Voices
Ben Worthen, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on August 1, 2011 at 5:00 am PT
A chief executive who boosted his company’s stock price more than 50 percent in two years might be expected to trade up to a larger company as his next career move. Instead, Mark McLaughlin resigned last week from the top job at publicly traded Internet-infrastructure company VeriSign Inc. to join a Silicon Valley start-up.
Kara Swisher in Commerce on June 8, 2011 at 11:08 am PT
A Chicago boy is going home, as former Yahoo PR exec Bradford Williams takes over as VP of Global Communications at Groupon.
Williams, who worked at Yahoo during its ugly takeover fight with Microsoft, will need his even-keeled personality more than ever now, as the social buying phenom heads into its upcoming IPO.
Arik Hesseldahl in Enterprise on January 4, 2011 at 8:37 am PT
Dell starts the year off with another small acquisition, this one in the security field.
Ina Fried in Mobile on December 22, 2010 at 12:55 pm PT
News Corp. said Wednesday it had sold its Fox Mobile Group unit to Jesta Group, an investor firm. The mobile entertainment unit, which had been on the block for a while, includes Jamster, Mobizzo and mobile video service BitBop.
Kara Swisher in News on November 15, 2010 at 12:09 am PT
Amy Banse, currently the president of Comcast Interactive Media, is shifting into a job as head of a new Silicon Valley-based equity fund aimed at making digital investments for the television cable giant, as well as its new NBC Universal unit, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.
As part of the shift, sources said, Banse will be charged with combining two existing corporate investment funds: NBC U’s Peacock Equity and Comcast Interactive Capital.
Kara Swisher in News on November 4, 2010 at 2:45 pm PT
As part of BoomTown’s duty as internal jobs board for Yahoo, here’s another departure: CIO Mike Kirwan.
According to his Yahoo bio, he had “global responsibility for Yahoo!’s Corporate Systems group, which includes the IT Infrastructure, Corporate Applications, CRM and Premium Services Infrastructure teams. These teams ensure Yahoo!’s internal systems and billing/anti-fraud services are available 24/7.”
In other words, the guy who keeps the lights on!
Peter Kafka in Media on September 22, 2010 at 9:16 am PT
Chartbeat, the real-time Web-publishing analytics service adds a few more celebrity angels to its funding round. And General Manager Tony Haile explains what, exactly, Web publishers are supposed to do with real-time data, anyway.
Kara Swisher in News on May 27, 2010 at 10:17 am PT
Beliefnet, the spirituality site bought by News Corp. in late 2007, is being shopped around for sale, according to several sources.
Sources said that the media giant is also considering selling off Berlin-based Jamba/Jamster, a mobile content provider now called Fox Mobile Group. News Corp. paid $187.5 million to VeriSign for a 51 percent stake in Jamba in 2006 and bought the rest in 2008.
Kara Swisher in News on May 27, 2010 at 7:30 am PT
Last night, BoomTown headed to San Francisco’s wedding-cake City Hall to attend “The 25 Years of .Com Gala,” which is honoring a quarter-century that I have been jacked into the matrix.
Actually, it’s the 25th anniversary of the .com Internet domain name.
And perhaps the most enjoyable blast from the past was the appearance of jeans-clad former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who ably retains the title of Clown Prince of Silicon Valley.
Kara Swisher in News on March 18, 2010 at 12:38 am PT
Here is a video I did of former President Bill Clinton talking at an event related to the 25th anniversary of the first .com registration.
Clinton gave a speech first–which was, inexplicably, about health-care legislation and global warming.
But after Clintion was done, he sat down with VeriSign CEO Mark McLaughlin to talk about a range of Web-related topics, in a very amusing exchange.
