AllThingsD » Verisign

Small Firms, Big Options

Ben Worthen — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:00:14 +0000

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.

Mr. McLaughlin has been tapped as CEO of Palo Alto Networks Inc., a closely held security-technology company widely viewed as a candidate for an initial public offering.

“I’ve had the chance to be the CEO of a great public company,” said the 45-year-old executive, whose new job is set to be announced Monday. “Something I haven’t done is to take a great private company public.”

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Exclusive: Former Yahoo Brad Williams Takes Over as PR Head Honcho at Groupon

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:08:37 +0000

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.

Groupon has gotten a lot of flack for the unusual accounting in its recent S-1 public offering filing, as well as for the huge amount of money that some of its founders have taken out of the company.

And its CEO Andrew Mason is also, well, somewhat of a death-staring character.

Williams has longtime tech experience, having also worked at VeriSign, eBay and Gateway.

He is one of many former Silicon Valley hires that Groupon has made of late, including several from Yahoo and also Google.

(By the way, that’s me calling on the other line, Brad, so get ready to pick up a lot.)

Dell Acquires SecureWorks, Embraces Security-as-Service

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:37:25 +0000

Dell is starting the year off with another acquisition. This morning it announced plans to acquire SecureWorks, an 11-year old Atlanta-based security outfit that specializes in managed security services, security and risk consulting, and threat intelligence.

SecureWorks, which is privately held, says it has about 2,900 customers in 70 countries, and that its customers include 15 percent of the Fortune 500, as well as 1,500 banks and credit unions, though typical of a security company, it doesn’t name any of them. In 2009 it acquired the managed security business of VeriSign. It has about 700 employees and projected revenue of about $120 million.

It’s also known for its top-flight malware research team. Last year it was involved in the research and response around a banking Trojan called Origami, which originated in Russia and was designed to steal sign-in credentials.

Dell says the deal will expand its IT-as-service offerings. It also looks to be, at least in part, a reaction to Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of security firm ArcSight in October. No financial terms are being disclosed, but Dell had been involved in a reselling partnership with SecureWorks since July of last year. It’s also Dell’s second acquisition in as many months. On Dec. 13 it spent $820 million for the health IT company Compellent.

News Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group to Investment Firm

Ina Fried — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 20:55:46 +0000

News Corp. said on Wednesday that it had sold its Fox Mobile Group unit to Jesta Group, an investor firm. The deal closed today, the parties said, but terms were not disclosed.

The mobile entertainment unit, which includes Jamster, Mobizzo and mobile video service BitBop, will be renamed and become a part of Jesta Mobile Holdings.

“We believe that mobile entertainment is an important emerging market and we are excited about this acquisition and the opportunities for growth it presents,” said Jesta President Jason Aintabi in a statement. “FMG’s unique 10-year history in mobile entertainment services; its stature as a trusted partner with carriers and device manufacturers; and its many successful consumer brands give it a clear advantage in this rapidly developing sector.”

BoomTown’s Kara Swisher reported earlier this year that News Corp. had been looking for a buyer for the unit. Fox Mobile Group, which also saw job cuts earlier this year, is made up largely of properties acquired from VeriSign for more than $300 million. (It was a two-stage deal, with News Corp. acquiring a stake in 2006 and buying the remaining part back in 2008.) The company had also launched the BitBop mobile video service earlier this year.

The deal is the latest in a series of online divestitures for News Corp., which has sold a number of properties, including movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.

(Disclosure: All Things Digital is owned by News Corp.)

Exclusive: Comcast's Top Digital Exec Amy Banse to Open New Silicon Valley Equity Fund for Cable Giant and NBC

Kara Swisher — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:09:04 +0000

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.

While most of the attention related to the soon-to-be-completed merger of Comcast with NBC U has been on the musical chairs of its high-profile news and entertainment divisions, this move is potentially significant for the companies by putting a stake in the ground–and a presence–for it on the West Coast.

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.

The New York-based Peacock Equity is a $250 million fund that was founded as a joint venture in 2007 by GE Capital and NBC U.

Its investments have ranged from $3 million to $25 million each, including a lot of online advertising start-ups such as Adify and the Rubicon Project.

Comcast Interactive Capital–founded in 1999 and based in Philadelphia, where Comcast’s HQ is–has $500 million under management.

It has focused on broadband, interactive and enterprise businesses.

According to its Web site, “early successful investments” include About.com, CitySearch, Half.com, TiVo, and VeriSign.”

Current investments include SB Nation, BlackArrow and JiWire.

It is not clear how much more money the new still-unnamed equity fund will raise, but it will be aimed at early-stage companies, said sources.

The combined fund will debut by the end of the year or early next year.

Banse’s shift to become a VC comes after many years of leading Comcast’s online strategy, which has included the acquisition of the Fandango movie ticketing site and Daily Candy, an email newsletter.

She has also been in charge of the development and management of Comcast’s many Web sites, including Comcast.net, Xfinity.com and Fancast.

MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka recently reported that the high-profile Banse was moving out of her post, which was being split up into two jobs.

Many thought she would likely depart the company, but it appears she will stay for a while longer at least.

As it happens, Banse will be in San Francisco this week for the Web 2.0 conference, so please be sure to give her a warm welcome and explain “Fear the Beard” to a likely Phillies fan-atic.

And just to get acquainted in advance, here is her bio from the Comcast Web site:

Amy Banse serves as President of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM), a division of Comcast Corporation that is responsible for developing and operating online tools and businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication.

Since founding CIM in December of 2005, Ms. Banse has led Comcast’s online strategy, overseeing the acquisition of Fandango (the movie ticketing site), Daily Candy (the popular email newsletter), Plaxo (the smart contacts site), and thePlatform (the industry-leading provider of digital media publishing solutions) as well as the in-house development and management of, Comcast.net and xFinity.com(Comcast’s portals), Fancast, (a leading tv entertainment site), xFinitytv (Comcast ‘s online video portal), and Swirl (Daily Candy’s sample sales site). In this role, she has grown CIM into an 800 person team with significant digital capabilities and has played a key part in the industry’s development of its TV Everywhere strategy and in Comcast’s execution of that strategy, Fancast/xFinitytv.

Ms. Banse joined Comcast in 1991 as an in-house attorney responsible for programming acquisition. Most recently she served as Executive Vice President of Content Development where she oversaw the development of Comcast’s cable network portfolio including the company’s investments in E! Entertainment Television, The Golf Channel, and VERSUS and the development and launch of G4, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One and Comcast’s sports networks.

Ms. Banse has represented CIM and Comcast as a featured speaker in venues around the country discussing the rapid evolution of content consumption in a digital world and the opportunities and challenges facing the cable and entertainment industries. She has been named among the “Most Powerful Women in Cable” and the “Top Programmers to Watch” by CableWorld magazine. She has also been named among the Cable 100 by Multichannel News and the Digital Power list, by The Hollywood Reporter. She was honored as a “Wonder Woman” by Multichannel News and Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) in 2004, received WICT’s Geraldine B. Laybourne Fearless Award in 2009 and ProMax’s Brand Builder Award in 2010 Ms. Banse sits on the Board of The Morris Arboretum and Springside School for Girls. In 2007 she received “The Distinguished Alumni Award” from Springside School, and in 2006 she was honored by Girls, Inc. as an outstanding role model for girls during their annual Celebration Luncheon. Ms. Banse is also a member of The Forum of Executive Women, the Philadelphia region’s premier women’s organization.

Ms. Banse received a BA from Harvard University and a JD from Temple University Law School. She and her husband and their four children live in Philadelphia.

Exclusive: Yahoo CIO Kirwan Bids Adieu

Kara Swisher — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:45:32 +0000

As part of BoomTown’s duty as internal jobs board for Yahoo, here’s another departure: CIO Michael Kirwan (pictured here).

A terse email went out yesterday about Kirwan’s leaving.

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 at the Silicon Valley icon!

Kirwan reported to David Dibble, EVP of Service Engineering & Operations at Yahoo.

Kirwan previously worked at VeriSign, as well as at Bank of America, Bank of California and Union Bank of California.

Real-Time Web Analytics Start-Up Chartbeat Tallies Up More Investors

Peter Kafka — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:16:11 +0000

Chartbeat, the real-time Web-publishing analytics service, has added a few more investors to its previously announced $3 million funding round. Joining Index Ventures et al are: Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg, former Verisign CFO Dana Evan and Code Advisors, best known as Quincy Smith’s newish gig.

All three are interesting names to attach to the company: Mullenweg created one of the Web’s most popular publishing platforms; Evan used to sit on the board of Omniture, Chartbeat’s giant rival (which is now owned by Adobe); and this is only the second investment that Code has made in its brief life–it has also put money into Flipboard, the much-buzzed-about iPad publishing app.

Meanwhile, Chartbeat is gaining rapid acceptance at big Web publishers that also use Omniture and/or Google (GOOG) Analytics. We’ve got an account here at All Things Digital, and I can confess that I’ve sometimes spent way too much time watching people come and go on my site–the interface is intuitive and sort of addictive, and it’s kind of like pachinko, that oddly mesmerizing cousin of pinball.

But I’m also not sure what I’m supposed to do with the information that Chartbeat provides me–it’s great to see how many people are reading this particular story at a given moment, but so what? I’ve already written my story–there’s not much else I can do at this point, right?

And if I can’t do much with that information, what can publishers at much larger, sclerotic shops do with the data?

I posed those questions to Chartbeat General Manager Tony Haile, who was kind enough to sit down with me for a minute before heading off to Africa for his honeymoon:

[ See post to watch video ]

Exclusive: The (Digital) End Is Nigh–News Corp. Unloading Beliefnet and Considering Jettisoning Jamba/Jamster

Kara Swisher — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:17:23 +0000

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. (NWS) paid $187.5 million to VeriSign (VRSN) for a 51 percent stake in Jamba in 2006 and bought the rest in 2008.

Founded by Steve Waldman and Robert Nylen in 1999, Beliefnet is a social networking site focused on religious, spiritual and faith-based issues, with $7 million in venture funding from Softbank Capital, as well as an initial angel investor round.

While its users skew Christian, the site offers blogs, news and other services related to Islam, Judaism and many other faiths, in addition to Christianity.

Its motto: “Our mission is to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness.”

The site was bought for an undisclosed sum by News Corp.’s Fox Entertainment Group as part of the Fox Digital Media unit. The digital strategy was to distribute some of its religious-based content on Beliefnet.

News Corp. has recently sold off some of the digital purchases it had made several years ago, such as its Rotten Tomatoes site to Flixster in a stock-trading deal.

Interestingly, Beliefnet’s Waldman is now senior adviser on the future of media and information technology to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Jamba was founded by Germany’s Samwer Brothers. On its Web site, News Corp. said it eventually bought it out entirely and “aligned the company’s business strengths with the global market opportunities in mobile entertainment, enabling it to underline its leadership in mobile content distribution, licensing and production as well as offering its customer a broad and up-to-date portfolio of mobile entertainment content further on.”

A News Corp. spokeswoman declined to comment on either Beliefnet or Jamba.

Scott McNealy's Top 15 Reasons He's Surprised We're Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Web

Kara Swisher — Thu, 27 May 2010 14:30:16 +0000

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.

VeriSign (VRSN), which administers the .com registry, sponsored the party, as well as a recent confab in Washington, D.C.

While the growth of .com was slow until the browser became popularized–numbering under 15,000 addresses in 1992–there are now close to 85 million .com domains. This innovative commercial designation is clearly the most important one, both financially and perceptually.

Thus, time to party at an event emceed by Web 1.0 comic favorite Dana Carvey.

He was funny, but perhaps the most enjoyable blast from the past was the appearance of jeans-clad former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who most definitely retains the title of Clown Prince of Silicon Valley as the needler-in-chief of then-dominant Microsoft (MSFT).

After being one of the superstars of Web 1.0, the wise-cracking McNealy has been missing in action in tech of late, as Sun’s influence waned. The company was sold to Oracle (ORCL) recently.

Ironically, given all the hubbub over Facebook’s privacy screw-ups this week, it was McNealy who famously said in a 1999 interview: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”

For last night’s crowd, he rendered a very adorkable list of the many reasons he was surprised that the .com was getting feted.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

President Clinton Talks About His Internet Legacy (BTW, He's an iPhone Dude, While the GOP's #41 Is a BlackBerry Teen)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:38:51 +0000

Here is a video I did of former President Bill Clinton talking at an event related to the 25th anniversary of the first .com domain registration.

Clinton gave a keynote speech first–which was, inexplicably, about health-care legislation and global warming.

But after Clinton was done, he sat down with VeriSign (VRSN) CEO Mark McLaughlin to talk about a range of Web-related topics, in a very amusing interview exchange.

They included what devices he uses, broadband access and the dire state of traditional media.

Clinton talked about what sites–largely political–he likes. He mentioned Politico, Daily Beast and the Huffington Post for their analysis and outlook, as well as far-right ones, to keep track of his opposition.

Interestingly, he did not mention the Washington Post (WPO) or the New York Times (NYT) online, although he said their deep reporting was valuable.

Still, Clinton noted, “It’s almost impossible, given the economics of the modern world for newspapers to continue.”

And the 42nd President of the United States is an Apple (AAPL) fanboy, naming his iPhone as his fave gadget (although he said he also has a BlackBerry).

Clinton joked that his predecessor, No. 41, former President George H.W. Bush, is a maniac user of the Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry, likening him to a teenager.

Also, no Kindle from Amazon (AMZN), since Clinton said he still likes books.

Here’s the video (sorry about his shiny watch, but you can hear him!):

[ See post to watch video ]

Tweet the People: Twitter VC Wilson and Federal CTO Chopra Talk Policy in D.C.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:15:40 +0000

Ms. BoomTown went to Washington, D.C., this week to moderate a panel on the future of the digital arena for an event marking the 25th anniversary of the first .com domain.

Surprisingly, the panelists–Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson, Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and VeriSign (VRSN) CTO Ken Silva–did not talk about geo-location jet packs and augmented reality for everyone.

Instead, due to their proximity to pols and government bureaucrats, they went wonkish, talking a lot about open government, data-retention regulations and, in Wilson’s case, pondering the “privacy heist” of consumer information by Silicon Valley social networking hotshot Facebook.

Now, to be fair, Wilson is a big and early investor in rival Twitter, so he might have his bias.

But the conversation was a refreshing change from pointless discussions on location wars between Foursquare and Gowalla and reporting-free speculation about whether MySpace is or is not for sale or will spin off or not.

In fact, it was almost erudite, except for the part about how the Federal Communications Commission gave me a giant paper-filled binder of the National Broadband Plan (more on that classic D.C. tree-killing move later!).

So that you too can get all federal, here’s a video I did with Wilson and Chopra, in which they talk tech policy:

[ See post to watch video ]

BoomTown in D.C. to Say Happy 25th Birthday to .Com and Wary Hello to Broadband Plan

Kara Swisher — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:54:33 +0000

Last night, I jetted east to Washington, D.C., for an unusual confluence of events: The 25th anniversary of the .com Internet domain name and the Federal Communications Commission’s release of the much anticipated National Broadband Plan.

Both are set for tomorrow in the nation’s capital and both concern the impact of the Web on the United States in the past and the future.

Incredibly, .com was almost .cor, for corporate.

And the first .com address handed out–Symbolics.com–belonged to a now-defunct Massachusetts computer company.

(It signed up via the domain registrar, Network Solutions, which was bought by VeriSign in 2000. The Symbolics.com domain was sold in 2009 to Missouri-based XF.com, which “operates commercial real estate and premium domain properties.”)

In honor of the anniversary, VeriSign (VRSN), which administers the .com registry, is hosting a policy forum in D.C. It includes a keynote address by former President Bill Clinton, as well as some panels.

I will be moderating the one in the afternoon titled “The Next Generation.” The panelists, looking to the future, include, among others: Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post; Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO of the U.S.; and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.

There will be another gala event to honor Internet innovators in San Francisco in late May.

While the growth of .com was slow until the browser became popularized–numbering under 15,000 in 1992–there are now close to 85 million .com domains. This commercial one is clearly the most important of the designations, both financially and perceptually.

Still, despite how much impact the Internet has had globally, spurred mostly by innovation in the U.S., this country still remains woefully behind in high-speed access to the Web.

While it is easy–and fun–to blame the greedy telcos and cable companies (and they do deserve some of the blame), the lack of a federal imperative has been the most appalling explanation.

It is as if the federal government had decided dirt roads were preferable to the highway system or tin cans and string were better than universal telephone access.

Will making broadband access easy, fast and cheap for most people in the U.S. be the end result of the National Broadband Plan, to be officially unveiled by the FCC tomorrow?

As I wrote last week:

“The two key questions about the effort to get the United States up to speed, so to speak, with decent digital access: Will it be toothless or not and will there be any money to pay for it, given the cash-strapped federal government?”

A possible highlight of the plan concerns whether spectrum should be allocated for a free or inexpensive high-speed wireless service, as well as restoration of some regulations lifted in the previous Republican administration.

But the main focus will be that the U.S. needs high-speed access to improve dramatically across the nation, especially for poorer citizens and in rural areas.

After a quarter-century of .com, the growth of a trillion-dollar industry from one punctuation mark and three letters, and badillions of page views, you would think this would be glaringly obvious to our federal government.

You should think it would.

RealNetworks Jumps on VeriSign Ruling; J.P. Morgan Upgrades

Eric Savitz — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:25:37 +0000

RealNetworks (RNWK) shares have spiked higher this morning after disclosing late yesterday that an arbitrator ruled in the company’s favor in its dispute with VeriSign (VRSN). The case concerned allegations that Real had interfered with VeriSign’s planned sale of its mobile messaging unit. Real said in an SEC filing that the arbitrator reversed his prior determination that Real committed acts of tortious interference with existing and prospective business relationships; those claims were dismissed.

J.P. Morgan analyst Vasily Karasyov this morning responded to the ruling by lifting his rating on the stock to Neutral from Underweight, noting that the decision was “more favorable for RealNetworks than we feared.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Bit.ly Inks Malware-Spotting Deals

Andrew LaVallee — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:00:17 +0000

As popular as link-shortening services are, security experts have been warning users that they put themselves at risk of malware infection by using them, since a suspicious-looking Web address just becomes another Bit.ly or TinyURL link once it’s shortened.

On Monday, Bit.ly announced partnership with several security firms, including Websense (WBSN), Sophos and VeriSign (VRSN), that it said helps to address that.

The three of them will provide malware and spam-detecting services designed to keep fraudulent links from making their way into Bit.ly URLs, which in turn are used extensively on Twitter, email and social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

All the Music You Can Eat, on Your iPhone? Wall Street Snoozes.

Peter Kafka — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:45:59 +0000

The announcement from RealNetworks that Apple had approved its iPhone app–all you can eat music, to go, for $15 a month–gave the company’s stock a brief jolt.

But that was Thursday, and that’s old news. After a run-up of more than 10 percent, Real’s stock is back in the $3.30 range, where it stood before the iPhone announcement.

The problem: While a lot of digital music nerds I’ve talked to in the last day or so are excited about the app, the first of its kind to hit the market in the U.S., Wall Street seems to think consumers won’t care. They’re just not going to pay a monthly fee to listen to music.

Here’s JP Morgan’s Vasily Karaysov: “Rhapsody’s subscriber base (750K as of Q2 ’09, a decline of 50K sequentially) reflects the existing demand for a subscription-based music service irrespective of the device on which it’s available. We don’t expect the new application to reverse the challenging trend.”

To be fair, Real Networks (RNWK) is a thinly traded stock with other challenges, and it can move for all sorts of reasons. For instance, there has been a bit of buzz about the damages that Real will have to pay Verisign (VRSN), which could be significant.

But I do get the sense that even in the Apple-crazed tech press, which goes bananas for every Apple (AAPL) morsel it can find (true or not), Real’s app seems to have floated under the radar. But Real’s rival, Spotify, whose app does more or less the same thing at the same price but is only available in Europe (for now), says that demand has been overwhelming, so much so that Spotify has had to restrict its offering to new subscribers, at least temporarily. So what gives?

[Image credit: Kaibara87]

Yahoo Product Head and CTO Ari Balogh Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:05:01 +0000

In BoomTown’s bold quest to annoyingly stick a Flip digital video camera in the face of every Yahoo senior exec, this week I worked the last nerve of its CTO and EVP of Products, Aristotle “Ari” Balogh.

Actually, the 45-year-old Balogh is a very calm and pleasant man, especially considering the huge responsibility that has been foisted on him by CEO Carol Bartz to rejigger how Yahoo (YHOO) makes its products and services and deploy its technology in a more efficient, centralized and most of all, innovative manner.

It is actually a process that was started under the previous leadership, especially President Sue Decker.

But now, after a number of reorgs, a wide swath of Yahoo is under Balogh’s purview–from search to open initiatives to product development to trying to fix Yahoo’s big problem of never quite getting its innovations out the door.

To explain all this, Balogh sat down with me twice–he is clearly a glutton for punishment–to talk about where Yahoo stood as it sought to dig itself out of its long slump and reemerge as the potent Internet force it once was.

While he successfully avoided the questions about Yahoo’s talks to do a search and advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT), he did talk about his view of its new Bing search service (well done, but can it scale?–which is an engineer’s favorite schoolyard taunt).

He also addressed the bigger question of how Yahoo can stay relevant in the fast-changing Web 2.0 world.

To Balogh, copying trendsetters like Facebook is not the answer. For example, he noted that Yahoo is more a place where consumers do “one-way” follows of things important in their lives rather than wanting another social-network service (which Yahoo has tried and failed at, actually).

“We’re not going to be another social network,” said Balogh flatly, agreeing that that boat has already long sailed without Yahoo on it with a significant product–Yahoo famously failed to buy Facebook, well before Balogh arrived in early 2008 from VeriSign (VRSN). “But we can be a place where people make and manage the important connections they have.”

How this will all play out is one of the most interesting questions in Silicon Valley because–even after all the turmoil–Yahoo remains one of the largest sites on the Web.

About 500 million monthly unique visitors enter its homepage and course through its vast site constantly, from its search pages to its massive email and instant-messaging services and its popular suite of content sites.

No one says Yahoo is not big–what everyone says is that it has missed many major and critical Internet trends as it has become mired in a management morass and external battles.

Now, with new leadership in place, observers are waiting to see what’s next.

In this regard, it is important what Balogh thinks since he is perhaps Yahoo’s only person who even closely resembles a Web product visionary now that former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang has stepped aside and Bartz has taken up command.

While he typically shies away from the spotlight, he is not bashful about talking about Yahoo’s infamous lugubrious development process.

“We have pockets of great technology that we have to really put back together into a coherent infrastructure,” said Balogh. “We have to get the basics right and focus on those core daily experiences that make Yahoo extraordinary.”

That is easier said than done, especially when changes impact so many consumers and, of course, the bottom line. Choosing what key trends to attack is harder for a large public company like Yahoo, which has a lot to protect in its current businesses.

“There will always be a battle between new ideas and monetization,” said Balogh. “The question is how much do you push that line back and forth?”

That fine line will surely be tested with the rollout of its new homepage in the fall, a long project that has been codenamed “Metro.”

“It is not a radical departure, but we have given users more power to do what they want and also serve as the best of Web versus that is already inside of Yahoo,” said Balogh of the new homepage. “With technology, it is always a push-pull.”

Here’s my video interview with him, talking about all this and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

D7 Tech Demo: Fullpower

John Paczkowski — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:05:51 +0000

Philippe Kahn’s history of entrepreneurship is nearly as old as the PC itself. He developed software for the Micral N, one of the earliest commercial personal computers, back in 1973. As CEO of Borland Software (BORL), he touted himself the “barbarian” of the software industry and embraced that identity by holding one of the first press conferences for his company in a McDonald’s (MCD) in Las Vegas during Comdex. Ousted from Borland in 1995, Kahn went on to found wireless synchronization outfit Starfish Software, which he sold to Motorola (MOT). He followed that up with LightSurf Technologies, a picture-messaging company acquired by Verisign (VRSN) in 2005. Today Philippe Kahn is at D7 as CEO of Fullpower, a company developing accelerometer-based hardware and software.

Session Highlights

[ See post to watch video ]

Live Blog

Walt and Kara welcome Kahn to the stage.
Fullpower, says Kahn, has developed the MotionX Recognition Engine, a technology intended to do for motion and gesture what speech recognition did for speech. “We’ve created a system that studies how you move, as opposed to reacting to it.”
The first demo involves a headset with onboard motion sensing, the MotionX-Headset. “Basically what we’ve done is build a motion-sensing headset,” says Kahn. The headset will differentiate between the sources of motion of its user–if the user is walking or running for example.
Kahn calls a colleague wearing the headset onstage. The colleague demonstrates how calls can be answered by tapping the headset, without using any buttons. Then the colleague begins walking and running around the stage — the technology is able to differentiate between actual user taps and all the other motion.
The device also notices whether its user is walking or running, using the MotionX Recognition Engine and accelerometer to obtain an accurate measurement of distance and speed traveled. The headset tracks the user’s speed and distance, and the user can tap it for spoken updates about his or her progress. The headset automatically turns off when set down, thus saving power, and turns back on when the user picks it up again. Kahn: The same technology used in the headset can be embedded in phones and other devices.
Moving on to the next demo, MotionX-Imaging, the technology demonstrated was full image stabilization using the MotionX Recognition engine and an accelerometer. These were built in to the smartphone. In order to demonstrate this for presentations, every time a picture is taken, the MotionX image stabilization is either applied (“stabilized”) or not applied (“unstabilized”) at random. The pictures are then sorted so you can compare all the regular pictures with the stabilized ones and see the benefit of the technology.

Recession Weighs on Web Address Growth

Andrew LaVallee — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:01:25 +0000

Maybe sexy Super Bowl ads aren’t helping the domain name business as much as we thought.

Domain registrar VeriSign’s (VRSN) latest report on the state of the industry shows that while more than 10.1 million new Web addresses were registered in the fourth quarter, this was a 17 percent drop from the period a year earlier.

The report, which drew from data provided by VeriSign, domain-data provider ZookNIC and the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, also showed a yearlong decline: New domain registrations averaged 11.9 million in 2008, compared with 12.2 million in 2007.

The slowdown in new URLs is clearly a reflection of the recession’s impact, says VeriSign spokesman Tom Galvin. “Any type of broader economic weakness is going to affect” that, he said, and it’s something the industry saw in the early part of the decade as well.

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VeriSign CEO Roper Resigns; James Bidzos Named Interim Chief

Eric Savitz — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:29:56 +0000

VeriSign (VRSN) announced that CEO William Roper resigned as an officer and director, effective June 30. On an interim basis, the company named James Bidzos as chairman, CEO and president. Bidzos was the company’s founder and original CEO; he has been chairman or vice chairman since April 1995. The company did not give a reason for the change, nor did they give any details on plans to install a permanent replacement.

In the announcement, Bidzos said that the company will proceed with its plan to divest non-core operations.

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So Much for the 'Gphone'

John Paczkowski — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:00:13 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

So Much for the 'Gphone'

John Paczkowski — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:00:13 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

And You Should Be Left Alone to Run the Internet as You See Fit, Why?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:18:14 +0000

Verizon’s Advanced Web Search service was, in the words of the company, “designed to help you quickly find the destination Web site you were seeking.” But apparently that’s true only if the destination site you’re seeking happens to be Verizon’s own search-engine page.

Some subscribers to the company’s FiOS fiber-optic Internet service are finding themselves redirected to Verizon’s own advertising-laden search-engine page when they mistype a URL or query a nonexistent Internet site–even if Verizon’s search isn’t set as their default. Verizon says it’s only trying to help, and to be fair, it does offer subscribers–who never “opted in” in the first place– the chance to opt out by changing the DNS settings in their routers.

Still, it’s all a bit too reminiscent of VeriSign’s Site Finder, a service that hijacked people who misspelled domain names and sent them to a Web directory full of advertising. Which, given the hue and cry over Net neutrality, isn’t the sort of memory you want to be conjuring up as a major telecom provider.

I Guess You Could Say He Ver-Resigned– Ba-Dum PSH!

John Paczkowski — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:17:07 +0000

“We keep the Internet’s dial tone up.” When VeriSign Chief Executive Officer Stratton Sclavos (at right, happy to see you) said that at the Tech Policy Summit in February, I wonder if he had any idea that the “we” to which he referred would soon become “they.” Because here we are about three months later and he’s resigned as CEO of the provider of digital-infrastructure services–a position he held for 12 years. VeriSign offered no real explanation for the surprise resignation, saying only that the company “has reached a point in its evolution where it can benefit from new leadership.”

An interesting choice of words, yeah? Some sort of new corporate euphemism, I suppose. I’m sure all will be revealed in the next few days.

Anyway … VeriSign tapped William Roper Jr. as president and chief executive. Roper, a board member since November 2003, has been the lead independent director. He most recently served as executive vice president of Science Applications International Corp., a diversified technology services company.