Robert Pattison

Take That, Twitter! Facebook's Cox and FriendFeed's Taylor Talk About the Deal (But Not BoomTown's $50 Million Guess on the Price)

Kara Swisher in News on August 10, 2009 at 1:42 pm PT

After Facebook announced today that it had acquired online content-sharing site FriendFeed, BoomTown had a chit-chat with Facebook’s Director of Product, Chris Cox, and FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor. Although neither budged on telling me the purchase price, which various Silicon Valley venture capitalists I spoke to estimated to be about $50 million in cash and stock, the pair came together after several months of casual conversation, probably sometime after Twitter spurned Facebook’s $500 million offer last year. But, as in failed love affairs, moving on is the next best thing to do! No word on who got to break the news to No. 1 FriendFeed Fanboy Robert Scoble.

Oscar’s YouTube No-Show

Peter Kafka in Media on February 23, 2009 at 7:30 am PT

Looking for highlights of last night’s Oscars on YouTube? Good luck. That’s because ABC, which broadcast last night’s show, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which produces the event, don’t want clips of last night’s show on the world’s biggest video site. Instead, they’d prefer that you watch highlights on ABC’s Oscar.com site.