Mayer had built — for which she paid personally — next to her office as a perk others at Yahoo do not get.

“I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set em up in the cube next door?” joked a husband of another employee who will be losing her work-from-home privileges.

Yahoo employees, as far as I can see from its company careers page, offers the typical Dependent Day Care Flexible Spending Account, where staff can pay “dependent care expenses, such as day care or after-school care, with pre-tax dollars.”

While it is fair to raise the issue of how employees will cope given the sudden change in HR policy, others also think that limiting work at home is a good idea because it galvanizes culture and creates a spirit of collaboration that has been missing at Yahoo for far too long.

“Marissa is doing what good leaders do,” wrote one person on Twitter. “Making sure her Yahoo team is communicating & working TOGETHER.”

That is actually a sentiment expressed by Google CFO Patrick Pichette at a recent talk in Australia, when asked about telecommuting at Google:

“The surprising question we get is: ‘How many people telecommute at Google?’ And our answer is: ‘As few as possible’ … There is something magical about sharing meals. There is something magical about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking at the computer ‘What do you think of this?’ These are [the] magical moments that we think at Google are immensely important in the development of your company, of your own personal development and [of] building much stronger communities.”

That said, officially, many Googlers are allowed and even encouraged to work at home. The company told me when asked about work-from-home policies: “We do not have a formal policy and leave Googlers to use good judgment.”

It is the same for Facebook, which confirmed a “policy to provide flexibility as work permits.” In fact, one exec at the social network giant noted to me that its entire camera app was built from an engineer’s garage, with the group staying away from the office as long as they wanted to build it from home.

Business networking site LinkedIn also said it had “no formal policy at present,” but noted that many employees work from home full-time and part-time as the situation warrants and in consultation with managers.

It goes on and on like that throughout the tech scene, part of an ethos of letting tech talent make its own rules — from what they wear to when and where they work — that is deeply ingrained in the culture.

A Hewlett-Packard spokesperson said of the tech giant: “We do not ban [work from home] and many HP people do it … it is not at all an issue at HP and hasn’t been for years. Some folks have a regular schedule, while others can do it from time to time with the okay of their supervisors.”

An AOL spokesperson said the company doesn’t ban work from home.

A Netflix spokesperson referenced a well-known premium video company’s job deck, which stressed a “freedom and responsibility culture” and notes, “We don’t measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office. We do care about accomplishing great work.”

Twitter had a different twist, but still supports working from home. Said a spokesperson: “We believe there are significant tangible and intangible benefits when employees are working under the same roof. We also recognize that every so often it’s important to be able to work remotely, and we allow for that flexibility.”

A Cisco spokesperson said the networking company also allows it, but it has to be approved by a direct manager: “It is certainly utilized by those employees who earn it. And, of course, with our collaborative suite of technologies like Webex (with video) and telepresence it is the next best thing to being there in person.”

A Microsoft spokesman said that the software company “offers flexible work schedules for all employees.”

Perhaps one of the best companies for a long time in the telecommuting space has been IBM. From its corporate Web page, also touting the environmental benefits:

“IBM was one of the first global companies to pioneer programs to reduce employee commuting. It has sustained these programs for nearly two decades. Two key aspects are its (a) work-at-home program and (b) mobile employees program. Today, more than 128,000 (29 percent) of employees globally participate in one of these programs. In 2011, in just the U.S. alone, IBM’s work-at-home program conserved approximately 6.4 million gallons of fuel and avoided more than 50,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.”

Startups are much the same.

Said an Airbnb spokesperson of the online housing rentals site: “It’s a flexible policy and managers determine what’s appropriate on a case-by-case basis.”

At location startup Foursquare, a spokesperson said, “Our policy is to allow for ‘flexible work hours’ — and that applies to both the hours you work, and where you work from. While we don’t have any dedicated remote employees, our folks do work from home on occasion and we’re fine with that.”

Private social networking company Path is much the same, according to a spokesperson: “Path has a work-from-home policy. The manager and employee work out the details together.”

The only company I queried that did not respond immediately is Apple, which has been known for a long time to have much tighter rules with its employees. I will update when I hear from the company.

I also have emails in to Amazon, which is already known for flexible working policies.

But, overall, Mayer is forging new ground with her work-from-home ban. Whether that is enough to turbocharge the Yahoo culture is anybody’s guess.

To VC or Not to VC: Former Square COO Rabois Leaning Toward Khosla Ventures Job

Kara Swisher — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 02:24:31 +0000

Keith Rabois, the former Square COO who left the company in the midst of unproven allegations of personal misconduct, is weighing an offer to join Silicon Valley venture firm Khosla Ventures, according to sources close to the situation, and is currently leaning toward accepting the job there.

But, that could change. In an interesting twist, the longtime entrepreneur and investor has also been in discussions with Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky to become COO or president there.

Both the VC and the startup have been doing reference checks on Rabois, news of which has gotten out in the ever-chatty Silicon Valley scene. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today that Rabois had been in talks with the San Francisco-based online housing rentals company.

But sources with knowledge of the situation said that Rabois — who has played the No. 2 to a string of high-profile entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel at PayPal, Max Levchin at Slide and, most recently, Jack Dorsey at Square — seems “99 percent” ready to move into a more formal investing role.

Of course, there is still that one percent chance he might not, underscored by the eternal lure of the hot startup for serial entrepreneurs like Rabois. That said, he has also been an active angel investors for many years, with a wide-ranging portfolio, and is on many boards, including Yelp’s.

The choice of two very attractive alternatives is in stark contrast to the more tense situation for Rabois just a month ago, after accusations of sexual harassment arose related to a relationship he had with a Square employee.

Rabois has denied the allegations aimed at him and at the San Francisco payments company, which have not yet turned into a lawsuit, and has thus far been backed by Square. Rabois called the accusations by the employee “fiction” and a “shakedown.”

That said, due to the controversy around the serious workplace issue, he stepped down from his job as COO.

“At the end of the day, this is personally embarrassing to me, because when anyone’s life is exposed to a public forum, it creates quite a damaging situation,” said Rabois at the time in an interview with me. “As we looked at it, it was going to become a distraction that was going to hurt the company.”

Nintendo's Wii U Outperforming the Original Wii, Only Because It Costs More

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 01:42:30 +0000

Nintendo’s Wii U has managed to outperform the launch of its original Wii, at least in terms of revenue, but only because it costs more.

In the U.S., Nintendo sold 460,000 Wii U devices in December and more than 890,000 since it launched in mid-November, according to NPD, which tracks monthly sales figures for the videogame industry.

As a result, Nintendo said it recorded $300 million in revenue, which is more than the $270 million that the original Wii made at the same point in its life cycle.

But the original Wii, which launched in 2006, cost only $250, and today’s Wii U is setting players back between $300 and $350 apiece. So, the only reason it was able to exceed prior sales is because it upped the price — not because it sold more units.

That didn’t stop Nintendo of America’s EVP of Sales & Marketing Scott Moffitt from singing the company’s praises: “While the Wii launch established new benchmarks in the United States, Wii U has surpassed its predecessor in perhaps the most important category: revenue generation.”

Moffitt, however, did not comment on profits.

The Wii U has two editions: The deluxe offering that costs $350 and the basic offering for $300. The deluxe edition sold out at retail this holiday, and both editions were difficult to find after the Nov. 18 launch. But it was nothing like the launch of the Wii, which experienced shortages for months. Nintendo did run into a few hiccups at launch with customers experiencing long waits for mandatory software updates. Additionally, some of the device’s most notable features, like its TVii service, did not launch until later in the month.

Microsoft also reported strong revenue for the Xbox. The company holds the envious position of having the top-selling piece of hardware for the past 17 months straight. It sold 1.4 million units in December, or three times the number of Wii U’s sold. (When you add up all the hardware Nintendo sold, it totals more than 2.65 million units).

In all, Microsoft said, consumers spent more than $1.27 billion on the Xbox 360, including games, consoles and accessories.

Following the release of the NPD data, Sony did not immediately break out the PlayStation’s performance for the month of December.

Even so, the numbers are staggering, especially given the amount of pressure that smartphones and tablets are putting on the game console industry. But some impact can be seen. The amount of money being generated by mobile games and online gaming still has not been enough to offset the declines that the traditional console gaming market is seeing — at least that’s NPD Group’s position.

Historically, the research firm has monitored sales through purchases made at physical retail locations. In recent years, it has expanded its methodologies as more content is sold digitally over services like Valve’s Steam on the PC or as expansion packs inside of console games.

Overall, it reported for December that new physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories totaled $3.2 billion, falling 22 percent year over year. It calculates that the physical channel accounts for nearly 50 percent of the total consumer spend on games.

When NPD considers revenue from other channels, such as used and rentals, and digital formats, like full games, micro-transactions, mobile apps and social gaming, its preliminary estimate is that consumer spending in December hit $4.1 billion in all. A final analysis of non-physical spending however, is expected to be released in February.

Checking In With the Natty VCs of Social+Capital (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:40:45 +0000

Recently, I paid a visit to the very elegant yet still hipster offices of Social+Capital Partnership in Palo Alto, Calif.

As many know already, the venture fund was founded last year by the dashing-in-Silicon-Valley-at-least Chamath Palihapitiya — the former Facebook and AOL exec, who also did a stint at the very traditional Mayfield Fund and is a competitive poker player, too.

After Palihapitiya started Social+Capital with a $300 million kitty, he famously declared — in a geek version of Frank Sinatra — that he would do it his way with his own money and funds from a bunch of other Richie Riches like him.

“Venture capital firms tend to focus on having large amounts of assets under management and collecting fixed fees,” Palihapitiya said in an interview with the New York Times a year ago. “That creates perverse incentives, because you’re focused on deploying as much capital as fast as possible. I want to be antithetical to all of that.”

Palihapitiya certainly started out doing that, with a noisy kerfuffle over his objections to how a funding was taking place at Airbnb, in which founders were sucking money out while the employees could not.

Eventually, that was water under the bridge, and Palihapitiya ended up investing in the online home rental service.

Thus, a year out, it was time to check in on the firm, which mostly focuses on health care, education and financial services. As Palihapitiya promised, Social+Capital has indeed invested in a range of very interesting start-ups so far, such as diabetes tracker Glooko and Web-design training service Treehouse.

And the firm already had a big win from its investment in social enterprise software start-up Yammer, which was bought by Microsoft for $1.2 billion this June.

Most recently, Palihapitiya said that Social+Capital just invested in Box, and also just backed the founders of Jive — Dave Hersh and Sam Lawrence — who are building a Salesforce killer called CrushPath.

Here’s a video I did with Palihapitiya and two Social+Capital partners, Ted Maidenberg and Mamoon Hamid, in the now-slick former warehouse where the firm operates along with some of its start-ups.

Enjoy:

[ See post to watch video ]

Amazon Brings Its Videos to the iPad

Peter Kafka — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:01:25 +0000

Amazon has been ramping up its digital video store for years. But until now it hasn’t been able to get the videos it rents and sells onto the iPad.

Now it can: The “Amazon Instant Video” player is available on iTunes for free.

The app won’t work on iPhones, but other than that, it is basically an analog of Amazon’s iOS Kindle apps: You can use it to access videos you’ve bought or rented from Amazon’s store, but you can’t actually buy or rent the content directly from the app. (For more on this, review last year’s changes to Apple’s iTunes rules.)

So this won’t help Amazon do much to market its offerings, but it adds obvious value for its existing consumers. (Via 9to5 Mac.)

Warner Brothers Will Make Netflix, Redbox, Blockbuster Wait Longer for New Movies

Peter Kafka — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:21:53 +0000

Want to watch a new movie just out on DVD from Warner Brothers? You’re going to have to buy it, or wait even longer to get it from Netflix or other disc renters.

A new deal between Time Warner’s movie studio and Netflix, Redbox and Blockbuster will double the “window” for new releases. That means the services will now have to wait 56 days after the discs first go on sale to offer them to their customers, instead of 28 days. [UPDATE: Redbox parent Coinstar now says they haven't agreed to a new deal; see below]

The move is part of Hollywood’s ongoing campaign to bolster flagging DVD sales, and sources tell me the new deal is supposed to be announced at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Warner Brothers executives have already talked publicly about extending the current window.

This is the second time that Warner has been able to get the rental services to wait before distributing its movies.

In 2010, it struck deals with Netflix, and later Coinstar’s Redbox, to wait 28 days before renting its new discs. Coinstar and Netflix later landed similar pacts with most of the other big studios. (Coinstar did up end up in legal battles with Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox, which like this Web site is owned by News Corp.)

Two years ago, Netflix was able to argue that by delaying access to DVDs, it was able to get its hands on more streaming content, and lower prices for the discs it did buy. This time around, though, Warner won’t be granting any additional digital rights to the studios. It will simply be offering them the ability to buy discs in bulk, at a significant discount to retail pricing, like they already do.

Earlier today, news broke that HBO, another Time Warner unit, would stop selling its DVDs to Netflix altogether, but sources tell me the two moves aren’t directly related. Next week’s planned announcement is supposed to be tied to Warner Brothers’ continuing push for Ultraviolet, an industry consortium that’s supposed to allow home video buyers to watch their purchases on multiple machines, in multiple formats.

Reps for Time Warner, Coinstar, Netflix and Blockbuster parent company Dish Network declined to comment.

UPDATE: Coinstar is now commenting, via email. “The current agreement Coinstar has with Warner Bros. is to receive movie titles 28 days after their release. No revised agreements are in place.” The company’s current deal with Warner Bros. expires at the end of January; PR chief Marci Maule referred me to comments CEO Paul Davis made last fall about pursuing “workarounds” if studios try to extend their windows.

Digital Game Revenue Wasn't Enough to Offset Broader Industry Declines in Q3

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 01:37:21 +0000

Revenue from mobile and social games, among other categories, is growing, but not at a fast enough clip to offset the declines witnessed in the traditional games market.

The NPD Group released a new report today that calculated the amount of money Americans are spending on games from the nontraditional market. That includes a lot of digital content, such as subscriptions, digital downloads, social games and mobile games, but also used games and rentals.

In the third quarter, it found that the amount spent on that “other content” totaled $1.64 billion.

While significant, NPD said it wasn’t enough to offset lower revenue from the traditional game market. NPD defines the traditional market as packaged goods sold at retail. In the third quarter, that totaled $1.3 billion.

“New physical retail sales had a rough third quarter,” said Anita Frazier, an analyst with NPD. “Increases in sales from some of these other monetization methods, and full game and add-on digital downloads in particular, only partially offset the decline see in the new physical retail channel.”

She said the overall market, including hardware, totaled $4.2 billion, down 11 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

For companies like Electronic Arts, which is investing heavily in mobile and social games and is placing big bets on online content, like today’s release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the results of these monthly and quarterly reports are unrepresentative of the trends they are seeing.

“Everything is growing. If you look at the total interactive business, it’s a $50 billion market internationally, and that’s up double digits. That’s where we play,” said EA’s President of Labels Frank Gibeau. “We find it frustrating because it doesn’t tell the whole picture.”

In the second quarter, EA’s digital revenue, which includes downloadable console content, mobile and social — was up 30 percent year over year.

Even a company like Activision, which has been slower to develop games on Facebook and mobile, said that during the second quarter, revenue from digital channels — mostly downloadable content — increased 27 percent year ove year, and accounted for 37 percent of the company’s total net revenue.

For all-digital companies, like Zynga, which went public last week to raise $1 billion, its impact hardly seems to register.

“I think that ultimately we are an interactive entertainment company, not a packaged goods company,” Gibeau said. “We are platform and channel agnostic. The physical channel is a great channel and it’s going to be around longer than people think. … We are fine with that model, but then, when you bring that game home, you should be able to connect to the larger online world.”

Airbnb Hires Former Yahoo Legal Eagle Belinda Johnson as General Counsel

Kara Swisher — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:44:49 +0000

Airbnb, the San Francisco online vacation rentals start-up, said it has hired a key former Yahoo lawyer, Belinda Johnson, as its new general counsel.

The legal issues at Airbnb are both interesting and challenging, all around the new arena of global sharing or, as the company calls it, “collaborative consumption.”

Johnson is one of several recent major hires by Airbnb, which has been adding more seasoned execs to its team of late. Other recent key Airbnb hires include Monroe Labouisse as head of trust and safety and customer service, and Vivek Wagle as head of content.

Johnson left Yahoo several months ago as its deputy general counsel, after a long tenure there working on a wide variety of issues.

Among other things, she oversaw legal strategy for Yahoo’s global products, and worked on deals like its search and advertising alliance with Microsoft. Johnson came to Yahoo from its Web 1.0 acquisition of Broadcast.com, where she had served as general counsel.

She attended both college and law school at the University of Texas.

Hot for "Bad Teacher": Sony Spikes Sales With Early Offers on iTunes, Amazon

Peter Kafka — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:00:38 +0000

Hollywood is trying to figure out how to get people to buy more movies instead of renting them. Sony might have an answer: Sell the flicks on iTunes, Amazon and other digital outlets before viewers can buy or rent them anywhere else.

Sony tried doing this with “Bad Teacher” last month, and the results sound encouraging for the studio. It says its “windowing” experiment boosted digital unit sales by 60 percent, and overall digital revenue by 24 percent.

That is: Most people prefer to rent a movie than buy it outright. But when offered the chance to pay for a download or wait a couple weeks to rent the movie, some folks paid up.

Digital sales of “Bad Teacher” make up a small percentage of the movie’s overall digital revenue (Sony won’t release actual sales numbers), but there’s a lot more profit in each transaction for the studio. Rentals via iTunes run from $3.99 to $4.99 for the Cameron Diaz vehicle, but sales run from $14.99 to $19.99 a pop.

More good news for Sony: It says demand for digital rentals didn’t seem to drop once they became available two weeks after digital sales started. And physical sales — still the most important source of income for the studio — don’t seem to have suffered, either.

That last point is crucial for Sony’s relationships with the retailers it counts on to move old-fashioned discs while stepping into digital at the same time. Retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy are selling Sony’s movies via digital outlets, like Wal-Mart’s Vudu, but they won’t do it at the expense of their brick-and-mortar business (yet.)

“The good news that encourages us is that the physical retailers, those are the guys that are playing well and getting good results out of this,” says John Calkins, who heads up digital for Sony’s home video unit. Calkins figures that the promotion for the early digital sales ended up working as marketing for all of the movie’s sales, and thinks that will work with other films, too.

Calkins just tried the experiment again, with “30 Minutes Or Less,” and says that comedy saw similar results. Calkins says he’ll try it one more time in 2011, with a movie he won’t disclose.

Here's Why Hollywood Needs UltraViolet -- Or Something -- To Work

Peter Kafka — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:05:47 +0000

Hollywood is rolling out UltraViolet, its homegrown cloud/locker scheme that may or may not compete with the ones Apple and Amazon are rolling out. But the studios very much need one of these things to work — and by “work” I mean “convince people to spend more money on movies and TV shows they watch at home.”

Because right now, things don’t look good at all. BTIG’s Rich Greenfield (registration required) lays it out in this grim chart: In the first half of the year, U.S. spending on home entertainment dropped 5.1 percent.

And it’s not because people don’t like to watch TV shows and movies at home: Spending on rentals, primarily via Netflix and Redbox, is up 10.9 percent. But that’s not enough to counter a 17.2 percent drop in movie and TV show purchases. Note that digital sales, primarily via Apple’s iTunes, barely make a dent.

[Image credit: Fekete Tibor/Shutterstock.]

Hidden Tools Find What You Want On YouTube

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:40:59 +0000

Have you seen YouTube lately, staying on the site for longer than the three minutes it takes to watch the video link that a friend emailed? Chances are the answer will be no.

Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ video shown in Leanback, which offers bigger fonts and a layout that’s easier to view away from your computer.

Though YouTube calls itself the third most-visited site in the world (after Google and Facebook), it works like an efficient courier service, playing content for you wherever you are on the Web, including Facebook, Twitter and email instant messages. But while we’ve been busy watching YouTube videos elsewhere, the site itself grew up.

YouTube has things like personalized channels, more editing options for uploading clips and a full-screen mode for sitting back and watching videos. A lot of these extra features are buried on the site and difficult to find.

I took a deep dive into YouTube, compiling a list of handy shortcuts for navigating this video hub and getting more out of it.

Quick Keys

Sharing videos with friends is one of the most popular uses for YouTube, but sometimes you want to share just the best part of a video. With two clicks, you can trim videos to begin exactly where you want and then share them. As a video is playing, right click at the point where you’d like your video clip to start and select “Copy video URL at current time” to get a URL for the trimmed video. When others open the link, it will start right at the spot in the video where you right-clicked. No longer will a video clip take too long to reach the best part, like waiting for a model to fall on the runway, and leave you hesitant to share it on Facebook or via emails with friends.

Real Deal Musicians

Searching for music on YouTube can be exasperating since so many people upload videos of themselves singing and tag the video with the name of a well-known musician. So while you’re looking for the latest Coldplay song, you find a high school band covering the song instead. To find artists who do publish on YouTube, look at youtube.com/disco, where users can type in artist names to get a playlist of videos by that artist. In regular YouTube search results, the official stamp from YouTube (and wording) signals that an artist is verified—much like the blue checkmark beside popular Twitter users who are truly who they claim to be.

With Video Editor, users can edit existing videos or upload new ones.

Edit Better

If you’ve ever recorded a video shot in portrait mode that you’d rather share in landscape or vice versa, the video can be switched to the correct viewing angle, saving viewers from tilting their heads to one side to watch. Do this with YouTube’s editor in the cloud, youtube.com/editor. Here, people can edit (including rotate) existing videos or upload new videos. Content can be mixed in with other video clips from the Creative Commons site, soundtracks can be added by choosing from a selection of music, and text slides can be dragged in to display between video clips.

If you’d rather use a third-party company for editing, multiple options are listed at youtube.com/create. A company called Vlix recently announced its integration with the YouTube site, bringing its editing features from the Vlix iPhone app—like artsy designs and text slides—to the site. Magisto automatically skims videos for the best footage and creates short clips with that content, and the Xtranormal Movie Maker lets people add text, such as a personal narration, to an animated video. (Never underestimate the entertainment value of hearing your words come out of an animated bear with a robotic voice.)

Personalized Viewing

If you’re tired of hunting for videos to watch, take a look at clips that YouTube thinks you’ll like. Once signed into your YouTube account, if you’ve used the site to watch at least one video in the past, the homepage will show Suggestions below your username based on that past watching history. These suggestions appear as small thumbnail images of each video and include the reasoning behind why a clip was suggested, like “because you watched Lady Gaga and Sting.”

Videos From Afar

To see all of YouTube in a much more handsome layout, try Leanback, found at YouTube.com/leanback. This opens a page that’s meant to be viewed far from your computer, complete with a black background and white text written in large font.

Sign In, Sign In Again

Recently, it became possible to log into YouTube using your Google account username and password (Google has owned YouTube since 2006). Using their Google account, users may browse YouTube, rent a movie and “like” a video. To upload their own videos, subscribe to a channel, make comments on and “favorite” videos and get recommendations from YouTube on content they may like, people must create a YouTube account and use that in addition to a Google account.

Testing, Testing

A site called TestTube, found at youtube.com/testtube, holds many in-the-works projects from YouTube engineers. Here, users can kick the tires of some features that aren’t fully baked. One example is YouTube/slam, which pits one video against another and lets viewers vote on the best one.

Posting Video

It’s important to know the sharing settings in YouTube. There are three: public (anyone can search for and view); unlisted (anyone with the link can view); and private (only people who you choose can view). Any video can always be taken down from the site by its original publisher.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

A Hollywood Experiment: Paramount Streams "Transformers" to Your PC

Peter Kafka — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:51:27 +0000

If you want to watch “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” at home, you’ve got a lot of options. Here’s an unusual one from Paramount: The studio is renting streams direct to consumers, via its own site.

Pay $3.99 and you can watch Optimus Prime and his pals romp through Chicago on your PC as many times as you’d like, for up to 48 hours. If you’re running a Windows machine, you can pay $4.99 for an HD stream (you’ll need to have Microsoft’s Silverlight installed for both versions, so no iPad/iPhone option).

Advertising Age describes this as an end run around Netflix, but since Reed Hastings’s video service never streams movies during their initial VOD/DVD window, a more apt analogy would be Amazon and Apple, which do.

Studios like Time Warner’s Warner Bros. have also experimented with renting movies directly via Facebook, but those are generally older catalog films, not fresh stuff.

You can see why Paramount would be interested in trying this out — if it works, the studio keeps all of the rental fee, and it establishes a direct billing and marketing relationship with its customers — but it’s also easy to see the hurdles.

Unlike Apple, Amazon and Facebook, etc., Paramount will have a difficult time finding its fans. And once it does, it will require them to pull out a credit card to complete the transaction — a PayPal, Facebook Credits or iTunes account won’t help you here.

Paramount is careful to describe this as a “toe-dip” experiment. Nothing wrong with that. Hard to see where this leads, though.

Email: Chamath Palihapitiya Decries Airbnb's Recent $112M Funding for Founder Control and Cash-Out

Kara Swisher — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:39:03 +0000

Here’s some electric weekend reading for those interested in the push and pull between venture investors and start-ups in the frothy Web 2.0 environment.

In an email to Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky (which I obtained, embedded below), former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya, who now runs an investment fund called the Social+Capital Partnership, is passing on participating in the recent $112 million round for the hot online rental site that was announced in July.

The deal — which values the company at $1.2 billion — has not officially closed yet, but includes venture firms such as DST Global, Andreessen Horowitz and others. Previous investors include Sequoia Capital.

Palihapitiya confirmed to me that it was his email and that his possible investment in Airbnb was small.

That said, his concerns center on how much voting control of new investors’ preferred shares the founders have in the latest round and also a $22.5 million cashing out, $21 million of which is going to those founders.

Another $9.6 million is being used to buy secondary stock from current Airbnb shareholders, who have to render parts of their vested stakes for the money.

Such wrangling between investors and entrepreneurs is not uncommon in Silicon Valley these days, as ever-dumber money chases ever-more-powerful geeks. But Palihapitiya’s email is a smart, reasonable and well-written argument to stop the madness.

According to sources close to Airbnb, the numbers that he refers to below are accurate, as is what appears to be an unusual level of voting control by its founders. Presumably, it is to protect the company from possible future sales on the secondary markets and to keep control with its founders as the number of investors grows.

In any case, the Palihapitiya email to Chesky is well worth the read (I have removed email addresses as a courtesy):

From: Chamath Palihapitiya
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2011 11:16:05 -0700

To: Brian Chesky

Subject: Airbnb financing…

Brian,

Cc Marc, Reid, my deal team

Thanks again for giving me the chance to participate in your latest financing. I had a chance to review the docs at length yesterday and I wanted to follow up as, quite honestly, I’ve never seen a deal like this over ~60 investments I’ve done and I’m pretty concerned.

I’m all for getting the best valuation you can, minimizing dilution and maximizing control. We did this brilliantly at Facebook…all of our financings (except our first $$$ from Peter Thiel) were done not out of necessity but opportunity. As such, our investors had virtually no control and it resulted in a much better outcome. As we’ve discussed, I generally don’t believe investors add much to a success story and so minimizing their impact is a great strategy when you are onto something that is working.

This said, while several of these concepts are reflected in the current deal, there is one big thing that I am fundamentally against and violates my principles and will prevent me from participating in your round. When I saw that you guys were taking $31M out of the company, I didn’t think much of it as I just assumed it would entirely be via a secondary sale.

But as I understand the deal, it seems that you are doing only $9.6M in secondary and $22.5M as a dividend to common (of which $21M goes to you and your co-founders). I am really uncomfortable with this and don’t think its in the spirit of building a good, long term business. Effectively, it is a strategy that allows you guys to take money out of the business and not dilute yourself — I’m not sure why this is such a big deal when you guys are almost 90% vested and the financing is at $1.2B where your dilution is marginal. Further, it excludes many of the employees that probably have helped you and your co–founders get the company to this place as most of these folks probably don’t have any stock but have unexercised stock options and thus won’t get a dividend.

My basic principle on this stuff is that if you want liquidity, that’s fine, but you should make it available to everyone. Otherwise, no one should get it. Your current deal is the farthest away from this principle that I’ve seen in a while…this strategy has been done once before — at Groupon. We can see how “well” they are doing and how short term the investor community is now viewing their motives. I really think you can do better than this…and that you are better than this.

Separately, when you look at successful tech companies, it seems that dividends are an approach used by cash rich operations to distribute excess earnings — in fact, the most successful, cash rich tech company in the world, Apple, hasn’t issued a dividend and they have more than $75B in cash! Again, while I think Airbnb will be a good company, this is nowhere near the truth now — you guys still need to scale and build this thing for the future.

I really think you are onto something but I would implore you to not take the easy way out. Treat your employees the same as you’d treat yourself. Do things that you will be proud of and can defend to anyone including your Board, employees, prospective hires etc. In such a competitive hiring market, you are competing with not just your obvious competitors, but also any successful tech company who is also looking for great talent. A principle that treats your employees as well as you’d treat yourself is a huge strategy for differentiation, retention and long term happiness of the exact types of people you will need to be successful. In contrast, if you are viewed as self-dealing and shady, it will only hurt your long term prospects…

In summary, I’m passing on this financing because I strongly disagree with what’s going on. I’m not sure who advocated this approach but I did mention this to Reid [Hoffman, another Airbnb investor via Greylock Partners] last night and he was of a similar mind to myself and surprised this was the approach being taken. If you want some good advice — I would ask that you consider pinging him about different ways to think about going about the liquidity portion.

If you change your mind on how to close this financing, let me know and I’d love to reconsider. Otherwise, good luck and lets keep in touch.

Take care,

Chamath

Chegg Buys Zinch in Another Move Toward a "Social Education Platform"

Kara Swisher — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:00:03 +0000

Chegg — best known for online rentals of textbooks to college students — said it has just bought Zinch, a start-up that links high school students and college recruiters.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The purchase of the San Francisco-based Zinch, said CEO Dan Rosensweig in an interview earlier this week, is part of a larger plan involving a series of acquisitions aimed at “how we move from two-day relevance to relevance all year around for students.”

By that, he meant the short time period when students either buy or rent their textbooks for the semester.

That’s certainly been a good business for Chegg, which is the leader in the online textbook-rental arena, including digital distribution.

But to further solidify its relationship with students and expand its market base to include high schoolers along with college consumers, Chegg has picked up a number of start-ups like Zinch, using its stock and also the whopping $220 million in funding from a number of venture firms, including Kleiner Perkins.

In late September, for example, the company bought CourseRank, which helps students share course schedules, take classes with friends, and read and write reviews on classes and professors, as well as find out how they grade.

Also scooped up by Chegg: Notehall, which is a student-to-student note-taking trading market; Cramster, a social homework helper; and Student of Fortune, a homework-answers site for student questions (which a recent filing by Chegg noted was bought for $5.9 million in stock).

Also being tested are such offerings as deals for students and other ways to leverage the original textbook relationship.

“This is the beginning of a connected student network that we hope to build into a giant platform,” said Rosensweig. “We want to have a student using us all the way through for a 10-year span, from high school on.”

In related news, Chegg said it has hired former Palm CFO Andrew Brown as its new CFO. Prior to Palm, he served as the CFO of Pillar Data Systems Inc., a storage start-up funded by Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

While a CFO hiring often indicates a soon-to-happen IPO, Rosensweig said that Chegg has more than enough capital, needs to focus on building up its offerings and is in no rush to go public.

We’ll see, but here’s the official press release from Chegg about Zinch:

Chegg Plans to Expand into $7 Billion College Recruiting Market and Increase Student Base By Over 3.5 Million

Chegg enters into a definitive agreement to acquire Zinch, the leading digital network that helps high school students research, connect with and pay for college

SANTA CLARA, Calif., September 15, 2011 – Chegg today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zinch. The acquisition is subject to standard closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this month. The acquisition will expand Chegg’s social education platform into high schools. Zinch, founded in 2007, connects prospective college and graduate students to scholarships, admissions officers and other students who have been through the same process.

The acquisition of Zinch, with over 3.5 million members, $1.9 billion in scholarships and over 5,000 school profiles, will significantly expand Chegg’s customer base and its social education platform. Colleges and students will be able to connect more effectively for less through Chegg, helping to streamline the college recruiting process globally. In addition, unlike any other company in the education space, Chegg will provide resources to students at every major milestone before, during and after their college career — including bridging the gap from high school to college.

“Our mission has always been to save students time, money and help them get smarter,” said Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Chegg. “With our acquisition of Zinch, we’re extending our mission to high school students through the $7 billion college recruiting market, while continuing to break down the barriers of a college education, from the high cost of tuition and textbooks to helping students make money, pick their courses and get the academic help they need.”

At Zinch, over 3.5 million students have built online profiles to showcase themselves as “more than test scores” to shine in the admissions process, and to be matched with schools and scholarships that might be a good fit. Colleges and universities worldwide, including more than half of the US News top ranked national universities, use Zinch for cost-effective student recruiting and outreach.

“Getting in and paying for school is daunting. Together, Chegg and Zinch can not only make higher education more affordable and accessible, it gives students an edge in finding the right school, getting admitted and reducing the cost. Students can put their best foot forward, be recognized for their achievements and be discovered by programs that fit their interests,” said Anne Dwane, CEO of Zinch.

The acquisition is subject to standard closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this month.
To learn more about Chegg’s social education platform and its network of services, go to www.chegg.com.

My Picks for Yahoo's Next CEO -- Maybe Snoop Dogg, Ya Digg?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:00:32 +0000

The firing of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz leaves open one of the bigger and more difficult jobs in tech — one that has taken its toll on many.

Nonetheless, rapper Snoop Dogg stepped right up to the Twitter plate yesterday, as soon as news broke of the ouster.

Tweeted Snoop Dogg:

“Im takn over as tha CEO of Yahoo. Need sum of tha Snoop Dogg content ya digg. Nuff Said.”

Not nearly nuff!

Thus, while the Yahoo board has yet to begin a search, I have already been hard at work on selecting the next CEO.

(Last time, the company took none of my suggestions, but after the most recent result, the directors might want to pay mind!)

Sources said Yahoo is looking for an experienced Internet type, either from inside or outside the company.

“Yahoo has put its flag in the ground as a digital media company with a technology base,” said one source. “The job requires big buckets of expertise and needs someone who will grow the company.”

Here I go with the outsiders:

Peter Chernin: The former News Corp. exec has been eyeing Yahoo for a possible takeover with other investors. Both Yahoo and I had picked him when co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down as CEO almost three years ago, and he had declined the offer. This time, perhaps a big chunk of the company and total autonomy would work, even if making a hit like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is more fun.

Sheryl Sandberg: The COO of Facebook is sort of the anti-Bartz, with a smooth and efficient persona, and she is an experienced tech exec. But the former Google exec is at a place of growth at the social networking site, and is unlikely to want to leave the big show, especially since a blockbuster IPO is looming.

Jason Kilar: The Hulu CEO is in the midst of the process of selling the premium video service, with Yahoo as a bidder. While he has some tense relations with the studios, Kilar is top notch in his dedication to consumer products, and has a lot of experience from his stint at Amazon, too.

Dan Rosensweig: Currently CEO of IPO-headed Chegg textbook rental service, the former Yahoo exec never got a chance to run the company as its top leader. Well-connected and still well-liked by the troops at Yahoo, it still would be pretty hard for him to go home again.

Dave Goldberg: Sure, he’s married to Sandberg (see above), but the savvy CEO of polling phenom SurveyMonkey is one of the sharpest thinkers in Silicon Valley. He sold his music company to Yahoo many years ago and has a strong background in consumer online services.

Jon Miller: The chief digital exec at News Corp. almost got the CEO spot years ago when Carl Icahn was agitating for change at Yahoo, before Time Warner blocked him via a noncompete. With the mishegas at the media giant, and dwindling digital businesses there, it might be a good escape hatch for Miller.

Susan Wojcicki: The accomplished Google exec, who runs all its ad products, has the kind of calm, cool, collected persona that Yahoo could use right about now. The search giant was founded in her garage, and she has been a key part of its success since then. Wojcicki is also an understated class act in hey-look-at-me Silicon Valley.

Todd Bradley: The Hewlett-Packard exec just got blindsided when the company kicked webOS to the curb. While he is in line to run a possible spinoff of the device business, Bradley might also want to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.

Mike McCue: The CEO of Flipboard would certainly energize Yahoo with his intense focus on quality and consumer delight. The news app start-up could be a good addition to Yahoo, and McCue, the former Netscape and Microsoft exec who is well-liked in the Internet scene, would be, too.

Joanne Bradford: The former Yahoo advertising head bolted Bartz’s regime early on to run revenue for Demand Media. Well-liked in the ad business, she also knows where all the bodies are buried at Yahoo. Since ads and media are key at the company, she’d make an interesting choice.

Yusuf Mehdi: The Microsoft online exec would also be a left-field candidate to run Yahoo, given his even-keeled personality and longtime experience in the sector. And, though pricey, Mehdi’s impact on Bing search has been important. But he’s also been involved in the software giant’s lackluster ad and search partnership and still has not turned around the situation at MSN.

Kevin Johnson: The former Microsoft exec and current CEO of Juniper was once slated to be the CEO of Yahoo, had Microsoft managed to win the company in its hostile takeover attempt. In fact, Johnson was the architect of the idea of Yahoo running the media and Microsoft running the tech.

Tim Armstrong: Well, he might have been a good candidate before the downward slide of AOL and a recent series of questionable judgments. If Armstrong can’t keep a loud tech blogger in line, it’s not clear he can wrangle the Yahoo beast.

And here’s the insider scoop:

Ross Levinsohn: The former News Corp. exec is running the Americas for Yahoo, which puts him in charge of the company’s key businesses. But he’s still struggling to turn the ad business around, and how well he does that could be a major determinant of his success. But fantastic hair!

Blake Irving: The former Microsoft exec has an amiable nature and is well-liked at Yahoo, but he still needs to show that the company can ship some innovative products, and quickly. Like Livestand, the news reader, which is muchly late.

David Kenny: The Yahoo board member is now president of Akamai, which might preclude him from the job. But the well-regarded exec — he’s a snazzy dresser, too — ran one of the Internet’s top digital ad agencies and now has tech chops from the content delivery network.

Memo to Yahoo board: I have a million more ideas, from former Viacom exec Tom Freston to former Yahoo board member Eric Hippeau. Or why not bring back a passel of former Yahoos to advise, such as former CEO Terry Semel or former president Sue Decker?

Or Oprah! I hear Winfrey will be in Silicon Valley later this week, and she has a lot more free time now.

Like Snoop Dogg, she would fo shizzle be the bomb to cover.

YouTube Movie Rentals in Canada, Too

Peter Kafka — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:37:17 +0000

Apparently it’s Web video international expansion day: A few hours after Hulu opened for business in Japan, YouTube has started offering rental movies in Canada (last year, Netflix headed north, too). Last spring, Google’s video site beefed up its barely-there U.S. rental service with more offerings from big studios, though a note from the site hints that it’s not a big deal quite yet: “P.S. (if you’re in the US and forgot we have movies to rent just go to www.youtube.com/movies).”

Move Over, Craigslist: Airbnb Launches Sublets for Longer-Term Rentals

Kara Swisher — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:00:06 +0000

Airbnb, the fast-growing online accommodations service, is expanding an offering to allow users to more easily book longer rentals of a month or more.

The San Francisco-based company said in a press release that it had seen a “marked increase in users seeking and booking long-term stays.” So now, after already booking 3,000 monthly rentals, Airbnb said it is improving the functionality and expanding the long-term market on the site.

“Searches for reservations of a month or longer will now display the total monthly price directly in search results,” said Airbnb.

The move will add more competitors to Airbnb, including huge sites such as Craigslist, which specialize in longer-term rentals. Until now, the well-funded site — which has just recovered from a recent controversy over a booking gone bad — has focused on shorter, hotel-like offerings, but at people’s homes.

Netflix Reportedly Eyeing Spain for Next Expansion

Peter Kafka — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:16:45 +0000

The next stop on the Netflix tour could be Spain. Trade journal Screen Daily (via Deadline) cites a single source — the head of a Spanish industry group — which says the video rental company “had contacted various Spanish producers ahead of its launch.” Netflix has already announced a major expansion into Latin America, but has said it is targeting another territory for international expansion in 2012; many observers have believed that the United Kingdom will be its next target.

More AsiaD Speakers: Sony, Google+, Microsoft, Hollywood, Huawei and Hot SV Start-Ups!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:33 +0000

After our grand tour of Asia last week — with stops in Korea and Japan — it seems like a perfect time to update the speaker list for our upcoming AsiaD conference in Hong Kong in October.

As Walt Mossberg and I said, we are trying to mix both U.S.-based speakers with a pan-Asian selection of speakers from across the region, and the new additions are just that.

For the international confab — this one will be held Oct. 19-21 — we’ve already announced a great lineup, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; and Asus Chairman Jonny Shih.

Now, to add to that terrific lineup:

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. In that role, the dynamic exec is at the nexus of the Japanese company’s efforts around tablets, smartphones, gaming and more. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance over the arena, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use? It’s an important question and Horowitz’s job No. 1.

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android far in the lead, Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. The former top News Corp. exec is now a movie producer — his first effort, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” is a big hit. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. The former CTO of Nortel, he’s heading up global development of Huawei’s cloud services for both businesses and consumers. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

Even in the midst of an economic downturn, there is no denying that it has been a golden time for Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including:

Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site that recently got a huge dose of funding and an equally large amount of controversy. How Airbnb can take the company to the next level, including across the world, while dealing with the kinds of challenges the small management team has to face, will be an interesting topic for discussion.

After stints as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America operations at Google and co-founder of the online personal finance company Yodlee, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is trying her hand at a small start-up again. She’ll talk about how the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online, plans to expand globally.

Finally, longtime tech exec David Goldberg is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company. With stints as founder of music site Launch Media, which was bought by Yahoo, and as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Benchmark Capital, he is the perfect person to explain what it’s like being an entrepreneur today in Silicon Valley.

We have even more speakers for AsiaD we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks, so get ready for what’s next.

Warner Bros. Pulls Back the Curtain on Flixster Collections, Its Ambitious Digital Video Bet

Peter Kafka — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:00:08 +0000

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes spent a lot of yesterday’s earnings call discussing the company’s future in digital video. Here’s one of his focal points: Flixster Collections, a social movie portal his Warner Bros. studio is rolling out this week.

I’ve given the service — which uses the Flixster brand that Warner Bros acquired earlier this year but which the studio built on its own over the last 12 months — a quick spin. Given that it just went into public beta yesterday, there’s no way to really assess how it’s going to work. Particularly since it’s supposed to be a social experience, and if no one you know is using it, it can’t be that social.

That said, you can at least get a sense of what Warner Bros. is trying to do here, and it’s a lot: They want Flixster to serve as your starting point whenever you’re thinking about renting, buying or watching a movie, or even when you’re thinking about thinking about it.

The free service ties into users’ Amazon, Apple iTunes, Hulu and Netflix accounts — as well as your hard drive, if you let it. And it lets you and your friends see what you’ve already watched, via “collections” that get displayed as movie posters (it doesn’t seem to have hang-ups about the “Bork law” that Netflix says prevents a Facebook integration the rental service wants to launch in the U.S.). It can also direct you back to those services when you want to watch something else.

And if you’d like to see a movie that’s actually in theaters, it can help there, too, via links to movie reviews, trailers and online ticketing services. You can also imagine how this will tie in to “Ultraviolet,” the cloud/locker system for video that Warner and a big coalition of movie studios and tech companies (except for Apple and Amazon) are pushing.

Sound like a lot of … stuff? It is! And the scope of the service’s offerings, plus the fact that it requires a standalone download (for Mac and PCs only for now, though mobile apps will be coming), may be a lot for casual video fans to take in. Especially since Facebook and Twitter already do a pretty good job of letting you and your friends gab about movies — without the privacy worries of letting a service look into your Netflix queue or root around in your hard drive.

And again, since the service is really supposed to shine once you can start sharing your likes and dislikes with friends, getting enough folks to sign on might be a challenge. Still, there’s nothing wrong with trying something big and ambitious.

Viral Video: Airbnb's Apartment Trashing Gets Taiwanesed (Of Course!)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:39:00 +0000

Airbnb recently raised $112 million in funding, but it’s not getting off the hook quite yet for a recent incident in which a property listed on its site got trashed by renters.

The incident was, no surprise, perfect for the folks over at Next Media Animation, the CGI news outfit from Taiwan.

The online rental start-up has gotten a lot of flack for the high-profile story of a woman in San Francisco whose apartment she rented to someone using Airbnb was badly vandalized.

Here is NMA’s version:

Don't Look Away From the Devastation of the Netflix Price Hike (Video)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:18:25 +0000

This is perhaps the most perfect commentary on the overwrought hue and cry over Netflix raising its prices recently on DVD-by-mail rentals.

While any hike on costs is annoying, I actually just had to talk one high salaried dude down from the ledge, after I pointed out the new monthly price for the online video service was less than he spent at the Starbucks that day on a needlessly elaborate latte.

Kudos to Funny or Die for uncovering “literally the worst thing that has ever happened to white people”:

Netflix Relief Fund with Jason Alexander from Jason Alexander

Netflix Adds Miramax Movies

Peter Kafka — Mon, 16 May 2011 09:00:04 +0000

Netflix has finalized a previously reported deal to bring “several hundred” old Miramax movies like “Pulp Fiction” to the rental service. The deal is non-exclusive and doesn’t cover new titles, since the holding company that owns Miramax hasn’t made any movies since it bought the library from Disney last year. The Wall Street Journal originally pegged the deal’s value at $100 million over five years.

Intel Capital, Condé Nast Owner Invest $30 Million in Kno; Intel to Consult on Student Tablet Hardware

Kara Swisher — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 02:17:57 +0000

According to sources close to the situation, Intel Capital and Advance Publications will lead a $30 million investment round in Kno, the high-profile student tablet start-up.

In addition to the funding from its venture capital arm, Intel itself will consult with Kno on its tablet design. Kno, which is getting out of the hardware business, will now focus on its software to manage the devices that are aimed at the college market.

Intel will not manufacture tablets either. Instead, its engineers will consult with Kno on power management, graphics, display, systems integration, which it does for a variety of its customers.

Along with Intel Capital and Advance, current investors will also participate in the round, said sources. But Intel Capital and Advance, the owner of the Condé Nast publishing empire, make up a big part of the funding.

Sources said Intel Capital’s investment is $20 million and Advance and others make up the rest of it.

BoomTown reported in February that the much-funded and high-profile Silicon Valley start-up–aimed at making tablet computers focused at students–was considering selling off the entire hardware part of the business.

Sources said Kno execs have recently decided that the quicker-than-expected uptake in tablet production by a multitude of powerful device makers had made its efforts to package a seamless offering less critical.

Instead, the company will now focus on its robust software and services to offer students on the Apple iPad, as well as upcoming tablets based on Google’s Android mobile operating system and others.

The move is a dramatic shift for the company, which had not shipped significant numbers of the touchscreen device as it has long touted.

In fact, Kno said in November that it would ship a $599 and $899 version of the tablet by the end of the year.

The lower price was for its single-screen device, while the clamshell double-screen version was more expensive.

And, although it has been reported no pre-orders were fulfilled, Kno did indeed ship several hundred of them, built by China’s Foxconn, before stopping doing so earlier this year.

Many have been dubious about Kno’s ambitious hardware efforts.

That’s because marketing a new and complex product like the Kno takes a lot of effort and cash, especially since it is an increasingly competitive market for mobile and portable computing products that includes Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Amazon, Dell and many others.

Before this $30 million, Kno has raised another $46 million in funding to add to an earlier $10 million round.

Sources in February said that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company considering going back out to raise even more.

Its current backers include prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with angel investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

Sources said the shift to deliver textbook and other student-related delivery system would be a better path for all that investment money, since Kno has established a wide range of partnerships with colleges and universities.

In addition, Kno co-founder Osman Rashid has a lot of experience in digital education market. He was also the co-founder of Chegg, the textbook rental business that is reportedly aiming for an IPO soon.

BusinessWeek was first to report that Intel Capital was making the investment in Kno, but the post did not mention Advance’s involvement or that Intel itself was licensing the hardware design business from Kno.

Flixster Update: Warner Bros. Very Interested, as Yahoo Drops Out of Bidding for Social Movie Site

Kara Swisher — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 09:47:03 +0000

Recently, BoomTown reported that Flixster–the popular social movie site whose brands include the Rotten Tomatoes premium reviews site–was in early acquisition discussions with several suitors.

Now, said sources, Warner Bros. appears to be the frontrunner in various talks to buy the entertainment site, while Internet giant Yahoo has dropped out due to price concerns.

The reason for interest from the Time Warner-owned studio, said sources, is due to a spate of recent digital efforts, including its expansion of a movie rental experiment on Facebook.

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote last night:

Facebook users watch “The Dark Knight” on the social network for $3. Now it has added five more movies, and is asking more money for three recent releases: It will cost you 40 Facebook Credits–the equivalent of $4–to rent “Inception,” “Life As We Know It” and “Yogi Bear” on the site. The first two “Harry Potter” movies, however, are at the original price.

Flixster has a strong presence on the Silicon Valley social networking giant, which could make it a good vehicle to attract people to the movie rental effort, as well as a popular mobile app.

Interestingly, Rotten Tomatoes was once owned outright by another traditional media giant: News Corp.

It is now only a minority shareholder, after trading Rotten Tomatoes for a 20 percent stake in the combined entity a little over a year ago.

News Corp., which owns 20th Century Fox Studios, is not bidding for Flixster, several sources said.

The price being discussed for the San Francisco-based start-up is between $60 million and $90 million.

Any acquisition negotiations could always fail, of course. In fact, Flixster held advanced discussions in late 2007 with IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Flixster trades all kinds of recommendations, ratings and news and even posts user-generated movie reviews on its Web site and via widgets on social networking sites, mostly on Facebook, and on mobile devices.

Co-founded in 2006 by CEO Joe Greenstein and CTO Saran Chari, Flixster has raised $7 million in venture funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pinnacle Ventures, as well as garnering angel investments, such as from Silicon Valley entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

The combination with Rotten Tomatoes and its more robust Web presence made a lot of sense. It features mostly premium content, including professional reviews, trailer videos and news.

The site is famous for its clever fresh and rotten tomato rating system for movies.

I have not received a response from emails sent to Flixster and Warner Bros. requesting comment.