Personally, I would watch her read the phone book.

Enjoy:

It’s no secret in Silicon Valley that the HBO series “Game of Thrones” is a big favorite among the geek set — including Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — what with its dungeons-and-dragons tone and fur-and-leather outfits.

Which is why Time Warner’s premium cable network decided to do one of its three red-carpet premieres for the third season of the hit fantasy show with a splashy event on Wednesday in San Francisco that will be teeming with digerati.

“We all thought it would be fun for the creators and the cast to come here and feel the enormous enthusiasm this community and our partners have for ‘Thrones,’” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler.

Eight cast members of “Thrones” will be attending, as will Plepler, HBO COO Eric Kessler, creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and … drumroll … author George R.R. Martin.

The show is an adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” Martin’s series of popular fantasy novels, the first of which is titled “A Game of Thrones.”

No surprise — there is much swordplay in the epic. And that’s where AllThingsD comes in, since Walt Mossberg and I will be doing an onstage Q&A with Martin, Benioff and Weiss right after the first show of the new season is aired.

It’s on, or, as Martin wrote: “When you play the game of thrones, it’s either you win or you die.” Or enjoy a lovely party after.

We’ll have video of the interviews later, but here are two trailers for the third season, which begins airing March 31:

There was a lot of big tech news breaking this week, which meant a lot of questions to answer about what happened. That was dominated at the beginning of the week by the story we broke on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s hot-button ban on working from home for employees, a bid to turn the Silicon Valley Internet giant around quickly.

Also of interest, the launch of the new Pebble Smart Watch and Leap Motion, as well as the ouster of Groupon CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason.

Thus, here’s a rundown of some video appearances that staffers at AllThingsD.com made on a number of topics:

I appeared on “CBS This Morning” for a piece on the funny farewell of fired Groupon leader Mason.

And here’s Walt Mossberg on WSJ’s online video show on the new Pebble Smart Watch, which allows users to check phone notifications and control music without having to pull out an Apple iPhone or Google Android smartphone:

Meanwhile, ATD reviewer Lauren Goode appeared on “Tech News Today” to talk about the launch of the Leap Motion motion-control sensor and more:

Of course, it was the Yahoo work-from-home controversy that was of particular interest to the national media, where the topic blew up like a Roman candle.

Here I am on “CBS This Morning”:

And then on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN:

Finally, there was a very good roundtable on PBS MediaShift’s weekly podcast called “Mediatwits,” which covered the WFH kerfuffle and also the Twitter attack on the unfunny Oscars:

About two weeks ago, I heard about a restructuring under HBO SVP of consumer technology Otto Berkes, who also takes over the job of CTO in March from longtime vet Bob Zitter. The former Microsoft exec and Xbox co-founder was named the top tech figure at the premium cable network at the end of last year, after being the primary developer of its popular HBO Go and MAX Go streaming video offerings.

As part of the changes, the memo of the Time Warner unit said, product strategy and development exec Hans Deutmeyer is leaving HBO.

HBO has been very active in the digital space, increasingly offering its shows on a variety of mobile devices. Earlier this week, at our D: Dive Into Media conference, HBO said its subscribers will be able to stream programming from an Apple iPhone or iPad onto their television via AirPlay.

All the various details are below, in a memo HBO sent to its employees at the end of January:

HBO GO has established HBO as a company that understands the value of technology as a tool for delivering great content and experiences to consumers, and HBO.com has become a primary means of driving broad consumer engagement and awareness of our offerings. We are proud of these achievements and also recognize that we have more ahead of us to accomplish. Over the course of the next several years, our mission is to build best-in-class technology execution capabilities. That mission is central to ensuring that HBO has the tools available to support our business through the ongoing technology-based disruption of media and to support new areas of growth. Like other leading Internet-based video service providers, we will design, build, and deploy scalable products with global reach.

Achieving these goals will require focus and a disciplined approach. Roles and responsibilities must be clear and well-defined to ensure efficient distribution of work and smooth collaboration between groups and people. In order to provide the organizational framework needed to achieve our goals, I am restructuring Digital Products around four functional groups (listed alphabetically):

1. Infrastructure Operations & QA,
2. Program Management,
3. Software Engineering,
4. User Experience & Product Design.

Each of these groups will have responsibilities for both HBO GO and HBO.com as appropriate for the functional areas of each group. This will enable more efficient end-to-end integration and coordination of our design, platform architecture, and infrastructure development.

The attached “Digital Products Organizational Pillars” slide illustrates the roles and responsibilities of each of these four functional groups in greater detail. The leaders of these groups will report directly to me and will continue to do so after my transition to the CTO role.

Donna Stalworth will continue to head up the infrastructure operations and QA efforts in Digital Products. She will also add build and release management to her responsibilities.

Rebekah Calabrese will be stepping into the role of VP of Program Management for Digital Products. She and her team will be responsible for cross-group coordination, project management, budget management, technology vendor relationships, and overall status communication for Digital Products. Rebekah will also continue to provide contract support for Digital Products as well as the other technology groups. Her team will consist of the existing Digital Products program and project management staff and her current reports.

Drew Angeloff will lead all of Digital Products’ software engineering activities in New York as well as in Seattle. Centralizing consumer software engineering in one group under one leader will maximize coordination and the flow of information, and will help ensure a consistent and robust software architecture. This is especially important given geographic distance between the New York and Seattle teams. The engineering staff working on device application development and the GO service currently on Rob Caruso’s team will now report to Drew.

Rob Caruso and the workflow team led by Jason Kui will transition to Diane Tryneski’s organization; Rob will report to Diane. Rob’s new charter is to build software engineering capabilities to optimize digital asset creation, management, and security, and to create technologies that unlock the full potential of software in the digital content area. Rob and his team will collaborate closely with Digital Products to ensure that our digital content technologies and our consumer-facing products inform each other to enable unique and innovative content-driven user experiences. This new role and group will be critical to achieving end-to-end software technology excellence.

Dina Juliano will lead the User Experience & Product Design organization. Her team’s responsibilities will include HBO GO, HBO.com, and HBO On Demand. Dina’s team will conceive, design, and realize new digital experiences in partnership with key stakeholders across HBO. She and her team will incorporate consumer and market insights to create a coherent product vision and roadmap that engages our users. Dina’s team will consist of her existing team and the groups formerly in Hans Deutmeyer’s organization.

Hans has decided to leave HBO to pursue opportunities that better align with his future interests. Hans has been a part of the HBO GO story since its genesis and has played a key role in bringing it to the market successfully. Given the new organizational direction, he has decided that this is the right time for him to pursue other opportunities. I want to thank Hans for his contributions and wish him success in his new endeavors.

Please welcome Donna, Rebekah, Drew, Rob, and Dina in their new roles. The changes in their teams and roles are effective immediately.

I am very excited about the new organization and am confident that we have the right the structure, leadership, passion, talent, and creativity needed to deliver best-in-class digital products to our users.

Please let your manager or me know if you have any questions.

Thank you-

— Otto —

A while back, the incomparable actor Samuel L. Jackson did an epic reading of the book “Go the F**k to Sleep.” Now, the “Django Unchained” movie star is taking on an even bigger task, with a dramatic take on Taylor Swift’s I-lost-another-boyfriend song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” for a radio show.

Enjoy (it’s really enjoyable):

As I had previously reported, Yahoo’s key business unit — its advertising sales force — is now getting details of a reorganization by its new leader, COO Henrique De Castro.

In making the changes, just weeks ahead of Yahoo’s annual sales conference in Las Vegas on Jan. 21, De Castro is borrowing rather heavily from the set-up of the powerful ad business at Google, from whence he came.

By shifting the sales organization to a “category” model, sales reps at the Silicon Valley Internet giant will sell all of Yahoo’s ad products, as well as its search offerings, across channels in a vertical process organized around advertiser segments, such as automotive, entertainment and packaged goods.

Yahoo has long sold its advertising in a regional and tiered organization against premium and performance inventory in display and search, designed to avoid vertical conflict. Thus, the sales staff have built up advertiser relationships across many areas, which will not work in the new system.

Sources inside the company said regional leaders will now be shifted to running various verticals. There will be support specialists for those areas, too.

Mark Ellis, who was most recently VP of North American sales and global partnerships, will pay a key role in the new org, said sources. It is not clear, though, what role Peter Foster, who has headed audience advertising, will play. Another high-ranking exec, Keith Kaplan, has apparently been shifted to focus on agency relationships.

As I had previously written, there are many different ways to organize sales, but making such major change has potentially large ramifications on Yahoo’s financial performance, at least in the short term, since advertising makes up the bulk of its revenue.

According to numerous sources inside Yahoo, the changes are causing some measure of worry and confusion across the salesforce at the company, since it comes after a lot of wrenching changes over the last year.

That includes the departure of well-regarded Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett in mid-October, after De Castro got the COO job. He has left a large gap in sales leadership and in maintaining strong relationships with big advertisers and agencies. De Castro himself is not as well known in the ad marketplace, despite many years at Google in its sales organization.

He will likely have a more high-profile next week at the International CES, the huge annual consumer electronics show taking place in Las Vegas, along with new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who was a top product exec at Google. The pair is planning on meeting with major ad clients while there, which is their first significant outreach to marketers since taking their new roles at Yahoo.

De Castro had outlined the new ad reorg plan immediately after a multiday offsite with top sales leaders several weeks ago, and said the changes would come at the very beginning of 2013.

The ad staff at Yahoo begin to hear of the changes on Friday, so it looks like De Castro has met his deadline.

As usual, there are videos all over YouTube of J.R.’s greatest moments, and here is my favorite:

But, in part, it includes singing while sticking your head in a box with a skunk. Also Steve-O is the host.

Your move, Japan.

Perhaps it is entirely no surprise that HBO’s Lena Dunham — whose frankly sexual cable television series “Girls” is a huge hit — has caused a wave of controversy with a new campaign video urging the reelection of President Barack Obama.

It’s titled “Your First Time,” and Dunham — in her typical ironically clever hipster tone — coyly talks about voting as if you were losing your virginity.

Says Dunham in the video: “My first time voting was amazing. It was this line in the sand — before, I was a girl, now I was a woman. I went to the polling station, I pulled back the curtain, I voted for Barack Obama.”

To be fair, this is much less racy than any five minutes of “Girls,” but you can see the problem for some.

Thus, since it was released via the Obama campaign, the edgy video has been decried by conservatives in no uncertain terms, such as this posting on Twitter from John Nolte, editor at large at Breitbart News.

Here is his tweet, which was like many:

How could a president with two, young blossoming daughters release an ad as disgusting as this –> youtube.com/watch?v=o6G3nw…

— John Nolte(@NolteNC) October 25, 2012

Oddly enough, the conservatives’ most beloved President — Ronald Reagan — once made a pretty similar joke: “I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.”

Dunham, who is now tweeting from an international vacation, does not seem to care much what anyone thinks, as you can see from her reaction tweet below:

It tickles me to no end that while my twitter feed was blowing up with conservative hate I was literally hanging out in a pile of bisexuals.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 26, 2012

Here’s the Dunham video, so judge for yourself:

I am also adding Hollywood writer/director Joss Whedon’s pretty caustic spoof about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and zombies, which will surely bring a second round of criticism:

It’s pretty epic.

Enjoy:

Here are two clips from the first episode that Bravo has put up about its new and controversial-before-it’s-aired reality television show, “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley.”

The cable program chronicles the ups and downs of a group of young entrepreneurs in tech, and some have decried it from simply seeing the promo sizzle reel that featured lots of partying and pool-hanging.

No frolicking here in a short clip, as super angel investor Dave McClure looks over a pitch deck of brother-and-sister team Ben and Hermione Way for their health-and-lifestyle start-up, apparently called Ignite.

With that reality show rut-roh music playing in the background, Ben inexplicably says he thinks McClure was “slightly disrespectful, him going through the whole thing and making his own judgments.”

Which is, of course, an investor’s job, going all Judge Judy on entrepreneurs. And, in my experience, McClure was awfully polite about grabbing the deck.

And alls I can say is that Ben is very lucky he managed to avoid bringing his pitch deck near me.

There’s also one that seems a lot more reality-show, with Hermione arguing over a botched event with another person on the show, Sarah Austin. There is mention of “making out” with Ben and SXSW.

In any case, the show looks interesting enough to take a gander when it airs on Monday, November 5 at 10 pm.

Here are the video clips:

As was announced earlier this week, Qualcomm CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs has nabbed the keynote spot at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

He’ll kick off the massive tech event, taking over the pre-show speech slot that has been the property of Microsoft since the beginning of geek time.

Until this coming year, that is. The selection of the head of the wireless chip giant says a lot about just how much mobile has taken over the scene at CES, and the title of Jacob’s speech expresses just that: “Born Mobile.”

Said Qualcomm about the keynote: “Thanks to anywhere, anytime communication, mobile technology brings people together and is enabling a powerfully connected future, a future that is now. Mobile has become an integral part of consumers daily lives, and it will continue to transform the way individuals and communities interact with one another and the world around them.”

Ya think?

In any case, in releasing the news, the company also added a painfully cute video, titled “Baby’s First Text,” of a little girl using a wide range of mobile devices, (and, no, as home video as it looks, I doubt she is really doing those things).

Enjoy:

Bravo has finally given a Nov. 5 air date for its much-discussed — in tech circles, at least — television reality show, which is now titled “Silicon Valley Start-Ups.”

Luckily, last month, I got a visit to the house where the show is being filmed — which is actually located in my San Francisco neighborhood — before security could kick me out.

Along with my AllThingsD sidekicks Liz Gannes and Mike Isaac (here on the red carpet at the house), I made my own reality video — secretly hoping for one of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” to show.

No dice on Teresa Giudice, but cast member Marcus Lovingood — yes, that’s his name — was pretty fantastic.

“Silicon Valley Start-Ups” follows a group of young entrepreneurs who are trying to take their ideas to the big time. A Bravo press release noted that the docu-series “explores the intertwining lives of a group of young professionals on the path to becoming Silicon Valley’s next great success stories.”

The show is executive-produced by former Facebook marketing exec Randi Zuckerberg, and has attracted some criticism before it has even been seen.

Whatev — Silicon Valley needs to chillax and enjoy it, no matter how it depicts the place.

Personally, I am really looking forward to another Bravo show that looks “inside the office for ICanHasCheezburger.com, one of the largest humor publishers on the Internet, with ‘LOLwork’ … The 30-minute doc-com goes inside the world of Ben Huh and his eccentric staff as they attempt to make the world laugh five minutes a day by putting nimble yet grammatically incorrect captions on cute photos of domesticated pets and animals.”

I love those crazy cats.

Here is my video, as well as a promo for the upcoming Bravo shows, including “Silicon Valley Start-Ups.”

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120926/atd-pays-a-visit-to-bravos-silicon-valley-start-ups-reality-show-house-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120713/viral-video-gavin-and-i-talk-big-minds-on-small-ideas-in-tech/ http://allthingsd.com/20120713/viral-video-gavin-and-i-talk-big-minds-on-small-ideas-in-tech/#comments Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:34:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=230040

Here’s a little taste of an interview I did on hairtastic California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom’s talk show on Current TV; it will be appearing tonight.

In it, I bellyache that while there are a lot of interesting innovations out there in Silicon Valley — I do love me some Instagram as a product — most of them are not at all profound.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120713/viral-video-gavin-and-i-talk-big-minds-on-small-ideas-in-tech/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120706/yahoo-and-facebook-patent-war-officially-over-the-press-release/ http://allthingsd.com/20120706/yahoo-and-facebook-patent-war-officially-over-the-press-release/#comments Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:10:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=227927

As I reported earlier today, Yahoo and Facebook confirmed in a press release after the markets closed that they had settled their cantankerous patent lawsuit. As part of the deal, the pair have also agreed to dramatically expand their content distribution and data partnership, as well as add a joint advertising effort to it.

The companies are calling it a “strategic alliance.”

Peace now reigns in Silicon Valley between the Internet portal and the social networking giant, which had — previous to this ugly legal kerfuffle — been longtime partners.

We can now go back to our regularly scheduled fighting between Facebook and Google, Google and Apple, Apple and Amazon, Amazon and … oh, you get my point here.

While Yahoo and Facebook declined to provide a whole lot of details about the agreement, sources said it encompasses cross-licensing of some key patents and the possibility that Facebook could buy or license more such intellectual property from Yahoo in the future.

In addition, as I previously reported, no actual cash payment will change hands under terms of the deal over the patents, in contrast to the $550 million that Facebook paid Microsoft recently in another transaction related to AOL patents.

But Facebook and Yahoo hope there will be significant upside in several possible advertising opportunities and other business deals between the pair that could yield large revenues if executed well.

Discussions to settle the lawsuits — negotiated by Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, among others — began almost as soon as Yahoo’s board ousted former CEO Scott Thompson, which I reported on in early June.

Thompson reportedly promised Yahoo directors a big financial payoff of many billions of dollars from the patent lawsuits against Facebook.

Instead, the pair decided to settle the case, which had been a drag on Yahoo’s tech reputation and was also not helping Facebook much, either.

Plus, continuing it would have been pricey and, probably, pointless in the end.

Here’s the press release:

Yahoo! and Facebook Launch Strategic Alliance and Resolve Patent Dispute

SUNNYVALE AND MENLO PARK, CALIF. –JULY 6, 2012 – Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) today announced that they have entered into definitive agreements that launch a new advertising partnership, extend and expand distribution arrangements, and settle all pending patent claims between the companies.

Under the agreements, which include a patent portfolio cross-license, the parties will work together to bring consumers and advertisers premium media experiences promoted and distributed across both Yahoo! and Facebook. Yahoo! and Facebook will also work together to bring Yahoo!’s large media event coverage to Facebook users by collaborating on social integrations on the Yahoo! site.

“We are excited to develop a deeper partnership with Facebook, and I’m grateful to Sheryl and her team for working hard together with our team to develop this dynamic agreement. We are looking forward to building on the success we have already seen to provide innovative new products and experiences for both consumers and sponsors,” said Ross Levinsohn, interim CEO of Yahoo!. “Combining the premium content and reach of Yahoo! as the world’s leading digital media company with Facebook provides branded advertisers with unmatched opportunity.”

“I’m pleased that we were able to resolve this in a positive manner and look forward to partnering closely with Ross and the leadership at Yahoo!,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. “Yahoo!’s new leaders are driven by a renewed focus on innovation and providing great products to users. Together, we can provide users with engaging social experiences while creating value for marketers.”

Since the launch of the original multi-year partnership between Yahoo! and Facebook that allows users to discover and connect news and information on Yahoo! sites and share them with their Facebook friends, Yahoo! has integrated the feature called “Social Bar” on more than 100 of its properties globally, and more than 90 million users have implemented it. As a result,Yahoo! has the largest active user base among all news sites that have integrated with Facebook’s Open Graph platform, making Social Bar the world’s leading social news application.

Going forward, Yahoo! and Facebook have agreed to work more closely and collaborate together on multiple tent-pole and anchor events annually over the next several years to provide unparalleled experiences for consumers and world-class sponsorship opportunities for advertisers.

And, if you are a glutton for patent punishment, here I am blabbing away about the deal on the WSJ.com’s Digits show earlier today:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120706/yahoo-and-facebook-patent-war-officially-over-the-press-release/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120704/hey-internet-girl-aaron-sorkins-tv-news-2-0-show-gets-a-second-season-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120704/hey-internet-girl-aaron-sorkins-tv-news-2-0-show-gets-a-second-season-video/#comments Wed, 04 Jul 2012 18:05:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=227426

Hollywood super-writer Aaron Sorkin has already gotten his new show on the struggles of creating a new television news show in the Internet age renewed for another season.

The successful Sorkin made light of the struggles to attract a big audience for the HBO program in a recent onstage interview at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference.

Not so hard, as it turns out for the voluble scribe, whose “The Newsroom” got 2.1 million viewers in its opening two weeks ago, which is just behind HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” and “Game of Thrones.”

Sorkin did manage to attract some controversy recently when he said in a tense interview with Sarah Nicole Pickett of Canada’s Globe and Mail:

“Listen here, Internet girl. It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.”

The fab line did result in an even funnier Tumblr on the kerfuffle.

Here’s the full video of Sorkin’s interview with Walt Mossberg at D10, as well as another very funny recent viral video, titled “Sorkinisms,” in which the writer uses his best lines over and over, compiled from a variety of his shows.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120704/hey-internet-girl-aaron-sorkins-tv-news-2-0-show-gets-a-second-season-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120615/aaron-sorkin-on-jobs-movie-zuckerberg-as-anti-hero-and-more-the-full-d10-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120615/aaron-sorkin-on-jobs-movie-zuckerberg-as-anti-hero-and-more-the-full-d10-interview-video/#comments Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:43:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=220713

One of the most engaging interviews at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference was with well-known Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

Best known for television hits such as “The West Wing” and movies like “A Few Good Men” — and, of course, the controversial film about Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg called “The Social Network” — he is now about to launch a new HBO show called “The Newsroom.”

But most intriguing to the crowd gathered was his work on an upcoming project: To turn Walter Isaacson’s book about Apple’s Steve Jobs into a movie.

Sorkin had a lot to say about that, and also about the way his digitally distracted audience watches all his work, in this talk with Walt Mossberg.

Here it is:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120615/aaron-sorkin-on-jobs-movie-zuckerberg-as-anti-hero-and-more-the-full-d10-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120516/exclusive-japans-rakuten-wins-the-heart-of-pinterest-founder-in-funding-race/ http://allthingsd.com/20120516/exclusive-japans-rakuten-wins-the-heart-of-pinterest-founder-in-funding-race/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 03:18:12 +0000 Liz Gannes and Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=209223 Rakuten, which runs the largest e-commerce site in Japan, is expected to be the lead investor in the much-contested next round of funding for Silicon Valley’s hottest start-up, Pinterest.

The funding is expected to be announced tomorrow morning.

(Update: Rakuten confirmed the deal in a press release, which is below.)

The Tokyo-based Internet giant will invest upwards of $50 million in a $100 million round that values the social bookmarking phenom at $1.5 billion.

There might be other individual investors in the new round, but those were still to be determined tonight by Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann.

(Correction: We previously reported it was a $120 million round, but sources said it is $100 million. It’s possible more could still be added, as we heard conflicting accounts.)

While the latest round of funding for Pinterest has been the most hotly sought of late in tech circles, one source said Silbermann was looking for a global strategic investor and had talked to several large Asian companies.

Said one source on why he settled on Rakuten: “He just really liked them.”

The current investors in Pinterest, which is a social collection site where users can “pin” their interests via a handsome graphical interface, include Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital, as well as several well-known angel investors. That group had valued the company at $200 million last October, and are joining the new round pro rata.

Founded in 2008, Pinterest had previously raised a little under $40 million in funding.

It’s interesting that the latest round was not led by an institutional investor, since everyone and their mother wanted in on the deal. Sources said no new venture capital firms were included in the round and that is the way Pinterest’s quirky leadership wanted it.

Sources said Silbermann has been concerned with Pinterest’s global growth as well as fending off international clones, and was looking for a partner with which the start-up could work closely.

“Ben did not want any more VCs,” said one source. “He wanted an investor that moved the company forward.”

Rakuten will presumably help advise Pinterest on turning their pretty pictures into purchases, as commerce is already starting to emerge naturally on the site.

It’s a good choice of partners in that regard. Rakuten is one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, with a flagship site Rakuten Ichiba. It was founded in 1997 and had revenues of $4.7 billion in 2011. Its CEO is Hiroshi Mikitani, whose nickname is Mickey.

One the richest men in Japan, Mikitani is one of the best known entrepreneurs there; he has been described as “Richard Branson meets Jeff Bezos.”

Earlier today, The Next Web reported that the funding was coming this week and said the company was looking at international partners, but it did not name Rakuten.

Rakuten Leads Investment In Pinterest

Global social commerce pioneer takes stake in online sharing service

TOKYO, May 17, 2012 – Rakuten, one of the world’s largest online marketplaces, today announced that it is leading a $100M investment in Pinterest, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, as well as a number of angel investors.

The funding will allow Pinterest to continue improving its service and expanding its community globally. The investment also marks the start of a strategic partnership between Rakuten and Pinterest to help expand in Japan and into Rakuten’s 17 other global markets.

Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten said: “While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining. We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world.”

Ben Silbermann, co-founder and CEO of Pinterest, said: “Our goal is to help people discover things they love, by connecting people through their shared interests. Bringing Rakuten on board gives us an amazing opportunity to move a step closer to this goal.”

Rakuten ranks among the top 10 internet companies in the world. Among its numerous online properties, its flagship B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) model e-commerce site Rakuten Ichiba is the largest e-commerce site in Japan and among the world’s largest by sales. Its global presence has been reinforced through the acquisitions of leading online marketplaces Buy.com (US), Priceminister (France), Ikeda (now Rakuten Brasil), Tradoria (now Rakuten Deutschland) and Play.com (UK), and investments in Ozon.ru and AHA Life. Whereas other marketplaces may compete directly with sellers, Rakuten’s model seeks to empower merchants to deliver Omotenashi, a Japanese high service mindset, which helps sellers create lasting relationships with customers.

And here’s a video of Kara pontificating away on the subject for WSJ.com’s “Digits” show:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120516/exclusive-japans-rakuten-wins-the-heart-of-pinterest-founder-in-funding-race/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120510/not-so-scott-free-yahoos-other-big-shareholder-cap-re-leaning-toward-supporting-loeb-over-thompson-resumess/ http://allthingsd.com/20120510/not-so-scott-free-yahoos-other-big-shareholder-cap-re-leaning-toward-supporting-loeb-over-thompson-resumess/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 22:56:57 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=206788

One of Yahoo’s biggest long-term investors, Capital Research and Management, which owns more than 10 percent of the company in two different funds, is leaning toward voting for the slate proposed by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, in the wake of the controversy around the botched bio of its new CEO Scott Thompson.

“Having a CEO with that hanging over his head is really a problem going forward,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “It’s hard to pretend this is not a problem.”

While sources said Yahoo’s longtime institutional investor — which currently holds large stakes via its Capital Research Global Investors and Capital World Investors funds — is not likely to go public with their voting choice until close to the annual meeting, which will take place sometime this summer.

But its fund managers have told key Yahoo board members of their grave concerns over the situation.

Ironically, in the last proxy fight showdown with Carl Icahn, Capital removed its support of Yahoo’s slate too and was an important influence to many major changes at the company.

Such a move is problematic for Thompson, since the rejection of another big shareholder at its upcoming annual meeting will keep the unusual issue and right in the middle of a noisy proxy fight.

A special committee of the Yahoo board is investigating the situation — in which a fake computer science degree somehow got on the resume of the former president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit and later into official Yahoo regulatory filings.

The problem was uncovered last week — unfortunately for the Silicon Valley Internet giant — by Loeb, who has been banging away on Yahoo since.

A trio of independent Yahoo directors is looking into the mess, with a focus on how that happened, whether anyone at Yahoo knew of the inaccurate bio and how it got there in the first place.

Also of great concern, is how Thompson could have not seen the error in the many years it was on the Web site of eBay and also how he approved a bio that had the inaccuracy in it when he was hired by Yahoo in January.

Worse still, in a 2009 interview, he clearly did not say he did not have such a degree in with a radio show host when directly asked about it.

“It’s a little hard believe an executive of this level would have missed such a thing, when he had so many opportunities to fix it,” said one source. “And, if he did overlook it that many times, that’s a problem too.”

In fact, according to a report earlier today by Business Insider that I also confirmed, Thompson told employees today in two separate meetings that he did miss the error since it was placed there — inexplicably — in 2004. In the meeting, he blamed a low-level headhunting staffer who added it incorrectly, an error that then proliferated.

Thompson also said he did not provide a resume to the company in his hiring process — say whaaaat, but true — although this still does not absolve him from the original error.

As to the interview: Thompson said he did not want to be rude and correct the host of TechNation, Moira Gunn, after she clearly asserted to him he had a computer science degree as part of a question on his qualifications. Others present at the meetings said he said he did not hear the question.

But, in an video interview with me yesterday, though, Gunn said she and Thompson discussed a computer science education in a way that left the clear impression that he had obtained one.

While Thompson’s excuse may beggar the imagination of some, it’s his story and he’s sticking to it. In all seriousness, his complete lack of willingness to take responsibility for the error — even if it was not his fault — itself is a little startling.

Because what’s not clear is how the bio was miraculously correct in eBay’s official filings and also if it is plausible that he never saw the mistake.

Numerous communications execs at Internet companies told me that it was unusual for a high-level exec not to pay close attention to information that went out about them, especially in legal filings. In addition, just as many execs are made to check and swear on their bios that go into such documents.

In fact, it was Thompson’s job to make sure the things written about him were correct at all times. As CEO, as a major Silicon Valley player pointed out, he is required by federal law to personally certify Yahoo’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Violations of these rules carry financial and also potential criminal penalties.

Sources said the board is worried about that credibility issue too and it puts Thompson in an ever-dicier position. Noticeably, the board has yet to make a public statement of support for him on the issue.

Also a major worry for the directors is the mostly negative response to the situation from Yahoo employees, who are deeply upset that Thompson’s error was not caught and that he might not be treated in the same way as anyone else who turned in a false resume, whether it was by accident or not.

A Yahoo spokeswoman told me last week that there was also support internally for Thompson, but in many dozens of interviews I have done with Yahoo employees and a continued monitoring of internal bulletin board, the tone is not in his favor by any means.

Like I said, it’s a dicey time to be Scott Thompson right now.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120510/not-so-scott-free-yahoos-other-big-shareholder-cap-re-leaning-toward-supporting-loeb-over-thompson-resumess/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120503/in-2009-interview-yahoo-ceo-does-not-deny-he-has-a-cs-degree-and-calls-himself-an-engineer/ http://allthingsd.com/20120503/in-2009-interview-yahoo-ceo-does-not-deny-he-has-a-cs-degree-and-calls-himself-an-engineer/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 06:22:41 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=203636

On March 25, 2009, Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson — when he was then president of PayPal — appeared on the TechNation radio show to talk about the revival of the eBay payments unit.

At the end of the largely charming interview, Moira Gunn asked him a direct question about his college degrees, specifically noting they were in accounting and computer science.

“Your bachelor’s degree is in accounting and computer science. Now, from both of those, I mean that’s, that’s pretty obvious that’s PayPal,” said Gunn. “What are the most important things you learned?”

“Yeah,” begins Thompson, failing to correct her at all on the fact that he does not actually have a computer science degree — only one in accounting.

He then went even further, touting his early tech training at Stonehill College, near Boston, which did not offer a computer science degree at the time he went there, from 1975 to 1979.

“And that’s really the background that I have, and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part of being an engineer is you think that way,” said Thompson.

In the most generous interpretation, it’s not quite clear whether Thompson was saying “Yeah” to her statement of his academic credentials, or if he was not actually listening.

But it’s a careless oversight on his part not to have corrected her about the degrees, which could also be said about a computer science degree being present on his bio for more than a half-dozen years at eBay and later at Yahoo without some notice by him.

Because while Thompson has had a long career as a tech exec, as well as a stint as a CIO, academically speaking, a computer science degree did not happen in his college days nor did he graduate as an engineer.

That became apparent earlier today, when Yahoo confirmed that it included inaccurate information about Thompson’s academic background on its Web site and in its regulatory filings.

The admission came after activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point correctly asserted that Thompson’s resume was overstated related to his education.

Yahoo called the inclusion of the computer science degree on his bio an “inadvertent error,” but gave no other explanation as yet. Tonight, the Yahoo board said it was reviewing the matter and would then make appropriate disclosures afterward.

While it is entirely possible that Thompson did not correctly grok what Gunn was saying, it seems pretty clear that he implied his college background was in tech and he was an engineer.

It is true that Thompson did take some computer science classes at Stonehill. And it is entirely possible that he thinks of himself as an engineer by work training and not by college degree.

I am awaiting comment from Yahoo PR, which has its hands full today (welcome to the circus, Amanda!).

Until then, here is the actual audio of that part of the interview and the pertinent part of the transcript, which began at the 26:33 time on the audio, to judge for yourself:

Gunn: Your bachelor’s degree is in accounting and computer science. Now, from both of those, I mean that’s, that’s pretty obvious that’s Paypal. What are the most important things you learned?

Thompson: Yeah. You know, I think and I, I mention this to young kids when I’m on campus, and my son who I was just talking about at Santa Clara, what I’m happiest about in my background is if you work in technology you’re trained to solve problems.

And that’s really it, you’re trained to pull apart very complex things and think about okay, how can I do this or how can I do that or how can I make it better?

And that’s really the background that I have and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part of being an engineer is you think that way.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120503/in-2009-interview-yahoo-ceo-does-not-deny-he-has-a-cs-degree-and-calls-himself-an-engineer/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120501/viral-video-the-newsroom-is-reborn/ http://allthingsd.com/20120501/viral-video-the-newsroom-is-reborn/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 07:01:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=201730

Here’s a new trailer for HBO’s upcoming series “The Newsroom,” by famed Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

The series — by the man behind the hit television show “The West Wing” and the Facebook movie “The Social Network” — is set at a cable news channel under siege in the new-media age.

In other words, lots of hand-wringing over blogs and tweeting, along with the drama.

It looks tasty, and Walt Mossberg and I will be asking Sorkin about it at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference at the end of this month, where he will be appearing as a speaker.

Enjoy (I also included another trailer, that starts off the “Newsroom” series):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120501/viral-video-the-newsroom-is-reborn/feed/ 0